Blog's takin a break.....

i mean, what do you say when you have nothin to say....

yeah, this is that phase of life when the only part of day to look forward to seems to be the night, tempting for it is in all its unreality...

when nothing in the day seems to happen to your liking, oh, what bliss it is to crawl into the warmth of the comforter, shut out the real world and dream of the things you'd rather have happen ...and when your mind finally runs out of creative ideas, it seems apt only to let go and have the tears roll...

Women and Colorado are unpredictable

[Players involved: sun, moon, wind, mountains.
Predictions are fair and balanced:
10 to 1 to Sun
10 to 1 to Moon
10 to 1 to Wind
10 to 1 to Mountains]

If you thought it were important enough, I could swear to you that I had the courage to open the windows and stand in the courtyard for a good five minutes early last morning (early, here, ofcourse meaning 9 am) and only after that grueling test did I decide that my fleece-lined jacket (proud as I was of it) would be a phenomenal disgrace to the sun that had decided to come out of its hiding place of three-----no, four long-----days.

Being a scientist robs you of certain basic requirements---one of them being that www.weather.com fails miserably in comparison to a 5-minute test; yeah, we are taught early on to trust "fool"-proof experiments to mere words printed on the computer screen.

But if you want more conviction on the inappropriateness of weather.com for the case at hand, let me recall here what my "software" pal (http://atool.blogspot.com) himself once told me-- "If you don’t like the weather in Colorado, wait for five minutes."

I could surmise quite accurately from the above statement that he also doesn't quite believe weather.com would give me a workable prediction of what 9 pm would be like at 9 am.

Anyway, so getting to the point in question, I left home that day, hugging on to a 0.000000000005 mm thick sweatshirt with machismo that rivaled that of the terminator (No, I don’t plan on running for governor--- if governors could decree the weather, however, I'd give it some serious thought). B’cos, once the sun started its game of peek-a-boo with me, I was pretty much frozen and out of sorts.

So, today, I decided to learn from my mistake. The smiling face of the sun didn’t fool me as I chucked my five-minute test and instead made sure I had on sweats and fleece and wool and thermals (read: everything but the carpet).

It was after I walked into my building and got a look at the thermostat that I began to think I was a little overdressed for 80 degrees Fahrenheit. The way I tackled that problem was by making sure I did not do the all-important centigrade-conversion. Yeah, after two years in the US, f-words still don’t mean much to me *grin*. It also helps when you can’t handle 9/5F x 32 mentally (yet another one of those exclusive scientists’ traits).

That brings me to the next item of the day---a professor once told me "Women and weather are unpredictable". I shrugged it off as the untested doctrine of an old bachelor. Then, another one told me, "The female of the species is deadlier than the male". I discarded that as the ranting of a male chauvinist of a bygone era.

Yeah, I think my professors specialized in the subject. At least now you wont blame me for my inability to divide and multiply.

Anyway, suddenly, surprisingly and pretty much recently, I realized that they were right all along---at least about the women. I got hit on the head with my discovery--- somewhat like the proverbial newtonian apple.

Well, let’s talk about this woman I met about three months ago and that I refuse to name. For a while, I was, to this woman, a cool, neat and friendly person to hang out with. I’d think that’d be an awful lot to pretend, so let’s believe that she did really think all that in the beginning.

And then, overnight (I attribute it to a really devastating nightmare), I was transformed into a complete antithesis. Thereon, EVERY thing I happened to do was either wrong or taboo--namely, eat, sleep, breathe, smoke, drink, drive (and not necessarily in that order).

Anyway, since this woman in question doesn't necessarily make my body shiver or my teeth chatter, I manage, quite easily, to give her no precedence.

It is the unpredictability of the other "w" that concerns me. And the thought of now having to walk out into zero degrees is indeed THE reason for this blog.

Oh, well, tomorrow will be another day ---you can trust Colorado on that.


(‘If you don’t like the weather in Colorado, wait for five minutes’. I have decided my five-minute test is in need of serious change. Starting tomorrow, I am making it six. THAT should work!)

I plead not guilty

[Everything that has a beginning has an end]

I decided to follow the matrician concept of pretending that Matrix-III never happened; until this morning i was awoken with the rude shock that I had in "reality" spent two and a half hours and six bucks in the pretence of watching the concluding sequel to one of the greatest movies of all time.

After waking up from that rude shock, I was all set to trash matrix-III like a couple of my fellow-movie watchers have done, but then, being the forgiving soul that i am, i decided to cut the wachowski brothers some slack.

here is the plea bargain i want to offer on their behalf, since they wouldn't be available on or off screen to justify their horrendous movie themselves:

argument #1: the abstract:
after indulging in the "reality" and "virtuality" of the real and the virtual, they decided to let their viewers experience the feeling of waking up from that matrician dream......somewhat similar to what happened to me, so, believe me I understand it perfectly; if you wanna experience it, i am willing to get into a wire-entangled pod and try to pass on the same impulses to your brain, jus' so you can feel it for yourself; just make sure you come to me with a brain.

argument #2: the mundane:
keanu reeves has been threatening hollywood that he is going to quit movies because of his sick sister. the wachowskis tried to overcome the problem of an absent keanu reeves by "pretending" that he was "virtually" available on the sets for Matrix III but believe it or not, the Matrician concept pulled a fast one on them--- so they had to quit the idea and cook up a quick (read: meaningless) tale before their lead actor's dissappearing act.

argument #3: the obvious:
"I can only show you to the door. You have to walk through it" Morpheus.
gee, the movie meant a great deal, not their problem if you aint smart enough to figure it out, and they aren't going to show up to interpret it for you----they are too busy fighting the giant squids that escaped from machine city.


the defence rests.....




if you wanna put your money on argument 3 above, you need to get help: either go see a shrink pronto or refer:

• The A to Z of Matrix

The Matrix—Pluggin’ in....

[I shall think that the sky, the air, the earth, colours, shapes, sounds and all external things are merely the delusions of dreams, which he has devised to ensnare my judgment.
-Rene Descartes]

Anyone who has watched a "behind the scenes" coverage of the Matrix will know that the Wachowski brothers pretty much stay off the stage--- on either side of the backdrop. While I appreciate their insistence to leave the interpretation of their phenomenal film to viewers, I must say it has had some outrageous consequences---not the most insignificant of which is the fact that the movie sits in the "sci-fi" section of the video store, alongside AI and space oddyssey.

Spelling facets of mysticism, philosophy, action, surrealism, religion and society, to me, science fiction is just one aspect of the Matrix, albeit over-hyped, because of society's inability to grasp at its deeper connotations.

Despite the fact that The Revolutions left far to be desired, I await the release of the concluding sequel tomorrow, with anticipation akin to the delerium of pre-world-cup bangalore or the fervor that grips americans a week prior to superbowl and decide it's time to credit my fascination for the movie with a little blog.

Let us, for now, leave aside the mundane story of the cyber hacker who is made to believe that the entire world is an elaborate computer program and do the Wachowski brothers’ unparalleled innovation some justice.

The idea that what we take to be the real world could all be just a dream is not alien to the philosophical world. Rene Descartes of Renaissance fame set the stage for the movie ages ago by questioning if that feeling we experience is not just an electric impulse being sent to our brain by a computer we are wired to. By doubting all that could be doubted, he took 17th century renaissance to a new level.

He might not exactly have been flabbergasted at the matrician idea of every individual within the matrix seemingly living out a normal life on 20th century earth, while in reality spending it in a wire-entangled pod.

Let’s now turn from the profundity of pre-renaissance- philosophy to 21st century biology and the power of the human mind.
Cypher: You know, I know this steak doesn’t exist. I know that when I put it in my mouth, the matrix is telling my brain that it is juicy and delicious.

When you delve deep into the neural circuitry of the human brain and learn that it is the all-controller, that it is impulses from the brain that make you feel, touch, hear and smell, how much harder is it to believe that Neo can will his brain to fly across skyscrapers and dodge bullets or the little girl can cause a metal spoon to bend to her whim?


And if you look a little closer (literally), you realize that Neo doesn't just happen to hollow out a book of such depth (pun intended) as Simulacra and Simulations to stash his blackmarket software. The French sociologist contributes more to the movie than camouflage for contraband, thus giving the movie its “sociological” angle. Baudrillard’s advocation of a “simulacram” or “a copy without the original” quite neatly describes the Wachowskis’ computer-generated dream world, where the “imitation” eventually gains more vitality than the original, with man becoming a slave of the “system”.

Agent Smith might well say, “The Matrix was designed to be a perfect human world, where none suffered, where everyone would be happy.”

To me the answer is simpler: the inexplicably “real” post-matrix feeling of walking through walls, bouncing off cars and flying home from the theatre.

[The most powerful instinct of man is to be in conflict with truth, and with the real-- Jean Baudrillard].
For fellow Matrix-die-hards:
Kat recommends

• Which Matrix persona are you?



• Matrix Search Engine

And while I'm in movie-mode, here are my must-watch movies of all time:

The Matrix
The Shawshank Redemption
A Few Good Men
Jurassic Park
Rainman
Bend it like Bekham
Memento
All the President's Men
The American President
My Fair Lady
The Life of David Gale
Double Jeopardy

Getting RNA-logical

[And that’s my second oxy-moron so far, cos RNAs, believe me, have no logic. I am waiting for someone to start an RNA Renaissance, and I must say (proudly) that with my relentless battle with my tube of RNA, I have indeed successfully managed to a instigate 'cold' war of some sort].

Hmmmmm....I went through my blog just now and hell, am I ashamed of myself.....I realized I am not behaving like a scientist AT ALL ! I write three essays and there's not a single scientific word...unless ofcourse you consider "asthmatic" and uhmmm, well, gravity and friction and air drag....that's quite a few....let me put it this way—there’s not a single scientific word in the right context....

So, I decided I needed to devote one blog to science....or atleast to "Whatever i (supposedly) do for ten hours everyday and that earns me my bread (it's weird that my entire life's earning is captioned thus--I mean, after all, a loaf of bread costs one buck.. You might as well give me that one buck to discontinue writing my blog)"

Okay, so getting to the point here, I realized a week ago that my whole lab is on my side, though I can't say the same about science...yeah, my entire lab empathizes with me cos my RNA (expansion: Routinely Not Available) just wouldn’t express and they know I am workin my ass off for it...here's a little note for you laymen out there----first of all, the scientific expansion for RNA is RiboNucleic Acid, though that doesn’t always apply; what ALWAYS applies is 'Routinely Not Available' (and I have unshakeable proof of this), but the scientific community (warped as it is) wouldn't take my suggestion.

Anyway, so RNases, apparently, are very different from RNAs, in that, they are ALWAYS available and EVERYWHERE...RNAses eat RNAs by the way (scientific lesson # 1: add "ase" and you get a predator). Hmmmm, so that's the reason why RNA is routinely not available--- cos RNAses are everywhere---- the palms of your hands, the benchtop, on the lid of the centrifuge, in the tube that has your RNA, the water, the air and practically EVERYwhere).

That is exactly the reason why, last week, when I went strutting about the lab in RNA-less agony, I had the luxury of listening to tales of how long each one in the lab had to wait to express their maiden RNA..... Phew! Was that encouraging or what! So, bottomline: I'd rather have my lab empathize with me and listen to all those stories than have my RNA up and running, really...who cares for that little black band on an X-ray film, anyway...I can think of a zillion ways of generating that (actually, I can't but I am sure if I went to the experts they could give me a zillion ideas).

Well, and as fate would have it, exactly when i DON'T want something, i get it! yep! Reversal of history! My RNA expressed! A shitload ....turns out, I was using dirty water. Note: there is absolutely NO WAY that dirty water can enter an RNA lab...it's blasphemy. (Courtesy: Dr. Jeff Wilusz, reference: Methods. 1999 Jan;17(1):21-7).

But as with science of any form, shape or nature, happiness is transient....yeah, I DID get happy eventually, I am learning to behave like a true scientist..... and just when I stole myself to get happy, my RNA wouldn't turn over! for the non-scientifics out there (including myself) turn over is "degradation" ...yeah, i am studying RNA degradation.... funny that I spend an entire year trying to make RNA only to "want" it to degrade to shit! DUH! scientists....they don’t make any sense whatsoever....the only thing that makes worse sense than scientists is their science...

anyway, so, point: now my RNA doesn’t turn over... and I betcha if there is ONE smart person out there among my readers (chances of that happening are exactly 2 in 1000000000000000), you'd be able to suggest that all I need to do is dump in some RNase (‘some’ here equals 2 in 1000000000000000 of a microliter by the way) and bingo, my RNA would degrade! But that is EXACTLY what my boss doesn’t want ! get it? scientists are funny......you have a zillion milli-molecules of stuff floating all around that can get you the job done and you don’t want that ....you want to do stuff the hard way...did I mention that I add RNAse inhibitor in my tubes to actually prevent RNAs from getting degraded?

Uh, well, I guess I’ll stop before I begin to completely realize the futility of my efforts ...

And I hope at least one of you out there is compassionate enough to one day walk into my lab (1300, Center Ave., room B325, Ft.Collins, CO, USA) and dump some RNase from your dirty fingers into the tube that contains my RNA.....

I couldn’t do it cos it would go against all the norms of being a true scientist (norm#1 being ‘make life as much harder for yourself as you can’).

Learning to greet Uncle Sam

I am all set to go to India in December....
On second thoughts, am I?, I ask myself ...
Ofcourse! A new credit card with a 2000 $ limit just landed in the mail box and I almost have my tickets confirmed. What’re you talkin’ about?!!
Yeah, yeah, but do you still say “talkin”?
Uh, well, yes.
Do you still smile at that stranger across the street?
Yes. :(....
Do you still thank the bus operator before getting off?
*sigh* Yes.
Do you still keep your teeth and your tongue in tight check when the shop attendant takes an interminable ten minutes to bill you?
YES!
All set? Think again!

While I’m in the process of un-learning savoir-faire in preparation for my impending trip, I might as well try and recall how I learnt it in the first place....

Hmmm.......it’s not everyday that you land in the richest country in the world and receive a greeting from a stranger like he hasn’t seen you in years. Well, you’ve never ever seen a stranger in years, but considering the trials and tribulations of an artless Indian trying to handle the white sociability (or was it supremacy?) is bewildering enough, I’ll reserve that for another day.

The sprawling Boston Logan Airport, the series of tall buildings in the city’s skyline, the myriad number of lanes and terminals did not overwhelm me as much as the tiny little man at the end of the concourse and more so, his cheery How do you do.

Hailing from a country where even a ‘hi’ from a stranger is considered taboo, ‘how do you do’ happened to be one word too many! So I decided to contest it by rattling off my medical history to the flight attendant, whose only fault, I agree today (after a lot of contemplation), was being nice and friendly, just like an average American is expected to. I have never been gladder for my myopia, which rendered me blissfully oblivious to the amused ever-so-slight raising of his eyebrows. Oh yes, loud as the greetings are, the sarcasm is but subtle.

I learnt the long and hard way that the How do you do and take care stemmed more from years of polite upbringing than any real interest in a saga of my health record. Within weeks following my entry, I had learnt that the more appropriate response was ‘Good’ (and this did not change if you had just been fired from your job or given the final cold shoulder by the love of your life), followed by a prompt enquiry in reciprocation, accompanied by the best smile any given circumstance would allow.

Having learnt that, I soon found myself incurably absorbed in the intricacies and nuances of conventional decorum. Calling out ‘good’ followed by the customary ‘how are you’ and then responding politely, all within the time span of a few seconds, which is how long it takes two humans to pass each other (given the gravity, friction and air drag at any time) proved tougher than I’d imagined.

Putting creativity and diligence to work, I figured the best way to achieve this was to jump the gun. So, instead of waiting for my relatively nonchalant acquaintance to do the honors, I decided it was easier to be the first one to call out the greeting. In my anxiety to get the whole charade over with (within earshot of each other), I found myself shouting out the ‘hi’ even before my associate had noticed me (Whoever said light traveled faster than sound?). It took a lot of long hard math and a fair amount of trial and error to decide on the starting point (both temporally and spatially).

A few problems I encountered were the inherent inconsistencies within the system-- for example, sense of hearing, sight and gait. There were some ethical issues involved as well---I began to discover the gory details of my associates’ medical problems— some had better hearing in their left ear than their right, a few were astigmatic and others had flat feet. So much for genetics----all you needed to discover one’s ailments was to say a hello to somebody! Americans and their meandering ways..... I still prefer the straightforward Indian method of rattling it all out, though.

Two years in this country hasn’t brought me any closer to determining appropriate conduct, but in retrospect, I think, for all its forthrightness, the hostile push I used to get so generously in a Mumbai train made me no happier than the rather specious yankee greeting (which indeed does manage to pep me up consistently).

[Besides, they say it takes anywhere between 5 and 53 muscles to smile; pray, how can THAT be skin-deep? Now, exactly what WAS my point?]

Quibbling over the X and the Y

[I don’t think it’s fair to your dad that you spend twenty-two years of your life believing that he was “supposed” to take care of the television when it conked and pay the electricity bill when it came and yet “you” are the all-independent
new-age (wo)man........I don’t think it’s fair to you that after believing in all that, at the vulnerable age of 23, you are thrown into an alien land where you not only cope with urban life, differing attitudes to race, women's rights and socially taboo subjects such as homosexuality, BUT ALSO telemarketing, health insurance, customer service, toll-free calls and cell phone bills.....But then, whoever said the world was a fair place.....]

My little mop of hair was disheveled, my laces were out and as I rubbed the sweat off my hands onto the shorts that clearly couldn’t take it any more, I tossed my friend an evil, victorious grin. As you can probably imagine, I didn’t make a pretty sight. But I’d beat him in a roller-skating race and that’s all I cared about.

Life was simple then....

That was the time when the best part of day was the early morning when I’d scoot right out of bed and trot along beside my dad for that wonderful morning walk, drop off my sister at the bus stop and pout all the way home if I didn’t get to run across the road like that boy did.

When it was my turn to get to school, however, early mornings were no longer fun, but once I was scrubbed and uniformed and satcheled, the worst was over, for what followed were fantasy lands harboring magic chairs, the less exciting but more likely merry-go-round, unintelligible yet very real goods in the art book, the world of limericks and the joy of seeing my name in print; but nothing felt as good as that all-important high-five from the boy that crossed the finish line just abreast of me.

Then came the phase of stringent teachers, boring morning math, incomplete home works and unfair penalties, but it seemed a price worth paying for the afternoon that was to follow---hours of back-bench popcorn munching, unpunctuated periods (pardon the pun) of delightful dozing, barely suppressed snickers and cross-classroom-chits, Shakespeare in uniform, endless throwball, an occasional hiking expedition of vying to do just as well as the guys and everyday attempts at clinging on to that last precarious step on the bus because all of them did .......

High school brought with it late afternoons of hanging out at umpteen fast food places by the alma mater, a badly timed yet luxurious home-cooked luncheon, long hours of the salty seaside air, discussing Darwin and H.G. Wells alike through miles of formidable Chennai road, carrying back the remainder to the phone (in the unusual case of running out of breath before topics to talk on), uninterrupted, thirst-ridden reading, oratoricals and sales appeals and What’s the good word and the realization that competing with the men on an intellectual level was just as much fun....

College had something different to offer--- late evenings of sneaking onto the terrace and gazing at big bear while discussing dream men and our fond hopes of finding them in the not-too-distant future, on-the-spur-of- the-moment decisions to watch the latest romantic comedy in town, long hours of cycling through pitch darkness in the pastoral surroundings of the university campus, rejoicing on a sudden opportunity to go home to loved ones, endless games of Literati and cracks at The Hindu Crossword, contemplating on Rand’s objectivist philosophy in the wee hours of the morning, aiming to read A Brief History of Time because all the smart men out there had....

Where my moments of greatest reproach included buying a Barbie doll on relenting to peer pressure and giving in on one occasion to rely on a man to pull down my baggage for me, I prided myself on being one of the few girls that could handle a yamaha with effortless ease and having the privilege of being thrown out of hostel for heading one of the most far-reaching strikes in the history of the university! Perplexing, because bagging the academic proficiency award in high school or winning at the top art competition in the nation had left me relatively blasé.

Life sure was simple then.

Somewhere between leaving my home country and traveling to a foreign land (albeit my cherished dream for years), between wanting to be with home and family and wanting to be all on my own, between loving solitude and freedom and suddenly finding myself with too much of both, between looking at men as mere yardsticks and looking at them as potential life partners, I had redefined too many standards in life.

I don’t take credit for the redefinition, however........

That credit goes to that month-old American Express bill on my desk screaming for attention, that hour-long toll-free call for one extra dollar billed to me (yeah, yeah, I said toll-free), the familiar-screech of the fire alarm after 250 difficult minutes of oh-so-delightful Indian cooking, the life-and-death matter of haggling over that important car insurance quote, the conking of every possible gadget I own after a fateful power surge, that half-a-day of NYPD-grade explanations because I forgot the existence of the burglar alarm, Microsoft Word giving up on me two hours before my qualifying proposal was due, finding myself homeless because my room mate happened to find a cheap thrill in hanging up on the land lord, the spectacular snow storm that decided to take me, my friends and our rented car through two exciting 360° turns, the three hours I spent trying to get home because I dodged a jug handle on a complicated Jersey highway, my priced Camry bursting into flames, minutes after I stepped out of it.........

Yes, those are the moments in your life when “wanting to be as good as the men” takes a backseat.

And standing testimony to those very moments is that little bundle of brown fur in the far corner of my room....

Cyber-kat

[Befitting as the caption might be for a seasoned blogger, a better oxy-moron I could not come up with! To give you a little perspective, just about five years ago when the rest of the twentieth century world was glued to www.you-name-it.com, I was still toying with the idea of giving up the conventional writing pad and switching to Microsoft Word ......... Finally, I did, as you can see (and I still don’t dare Adobe Acrobat) and this has sure brought me a ‘blong’ way! Nevertheless, since I am trying to reflect here a certain contradiction in my personality (think Jekyll and Hyde), I decided to stick with the misnomer.....]

For as long as I can recall, I have gone about life looking for that ‘one’ thing that would make me happy, not really knowing what it was. I still don’t, but now I have a name for it ---‘cheese’. And for those of you who are worrying about the amount of calories I have gained, nope, much as I love that coagulated chunk of ripened milk, this name is more out of appreciation for Spencer Johnson’s Who moved my cheese than any craving I might have for the real thing.

I have been carrying the weight of “searching for happiness” about my shoulders since age 12 and always felt good about it. For a long time the cheese was really myself. I loved the way I was, my many traits and idiosyncrasies and took great pride and happiness in just “being me”. It was after I realized that the task of being me was wonderful, no doubt, but was proving to be as prosaic as breathing, an act that every human on earth is capable of doing for himself (let me not make light of it, considering I have been asthmatic for atleast six painful years, but it sure doesn’t come under the category of leisure in any diction), that I began to look for other ways of entertainment.

So, my cheese became the enchanting world of books. I lived, breathed and ate books for eight straight years from there, personified every character that I loved; even walked, talked and spoke like a few of them! And when the black and white of paperbacks ceased to inspire, I turned to the colorful world of celluloid. Living the intelligent Darby Shaw during a recess in academic achievement, a successful Laura Cameron during a particularly vulnerable moment or a boisterous Kate Blackwell during flashes of feminine helplessness did feel extremely good but amidst this myriad of personas, I was in constant fear of somewhere losing the real me.

I was soon absorbed into this deep chasm of botheration that I was living in a fantastical dream world that had no chance of transposing to reality. Hence followed a “realization” phase that included everything from rock climbing expeditions to a course in journalism. But alas, I still did not like the way my cheese was tasting.

The Wachowski brothers timed it well. Matrix could not have come at a more opportune time. Launching into philosophies of the real and the virtual, I was soon trying to comprehend if the ‘best actress’ award I had won in high school indeed tasted any better than the sight of Abel Rosnowski’s first and very own Baron Hotel (with all due thanks to Jefferey Archer).

Setting all my skepticism aside, I launched into limitless journeys of the human mind. With it, came my entry into cyberspace. The intriguing mysticism of the digital world added a certain dimension to the fantasies that hitherto ruled my life. My online counterparts not only had a profundity and abstractness that made me oblivious to living, breathing people around me, they also did away with the uninteresting prospect of dealing with the banalities of the tangible world. My flesh and blood companions were baffled by my relentless love of the computer. “This isn’t real” was their constant complaint.

“Well, what IS real?” Like all things, I grew out of my virtual existence and now I have a “real” world where I continue to say hi and hello, continue to discuss the weather, continue to go on a reasonably challenging hike. One recurring thought comes to mind--- I told an online counterpart once that I would love to go on an expedition like that in the Amazing Race; he echoed the thought that crossed my mind in retrospect --‘I’d rather have my mind go on such a journey’. Since then I have never used the term ‘couch potato’ for anyone. There is far more the mind can explore in a single day than the body can in eons.

---the cyber-kat that until a few years ago never knew a mouse that responded at the click of a button.