From Drops of Jupiter to Battlestar Galactica

I'm watching a Train concert right now - The Bulletproof Picasso Tour that's streaming live from George, WA on Yahoo! Pat and co. are performing one of their very first first hit songs "Drops of Jupiter" and that brought back some old memories. I went back and found my old blog and I simply had to pen something today.

Pat, what a brilliant musician. I've had the fortune of attending one of his concerts a couple of years back. Originally hailing from cloudy San Francisco, he and his band have had their own share of failures and successes, and I'm glad they're doing so well. It's also nice that Train always perform a fair number of songs from their older albums. It's like they want to remember and remind fans of the place they started out from. Most other artists simply perform most of their tracks from the album they are promoting.

The last entry was in 2012 after I graduated from UCLA. I'm now somewhere in California working at some place that isn't extremely large and still related to my field of interest which is nice. I also work on or very close to hardware. I've always enjoyed writing a good program to make LEDs blink, or motors move or speakers make music. Work had been good and the organization (starts with A and ends with another A) has been simply fantastic. The team I was the 4th member of has now grown to about 10 so I'm apparently a 'senior' member of the team now! Woah! Feels mature and all grown up.

As I read the names on the previous post, I realize that I've lost contact with most of them, as expected. Some of them are simply what I like to call 'friends on hold'. People who I don't communicate often with, but I know they'll be only an email or a phone call away when I need to talk to them. Some enriched my experience at school and were instrumental in helping shape my thoughts and beliefs whilst I was studying in Los Angeles. Most I will never end of communicating with unless our paths cross again in some meaningful way.

Being a lazy person with respect to keeping in touch with people, quitting all social media doesn't help matters. Facebook feels like this shallow platform for advertising that you are connected and in touch with people hundreds or thousands of miles away by showcasing the best of yourself, leaving out the boring parts and liking and commenting on other people's photographs and status updates. So superficial! Walls littered with generic birthday wishes every year but not enough IRL (in real life) communication or contact via something more personal such as an email or a phone call. Sad. I do admit it does have its own advantages. You do get to keep up to date with major milestones in the lives of your friends and relatives and so on.

However, I've made a few new friends, most by transitive association, and have gotten back in touch with some older 'friends on hold' from my BITS days, now that more and more BITSians are moving to the US to study and work.

Since the more usual aspects of my life seem to be fairly well off - family's doing good, job's great, living situation is perfect, I have some more personal goals to take care of now. Onwards to the next challenge in the saga called life!

Hoping that it's not as difficult as finding New Earth for the civilian survivors and crew of Galactica. What a great sci-fi political drama that was!

To Ends, and new Beginnings

To Vikrant, Mansi, Sudeep, Shashwat, Abha, Nidhi, Tanaya, Sritulasi, Sowmya, Parul, Sumedh, Shashank, Karan, Tanvi, Sourabh, Smiti, Raghu, Mohan, Rohit, Jitin, Madhuri, Vybava, Divya, Priya, Hema, Madhuree, Viraj, Ameya, Rahul, Gauresh, Nikhilesh, Palash, Prerna, Niranjan, Pushkar, Niyati, Aviral, Tarun, Madhavi, Vanishree, Joshi, Simran, Pralav, Modi, Sharan, Henish, Hitesh, Shilpi, Inchara, Fabio, Zafeiria and last but definitely not the least, Ritika.

To Mario, Eddie, Songwu, Lixia, Paul, Adam, Mani, Deborah, Yuval, Miodrag and Eliezer.

To many others I may have missed to mention.

To UCLA.

Go Bruins!

Peace.

The Meaning of Lite

Yes! You read it correctly. The title reads 'Lite' and not 'Life'. Well, the the latter would have made a very good philosophical discussion, some of which is dealt with here, but today is the time for the former. Chatting with a friend just today, I was being told how her non-bitsian friends were having trouble understanding the numerous contexts in which she used the word 'lite' and what it meant. We decided to mutually publish a blogpost which clarified the use of "lite" for all the unenlightened folks out there.

Let's explore the use of 'lite' in various scenarios.

After a test, I met a friend outside the classroom. He asked me how my test was. I replied, "Liiiiite." Note how the 'i' was long and exaggerated. This basically means that the test was very simple and straight-forward. "It was very lite," would also mean the same thing.

The next day we had another test. (This was a particularly annoying week) Again, I met the same friend and asked how he did. He replied, "Lite only." In this context, he meant that it was pretty difficult and he could do nothing but take lite.

Which brings us to the third use of the word, as I used it in the previous sentence. "Take lite," means to not give something too much importance. So in the above context, since the test was hard, all my friend could do was to take lite, which would be to not give it too much thought.

Another similar use is when you ask someone to not fret about something, or to let go. For example, suppose you get into a fight and are about to punch the daylight out of somebody. One of your friends might come up to you and say. "Take lite, man. It's not worth it."

So here's four usages, and this is how the word is used a majority of the time. If other bitsians would like to add more to the list, please leave a comment, and I'll add to the post.

The End of House

I just heard that this would be the last season of House MD. I've been a fan of a lot of TV series for quite a long time now. House MD was one of the early series I began following. I remember watching it as long ago as my second year at BITS, probably even before I had watched even a single episode of FRIENDS. Gregory House was very well portrayed by Hugh Laurie, and I had great difficulty accepting he had been a stand up comedian before stepping into the role of the enigmatic and brilliant diagnostician. I had to actually see him act in "A Bit of Fry and Laurie" to believe it!

I can (proudly) say that I've watched every single episode of the series, starting right from the mysterious doctor who never saw his patients, yet diagnosing them correctly with his team of excellent multi-disciplinary doctors to accepting his Vicodin addiction and checking himself in to get better, to getting into a relationship with Cuddy (only avid fans know how long they had to wait to see it happen) and finally crashing a car into her apartment as an outburst of emotion and thereafter serving jail time.

The makers of House were successfully able to keep the audience hooked to the series with offering insight into new aspects of House's life with every new season, but that could last for only so long. After Cuddy left the series, it just wasn't the same anymore, with the new team not bringing enough to the table as Cuddy and Cameron did, and House running out of facets of his life to enthrall the audience with.

As with many other things, sometimes the best way to show that one cares is by ending something at the correct time, when things are still good, than wait unnecessarily and impose oneself till things turn sour. I'm glad that the makers of House hit a sweet spot with respect to when to end the series. It was about time when the series was growing quite repetitive and monotonous, with no real character development to speak of. Ardent fans still followed it, but there really was nothing new or interesting happening. It was nice to see that they cared enough to end it before it became a drag like some of the series that started around the same time.

I'll always remember House MD as one of the most inspiring series I've watched, with interesting, well thought out characters and an amazing storyline, right till the end. A big thanks to everybody who contributed to the making of this series.

Home

"Home is where the heart is" so they say. I've had three "homes" now - Mumbai, Goa and Los Angeles (maybe Bangalore is another.... but no.... not so much)

Every home has been a new step is learning - about myself, about the world.

Mumbai - with my family and the earliest of friends and classmates, most of whom are no longer in Mumbai any more... just like me...

Goa - my undergrad, the second rung. My first home away from home, new directions, new ideas, complete independence without the strain of daily chores... A place to discover yourself and where you want to go...

And finally, Los Angeles - A new place, a new country. I've been here for the longest away from Mumbai - one year today, having not been home. Getting a little homesick, but I'll be traveling back soon enough! Los Angeles - responsibility for all of yourself - not just living in a hostel, but an apartment, taking care of EVERYTHING yourself, from your food to your academics.

I long to be in Mumbai - my first and dearest home, for just a little bit. To re-live the sights, sounds and smells of the place I grew up...

Retro Music Videos

End of another exhausting quarter.

I'm in retro mode today, so no gyaan or introspection, just YouTube links of old videos.

Enjoy!

Woh Chali Woh Chali - Bombay Vikings

Mona Re - Bombay Vikings

Channa Vey - Kunal Ganjawala

Kya Soorat Hai - Bombay Vikings

Aashiq Banaya Aapne - Himesh Reshammiya

Calcutta (Taxi, Taxi, Taxi) - Dr. Bombay

Sayonee - Junoon

Aankhon Mein Tera Hi Chehra - Aryans

Just Around the Corner

And as the quarter approaches its end, only the last leg is left. The last couple of assignments and exams and submissions. The last two days have been quite interesting. Yesterday was the submission deadline for the third homework of Algorithmic Game Theory. I was clueless as usual, offering my 20 cent worth ideas wherever I could. My group has a couple of really talented individuals who just concoct solutions for the homework problems out of nowhere. Really admirable.

I also played a lot of foosball yesterday during the assignment. I was surprisingly good at it, more so than usual. I was basically on a foosball high, beating everyone left, right and center. Today, is unfortunately different. Just lost a game 1v1 with a person I would probably defeat on any given day.

But today is special. Not because I wrote a lot in the seminar course, so that making a summary for submission would be easy, not because a fire alarm rang during class today and that we had to evacuate the building, but because I got my first dollar value paycheck today. Just made a scan of it as a souvenir and then deposited it into my checking account. Probably, this would be the first and only paycheck, and I've set up direct deposit, which will take effect as soon as I receive my SSN.

Also, I went shooting with a friend yesterday to the botanical garden. I was pleasantly surprised to find it a nice quiet environment for introspection. I think I'll be using it in the future, the only downside being that it is open only during working hours. Anyway, back to the point, the photography assignment this week of nature, and I got quite a number of good shots. I've been slacking off on the assignments lately due to a lack of time and motivation, and it felt good to hold my camera in my hands again.

The class is in half an hour, I have a lot of work to do, but I wanted a good break, so I thought I should update my blog as I haven't done so in a while. Kind of a random post, this one.

Time to decide what to spend my pay on!

Later then.