Kodak's Blog

Moving to blogspot.com

I am moving over to blogspot.com. Please visit http://dakee.blogspot.com
for my latest posts.

A New Guru

I am trying to learn guitar now. Have this instrument sitting next to me for about 10 months now and have managed to learn 2 songs. My Guru (Balsu) taught me those songs. I came to know later that he knows only those songs. So I am technically a " Guru vee Minjina Shisyan" now althought I dont know much in guitar anyways. A graudate student came in this Fall 2004, who is a master in guitar. He has readily agreed to be my guru. I plan to learn a lot more this year.

World beware,

A new talent is coming ... soon.. hopefully.. someday...

I feel like......

If you are living in Midwest or anyother COLD region in the United States, there is one advice which you will hear from people around you. Dress in Layers. The funda is that, the air between layers of cloth is a better insulator and hence keeps you warm.

Assume that I want to go the next apartment building. In India, just wear a chappal and you are ready to go. In Minneapolis, man, its a different story altogether. The process is something like this.

1. Ull Banian
2. Shirt/TShirt
3. Sweater
4. Jacket
5. Muffler
6. A woolen cap
7. Underwear
8. Thermals
9. Jeans
10. Socks
11. Shoes

By this time, one gets tired and start thinking if its worth all this effort to meet the guy next door? Why not call him up?

Getting dressed in minneapolis, is not a task, its a ritual. I feel like an onion after sometime. To put Layer after Layer of clothing and peel away after the trip. After sometime you dont see people walking around, you see onions. Everyone in layers. There is a philosophy that people are like onions (Sherk 2). Everyone has layer and layer of personality and to know the actual person, one has to peel away these layers and get to know the actual person. In Minneapolis, well this is literally how people are seen around. Like onions. Layers and Layers of clothing. Even after all this, you feel cold and curse the winter. Long live the cold (sigh).

Quick Dinner recipe

Yesterday we just had cooked rice at home for dinner. We ( me and my roomie) had no mood to cook anything and there wasnt much stuff in our house to cook anyways. So we thought, lets make some mixed rice. (lemon rice and tomato rice). As PhD students, we dont follow conventions ;). We thought, lets make our own recipe. I made the tomato rice and its called "Verum Thakkali Sadham" (Just tomato Rice). The key word is "Verum" (just). Its called like that, because apart from tomato, there is no other vegetable in it, not even onion (We were out of onion and I generally dont prefer to put any vegetable in my cooking which makes me cry unless ofcourse its absolutely necessary, like onion chutney ;)). So here goes the recipe.

Things which you absolutely need:
Tomato ( we used Hunt's crushed tomato)
Mustard seeds
Oil
Salt

Things which can increase the flavor
Ginger-Garlix Paste
"Karuveepilai" (dont know the english equivalent of this)
Jeera (Cummin Seeds)
Turmeric Powder

To Prepare:

Heat oil
Put everything (except tomato and salt) into it
Once the mini-explosions are over due to mustard seeds, put tomato and salt. Becareful here as more mini-explosions are possible due to heated oil mixing with water of tomato.
Keep cooking till you no longer want to wait or till the raw tomato smell is over
PUt the cooked rice into it and mix well.

The "Verum Thakkali Sadam" is ready :)

Some hints: Use a non-stick vessel for cooking.

Sienfield

I am simply hooked to Sienfield. I just cant help it. The characters are just too good. My favourite: Who else but Kramer. Man he is the gem of the show. Once he is in, you are sure to laugh, no doubt about it. Just days before my visit to the barber shop, my hair style was the "Kramer" hair style ;).

Yesterday, got a chance to watch the in the making of Sienfield. The man behind the scripts is Larry David and the character "George" is based on him (the real life Larry David). It seems that this was initially thought of as a standup comedy special and in the end became a serial. Can you imagine, the pilot serial was rated really bad by the test viewers. One guy in NBC backed up this project. Thank god he did back it up.

All thumbs up for Sienfield, Larry and Mike Richards (Kramer).

To Kill a Mocking Bird

What a movie. One of the best movies I have seen till now. The story is very simple and the caracters play their part very well. Particularly scout and Mr Flinch acted very well. Clearly shows the social condition in the 1930's America. After seeing this movie, I have the urge to read the book. Great ending. A must see 1962 classic.

Another Year

So, another year has passed. I am 26+ now. I still remember the incident which happened at a saloon this year. The hair stylist was a 50+ year old man and as usual we were chatting while he was doing his job. He was telling about getting old. The conversation went on something like this

HS: So how old are you?
Me: I am 25
HS: OK, so you are 25. Soon you will hit 30, before you even will know
Me: Yeah time is just flying.
HS: Then 35 then 40 then 50 and it will be time to retire
Me: Silent
HS: What do you think about it?
Me: Well, I guess its sort of scary to think about that.
HS: Scary? immm, thats how it is, time just flies.

This short conversation made me think, how "soon" time goes by. I can still remember my first day at school, pretty well. and now I am at the "end of the road" of school life. I have travelled for more than 23 years in this road, through the highs and lows. Its a different feeling to know that the travel is coming to an end and its time to go on to the next phase of life. A new life in a new year.

Christmas Eve

So, its christmas eve. What a day to go shopping. Well, I wanted to get warm winter cloths from Walmart and me and my roomie also wanted to watch the movie " THE INCREDIBLES". So off I started from my home. On the way picked up some cash from the ATM and picked up my roomie from his lab. Well, I dont have a car, so picked up means, joined him for a walk to the bus stand. Anyways, what ever. There is just one problem. I have a $10 note and I need quarters to get into the bus. Well, we thought the quarter machine in the Mechanical Department should get us the change. When we reached there, a sweet surprise, the machine takes only upto $5 note. No $10. Now what to do? There should be some shop thats open. Will get some stuff and in the process get the quarter. Once into the street the reality hit us. Man its CHRISTMAS EVE. No shop was open. Well, almost. One was open. The barber shop ;). ANN's Hair dresser in washington ave. We decided to try our luck there. We went in. Seeing our hair, the guy was happy. Asked us, so you want a hair cut?? We said well ... no.... , we need change for $10. The guy was kind enough to get us change for $10. Man that was a close call. If this dint happen, all plans down the drain. From then on everything happened like clock work. Reached Walmart, got some stuff, next went to down town, reached the theater on time (actually a bit early). We were the only people in the theater till about one minute into the trailers. Then about 6 people joined us. In India, generally at this point, we will get our money back and would have been asked to come later. But this is US of A. So we were able to see the movie. IT was AWESOME. We came out of the theater will great joy, when we hit upon a sweet surprise. The bus to our home was just in front of us, like a waiting "LIMO". We were back in home in 10 mins. So that was "clockworky".

So next time, before we start shopping or go to a movie we know where to get change for $10 ;).

Learn to Ride a Bicycle

So, Here I am yet again with another weblog entry. So what prompted me in writing one? Well, tommorow I have the statistics finals and I am sort of down. Was browsing in the web when I came accross the lecture on "Technology and Courage" by Ivan Sutherland. He talks in length about courage and how essential it is for research. He emphasises that Pride in ones work is a very important component in ones success. An example is " A child learning how to tie the shoe lace". Why the child learn's that? because he wants to show to others that "He can do it". For a very similar reason, I learnt how to bicycle. I was trying hard during my 4th grade class, to learn how to Bi-Cycle. Since there were many people around, they tried to teach me how to ride one, but I could never get the cycle to balance. Then one day I decided I will show them that I can ride a bi-cycle. All my neighbours were outside, and I started. Initially it was sort of unbalanced, but I picked up and for the next 10 seconds I was "balanced". Then I hit a rock and I fell down. It was a bad fall and I lost some skin. But I was very happy and I was not crying. Just because of the fact that I was able to show to people that I can do it. That is one incident of "courage" which I can remember in my life. In retrospect, I dont know if I had shown courage in my research. I cant think of any incident where I showed courage. I guess as one grows older, one tends to forget these basic things in life and this article reminded me to think about it. I guess more than thinking action is required.

If you are interested to read the article, go a gogle search on "Technology and Courage" and the first link will get you the document.

Assignment

Now, I have taken this statistics course. The Math and Stat departments are not fogiving when it comes to homework. They insist - An assignment submission every week. Man, for a 4th year graduate student, this is a bit to much. I like research courses - no homework, no tests. Just read papers, dicuss it in the class and give a final presentation at the end of the semister. Right now, the situation is not like that. I have to get this homework done by 10.10 Am every friday. So I started, on thursday, at 10 PM, as usual, to start the homework. On the side note, one good thing about doing homework is that the students are forced to find out what chapters are covered till now. I usually find that out two times a semister, once before the midterm and once befor the finals. Now its more frequent, thanks to the homework. Anyways, on thursday night I realized that my Prof. has complete 2 chapters in 3 classes and I need to understand every bit of it to finish the 6 problems. The time is 10.00 PM and I have 12 hours to go and I am reading about controlling error rate, the REGWR method, HSD, LSD, Pairwise comparison etc etc. If you are new to statistics, these might look like greek and latin. Well, dont worry, I had the same feeling at 10.00 PM on thursday. I was supposed to know everything a week back. Poor me, I had no idea. Now after a night out, I was able to convert this Greek and Latin to Kannada and Telugu ( These are Indian languages, which I can atleast try to understand). And all this for the second assignment. I have no idea how I will be when I submit the 13th assignment.

Religion and Programmers

So you are a programmer and you are a kind of person who reason out things. Who believe's that we have to question our beliefs. If you are one such person, then I have one way to reason out the existance of so many religions (or for that matter so many ways to reach "God").

A simple way to reason it out. Make GOD as an abstract class with many properties like name etc and some functions like "festivals", "rituals". Now consider different religions as different derived classes of this parent class "GOD". Each have their own definitions of the "name" of the god, different implementations of "festivals" and "rituals". As for you, you can either derive your class "BELIEF" from one such derived class (Hinduism, Islam, Christianity etc). It makes your life easy in the sense that the content of the class is defined already by someone. If you dont believe in some attributes of that class, you overload it and define your own. The other way is to derive a class from that abstract parent class and define each of those attibutes and create new attributes.

Learning to play flute

Flute is an amazing instrument. I always wanted to learn how to play flute. Fortunately, my roommate had taken formal training from his guru's back in India and is well versed in this instrument. My joys knew no bound when he agreed to teach me the art. In return I will cook dinner for a week. If you are a grad student you will know that "cooking for a week" is a big fee for teaching how to play flute. Anyways, on the first day, after the "guru daskhina ceremony" in our living room, I started the formal training. My guru instructed,

" The first thing to learn in playing flute, is to learn how to blow air. The air should come from your stomach and you should be able to blow it continuously with good control"

So I started. For the first 30 mins, I like actress Revathi in the tamil film "Devar Magan", was telling repeatedly this dialogue "Verum Kaathu than varuthu (Only the sound of blowing air is comming out)", much to the amusement of my other friends who were witnessing this incident. Then after about 30 mins, when I was about the give up, the first sounds came. For me it was like hearing the first cry of a baby. The flutist in me has born. Like a new born child I went "berserk" in my playing, almost blowing away our window panes. Then came the most unexpected incident. To understand this, you should know how the door in our apartment operates. I know it sounds wierd now, but trust me, there is a deep relationship here. Since Minneapolis is a very cold place, our apartment is well insulated. To enter the apartment building you have to have a key to a glass door. People without keys, will have to press a buzzer. You at home will hear a shrill sound and you will press a "door open" button, which opens the door.

Back to my flute learning experience. Now I started "playing" the flute and it was, trust me, "very melodious". Two of my friends thought otherwise. They came running from the other house. One guy was shouting "PRESS THE DOOR OPEN BUTTON, THE GUY MUST BE FREEZING TO DEATH" while the other guy was shouting "SWITCH OFF THE MILK COOKER". Little did they know that the sound was coming from me. By this time, the entire janatha at my home started laughing. This news spread like wild fire. For somedays I felt that when someone looks at me, they imagined seeing a "milk cooker". I thank God that this "impression" dint stick for long, else I would have got another fancy name associating me with this incident, for the rest of my life.

This pretty much ended my "learning flute" and the "one week dinner cooking" contract with my roomate.

Reliance India Call

Reliance India call, a calling card company, had this promotion of free 15 minute calls to India. The catch is that once you use up this free 15 minutes, you cannot call to india for free from the same phone. Now a general rule is that for every such "abuse prevention trick" there is an exception. Since it is a 1-800 number, you can dial it for free from a public phone booth. Guess what? Every public phone booth was "attacked" by the "grad students". People took the pains to go around all buildings in my university in search of public phones!! One guy was ready to take "one day bus pass with unlimited rides" and go around Minneapolis and St. Paul City (Called the Twin Cities area) and its suburbs in search for public phones. Such was his dedication. And if you are in the assumption that they are calling their parents, man you are wrong. Ofcourse, its to call ones girl friend back in India. One guy also had a ratio. For every call to his parents, he will make 5 calls to his girl friend!! Courtesy Reliance India call.

Now a look at the "imaginary" marketing reports of Reliance India Call.

"This promotion had the greatest effect in the Twin Cities area. Lots of people are tying out this card from all over the city limits and suburbs. Experiencing the quality of this service and comparing the price and quality with other calling cards, there will be a large numbers of takers. "

Little did they think about the bunch of grad students at UofM, who are ready to apply their research skills to anything other than their major area ;) .

Mutating Names

I guess I am too enthusiastic to write ( or very lazy to do my research), I am posting one more. Indian names can be notoriously big, hence the need for short forms. My roomate Aravindan is now a days called pinto. Many of my friends dint know how Aravindan, a proper south Indian name became pinto (sounds like pluto, the dog in micky mouse). Well the transformation goes like this.

Aravindan -> Arabindo -> ArrraPinto --> Pinto

For the tamil readers, it also became "mukalpinto" but was dropped because of its length.

As for my name, the credit for the first mutation goes to the System administrator of the computer science department (clap clap clap) here at the UofM. He put my cs id as kodak ( first 5 letters of my last name). For the first time in my life, I realized that my last name can be mutated to be the name of a large corporation :) . People started calling me kodak. In India, we generally give a musical note to the end of the name. Hence it became "kodakeee". Then one guy applied his innovation and make it "dakee".

Kodakara -> kodak -> kodakeee -> dakee

I dont know how emotional (read angry) my family members will be when they come to know that their name (same family you see) is mutated like this. All I can say is, it could have been worse, like the one below

Kaushik -> Kaushikeeee -> keeee

For the people familiar with Indian Ads in TV, the last one sounds like the hissing of mosquitoes in "tortoise" mosquitoe coil ad.

The quickstar paran

Here I am , after almost one month, trying to post one more blog. Yesterday I was talking with one of my friends (noisyparan.blogspot.com) and he was telling about attending a meeting with other people about "making money in your free time". Basically its a meeting to try and convince people to take up a membership in Quickstar. I think this is a similar kind of business like Amway International. Anyways, the bottom line is that my friend expected to get some free food (the grad student in him is not dead yet). Atleast they should give some food for taking the pains to make it to the meeting and listen to the " seems to be never ending lecture". Unfortunately free food was not on the agenda. He came to know that pretty late, poor paran.