Irony of a Communications Engineer

"Why don't I ever find you online?" is a very common question I'm often asked. "Perhaps, both of us not hooked on to the Internet at the same time... aahh.. you know... "(then somehow change the topic :D ) is the same answer I have to everyone that asks me the popular question.

So, why can't you find me on chat lists?
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My first encounter with the World Wide Web was when I had to apply to an Engineering college in India about five six years ago. I did not even know what an e-mail was, then. Thankfully, that University did not require the candidates to have an e-mail ID unlike the admission processes now.

My second online activity, filling out the application being the first, was taking the entrance test to the same college. Incidentally, that was the first time the University was conducting their online entrance test. It's a different story that I did not go to that University to study.

That it was possible to chat online with someone sitting at some corner of the world never succeeded in securing even a glimpse from me. Some people I knew (not too well :-/ ) used to chat online with some random people they never even met in person. I had found it really absurd. I always thought it was such an utter waste of time and energy. I've never seen such a facility on Web that lets you meet random people online and chat with them. I don't think I'll ever bother to see how the application works.

Later I joined BMSIT, Bangalore, to pursue BE with concentration in ECE. Here, I used a computer mainly to work on tools necessary for my courses. I was still Internet-ignorant. E-mail became a hot topic among peers. Some would look at me as if I were an ancient creature since I did not have an e-mail ID.

My very-comfortable-with-the-Web friends helped me create an account on Yahoo. I had just watched the movie Lakshya, then. I had liked the movie so much that part of my e-mail ID was "lakshya"! Guess that was in our fifth semester.

It was only when we got an Internet connection at home in early 2009 that I got a google account. I created one just to leave comments on my friend's blog, which was not possible otherwise back then. My first experience of chat was rather embarrassing; I did not know how to initiate a chat! I called up one of the members of GoG (Gang of Girls - our group of friends in college was called that) and said "ok, I logged in to Gmail. How does this chat thing work??. When I click on a name that appears in list, it goes to compose mail..." Then was was "online-educated".

Now, I'm never "visible" on chat lists on either gmail or facebook, the platforms on which most of my friends "live" most part of their time. I occasionally ping my best friends and have a chat with them when it's not possible to talk over phone.

I'd any day prefer to call up to talk to friends and family instead of catching up with them online.


PostScript:

Being a student of Communications Engineering, I seem to be good at the complex Physical Layer, the exciting Data Link Layer, the cool Network Layer and the Transport Layer. Somehow, most of the "popular" web applications  do not seem to impress me.

My cousin is the only one with whom I've chatted on Facebook. That was the first and the last.
 ***
 Read this saying somewhere - "If you have to ask if you belong in a group, you probably don't"

*****
Current Song:
White Flag by Dido

Lets take away Religion out of Science

A few days before I left for Boston, I visited the Visveshwaraya Industrial and Technological Museum at Bangalore with my friends. There was this show - Tara Mandal running. Since all of us shared a common interest in Astronomy, we decided to go watch it.

So it was supposed to be a small lecture on celestial bodies inside the dome-shaped dark tent with the image of the night sky projected on the inside of the tent. Lambda Orionis was missing from my favourite constellation Orion.

The speaker started with some lines in Sanskrit which went over my head. As if he were contesting in a number-of-words-per-minute competition, he rattled off  quick facts. Most of the talk was in Sanskrit. The Sanskrit-illiterates like us managed to catch some English words.

He started to talk about rashis which again missed my ears. A kid among the audience screamed "What's your Rashee" referring to the Bollywood movie. Appreciation poured in from all corners as if a new planet was just discovered in our solar system.

Then there was a question to the audience. We were asked what was special about some constellation ( I can't remember its name) There were many voices with the "right" answer. Apparently it was Amitabh Bachchan's rashi! Vow, dear constellation, you are famous! Oh another constellation was "Jaya Lalitha's".

What Dad had taught me about Astronomy when I was in the fourth grade was a zillion times more informative than this dumb show, I thought.

*****
If you like your house, you will like everything around you - My friend

**
Somebody: What is the cure of love at first sight? 
Socrates: Take a closer second look. It helps a lot.
  :D :D

*****
Let’s start at the very beginning,
a very nice place to start,
when you sing, you begin with A, B, C,
when you simulate, you begin with the topology,...

- Introduction to ns (Network Simulator) in the manual

***
Current Song:
These Dreams by Heart

The Handsome old man and the Charming old lady

I was walking up to the library in the evening yesterday when the audience were walking out of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, visibly enchanted by the fine music. Men and women, impeccably dressed, were gracefully walking down the stairs, some hand in hand.

Among them was this old couple which caught my attention. The serene smile on their faces was as though they were celebrating a lifetime of affection. The charming old lady's head was lowered while the handsome old gentleman was looking at her. They were not speaking. Perhaps the silence spoke between them. As they slowly walked away toward the road, I thought - one must be fortunate to experience such a moment. Cheers to them!

*****
Current Song :
Everlong by Foo Fighters
"Hello
I've waited here for you
Everlong..."

A little bit of 'me'

I was in love with the 1:18 Scale Mitsubishi Lancer Car Model that came free with our subscription to the Overdrive magazine. Few years ago, we had some guests invited over to dinner. A naughty kid in the guest-group, who was the apple of everyone's eyes, didn't take a moment to break my precious car. When I saw the car model broken into pieces, I was shattered. Worst part of it was, I could not even vent out my anger. I was supposed not to have reacted since I was in college and hence remain poised. I don't know what makes people think that you are all grown up and hence should be magnanimous just because you are in college.

The parents of the kid were least concerned about the incident and continued bragging about their child prodigy. Mom knew that I would break down any moment and took me away and consoled me.

Some time later the basketball I was fond of, was the kid's peremptory demand. My eyes dilated and I felt hollow to see my basketball being drubbed and taken away from me.

A couple of days back, I was studying at my favourite place in the library, enjoying the view of the evening-city from the fourth floor. It was a particularly nice day. Just when I thought I was going to study a challenging topic that evening, an acquaintance spilt by mistake a whole cup of hot chocolate over my Digital Communication text book. I was stupefied to see the book I loved drenched in the brown drink. I spent an hour cleaning the mess and couple of more crying over my misfortune. I have been fuming, with swollen eyes since then.

All my things have a little bit of me in them. I'm not so magnanimous to remain calm when I see them spoilt.

***
Thought for the post
Nothing that grieves us can be called little: by the eternal laws of proportion a child's loss of a doll and a king's loss of a crown are events of the same size.
- Mark Twain in Which Was the Dream?

*****
Current Song:
Break Even by The Script
"I'm still alive but I'm barely breathing..."

I prefer it natural

While teaching us the importance of utilizing the space on the constellation diagram to represent digitally modulated signals, my professor gave us an example today of Japanese farmers growing cuboid watermelon to save storage space .

Out of curiosity, I googled for square watermelons and found this article on BBC news - http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/1390088.stm
I'm just thinking - advances in biological sciences has made it possible to force changes in the behaviour of plants and animals. Cows are injected with genetically engineered hormones to increase milk production. Cattle are injected with hormones to make them grow faster. Biotechnology can make the plants bear more fruits and vegetables than they naturally can.

I understand that science and technology has helped a great deal to prevent diseases; understand the nature better enabling us to act based on the observations. But, isn't there a limit up to which we can use technology? Why can't we let nature have it's say at the end?

When I was younger, I used to accompany my Grandma to our farm. She would pull out groundnut plants and I'd joyfully break the shells and munch the nuts. I would wander through the fields and pluck mulberry fruits. It's been ages since I had the mulberry fruits, still, the taste lingers. As a kid the greatest achievement was to pull out a sugarcane stalk remove its sheath with my teeth. Chewing the cane, I thoroughly relished the sweet juice.

These days, fruits only "look" tempting. I seldom get to savour a taste. Biotechnology, you have succeeded in producing large quantities, but taste? Nope.


*****
Current Status:
Refreshed, feeling the bright warm Sun after so long.

**
Then Status:
A few days ago, I wanted to scream at the person concerned : "Tumhare jaise dost ho to dushman ki kya zaroorat??" (What's the necessity of an enemy when I have a friend like you?)

***
Current Song:
Selling the Drama by Live

"And to love: a god
And to fear: a flame..."

The power of Expectation

From Wikipedia :

In probability theory, the expected value (or expectation, or mathematical expectation, or mean, or the first moment) of a random variable is the weighted average of all possible values that this random variable can take on.
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If you are doing a graduate program in Electrical Engineering, an entire four-credit course could be based on expected values of our dear stochastic process. My professor used to say "Most of the time, you do not require a perfect sample of a signal. Based on the expected values and your observation, you can arrive at correct decisions with minimum probability of error.

Now, let me tell you about my tryst with my observations and expectations.
During my pre-university, I used to commute by namma(our) BMTC buses. We had four buses that particularly routed through our locality, which meant I could get off the bus few feet away from our home in Bangalore. I used to make a note of what time you could anticipate these buses at the two ends of my commute. Whenever I didn't have to travel, the buses were almost on time. What punctuality, impressive! - I used to think.

When I actually waited for one of our buses, none arrived! One day, I was hell bent on catching an "our" bus and waited quite long. According to the statistics I had at least one bus should have arrived at that particular stop within twenty minutes of mine getting there. I waited, and waited more than an hour. Then decided on hopping into some bus in my direction and later walking home from the nearest bus stop. Guess what - I find a seat for myself in the bus and am pulling out my handsfree from my bagpack, "our" bus overtakes the bus I'm in, leaving me furious!

My statistics helped everyone in our locality except me, huh!

That's not all. Yesterday, in the laundromat I decided on using the washing machine that was closer to the dryer. I pour in the detergent and load the clothes and insert coins. That machine simply returned the coins, much to my dismay.

There are tons of instances wherein simple things, that everyone else finds easy to get, elude me! Why me?

PostScript:
I tell myself "don't expect, be surprised"

Current Thought:
How do the radio stations know my current mood? They seem to play apt songs! All the stations!

Current Song:
With or Without You by U2
"See the stone set in your eyes
See the thorn twist in your side
I wait for you..."

The early riser

The only day I woke up really early in the morning was when I had to take my SSDT (Solid-State Device Technology) final exam. Well, I had to study two huge chapters that morning and that was the first time I was reading those topics! If I had not woken up early I would have flunked the exam for sure. That was one subject in which the equations made absolutely no sense to me.

Anyway, lets not talk about that. Why I logged into Blogger was to tell you about my new cool part-time job.

This friend of mine, who was also the teaching assistant for one of the courses I had taken last semester, used to work as an assistant in the Computer lab of our Northeastern University. Learning about the job and the environment here, I applied to the position of  Lab Assistant. Since the lab supervisor is a morning person, I used to come to the lab early morning by 7 30 to follow up on the status of the application. I guess everyone thought I was an early riser. What they did not know was I hadn't had slept at all through the night! I would study the notorious Applied Probability and Stochastic Processes for which I had to get my fundamentals of Signals and Systems, and all the math of four undergrad semesters "fundamentally" and "completely" right.

I was more than happy that got this job, considering there were tons of applications and so few persons work here. And, I have been put on early morning shifts. On the first day of work our supervisor briefed me on the duties I had to perform. I had already learnt that from my friend long before. But the way he talked, it would have made anyone feel good about the work. The tone was not imposing. The words were not binding me. It was as if an elderly person was telling a kid a story and the kid having the freedom to build on that. He never said this "has" to be done. The culture was "do whatever you can". That probably pushes anyone to do more than s/he is ought to do.

Whenever I am given total freedom, I'm naturally responsible and I simply enjoy my work and its fun. I've been the same since childhood. My parents never imposed on me any rules. I have always been a good and responsible kid, thanks to the freedom I was given :)

So, after checking that computers and printers in four rooms are all working fine, logging some students off, making sure everything is all right, sitting at her desk, this Grad kid is blogging!
 *
I'm not complaining about getting up early at all. Oh by the way, the supervisor is happy that I opened the lab on scheduled time of 7 30 today. Due to this morning's snow storm, the university announced a two-hour delayed opening. It was good that I was on time. In spite of the classes being delayed, the undergrad kids are studying in the lab so early.
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Somehow, that it is snowing heavily does not make any difference to me. It's just a normal day.
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After my first day of work, I had called this friend of mine, who had helped me get the job and said "Hey, thanks a ton for the job! I thoroughly enjoyed myself!".

*****
The time of posting is actually 10 08 am. Blogger says 11 something. It's not keeping track of day light saving...

Current Song:
Back to December by Taylor Swift