That safe place called home...

exists in Atlantis!

Where can I begin...let's see:

1. I thought my water was safe...

2. I thought my floors were safe...

3. I thought my air was safe...

4. I thought my food was safe...

5. I thought my habits were safe...

You get the point.

Blah, what a bleak post! Promise to post something optimistic soon!

Edited: And then L sends me this cartoon, oh well!

Source of cartoon: EveryDayEcon, CartoonBank.com

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:-( -----> :-)

So, I thought I would post photos from Georgetown Kite Fest. But, for some reason, I just don't "feel up to it". I feel like moping for no justifiable reason. Maybe it's because I woke up with a start at 7.30 AM with the thought that I had made a coding mistake! So weird, but I had actually saved a password that I should not have saved to source control. So, I went rushing to my laptop even without my cup-a-coffee and tried to "fix" my mistake as best as I could (Turned out it wasn't such a big deal, my colleague told me, "Don't sweat it, Ramya, we all make mistakes!" which was nice of him). Then, I spent a tensed morning half-concentrating, half-worrying about a presentation I had to give in the afternoon. And come afternoon, all the nice things that can and will go wrong did go wrong. I fumbled to project my laptop screen to the projector screen - Fn F7 just refused to work for me! Then, I had trouble pulling the stupid projector screen down. Then the meat of it - the actual presentation - and I heard my voice whispering to myself and shaking - quite a feat! And because, I was so nervous, I gave a 2 second demo instead of what should have been at least a 2 minute demo. Anyway, it's quite unfair to let the few of you still reading this post leave on a not-so-thrilled note like this (I blame it all on the faulty female hormones), so I am going to fight my moping ghost away and upload some pics!



See (talking to myself, you obviously do see), all I needed to do was a collage of bright and sunny photos with smiling faces and I feel better already :)...although I did think the kite-fest organizers were just going to approach us to say, "Ahem...you all have been here for more than 6 hours and really, you are the last people left at the park, could you kindly, you know, go home?!"

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Sunday routine!

One good thing about watching this on Sundays is this.

Most of the recent articles I read seem to claim multi-tasking is bad, this worked out ok for me, though :)

Oh, also, I like Anbudan (marks the end of the weekend to me) although the lucky people who get to watch other desi channels claim Anu Hassan's talk show is much better...

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Sometimes...

I lose faith in humanity.

Remember how people claim, big problems can be solved by small changes, by you and me?

How?

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Similarly crazy!

You know the moment when you know you have connected with someone? That moment changes everything. You go from listening to empathizing. It can happen in the middle of a conversation or out of the blue and you have the "Aha" moment, the moment when you know exactly what the other person is talking about. I can never truly understand what you feel because I am intimately familiar with my thoughts, I hear them in my head and I know exactly how I feel. But, when you talk, I hear the words, translate them in my head and try to make sense of them. Sometimes, I don't do such a good job of translating them and they don't make sense to me (courtesy - Stumbling on happiness). But in spite of being two different people, there are moments such as these when we almost think as one. I call it, being "similarly crazy". Because at some level, we all are crazy but being crazy together? That experience is something special.

Philosophy aside, I managed two stories in a row! Some wise person once said (Was it me? I can't remember but it always sounds authentic when you begin a sentence with "Some wise person once said..." :p ) "If you want to do a better job of writing, do it everyday. Write. Write. Write. It may sound like gibberish to you initially, but it gets better." So, that's what I do. Gibberish or not. I write because I have to. And I want to.

I titled my short story, "Rayin Snegam" (Rayil = train, Snegam = love, affection, friendship...). I couldn't find an equivalent in English. I began the story with an intent to try something different - use many short sentences instead of awkwardly long sentences. But half-way through, I forgot all about the short sentences and followed where the story took me, a mish-mash of thoughts from the books I have been reading recently (Stumbling on... and Maximum city), the ever-present nostalgia that all NRIs deal with and how life changes in a moment - the regular stuff :p

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Whew!

Managed to cook up a story.

Theme? Love story. What? Don't tell me you are surprised!

Be nice with your comments now. It's 12.30 am after all and my brain cells are only partially engaged in the process of intelligent thought.

Also, watch out for a deliberately vague ending, am hoping it's not really that vague :p

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Object Oriented Thinking.

If you are not programatically inclined, the code below just proves the point that I spend the major part of my day thinking thoughts that are not really worth thinking (you might want to read the stuff in green though). I spend the few precious minutes left behind (if any) thinking the thoughts that I really ought to be thinking. So why did I post this class below if I know the result already?

Because this is one crazy space (nothing extraordinary goin' on up there) and I plan to maintain it that way :p

/*
* Class to estimate how I end up spending all the time
* in my life. Best results when program is executed every
* 6 months and results compared.
*/
package com.lex.rs.thoughts;

public class ThoughtsOfRS
{
public static final boolean confused = true;
public static final long SECONDS_IN_DAY = 43200;
public static final long MAX_TRIVIAL = 10000;
public static final long MAX_RANDOM = 5000;
public static final long MAX_CRITICAL = 5000;
public static final long MAX_PAST = 5000;
public static final long MAX_FUTURE = 5000;
public static final long MAX_HYPOTHETICAL = 5000;
public static final long MAX_INDIA = 5000;

//Variable introduced after k explained that my previous class
//assumed I would think trivial thoughts all day long!

protected long actualTrivialTime = 0;

ThoughtsOfRS()
{
//Note that this does not honor the SECONDS_IN_DAY field.
while(confused)
{
think();
}
}

public void think()
{
initTrivialThoughts();
initRandomThoughts();
initCriticalThoughts();
initPastThoughts();
initFutureThoughts();
initWorthyThoughts();
}

public void initTrivialThoughts()
{
long startTime = System.currentTimeMillis();
brain.getTrivialThoughtsFromCache();
brain.processTrivialThoughts();
brain.recheckProcessing();
brain.storeChurnedThoughtsToCache();

long endTime = System.currentTimeMillis();

actualTrivialTime += endTime - startTime;

if (actualTrivialTime > MAX_TRIVIAL)
{
brain.storeChurnedThoughtsInLongTermMemory();
addToLoadForTomorrow();
actualTrivialTime = 0;
return;
}
else
{
initTrivialThoughts();
}
}

//Similar methods for random, future, past, hypothetical and
//critical thoughts in decreasing order of importance.

public void initWorthyThoughts()
{
long otherTime = MAX_CRITICAL + MAX_FUTURE + MAX_HYPOTHETICAL;
otherTime += MAX_INDIA + MAX_PAST + MAX_RANDOM + MAX_TRIVIAL;
long worthyTime = SECONDS_IN_DAY - (otherTime);
//As of current estimate, I get a whopping 3200 seconds to
//think all of my worthy thoughts !
}
}
/*
* If the GOF ever read this program, they would definitely publish this
* as a classic antipattern. Oh well, as long as I get my name on a published
* book...*sheepish grin*
*/

/*
* If you work with me, just fyi this is my evil twin who doesn't know a
* thing about programming.
*/

/*
* And if you are wondering about the weird green and yellow color theme (I know this link is not blue, but humor me and click it anyway :p)
*/

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