My recommendations

Back!

Finally rekindling this blog, after a break of seven years. My other blogs were anonymous so I didn't have much of a choice. To quickly summarize the time between this post and the last, I worked at a hedge fund, left it, joined another startup fund, got hitched, acquired a niece and generally spent my happy twenties in Chicago. I'm trying to decide what direction to take this particular blog in; mostly it will be pretty tame-ish since it isn't anonymous, but will talk about interesting stuff I've read or done lately.

Strawberry Crush

On a previous v-day, I received an anonymous can of strawberry crush soda (crush, get it?) in the mail, with a tag attached to it saying 'happy v day'. For almost a year (or is it two?) it gathered dust on my shelf.

Recently, while packing my things, I came across it again, and decided to find out who sent it before tossing it out. It turns out, it wasn't any of my neighbors or friends. So now one begins to wonder, who could it be? and will I ever know.

Desperation. How far would YOU go?

If a fire were about to burn down your building, what would you run out with?
We had another fire alarm incident a few days ago. People were surprisingly happy given the fact that it could easily burn our old wooden building down (the neighboring building did anyway). It was also a pretty social event because we got to meet our neighbors, some whom we had never met before. Most students ran out with their laptops, given that their theses or papers were on that. I ran out with my most precious . . A neighbor, M, ran out with absolutely nothing, since he claimed to not care anymore having defended the week before. My apartmentmate L, ran out with enough to look like she was leaving the country, including the laptop of course. (image coming soon)

A little poem for me.
By a fan:

You only have two hands,
and one eye.
Cyclops.

Another poem by someone famous:
The earth turned to bring us closer,

it spun on itself and within us,

and finally joined us together in this dream

What is..

.. the best way to refuse to give away your cell number to a guy? My room mates this evening were very furiously trying to come up with an answer to this seemingly frivolous question. If some guy at a party asks you for your number and you dont want to give it away, what is the nicest way to refuse? We had no clue. We googled, we yahood, we even asked Jeeves but the solution still evaded us. So the internet does NOT have answers to all our burning questions. Apparently many people have asked the same question. So, what is it? Please email us if you have some useful advice. Please.

This is what I do in lab these days while i wait for changes on the
draft. (very ominously brings Jack Nicholson to mind).

And this is how pretty the Boston skyline looked on Friday before we started rowing.

The trip to Atlanta high schools as part of the initiative trying to encourage girls into engineering went decently well. I will put up a couple of pictures soon, though we've been instructed that we can't have any pictures with faces of girls without their parents' permissions, since they are minors. So I'll have to find a pic with anything but their faces apparently.

It also turns out that there's a big stigma there associated with girls being smart. One of the teachers talked about how she was disappointed that their generation had fought for women's rights and what not, and now the middle school girls actually feel that they should not act too smart in front of the guys. weird. How things change when you're in college. I think.

Also, after one of the presentations at a pretty affluent school, I was talking to some girls, one of whom was of south asian origin. She said 'I dont know about this whole engineering thing.. I'm probably just going to become a doctor' (talk about stereotypes). And then the blonde friend said 'I want to become the wife of a doctor'. And then a third girl said 'I jsut want to have enough money to buy all these cool inventions instead of making them'. So much for trying to convince them to become engineers. So much for really strong stereotypes. But there were a few who seemed convinced. I think I have done my good deed for the year.

Being twenty-something...

Thigns really are crazy busy with the paper deadline coming up and a whole bunch of things in my schedule so I'm going to shamelessly plagiarize and steal my friend's post about the trials of being twenty-something. Do read.

This has been a long relationship. And I'm a little concerned about this one because some People find it disturbing. The relationship is way beyond touching. It started with my watching movies, and now I cant fall asleep without it. It keeps my pillow warm during those cold winter nights. It talks to me. I can even apt-get stuff on it like my other machine. It has always been there for me in many a lonely moment. YES people, I am in love .

My guilty pleasure this semester was watching the Apprentice episodes. But dont get me wrong, I'm still not a big fan of the Trump. Its more to see if Randal will make it as the winner. Today's the finale, and I wonder with much excitement as to who will win.
Other than that, the dog genome was just sequenced >:o. Too little too late I say, for me anyway, when I've spent all this time looking at research comparing our genes with that of the mouse. Oh well...c'est la vie.

karma

Through the women's initiative program, we'll be going to high schools in the end of jan to give presentations to school girls (in Atlanta, so if anyone is going to be there during Jan29 - feb5, let me know!), to encourage them to go into engineering by talking about some research, cool projects and why they should do engineering. [ slycoder: Does the world really need more geeks?] I'm really excited about this. Except I'm not totally sure what to say about the upside of being a female in engineering. Maybe that you get to be the only girl in class. or that you get to spend fun nights in lab trying to debug a burnt capacitor problem. Maybe I'll put up my naive blogs from the EE52 microprocessor class that I did in my young undergrad many many years ago and about the time when I had bad karma for destroying someone else's ROM chip; though that might turn out to be a bit too dark for minds so young.

Other than that, I decided to find out how long the BU bridge run really is, i.e. the loop starting from MIT, going across the Mass Ave/Harvard bridge, and then along the charles, back on the BU bridge to MIT. I ran it for the first time two weeks back, and it felt *long*, longer than 5k, but then I wouldnt know since I have never run 5k before. I decided to use Routeruler to map the route, and measure the length. For that, you need to load a map, give it a scale and chalk out the route. The scale could be gotten from google maps. I learned to do this be reading people's blogs online. Anyway, turns out, the route really is 5km long. [more images to come]

It IS true that timing is everything. Because if I wasn't so late in turning in my thesis (yes, finally did turn it in last week which means I'm now officially a phud student) I wouldnt have bumped into the varsity crew coach, and he wouldnt have convinced me to try out rowing, and I wouldn't be squirming in pain while writing this blog. Now, i just have to see how long I can stick with it :s

Also, on being late to practice one day, we were made to learn the following mascot song:
e^u^x dx, e^x dx
cosine secant tangent sine, 3.14159
integral radical mu dv, slipstick sliderule mit...go tech.


PS: I was kicked out of the team, and hence had to join the rowing club instead. Grad students are apparently too old >:0

A Graduate School Relationship

Graduate school is so much like a lingering relationship. There's no good way to break up, and its so hard to decide whether to take a break from school; and whether it will make things better or worse. On the other hand, the idea of not doing anything next semester is so very appealing, I just need more ideas of what to do then. Other than that, my SM thesis is finally starting to take shape and even look decently pretty. Of course, it is late, oh SO late.

Homeless Help

I have decided to give my left-over summer train passes to the homeless people I could find hovering around the subway in chicago, in order to honor the bum that helped me out (a little ironic dont you think) once. A few months back, I was in a hurry trying to get into the T (boston subway), and I didnt have enough money for the token, so a homeless guy let me in (in exchange to having me listen to his advice about how to do well in classes) I should add that his advice was well-received, I just wonder why he didnt employ it himself. If he EVER reads this, I hope he appreciates my good deed.

Time Travel Party

Comment if you must on the irony of the situation, as I had complained not so long ago about time - but I spent this saturday night at the time travel convention organised by some undergradsgrads.

The talks were interesting, not stuff that we hadn't already heard about though. Some of the profs were really funny, and i was surprised that they were such good actors. One of them talked of the wormhole theory by Kip Thorne. Eric demaine, the super-smart very young prof at CSAIL was the last to speak. He insisted that the universe was a computer. I think what I found most amusing, was that it seemed like people were pretty serious about it. They engraved stuff about the time and exact location of the convention onto things that might be preserved for future generations to see, with the hope that they'll come to this convention.
After the talks, everyone gathered in the courtyard around a launching pad that they created, with cookies and milk to attract the time-travelers. Obviously, no time traveler came to the launching pad, but after waiting roughly about 5 minutes, many students did pounce on the cookies and milk.

Oh and if you're dying to know what they said about time-travel, many of them don't believe traveling back in time possible or feasible. But they also said they could be wrong, and entertained the possibility that the theory of relativity could be wrong as well. bah. wasted time in relativity classes.

too busy :( no time!

Everybody needs it. I have only just realized the benefits of a secret blog. I may quote some things from it, but most of it WILL remain hidden. In fact, I quote my (secret) self:

" This is to fulfil my need to talk about simple daily events that could in fact be considered quite serious in a normal place. ...... *more stuff* ..... and I wonder if things always sounds so silly and hilarious.
So this time this journal really isnt for people to see, unless they can handle it. You can't judge me for this; I'm not trying to fulfil any pathetic craving for attention, nor am I trying to get stalkers. In fact, I'm going to keep moving this around, so do not try to follow me."

Softball

I didnt realize how blue the sky can get. really. We're right at the ociean, and the contrast of the green, blue and brown is driving me crazy. San diego is a lot prettier than I remember... definitely better than LA, and posisbly prettier than Pasadena. i blame caltech for keeping me away from this for so long.
Its so much better to travel for work (this kind of work anyway). Feel like I'm on vacation, but still get to do my work on the paper, minus the distractions of univ... I also got to visit the scripps and the Salk institutes. the views are amazing, and I may never want to leave.

I also played my first softball intramural game the night before leaving boston (which, I must add, seems exactly like baseball). I played with the CSAIL team called "Exponential run time". To my surprise and angst, it was actually the B league, not C. So some of the players were pretty decent, but they encouraged me a lot. My first innings were pretty crappy, but what happened next, would best be described in the email from our captain:
"To recount the highlights, newcomer Jesse Smithnosky had some sick plays at 3B, robbing the Canicular Hebrews of many an extra-base hit. But there can be little doubt that MVP status goes to rookie Neha Soni. With a bat in her hands for only the second time, she drilled a solid liner down the third base line, and showed expert base running to score the go-ahead run in the pivotal fifth inning." This kind of flattery will kill me and my game : )