Aha! Take that all you cynics of my writing style!

I just didn’t know how to begin. The words, the thoughts, the lines, they came and went and with them they brought and took away a million feelings a million times. I was not ‘consistent’ they said. ‘Consistent’ is a strange thing to be as one learns one must change every second. Survival is adaptation so ‘consistent’ I was not – did not want to be.
Poetry, I thought. Rhyme and rhythm. That amazing combination of words that express emotions unsaid and sights unseen with such laconic expertise that it bewildered. It had to be poetry. There must be poetry. Yet there was none…as yet. And if it were to be then I must write it.
This was a disturbing conclusion so I ignored it. For writing was something of the past. The rhyme had deserted me and the rhythm no longer beat in the freely flowing words. So I turned to words. Just plain words with no frills. And then there was the abstract. That which was known yet unknown and that which was above all loved because it left all but a slight notion to the imaginative mind. Was this an option when I wanted to make myself clear? To make myself heard and most importantly understood.
The fact of the simple matter was, I did not know. Did not know what was to come. What had passed and what was now. Yet there was no sense of foreboding. No uncertainty for that had passed too. With no help from the world I might add.
And then it nagged again. Something between thought and feeling, somewhere between mind and heart. So elusive that even though it was within me I was unable to grasp it. Even though its origins lay in, possibly, the deepest darkest recesses of that unknown part of me, it was as swift as the most fleeting glance.
It turned the day into night and the night into a gloom cast. It made the laughter artificial and it made the heart heavy and the mind dysfunctional and dull. It nagged at joy and boosted the sorrow. What was it, this creature? So illusory yet so effectual.

Something between thought and feeling
Lay somewhere between heart and mind
In swirls of darkness hopes were reeling
Till solace those illusions did find
Its origins lay in the deepest,
Farthest part of the soul we had
Illuminated were the recesses darkest
With memories sad and glad
Strands of thought formed from the mist
Of reason and belief, they stood
Alone and apart from the rest
Enshrouded beneath the sacred hood.
The Holy Grail, it has been lost
And the purest blood has flowed
The boundaries of faith, they have been crossed
The seeds of doubt are sowed
What will become of reason now?
What destiny does lease
We have lost what was ours – and how!
We have shattered the simple peace.
The bonds that hold the world together
Have snapped between you and I
So now there is no forever
It just seems like there is goodbye.

Those were the days my friend...

So I have made a grand entry into the elite group of 'blogs once in a while'ers. Almost feel like re-writing my 'profile' in something:
Living with - out a choice
Political view - opaque
Humour - Ive done better!
Drinking - need a stiff one to get over today!
smoking - arite hand me that too if it will make today better!
blogging - occasionally :-)

Today was a bad day, one of those where all your effort leads to zilch and you feel stupid and almost...almost... decide to come away with a Masters instead of PhD (blasphemy!!). Anyhow, so just as I was thinking that I am probably the stupidest moron (if such a combination is legal!) to walk God's green (and smart!) Earth, not to mention the harrowed halls of the LPC, RSPHYSSE(that's an acronym for where I work!) - just as I was on the verge of wallowing in self-pity, somebody pulled me out (kicking and screaming no less!).
Self pity is a blissful state where everything is justified. So also the pre-awakening state where 10 mins more is always justified, never mind that you will get to work an hour late and have to sneak in the back door of a different department and then down in the dark corridors of the dimly lit labs and then very swiftly past the administrator to your desk, get rid of bag and coat in the blink of an eye, put bottom on chair and look around as if to say 'What! ive been here all morning!'.
Back to self-pity, so it is a state where one can be lazy, depressed, lethargic, condescending and critical. One can eat ridiculous amounts of food for comfort, watch TV all day to feel better and do nothing if that's what it takes. If you are a very unlucky self-pityer you will have some 'enlightened' soul around you who will give you the whole rigmarole about how nothing ever came off self-pitying (although Im not sure how they know that!) and one must pick oneself up and move onto greener pastures as it were. A very lucky self-pityer will have another self pityer so they can self pity together :-D!
Im a moderate self pityer, like to wallow in it for a while but then have to drag myself out of it because big things at hand. A hot cup of tea to brew and some good company to drink your sorrows away with is that not all one needs - or is it?

Of Blogs Thus Far

I find my writing skills rapidly deteriorating, anybody who has had the misfortune of keeping up with my blogs will vouch for this - that is of course if they consider honesty more of a virtue than niceness. My first few blogs - ah! sheer class (or so I would have myself believe), the intermediate ones were struggling between heaven and hell and the last few were competing in a downhill race!
I like to think this happens to the best of us. Mr. Archer should agree since his 'Sons of Fortune' seemed to draw inspiration from a bad Saawan Kumar flick! (sincere apologies and sympathies to anyone who liked the book!)
Personally I find that writing, although it begins as a very intimate thing, in moments of introspection and reflection for those blessed with (or willing to put in the effort to acquire) a rather more flowery vocabulary than the masses - it very quickly digresses into something more appealing to these very same masses. A tried and tested style will, no doubt, work but a different style that recieves just as much attention will soon become tried and tested too!
I am unsure as to where blogs fit in in the general scheme of things. One cannot pour one's heart out nor can one write about the blueness of the sky in any great detail.
There are of course things like last week's dream or 'How I was chased by ducks around South Oval' (in that case I reckon a picture would be worth a thousand words and a video would be priceless!).
Current issues is another subject and will always recieve attention as they are ...well...current. they don't get outdated! However I am not keen on unleasing a monster with such open endedness as 'please feel free to share your views on *some sensitive (non) issue*'.
Where there are numerous options, indecision is paramount, hence the random rants about seemingly random things.
THE question, at the end of every day is 'What do I write about'. Should it be something that my 'readers' (I have readers now?!) care about or something I would rather they cared about, or alternatively (and this is the easier option) something I care about. More often than not I choose the last option and the eternal struggle is to make something I care about sound so worth caring for that the reader, by the end of the blog, cares about it too.
Here's to success!

Gratitude!

Sometimes people do things that leave you at a loss for words. Now I cannot personally say that I have had this experience several times. I can spring in my two-cents to anyone at any given time without thinking twice about it. But every once in a while someone does something - so thoughtful and nice that I am at a loss for words. Honestly only unadulterated kindness can leave me tongue-tied. I have never been big on self-confidence, I dont possess it in any reasonable quantity and I dont inspire it in the masses, as it were. However, there have been instances in my life that have made me sit up and take notice - of myself! Generally I am of the notion that my life makes not an ounce of difference to more than a handful, and those handful I can explain myself to, hence I can continue with the general air that by simple statistics my life makes no difference to the person next to me (almost 99 out of 100 times!).
Even so, as I mentioned in my previous rant (about tools building life and such) I try (strive even!) to be a nice person and thanks to several people today I know I have succeeded.
So basically this is a THANK YOU! blog - to everyone who has made a difference and although I would love to gush like I've just won Miss. Universe, with a bouquet in my hands and a crown on my head and start thanking this lot - Im going to do something a lot more from the heart.
Im going to put it in black and white (words!!) - THANK YOU!

Rainy days and Mondays always get me down.....

Another blog title that has nothing to do with the actual content of this blog (just happened to hear the Carpenters on TV yesterday!).
I dislike grocery shopping - I am bad at it and I lack the inherent skills required to make complex decisions such as "what vegetables should I buy". Of course this stems from a deep rooted fear of decision making and also from the fact that I can always count on somebody else to make decisions for me. Only the seemingly insignificant ones though - other major life decisions like "I dont want to go to work today because I can pass off my countenance as slightly indisposed", I make myself.
When my mom walks into a super-market she has a plan of attack. She treads purposefully towards the right aisle and we are always in-and-out in a few minutes, armed with exactly what we need - not a tomato more or a potato less.
Every saturday morning I decide to take an inventory of the 'larder' (so Enid Blyton I love it!). A moment after I am faced with 'grocery type' things or the lack thereof, my resolve comes crashing down and I give up even before I have begun.
Come afternoon I trudge off with dragging footsteps towards 'SupaBarn' (very 'barn'like and hardly 'supa') and here starts the misery. The second I enter my brain begins it shutdown process, I walk through the aisles dazed and overwhelmed by the sheer amount of choice surrounding me. I pick up random things at leisure and put them back (sometimes in the wrong places). Few things I buy out of sheer habit (even though I might have 10 of the same in my 'larder'). Few things I avoid because I know that I will go into an uncontrollable frenzy at the sight of potato crisps or Cadbury Hazelnut hot chocolate powder!
Chaos reigns supreme in my mind and before I know it I am at the check out. Post check- out I suddenly snap out of this hypnotic state and take a moment to look through my shopping for the day. Usually I have nothing to show for it and invariably I always never know what to cook that night because I have not bought anything that I can make a decent meal out of.
My friend has got grocery shopping down to a science. He can reduce it to a simple mathematical equation and as they say when God shuts a door somewhere he opens a window - I find it quite simple to work with equations coined by somebody else :-).
Calculation goes something like this:
(i) Calculate the no. of meals that you will cook before your next visit to SupaBarn (and be honest about this, your laziness factor can be accounted for right here without causing more strain on the pocket!)
(ii) Divide by 2 in my case because food cooked for one meal usually lasts for another (call this no. x)
(iii) Subtract the number of vegetables that you already have at home that can be cooked for one meal (and last for two!) - call this result y.
(iv) Buy x-y = z number of vegetables!
SIMPLE, BEAUTIFUL AND ELEGANT - reminds me of Veronica's French chef in the Archie comics when he smacked his lips and gushed "bellisimo".

Wheels of time

Its been a roller coaster ride y'all!
Over an 'extended' lunch break today my (very unlikely) friend and I started discussing issues. Beginning with the kind of people that we can get along with and the kind of people we cannot, delving into the depths of human relationships and the like and the icing on the cake was realising that paediatricians have a completely different outlook on life (when compared to the rest of humanity)!
This got me thinking on the walk back to work - i have strived all my life to be a good kid, a good friend and generally a good person to be with. Im sure that as a baby and a child I still believed in the inherent goodness of the world - heck why else would I have let every other person carry me and 'say hello' or 'say bye' (all the while thinking 'lady/dude I can barely cry to let people know im hungry, saying 'hello' is not an option right now! OR "I didnt not just say bye, I was trying to cough out something stuck in my throat! There really isn't anything to get goo goo gaa gaa over!). But as people grow and learn (all kinds of things!) all this talk of inherent goodness takes the very last seat on the bus!
Now that I re-read by blog thus far I realise that I have majorly digressed from the initial point I was trying to make (but of course digression is what leads you to greener pastures!).
The point I was, and still am, trying to make is that my life has been a mix, hell its been a concoction! Every time I am asked "So, where are you from?" I have to stop and think of a suitable reply (this reply hugely depends on the person asking this question :-) ). I now realise that this indecision regarding my origins is unnecessary - or is it?
If I tell somebody that I am half Jamaican, half Bohemian and I have been brought up in Timbucktoo - would they say 'No wai, bet yeow a dollah you're Eendian, brought up in Neow Zoilan for a beet, mate!'
And if they did say this, after I had finished reeling from the shock of it all, I would of course try to fathom how they figured it out. Would it be my accent, my clothes, my love of beaches and other vast expanses of water or the fact that I said thank you to an auto-driver in B'lore! (which nobody does apparently!). The answer does not strike me as 'elementary, my dear Watson'!
I think (for what its worth) that I am what I am because of my environment and a small set of basic beliefs. It is as if my parents handed me down some tools and told me to build my life with 'em. On the way I found other tools and the occasional spanners in the work. Tools I kept, spanners I got rid of.
So I turn as best I can, the wheels of this system and it trudges along no doubt to some distant future.

Writer's Block

As the title of this blog suggests the above is exactly what I am suffering from. Writer's block seems to be a genuine thing and not something that came into existence because somebody had to hand in an essay the following day and had whiled away all their time drinking and partying and then realised 'oops! umm...sorry maam I had writers' block' (of course if they could back it up with a medical certificate confirming the same then they might have gotten away with it!).
As I never fail to mention, I have been out and away from the writing scene for quite a while, I like to think that all this time I have dedicated to more (arguably) useful things like studies - although what greater good this will serve, we have yet to see.
My first few blogging sessions were quite productive. In spite of the half a decade long absence I was able to write something that I thought could be read for the 'goodness and enrichment of one's soul'. Ok who am I kidding, those words were said by my Prof. to a class of rather atrocious students who really couldnt care less about 'Analytical techniques in Physical Sciences'. Actually an interesting story surrounds this comment. We were fresh into our first year (and this means it was our second day at university because things get quite stale a few months into a degree!) at university, still in that phase where we thought 'hanging out' at 'uni' was cool and we were oh so 'flash' because we would be 'Btech-optoelectricians' four years down the line. So first week into our course we were told that we would be the first ever batch to study 'Analytical techniques in Physical Sciences' taught by Prof. BP! What, very convieniently, they failed to tell us what that Prof. BP was Little Nicky with chalk for a pitch-fork, who thought that we were actually there to learn these Analytical Techniques!
After about 99% of the class (comprising of 11 students, one of whom was there to actually learn and so he passed) failed - Dr. MH came to our rescue. MH shared an office with Prof. and had been his student - so he was fully familiar with the effect of Analytical Techniques on young minds and how traumatic the whole experience can be, so to save the university having to pay through its nose for lawsuits filed by the parents of aforementioned, traumatised young minds, MH decided that he would tutor us - on the sly- for weeks before the exam.
In one of these ill-fated tutorials one student who had been religiously pouring over the techniques and burning his belongings one-by-one (as midnight oil must've run out!!), in sheer frustration chucked his book on the desk and shouted 'Why the heck do we have to learn all this c**p"! To this lad MH calmly replied 'you must learn this for the goodness and enrichment of your soul'!!!! The shell shocked student is still trying to comprehend this remark, as are the rest of us but for that moment in time we actually believed that we were on the brink of something remarkable. That learning 'Analytica techniques in Physical Sciences' was the one and only path to nirvana...

On the shoulders of giants

In one of my earlier blogs I had written, rather discerningly, about how sad it was that all my writing eventually digresses into something Physics oriented. I had also expressed my deep sorrow at this fact and then continued to write about something Physics oriented albeit with a sorrowful countenance.
Now that I think about it I realise that it is the most natural thing, the path of least resistance and thus I take it. My friend who is well on her way to saving the lives of many, weilding steth and scalpel, is an eager blogger - and she writes about - you guessed it - steth and scalpel!
Not that her every blog tells of symptoms and treatments, but majority (in fact maybe all!) of her day to day experiences involve the 'sick and ailing' in some way.
What we choose to become heavily influences who we are at a given point in time and, like it or not, we are very likely to view the world and then use our knowledge/experiences to explain it. However, the strange thing about all this is that people that truly realise the world, people we (I) consider giants - Buddha, A.Einstein, Michelangelo to name very very few - seemed to have broken through this barrier of the preconcieved. Of course I have never been in the presence of these esteemed beings and had the opportunity to say 'how the heck did you come up with that!', but history tells us of their lives and how they openly flaunted authority, seemed to be prodigies from the word go and basically took the responsiblity not to let schooling interfere with their education.
So many a time I think that maybe my life is getting nowhere because my thinking is based on prior knowledge, I look at and think about everything in terms of a preconcieved idea that some such giant put forth - while what I should really do is research, rethink and react.

All of eternity...

A big Thank You! to everyone who has read my blog and showed their appreciation. It is definitely a moral booster as its been about half a decade since I wrote anything readable by the general population. Not to say that for the last half a decade I have been filling in speech bubbles for japanese cartoons (that's the stuff of nightmares!) - quite the contrary actually - I have been writing scientific reports (nothing world changing and certainly not revolutionary but scientific all the same). This morning during 'educational net browsing', I came across Albert E's original published papers (photoelectric effect, special and general relativity etc.), translated to English of course. I was excited to say the least (and totally confused by that 3 page document that changed the course of science as they knew it and caused many a student to wake up in cold sweat the night before an exam on the aforementioned topic).
Amidst all this uncontrollable excitement a slightly more subduing thought came to mind - the language of science is so ... dreary!
As I read through that document - on which this unequalled, undeniable genius had poured his mind out - I was amazed at how practical, simple even, he made it sound. Almost as if he was not saying 'these pages will change your world forever!!' but instead saying 'hey, what a lovely day!'. In some ways I appreciate Archimedes for running out in his birthday suit screaming 'Eureka!' because this is exactly what I might do if I find so fundamental a fragment of the 'ultimate theory'.
I am unsure as to what Albert did the very second he realised '....and....that means...E=mc squared' did he stand, eyes wide with amazement at this seemingly impossible yet obvious conclusion that drives the world we live in - I think he did! He must have!
The magnitude of such a moment cannot be adequately expressed even with the most descriptive adjectives of the English language - let alone the practical language of science. It is almost as if you are standing on the brink of creation and in a moment the entire universe unfolds before you - exactly as you said it would - abiding by laws that you understand. Then you sigh because such is the beauty and this simplicity is beyond the comprehension of the masses - yet this knowledge is now within you for eternity.
If I ever have my very own annus mirabilis I will write a book (and of course publish in 'Nature'!!) because I think that even though the language of science could communicate my conclusions and derivations - it is only the language of literature that can communicate my thoughts, my trials and triumphs.

Random Musings

One doesnt appreciate what they have till they no longer have it (be it for a day or a couple of months!) - and I am now experiencing that very appreciation!
Someone said (Im not sure who, maybe Milton, if you know please enlighten me!) that 'Every man is an island' -and to him John Donne replied saying:

'No man is an island, entire of itself
every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main
if a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were,
as well as if a manor of thy friends or of thine own were
any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind
and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls
it tolls for thee.'

I plead guilty to preaching the former philosoph, although life has taught me that I conform to the latter. There was a time when I thought that I was happy on my own, that my solitude would give me time to think and reflect and thus pave the way for major breakthroughs in life. What a fool I was!
Indeed no man is an island and our social interactions help us to grow and learn the ways of the world that we (fortunately or unfortunately, by some curvature of spacetime and on the very very off chance!) inhabit.

Then the phoenix rises from the ashes as it were...and we begin again...to wait and hope.

Random Musings 2

I was thinking yesterday (save the smartass comments- and anyone who doesnt know better, this is the time to leave :-D) that all my blogs, even though they might begin with random philosophies and/or seem to be about life in general and my life in particular, eventually digress into something Physics oriented. This deeply saddens me.
Anyhow back to the usual digression :-) - everyone who has the distinct impression of Physicists being the clumsy, 'Albert haired', slightly ditzy and extremely klutzy strange people walking around talking to themselves in strange languages, is in for a rude awakening!
I too am guilty of this thoughtless generalisation. The truth however once again happens to be the opposite. The aforementioned generalisation can only be applied to to the 'theoretical' community. Which, I hear, is rapidly shrinking!
During my first week at work (umm..us PhD students who many accuse of doing nothing but mooching off taxpayers money and calling it a well earned 'scholarship' like to call our work 'work') my supervisor (a gem of a man whose brain is the physics equivalent of a concorde and his countenance just as cold as the upper atmosphere) told me that I cannot afford to think of this as a 'job' - and I cannot afford to turn up to work drunk! I assured him that he need not worry about the latter!
Anyhow - I never finished this blog when I should have and now have lost my train of thought so I am going to abruptly end this blog!

Curiouser and Curiouser

So I sat down to write again...it's been a very long day...with ups and downs and I am just about ready to head home, head filled with Faraday, Verdet and the like. It is a thrilling ride this Doctorate. Whenever I mention it to my grandparents, who are giants in their respective disciplines and without whose guidance and support I would be nowhere, their eyebrows go up in approval. However, I know my worth. I reiterate - it has been a long day and getting longer still.
The weekend is ahead, wonder what it holds. Hopefully some uninterrupted sleep and of course more work. A little bit of enthusiasm for the latter thrown in wouldn't hurt one bit!
Ive been reading 'Big Bang' by Simon Singh. It made me think, as books do, of our place in the universe. I dont know if anyone has put a number on this vastness that we are a very insignificant part of - or what dimensions we will have to venture into if we ever find ourselves in the vicinity of an answer to the question - 'So how big is the universe again?'.
It is freaking huge, unfathomably (if there is such a word!) huge , vast beyond our wildest dreams and imagination....and empty! So empty that James Jeans said of it - "Put three grains of sand inside a vast cathedral, and the cathedral will be more closely packed with sand than space is with stars!". Amazing - Hell ya!!

We hold a place in this vast emptiness of space
Our stand is little more than a speck of land
In which we sow to reap and work and toil
Dreams to build, amidst growing turmoil
We seek the truth and nurture notions
Of greatness and such futile emotions
As the universe watches us - born to live and die
It goes on unchanged, as life passes us by
For on our speck we stand mighty and tall
Amidst an almighty vastness - that renders us small.

Bollywood Masala

Ever notice how my blog titles have nothing to do with the content...I did! Oh well to each her own I always say - but this one does!
Tried to sleep last night but didnt succeed till about 4.30 am. My flatmate had 'subhan allah, subhan allah' blaring on his laptop while he worked and so I asked him what was with the 'subhan allah'ing lately and turns out it is a super-hit song from the soon to be super-hit movie Fanaa (c/0 Yash Chopra Prod.) and just as I was getting ready to roll those eyes he said 'it has Aamir Khan' - done deal! Im watching it. Ok for those that know me, I will watch any hindi movie. It just that, plain as day. I find hindi movies mindlessly entertaining and so far fetched and surreal that although I dont fancy them, Ill watch them, if only to see how mindless they can get! People that say 'how can anyone watch this shite..why can't they make better movies' .. think about it!
Majority of the bharatiya population is composed of working class people who spend their day and possibly their whole life working towards something they can never achieve - immense wealth! So try telling a guy who has just slogged for 10 hours, beaten crazy traffic and come home to a nagging wife (who is completely justified!) that when he turns on TV, he is going to be shown a movie about...corruption in India! He will very graphically tell you to take a hike! Hindi movies cater to the delusional senses of the Indian masses. It takes them, if only for 3-4 hours, into a life that they can never live, full of hoardes of riches and pretty dancing damsels. Where good triumphs over evil and everything ends happily ever after. Momentary bliss and then they are thrown back into harsh reality. So for all those hindi movie critics out there...put yourself in the shoes of the common Indian and maybe you will then fathom how much those few hours mean to them.

voyage heureux !!

The events and characters described below are completely fictitious and a complete figment of the author's overactive imagination. Any resemblance to anyone alive or otherwise is purely co-incidental and completely unintentional.


This is a story...it has not yet happened, but the events leading up to it are well in progess. It is a tale of a transition - Ramji Canberra Wale to Herr Ram of Wuerzburg. So pray tell where in the scheme of German things does a cricket-bat weilding, perugu-annam eating, pickle slurping, strapping young lad fit in. Let me enlighten you...he just happens to possess a mathematically 'Beautiful Mind' (minus the schizophrenia so far!) and us Canberrians and them Germans hope that one day (in the next two months!) he shall enlighten us all with a theory of err..antenna...wave...propagation...matrix...Heisenberg help me!!
Keep those equations rolling Ramji and we wish you the very best!!

Wouldn't it be loverly!

Its Monday afternoon and the weather looks like it is mourning a lost friend! The skies have been crying all night and the general atmosphere can, at the height of optimism, be regarded as gloomy...and I am at home...on sick leave!
So of course my perspective on the gloomy day is a cross between ecstacy and elation! In my home, tucked under a warm duvet on the couch, Taj Mahal tea with ginger brewing on the stove (really!!) and a copy of the Big Bang by Simon Singh..ah total bliss!!
Then it hits me....its MONDAY AFTERNOON!!! darn it!! sick leave doesnt justify not doing work!!! So very reluctantly I pull out a copy of Non-linear Optics..and the day passes me by.
Come Monday night, I read a blog by a friend of mine who spoke about Time-travel and how teleportation would be so darned convenient! Amen to that!!
I hate flying...I hate travelling and the thought of packing my bags sends me into a state of total disarray! (lately my psychosis termed as 'travel anxiety' has become so bad I have been contemplating treatment for it!) .
Here is an e.g. of total mental breakdown at the thought of undertaking a very simple journey. I live in Canberra, capital of Aussieland. Family is in Auckland, not the capital of New 'seLan ;-).
Hence the journey back home goes somewhat like this - wake up 4 am - bus to Sydney (3 hrs) and fly to NZ from Syd (3 hrs). Not at all complicated, very straightforward.
However, about a week before the travel day I cant sleep anymore. I become very irritable when people mention the fated day and I cannot bear the idea of even looking at my empty suitcase to fill it up. To add to the general trend of things - appetite loss, stomach upset and nausea - we dont have a pretty picture people!
After much careful hindsight and contemplation, I have arrived at the conclusion that I am not scared of flying, I am neither acrophobic nor am I claustrophobic ...what I may be is a tad agorophobic!
Plain and simple...the thought of change scares me...I do not like being disrupted from my present state of inertia...in fact I am the archtypical Newtonian 'object'!
All this is not to say that I dont want to see the world, in fact I share a dream with almost all my fellow human beings...to see Europe :-).
However, I have a fervent request of all quantum physicists...beam me up Scotty!

Thanks a lot Mr. Dickens!!

I think the biggest impediment to my writing, anything in general and a book in particular, is the opening sentence. I am up against such greats as Charles Dickens ("It was the best of times...") and of course the all encompassing Mr. William S! and umpteen others who have been lucky enough to have their go before me and luckier still because their golden words (opening words, mind you!) have become so ingrained in our minds, that nothing less will be considered noteworthy!
I want my opening line to be nothing short of remarkable....but of course, why would anyone read something that started off "This is a text book on electricity and magnetism..." (that is how the book on 'Introduction to Electrodynamics' started off...and I read it and thought to myself... if the person reading this book doesnt even know that "This is a text book on electricity and magnetism..."then they should shut this book right now and dedicate their life to more useful things...unfortunately I now know that reading that book cover to cover was the biggest mistake of my life...no actually it was a big mistake, the biggest mistake was thinking that I understood that book cover to cover - a misconception that I am very dearly paying for!).
Anyhow, back to opening sentences, I realise after writing this that maybe it doesnt matter after all how one begins....or does it??

ANZAC Day

It is my dream to be an author and whenever I get the chance I never fail to tell close friends that, someday I will write a book. What about - not sure yet, how - no idea! But I still dream on, I say dream and not persevere because in reality I havent even begun!
So when I created my own blog-site what-have-you, I vowed that I would try to write something everyday, or atleast every other day - and so far I have managed to keep this up (I think I have!). However, it might soon become every other other day and eventually just when I have time. So till then do keep up!
As it were I am getting side tracked from the main subject of this blog - ANZAC Day. 25th April is a day dedicated to celebrating the lives of the numerous soldiers who give their lives for their country. Fight till the end and never question - just do or die. In Canberra the celebrations began as early as 5.30 am with the dawn service and...wait for it...I attended!!! Since I live a stone's throw from the War Memorial I thought I should add this on to my (rapidly gettin longer) list of experiences. The service itself was lovely and solemn and Im glad I woke up early (I can count on one hand such early morning risings and this one was definitely worth it!).
Sadly, I dont know much about the Army Corps. Few distorted snippets of information is all I have but something in the way that everyone seemed that morning, the record turn out of people of all ages and from all walks of life, parking their car several kms away and walking in sub zero temperatures to pay tribute to these armed men and women whose unquestioning dedication allows commoners like you and I to sleep at night knowing that we are secure in some way - all this made me think.
Many of us go through our lives in a very careless and sometimes callous manner. How many of us think of these others, people just like us, who are driven by an urge to serve their country. I hold the Armed Corps. in high esteem - it is the most selfless service.
Very unfortunate, though, that the governments these people serve are, more often than not, undeserving...

Trials and Tribulations - Life of a laser Physicist Part 1

Its been 5 hours - 5 long hours of my life dedicated to coupling light into a chalcogenide wafer on silicon substrate (dont look- there is no appendix to explain the 'geek and latin' terms! :-D). In fact it would be good if God had given us an appendix to refer to, a book of life with suitable appendices to which we could refer whenever life gave us something we never bargained for. Somewhere we could look and check, where things were in context! A place like no other where all the c**p that happened to you was explained - plain and simple! Look in there and you would think 'Aaaaaaaaaahhh...that's why ... now it all makes sense'. But, as life (and God) would have it there is no such book and no such appendix - hence we must trudge along our lives and keep pondering and wasting time over things that seem so trivial and so useless (such as the aforementioned 5 hour long task) and better still we must suffer over things that never work and to cap it all off we must still have the longing and drive to be the physicist that we set out to be in the first place. In spite of coupling being so difficult, there is still hope! :-)
Maybe God did give us an appendix after all...

New found Land

I am new to the blogging world...and I think half a decade too late! Its just that nothing hinders creativity more than having to do the most mundane chores of existence. However, without further ado I shall launch myself into this newfound land and let the creative juices flow as never before! Umm..err ...sure... till next time!