the LHC, photons and their likes :)

we were preparing dinner yesterday evening; he was mixing up some batter and i was waiting impatiently for him to get over with it, when he started talking about the LHC. i must admit that was my first real encounter with the term, though i had been hearing vague references to the experiment for the past week or so. so he was like, "...and two photons are going to be collided on october 21st..." and i was like "hold on. it cannot be two photons; it must be two protons". so that immediately ticked him and he said "how can you be so sure? i think i read photons". so i spouted some gyan on photons (the little that i remember from class 12 physics) and he told me that i am have an "exceptional memory" :) now me, i am modest. i know my memory's not exceptional...it's just good. i looked up the LHC and photons on the web today, and it made for some interesting reading (primarily because i wouldnt have to remember all of the stuff for an exam on the morrow). here are the links (as if the whole world hasnt read of all this already!...but anyway, here's my bit to promote the knowledge of what surely ought to become one of the greatest experiments ever performed!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_Hadron_Collider

http://lhc.web.cern.ch/lhc/

college tales

my second post in the day, which probably shows how very bored and extremely jobless i am (well i have a job, and i am working, but in snatches...it's not keeping me busy today). i was looking up some very old snaps on my computer the other day---they date back to 7-8 years and have that old/jaded look associated with relatively older snaps that have been scanned from their paper originals. i had to do a lot of zooming in and out, to be able to see every detail vividly, but the mind was more than ready with the details where the snaps failed. you see, those are from college tours, the class, our lazy evenings outside the hostel etc.

i think after all these years it would be safe to reveal that my best moments as a student, happened in that beautiful place tucked cosily on a hill. well there were some ugly incidents too, but if i closed my eyes to those (or relegated them to a blind spot in my brain), there is nothing to deter me from saying that RIT was by far the best place i spent in 18 years of acads.

for starters, getting in was a piece of cake. for the less enthusiastic and less scholarly students like me, places like RIT are a godsend :) you prepare for a sennight and take a shot at the state level exam, and lo, there you are...you find yourself at rit :) (that's how i went there, though i had always wanted to go there ever since i had heard of the place in '94 or so). and once you got in, barring the ragging and the electrical labs, life was a piece of cake as well :)

the thing with the electrical labs was that...well...the professors made every session a nightmare, with unending questions to test our lack of knowledge :( and writing a record of the work done was bad too, considering that i have always had scant regard for writing neatly, drawing nicely, etc etc. so anyway, except for a biweekly torture session, and a daily dose of the R thingy in the first year, life was great. i rarely ever studied (except on the night before the exam ofcourse) :) when i moved into the college hostel in the second year, the fun improved by leaps and bounds, and whatever remained of the studies, flew out of the window. i remember our gang of 6 having major addas in the common space in the ground floor at 2:00 a.m in the night, hoping that we would wake up the next morning in time for breakfast (which we never did anyway). all the other girls were cross with the 6 of us and made pointed references to our disturbing behaviour (well, the act of disturbing them while they were studying). all of them were either comp science or EC students and thought of themselves as intellectually advanced (as compared to us ofcourse). i remember their snooty looks (and i hope none of them ever read this blog!) and their sarcastic comments and our giggling behind their backs at the monumental waste of time :)

when we spent hours together sitting on the roads within the campus, looking at the blue sky above and contemplating what the future held for us, i guess we never dreamt of the paths we would take, and the places we would end up in. the fun lies in the uncertainty though, for it gave us umpteen opportunities to fantasise, and today, it gives me even more opportunities to reminisce. nostalgia...oh so bittersweet, and yet one of the bestest things that have ever happened to mortals :)

disclaimer post!

here's something that i thought, was obvious. apparently, it isn't...so here goes. appropos the small description i've put in, please do not take everything on this blog at face value. i am not one of those chatty females that would reveal all of their secrets, dark or light, on a blog :) most of what i write, is trash (it's mostly 65% untrue, though it sounds oh-so-true at times; except for the previous post because i meant every word of it) :) and sometimes, when i feel bored, or sleepy, or just plain pissed at the lack of eventfulness in my life, i'll go on and write some soppy crap (literally crap, because most of it would be junk) :)

ok, so this is my disclaimer post...should've come earlier; but better late than never. i used to write better stuff on my blog at the office, and i can't explain the lackadaisical posts in here! but until i come up with something nicer and more creative, please bear with my lit trash :)

for its sake :)

i think something is grossly wrong with the world...or atleast, most of the world. where we should have concentrated on preaching about love, and practising kindness to fellow beings, we have started preaching on the virtues of being jealous, and practise being arrogant like never before.

the other day, i went to church, knowing fully well that the reverend would subject me and fellow churchgoers to an hour of never ending boredom in the name of a sermon. i did not realise that he would read out an e-mail (one of those "forwards" that i always annihilate with a shift+delete action), and that he would use the points therein to paint a dirty picture of "techies" and MBAs and the likes.

i haven't understood the moot point that he was trying to make that day. he quoted a verse from the good book and strayed from it like the prodigal son from his father's house! apparently, the wise man that he is, he is irked by young people of this generation who are ambitious. and that brings me to the quintessential question -- what is the vice in being ambitious? is ambition by any means, a prelude to wickedness?

so the guy the reverend was speaking about, quit a job that paid him 12lakhs p.a. to look for something that would pay him 36 lakhs p.a. is that a crime? is that act worthy of the disdain and sarcasm that dripped copiously from the other's words? is the society aware of the lakhs that the young man spent, in getting a coveted MBA from some IIM? is he then not justified in making a good ROI? and even if he hadn't made an investement worth lakhs for his education, does he not have the right to aim for a better job, if he so desires? who gave me, or you, or a reverend, the right to speak of his aim as though it were a heinous deed?

really, i have heard this diatribe against "techies" (and other folks working in MNCs) so much and for so long that i wonder what we (the techies) did, to invite this wrath? is it that we spent 4 years studying a variety of subjects related to some branch of engineering? that we got jobs in MNCs that developed software? or is it a war against software itself?
i can't hire an autorickshaw without the driver giving me a discourse on how "my kind" brought the evils of traffic and potholed roads into bangalore...really! now that's a tall claim. i wonder if would have made as decent a living as he does now, if "my kind" had not existed. i also wonder if the reverend in my church would have run out of topics for the sunday sermon, if IT had not happened :)

i was reading a friend's blog that had "rambling" somewhere in its title; iwas also doing an official assignment , and hence was looking up "cultural diversity". at the height of my absent mindedness, i typed in "cultural ramblings" :D