Parting ways

Its a sad day for all of us at asu homies. Our lohith biskur shanthaiah aka 'grand old man' aka 'senior citizen' left tempe today morning for good. He leaves USA for India in under a week where he has decided to pursue his career.

I first met him as part of an edulix meet organized in bangalore by srivatsa...My first impression looking at him was that he should have been the youngest among us....But looks can be deceptive sometimes...

He's been a part of our group for more than 26 months and all those 26 months flashed like a series of pictures in my mind when i bid him goodbye for the last time. Those quirky remarks, unbelievably fast pace of talking, a walking style closely resembling Dr.Calculus from tintin comics, a face that looks exactly like charlie chaplin minus the moustache and his favourite recipe 'soppin huli' (spinach saaru) will all be missed. And then there is orange chicken...I doubt if anyone has given more business to panda express outlet on college avenue than lohith...He practically owned that store...And for his stature, he feels hungry amazing number of times...If i had a dime for his every complaint that he was hungry, i would have cleared my loan by now...

I will also remember him for sharing my passion for kannada novels...One of the very few i know...His craze for tamil and telugu films was also something unique (and strange i have to say)...

Parting moments are always hard. But if anything, these parting moments keep reminding me that nothing is permanent in life. Lohith will be only the first and will surely be followed by more guys leaving the group. We will be lucky if by the same time next year more than 2 guys in our group are in the same city. Maybe then we'll see more posts in this blog... ;-)

I will post pictures from lohith's final days in tempe when i get them...Or Abhishek will post them when he's done mutilating them :D

Total solar eclipse

Look at the irony...For 22 years i was in India, there was no solar eclipse visible totally in India. Now the longest solar eclipse of the century is visible so well from India and i am stuck here. It is especially disappointing, since arizona has a huge astronomy scene. Out of 20 largest telescopes in the world, 3 are here. Kitt peak observatory in southern arizona has the world's largest collection of optical telescopes. The crystal clear night skies here are an astronomer's dream. It is on my list of 'must go' places before i leave arizona. There is a planetarium here at ASU as well in the physical sciences building which offers group shows. They are called 'ASU astronomy open house' and should be considered if you are interested in sky viewing. This is their official website: http://homepage.mac.com/agfuentes/openhouse.html

You might wanna check that if you want to attend their future sessions.

dust storm in tempe

For the first time during our stay here, we experienced a duststorm. I am surprised it took nearly 2 years for us to do that, since we are right in the middle of a desert. Thats probably because most of us were interning somewhere else last summer. The visibility had reduced considerably and most static objects were covered in dust. It lasted for a couple of hours. But dust storms are not uncommon in arizona. Quite a few huge dust storms have been recorded here. I found these pictures in a phoenix library, showing famous instances of dust storms in arizona:

Walkers in Dust Storm. 1972.

Dust Storm Over Residential Area on Labor Day, 1972.

No Rain Had Fallen in the Area for 153 Days, 06/1972.

Dust Storm Over residential Area on Labor Day, 1972.

No Rain Had Fallen in the Area for 153 Days, 06/1972.

Dust Storm Rises Over Phoenix on Labor Day, 1972.

No Rain Had Fallen in the Area for 153 Days, 06/1972.

Dust Storm Rises Over Phoenix on Labor Day, 1972.

No Rain Had Fallen in the Area for 153 Days , 06/1972.

*Dust Storm Pictures from Environmental Protection Agency.

Graduate Recepie for Saaru/Saambhaaru/Huli

A typical saaru recepie of a South Indian Graduate Student:

How to prepare ALOOGEDDE Irulli saaru:

STEP 1) Cut Onion, cut tomatoes, wash toor daal, pour a little oil in the cooker and the above items and pressure cook for 2-3 whistles let it cool down and smash it.

STEP 2) Cut ALOO and boil.

STEP 3) Mix the above put water,salt, saaru pudi and garnish it.

Ready to eat.

How to prepare CAULIFLOWER Saaru:

STEP 1) Cut Onion, cut tomatoes, wash toor daal, pour a little oil in the cooker and the above items and pressure cook for 2-3 whistles let it cool down and smash it.

STEP 2) Cut CAULIFLOWER and boil.

STEP 3) Mix the above put water,salt, saaru pudi and garnish it.

Ready to eat.

By induction it is true for any VEGETABLE saaru!!

Just replace the main vegetable and u get the curry ready!

Pros:

1) Very Consistent taste(rather the stereotype ;) ),

and will not change unless you get a distress call to attend in the bathroom whereby the vegetable overcooks and/or gets burnt out!

2) You can prepare it when u are totally drunk and bet on the taste to remain the same! ;)

3) In case you do not have the main VEGETABLE, just open a bag of FROZEN mixed vegetable and your are done again!

4) You can prepare STEP 1 in a bulk and use it during your subsequent cooking turns as a standard base.

Cons:

1) In case either Onion/Tomoto gets over you are at loss and have to stay hungry whole day despite the presence of all/any other vegetable in your refregirator as you cannot proceed beyond STEP 1.

2) You completely loose the sense of taste and any dish that tastes different than the above preperation will be qualified as a very good dish and in some cases over exposure to the above may cause your tounge to loose sensation to any other dishes! :P

Some variants of above where in use of coconut powder and a mixer may be in practice, but the steps will remain very consistent to such a practice. :)

Welcome to the Kitchen of a typical South Indian Graduate Student! What you are going to taste here today is,......

What you will taste after 2 years.. Please do, Come back for a feast!!

Tempe Festival of the Arts

I was pleasantly surprised to see Downtown Tempe transformed into a fair of sorts yesterday, which I was told was the Tempe Festival of the Arts. It's a bi-annual festival where Mill Avenue in Tempe plays host to a number of stalls displaying artworks created by Phoenix area artists. I had gone to the Post Office, and after the work I thought I'd catch a glimpse at some of the stalls. Most of the stalls displayed paintings, artwork, embroidery and similar stuff. There were a few musicians and street performers as well. 

Apparently, this event has been going on for quite a while now, and the organizers receive well over a 1000 applications from artists to be a part of the fair.  Apparently some of the proceeds go to local charities as well. Check out more at: http://www.tempefestivalofthearts.com/HomePage.aspx

Pics courtesy: Arvind Ramachander & http://www.tempefestivalofthearts.com/HomePage.aspx

SPICMACAY - ASU

ASU chapter of SPICMACAY(Society For Promotion Of Indian Classical Music And Culture Among Youth) had organised a classical musical concert last week. I attended the concert and it was mindblowing. Four leading artists (tabla, mridanga, violin and sitar) were invited to perform and all were top notch. Usually tabla is used as 'saath' for hindustani music and mridanga for carnatic music, but here they experimented with cross duels as well. The final  duel - jugalbandi - where all four artists performed a bhajan (vaishnava jana tho) together was the best of the lot. All in all a saturday afternoon well spent.

ASU problems making frontpage of NYTIMES

We all are familiar with the various budget problems ASU is facing. Today's NYTIMES carries a frontpage story on this:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/17/us/17university.html?hp

At the expense of sounding foolish, i hope this changes some things for the better.

Post 26/11

It has been always like this in India and among us Indians. While there is a crisis there is a huge hue and cry and once things get past it, even if there was no significant effort done to review the causes and prevent further reoccurrences we forget about it and things calm down until such a point when we see it appear before us in the form of Kargil War. When 26/11 attacks occurred every Indian, back home or in various parts of world showed support and anger against the barbarism. We at ASU, forming one of the largest Indian student community, also staged a peace protest condemning this violence. It was nice to see that this had attracted the attention of the ordinary people of other countries and they too participated in this protest. (Especially because not many in US are aware of world politics except I-rak or Af-gan as they call it.) Forget what happened back home post 26/11, with politicians and diplomats trying to appease US or abide by their policies, or may be to protect ourselves from the possibility of instability in the region due to Taliban resurgence in the wake of an Indo Pak war. It’s a complicated political situation. Question at this point is what have we as Indians, abroad done towards it, barring a peace protest? Did we think what role, may be small, we can take to correct things?

     We are the 14 million strong Indian community at US or various places abroad form the size of a Delhi electorate, who are surely literates and can take an educated decision about our country’s future. With the general elections coming up, we should know that this size of well educated mass is deprived of their rights to form a better future for themselves and their country. Our Representation of Peoples act does not allow an NRI to cast his vote. I believe atleast 10 million of them are wanting to go back to India and settle with their family, live a happy life – After earning a good money/education/position here. But upon return, don’t you want to see a better India than the one you left?As being a part of one of the largest Indian Student Communities in US I would like you all here to think about this.

 There has been some work done by people in this direction to file a petition for the change in RPA act 1950. Please read through this http://voterswithoutborders.org/ and you will realize some very interesting facts about it. Americans can vote from a Space Ship, while we are just on the other side of the globe. I am sure if we the students take this initiative ahead it will provide a huge momentum. Our network is stronger than others. We all have atleast 5 friends in different Universities in US and if the message spreads we can achieve our goal faster.

Let us act today, and we can see a better tomorrow.

(Photos courtsey Arvind R.)

Irritating aspect of ASU

OK guys...Since you all are working on your writing skills, i will indulge you in a question, till you are ready. What according to you, is the most irritating thing about ASU?

Give an honest answer and you can list multiple things as well.

Do not be afraid of challenges

I have learnt a lot of things after coming to ASU and not the least of all, is handling failures. I want to recall one particular incident during my first semester. It was the semester break and i was desperate for campus jobs. The job i was currently at, was closed during the holidays, and i had to pay the month's rent off my pocket. The number of postings were not that great. I was applying to each and every one of 'em but no replies whatsoever. Finally i got a call for a programmer position in a space research laboratory which paid $14/hour. It was way out of my league and i was surprised to get a call in the first place. The interviewer wanted to talk to me next day. I read up whatever i can about unix, linux, C, C++, etc and went to their office. A guy looking very much like a scientist came up and asked me to sit in a conference room. Soon, two more guys joined him there with a copy of my resume. They sounded very pleasant at the beginning but then started bombarding me with questions i had never heard of and did not have a clue about. It was the most embarassing one hour i have faced in my life. At first i tried to ward off their questions with clever answers, but soon i started getting tired of my idiotic answers. At the end of my hour-long grilling i was so devastated that i made the cardinal sin of asking the interviewer how did i perform. This was my final dialogue:

Me: Can i ask you guys how did i do?

Interviewer A: We'll call you back if you are selected.

Me: It looked like the skills i have are not sufficient for this job.

Interviewer B: We are not looking for someone who knows everything. We are looking for someone who are willing to learn what is needed.

This interview changed my perception about failures. For a long, long time i used to think back at this interview and feel embarassed. But it made me realise that i had lasted one hour in an interview in which i dint knew a dime. And i started feeling proud of it. That day, i would not have dared go near a mirror and face myself. But not today. I have learnt that crimes are something to be embarassed about, not failures. And that is an important lesson.

Time Series Analysis, Predicting Future...

The other day i was reading Time series Analysis and hence gave inspiration to this thought!!

Rather silly and funny.. nevertheless worth mentioning.. :P

If we count time since the earth began in seconds it grows and continues to grow every second...

Now, 

If we take inverse of this time, the series converges. Hence it is analytic.

Hence limit exists for such a series.

Hence any formula used to predict the future using this has a finite and definite value..

Hence you can predict future precisely! :)

Stephen Hawking coming to ASU

One of the most brilliant scientists of our generation, Stephen Hawking is coming to ASU on April 3. He's been one of those guys i am a genuine fan of...Perhaps whoever have read his book 'A brief history of time' would echo my sentiments. Hopefully i can catch a glimpse of him....I will try for a ticket to the symposium on Monday. Hopefully some are still left.

Links:  

http://origins.asu.edu/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Hawking

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Brief_History_of_Time

Photo album

First off, i am starting with a picture album of ASU....(Courtesy: Srivatsa)

Here are a couple of slideshows of the main places in our university where we hang out..

Welcome note

Hello!!

We are a bunch of students at ASU and here we show you ASU through our eyes....Discover what ASU means to our lives and what we feel about anything related to this place.....Get ready to experience the relationship we have with our university....

Welcome to our blog!!