Bus Driver

Once I was traveling southern Europe on a bus for a week. The driver Beno and I somehow ended up at the same table discussing things over coffee. Apart from me getting to know he is diabetic which left him cursing through most of Italy where they had bread, honey and marmalade for breakfast instead of Sausage and cheese, he got to know I am vegetarian which made him pull my leg, given a chance. We settled it elegantly, which involved me laughing at him at all the breakfasts in Italy. But, i've been given this look and lecture many times, and Beno was sensible enough not to. But sometimes these conversations don't go straight at all. Example, Beno laughing at me for being a vegetarian is like me laughing at him for being just a bus driver. Different worlds, no idea to each what the other is missing/gaining.

Haircut?

Q: When do you know you're up for a haircut?

A: When you can no longer feel the jet of water from the shower hitting your scalp.

Looking shabby like I do doesn't necessarily mean being shabby. For example, people look smart and intelligent all the time!

I'm back, well, almost, but not quite.

Feels like forever since i've been here. I see the follower's count hasn't increased. That is, perhaps, a little too much to expect when one isn't blogging. I have to see how to make this thing work on the phone so that i don't have to sit in front of the computer to do this. Or, so that i can write paragraph after paragraph every morning on the loo and post it at the end. I'm consider myself quite healthy not to finish an entire blog post in one sitting. Thank you.

One of the reasons why i haven't written about anything lately, is quite simply because there isn't anything to write about. Some other parts in life, like culinary skills, running, a small matter of my thesis and not to mention the new found interest in languages are happily munching away my time. My "writing time" as well has been taken over by the fountain-pen. The pen, indeed is mightier than the sword, or here, more aptly, the keyboard. Finding new pen friends, having a mom who loves to write and a new found interest in making people take up philately by sending them new stamps, also consume time, especially when people set themes for what stamps i have to send them. Gladly, but takes time, you see. But lately, a person totally unrelated to my blogging sphere asked me whether i still keep writing. It was also inspirational and a reason to start again. Thank you Thomas.

Lately, my life has gone towards drooling over academic titles like "Model Concepts for Non Isothermal Compositional Liqid-Gas Flow and Transport" By Holger class or "Multiphase Flow and Transport Processes in the Subsurface" By rainer helmig. Firstly, because of this, i don't have enough time to read other stuff, like a normal book written by a non-acadmeic author. Secondly, i cannot write about what i read here, because, (a). I will have to cite everything, an annoying activity I try to avoid doing because it might lead to someone revoking my degree ten years later because of improper citation. See, german politics for example. (b). I need LaTeX and i don't wanna do that here, too many equations.

I sometimes try to put out a post on my culinary achievements, later realizing that it would be a hundred times in the internet already (see my explanation about citations and relate to this).

So, for the next months, i will have limited access to normal literature, normal english literature, normal non-academic english literature and hence a reduced posting frequency related to it. It's sad, but somehow i wish to get through this phase with my interest to blog still intact at the other end. Your wishes and inspirational words are warmly welcome! Till my next post! Ta-ta!

Thoughts

Here's the thing with weekends, they just end even before you get into a grove! And if you're in my phase of life, not to mention; part of the world, you'll spend it panicking about the week ahead, if you're good, or the entire month; and thats when you need professional help. Mind you, not worrying, under certain circumstances, will also be eligible to necessitate professional help, but in most cases a long whip will solve that trend.

The interesting part of the weekend is how you can come up with seemingly unrelated stuff and worry about it for hours together, losing sleep and sometimes forgetting to cook and eat until your thought process dulls down and you realize you require some fuel. That's when i usually have several bars of chocolates to choose from handy, to take a bite from each would mean you get half an hour before the mind and body goes on strike to cook yourself a warm meal (if you're not used to cold sandwiches that is; I'm not).

One of the thing i was wondering so much about the last weekend was, apart form my assignments and presentations which're coming up; and the exams too, was how civilizations seemingly managed to destroy themselves usually at the most advanced phase of their development . Like the Indus valley for example. They had water conduits and public baths and roads and everything. Some say the river dried up and so everyone died. But still, that was probably just one reason among many.

The fact that mesmerizes me is that, in ancient times, every civilization, without being in touch with each other, went through the same phases of development, in the same chronological order, this is somewhat beautiful and in a certain way mysterious and, for the lack of a better word, fishy even! I say that because, all civilizations were not exposed to the same set of resources. Each civilization had a different set, some had more ores, some had more rocks, and some had more trees, and some had more sand. But the people with ores did not come up entirely with metal underwear, people with rocks, didn't exactly make everything with rocks, people with sand didn't come up with glass (if you look at it, that was how metal was discovered, when they had a fire, the ore melted and they found molten metal, but the same analogy doesn't go with sand and glass). Each one searched out for something particular, found it somewhere far away and dragged it all the way back to do something that meant something great to them. That's just one incident. But if you look at the bigger picture, almost without knowledge of each other, all civilizations, went through the same phases, the discovery of clothing and shelter, the evolution of language and script, the concept of God or a supreme being, formation of society and the workings of that, the concept of after-life, of building structures which are of seemingly no other use than to please some supreme being that they allege exists.

It wasn't like they sent a pigeon saying "dude, we built a temple....... Losers!" and the other guys replied saying, "HAha, we built one too, and you know what, exactly on winter solstice, the sunlight comes straight into the inner temple, beat that, Suckers!". Think about it, doesn't seem right, does it?

Glimpses

These are some snaps from the available resources i have in my reach!

#1: is the classroom

#2: left 1/3rd of my table.

Snow!

Finally! My first experience of Snow! well, was nothing special or tears-bringing, but still it was a strange feeling to touch it, cause of the humidity, it is still rough and "sharpy" quite unlike the image it portrays. As things start to get drier, it should soften up! Anyway, my first pics.

Guessing Game!

Some interesting stuff i got my hands on this morning, and really complex stuff i learnt about them in my engineering and also learning a great detail now. Lets start a guessing game, what is it, where exactly it is used. If you can mention it to an accuracy of 5 inches. you're good! :D

Random Pics

Dhobi Central @ Stuttgart

This one is the dhobi ghat for coloured clothes :P

Glipses of Fall

More Gadgets

The Wohnheim

Race 2 Tee

So, Boring Saturday afternoon in Stuttgart, with even the sun on holiday for all of central Europe, a promise of a beautiful weekend by the weather forecast was ruined by mother nature. I, for one missed my weekend run, and stayed home all day long. So, when i was getting bored in the evening, so was Subbu on the port of Goteborg, and we both had no clue what to do to drive away the boredom. The crazier of the two came up with a plan, a race, to make tea, yeah, however stupid sounds, it was actually what was agreed upon! a race to make tea.

The rules were:

on count of 5 we'd go to the kitchen put the kettle on, boil water and put the tea bag. But then it was agreed that since the tea bags are dipped for 2 mins constant by both of us, only the time taken to heat the water, put it in a mug and getting it back to the computer desk is what counts.

So, the race started on the count of 5. How much time we each took is immaterial, but then what's important is that he took about 20 seconds later to to finish it. you know why? duh! you'd be a total idiot if you hadn't guessed it out by now already! a total dork! I'm telling you, if it doesn't flash by the time you reach the end of this sentence, then you shouldn't be reading this, really, because then you'd be too stupid to own a computer! give it back!

oh well, I'll tell you anyway, let me ask, you, can you handle it? the truth? well, don't say i didn't warn you! the reason is so simple, i gave away the clues in the first paragraph of this blog! c'mon! nothing yet?

well anyway, this time for real! Stuttgart is at a elevation of 450M above sea level and Goteborg is a port! nothing yet? doh! well, water boils faster at higher elevations than at sea level! water boils in Goteborg at 99.997 degrees and at Stuttgart at 98.7 degrees. So, the time to bring 250ml of water through 2˚C took 20 seconds :D (Specific heat+latent heat)! C'mon, you didn't know that much? Get back to books! who ever bought you a computer! Dorks!

Kidding! Cheers!

--Gecko.

Differences

Having students from different countries around can be really amusing sometimes. Today in the break (literally!) from the German class, there was a small group which was formed, in it there was a person from Palestine, one from Jordan, one from Bengal, one from Gujrat, and one from Maharashtra. Eventually, we were tired of speaking a foreign language all the time so the Palestine and the Jordanian started talking in Arabic. That was when i thought "those two are from two different countries, how can they speak the different languages!!"

But immediately i realized the various questions asked to me by other people. A few are

Brazil: how can two Indians not speak the same language

Turkey: Is it true that India has more than 200 Languages

Somebody i don't remember: How can all three of you be the same country and still talk in english all the time!

This is how the world is, we all have our own notions about the world, and distant parts of it which really come as a "culture shock" when we actually experience it. One guy though did really believe it till i pulled out one of my Indian currency notes and counted the languages for him.

Heh! And in Germany, it seems there're dialects which sound nothing like textbook German and this evening, luckily, when one of my neighbors had his friend, from just-out-of-Stuttgart, over for dinner, i had the privilege of listening to one, and compared to the "special German" (compare to 'news in special English' from VOA) we're used to at class, it sounded something like how Brad Pitt sounded in snatch, talking "English" to a slick looking, country-speaking, Jason Statham in "Snatch"!

And, @Adithya's comment about chucking the dictionary for one of my previous posts.

Learning German by chucking the dictionary is like trying to learn Sanskrit by listening to the Sanskrit news on TV every weekend, you'll miss the news, and will never learn the language too, apart from wasting time that is. Well, even if it's slow, when you learn, learn it technically!