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Weary traveller
Look out the window
Rediscover and rejoice.

The last time you were here
You missed something for sure,
There's so much to see!

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This one started quite innocuously. We started getting hot water from the cold water taps in the kitchen and the bathrooms. Now this happens regularly in Mumbai during the summers; but this being April, and irrespective of the month, this being Edinburgh, this was definitely not a case of the sun heating up the water tank. At first we ignored it, but the water was scalding hot, and it became impossible to take a shower without running out of the stream of water every two seconds. It was happening in most of the flats.

We complained. Plumbers came and investigated. They were joined by the electrician. They talked about valves and high water pressure. They inspected all flats. They decided that it was a problem with the water pressure, and that additional valves would need to be fitted. They went about their work, opening up ceiling panels and putting additional valves. At the end of the day they announced that the problem had been fixed. The next day, we duly got scalding hot water from the cold water taps. We debated our next steps, unaware that this was soon to be the least of our worries.

On the 19th of May, our Indonesian flatmate came out of his room and announced that water was leaking out of the ceiling in his room. We went and had a look. This was not a moist patch on the ceiling. This was a leak of titanic proportions, no pun intended. The ceiling in one corner was completely drenched. Water was actually flowing down in a steady stream. As we looked at it and tried to comprehend what was happening, it reached the fire alarm, and started flowing down through it. It would soon reach the other electric stuff. I quickly rushed out and switched off the electric mains. Inside, there was more mayhem. The leakage was not restricted to one room, it had spread to the two bathrooms and the kitchen. In one of the bathrooms, water filled up the electric bulb casing, which dropped down from the unexpected load and dangled from the ceiling on the wire. I suppressed the temptation to measure the time period of this pendulum and thence calculate the value of 'g' in our flat. The time was for action, and we had to get out pots, pans and buckets and place them under the streams of water descending from the ceiling to save the carpets.

Click to enlarge

Meanwhile, the dripping fire alarm pondered over the unfamiliar situation. How it sensed the presence of dihydrogen monoxide when it was built to detect carbon monoxide is anybody's guess. It decided that fire or no fire, something was wrong and started wailing merrily. At this point there was nothing to do but summon our university and fire department overlords. They came by in a while. The flow of water had slowed down to a trickle by then. They inspected the flat above and discovered a leaking pipe in the bathroom. They fixed it, came back down and took a screwdriver and poked holes in the ceiling so that all the remaining water would fall down.

At this point the guy from the flat below us came up and told us that the ceiling in his room looked like it was a bit moist, that he was tired of the problems in the apartment, that he was going to complain and whether we would like to join him in doing so. We invited him in and after a short while, he left with a bit of perspective.

Really, that's more than I want to talk about the poltergeist now. Here's a nice short video to keep you amused:

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With the writer's block out of the way, I think I can now go on and write without the need for graphs.

The story starts off in dark and medieval Edinburgh. Times were harsh, the weather was harsh. Men battled disease and sometimes they won, they battled each other and sometimes they won, and they battled fear, but they never won. There were ghosts and demons, and witches who summoned them; and in the fight against fear there were witch-hunts all over the land. On one fateful clear but moon-less night, a mob - pitchforks, torches and all - rounded up three witches, and marched them out to be burned at the stake. Rumour has it that these witches never left behind any ashes, for they never burned at all. They died, but they lived. They haunted every person in the mob until he died a slow death - death from fear. The witches still haunt the site of the stakes. This part is now known in the Burgh as Ratcliffe Terrace.

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It was the night of the 12th of April. We were in the flat (61/8 Ratcliffe Terrace, yes *the* Ratcliffe Terrace), watching a movie. It was a movie that had recently won a bagful of Oscars. It was absolute crap. About halfway through the movie, there was a big explosion. The explosion was not in the movie. It was in our kitchen. The oven had exploded. My Polish flat-mate had put some potatoes to bake in it. For no reason, the inside glass completely shattered - like the windshield of a car in a nasty accident. It was like an implosion; the outer glass was completely intact.

After a minute of absolutely no panic, we ventured towards it and switched it off. Before touching anything of course, we got out the cameras and recorded everything in detail: the first thought was about insurance. Then we opened the oven, and slowly cleared the shattered glass. It was all over the potatoes. The Polish flat-mate was not very impressed; that was supposed to have been his dinner. We took some more photographs, and then had a lively discussion about what to do. At least I was happy to have got a break from the movie. I think the movie was called "There will be no blood for old men" or something like that. Absolutely hopeless it was. In the end we cleared up the mess, and decided that the best course of action was to fire off a nice and polite email to our accommodation manager requesting her to see if she could do anything about this. The Polish guy decided that a few shards of glass were not going to ruin his dinner, and proceeded to clean the potatoes and eat them.

After a day or two, somebody came to look at the broken oven. He told us that the inner glass of the oven was missing. We told him that we were aware of the situation and reminded him how it came to be so. He said that he would get a new glass and left. He did not return. But after another two or three days, we received a strange looking package through Royal Mail. We opened it and it was the oven glass. I am not sure how accustomed the postmen are to delivering large glass panes in their daily rounds. We placed it in a corner in the kitchen with the cardboard wrapping around it, and waited for the oven man to show up, but he didn't. After another day or two, the Polish guy was overcome by the urge to eat baked potatoes, and fixed the glass himself.

So far, it has stayed in place, and nothing wrong has happened to the oven. The microwave oven - that is another story entirely. It stopped working one fine day in June. This time they took it away, and we were worried that they would send a replacement through Royal Mail which would really piss off the postman. But common sense prevailed and the repairmen brought in a new microwave oven themselves.

More to come...

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The time has come to rectify this situation. The solution to my problem lies in graphs. That is how I overcame writer's blocks while I was writing the thesis: produce a graph and then write about it. This is exactly what I will do. The plenty of things that I wanted to blog about all revolve around a central theme - the haunting of our university accommodation by a poltergeist.

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Abstract

In this article, I describe the haunting of the Ratcliffe Terrace university accommodation by a poltergeist. The poltergeist activities are described in detail, with photographs and videos wherever available. I try to trace its origins, and end with a note on the final exorcism.

Introduction

I moved into the Ratcliffe Terrace accommodation in November 2007 [1]. Various aspects of this university residence are described in earlier posts [1], [2]. The first manifestations of unnatural activities were reported by residents in the form of frequent and spurious ringing of the fire-alarm all over the building [1]. Although this resulted in cordial relations with the local fire department personnel, residents were understandably unhappy about having to bump into each other in pyjamas and various degrees of sleepiness whenever the fire-alarm necessitated the evacuation of the rooms. Initially, these incidents were attributed to burnt toast and over-sensitive equipment. However, over the next few months, other incidents occurred which unquestionably pointed to poltergeist activity. Extensive research and the abundance of unexplained phenomena originating in the author's flat, number eight, have confirmed that this flat was the hub of the poltergeist activity.

The Progression of Supernatural Activity

As soon as it was suspected that a supernatural agency was at play, the author started scientific measurements of the activity. Over the period March 2008 to July 2008, the author tracked all supernatural phenomena using equipment he assembled from parts bought over ebay and at yard sales in churches all over Edinburgh, and some spare cricket equipment. Complete details are provided in Appendix A. The residents would react to the incidents in various ways: these included sleeping through everything with ear-plugs on, but the ultimate result was that an email would be shot off to the property manager complaining about the inconvenience. Figure 1* shows a plot of poltergeist activity over this period, with a plot of email activity. The X-axis corresponds to time, and Y-axis corresponds to activity. Poltergeist activity is plotted in the standard SI unit of BogoPolts. Email activity is plotted in the standard SI unit of MegaFwds. As can be seen from the two curves, there is a strong correlation between the two activities. It is of course the most basic maxim that correlation does not imply causation, but in this case it does. Through personal communication with the residents, the author has established that they are not in the habit of casually communicating with the property manager through email. Any email activity therefore corresponds to a spurt of complaints and expressions of concern following major incidents.

Next, we turn our attention to the spikes in the activity curve - these are the actual incidents which I will go on to describe in the next few sections. These include but are not limited to the oven explosion in Flat 8; the major water leakage, again in Flat 8; and the untimely death of the computer mouse of the author.

- to be continued.

Bibliography

[1] N. Manerikar, "The Ratcliffe Terrace accommodation and the first fire-alarm incident". Blog. (link)

[2] N. Manerikar, "On the quality of internet access in 61 Ratcliffe Terrace". Blog. (Part1) and (Part2)

(*) Graph generated using gnuplot. Sadly, I have to use to the png/jpeg terminal type for producing graphics suitable for the internet. This means I cannot get the beautiful anti-aliased curves you can get with the eps-terminal/latex/pdf combination.

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Was this it? Surely not? I waited, as if for something to creep into the copy. In the afternoon I looked through it again. It looked beautiful! I went ahead and submitted it. It was the 14th of August - a full five days before deadline. It was a bit of a shock for me. I had worked on two papers earlier in the year. I had submitted the first one about two hours before deadline. The second one is one of my proud moments. We had a base draft submitted about thirty minutes before deadline, and then kept making small refinements, until the final submission was done exactly ninety seconds before deadline. Keeping all this in mind, four days was completely uncharted territory.

And then ever since, I have been a bit confused. There is nothing to do now. I mean nothing academic. Since November 2007, I haven't had a day like this. I think I'll get used to it in a week or so, and let the feeling slowly sink in.

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The longest day came and went
A sunrise in the morn;
A shower in the noon.

The longest day came and went
A coffee in the evening;
'Twas the sweetest thing.

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21st June: Edinburgh.
Sunrise: 0426 hrs
Sunset: 2203 hrs
Best place in the world at 0420 hrs: Top of Arthur's Seat

Sadly, the days get shorter from now on.

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Never does the past let you go
Never do you let the past go
You are both stuck in tangles.

Some tangles,
though they beg to be unravelled,
are better left tangled.

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There's this application on Facebook called "Compare Friends". On that, three of my friends voted for me when pitted against somebody else for "better singer". If you are one of my friends who voted for me, thank you. Please tell me who you are. I will sponsor a visit to the ENT specialist for you. If you are the person who lost against me (which you wouldn't know, actually), I can only say, please please never ever sing.

Then two days ago, I got this scrap on Orkut from some completely random person:

"hi mate..........tis is --name deleted-- from coimbator............which is best place to study fashion designin p.g..............??? scotland or u.k....???"

This is hilarious on so many levels. And a big ego massage. I get asked for advice by random people. On fashion designing! Wooohooo! Seems like all my hours of watching FTV finally paid off. Dear sir, may I recommend trying out some Italian universities? "scotland or u.k." might not be the best choice. Please do not hesitate to contact me for further details, I have been to universities in all three places: Italy, "scotland AND u.k.". Best regards.

In other news, Orkut today tells me that I am the master of every situation.
Sure.

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Happy pi day. To Americans, anyway. The rest of us will wait until the 22nd of July.

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A coin toss
And then it rains.
Two ducks, on a sticky wicket.

A random generator
not for numbers,
but for words

A random generator
Thrashes out words:
Two white swans.

A tiny little lake
Two white swans,
And lovers lie on the banks.

The random generator
turns out to be
Pseudo-random.

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Chance meetings,
Sweet smiles,
Euphoria!!!

Program, write, run,
Graphs, graphs, graphs,
Euphoria!!!

Cycle furiously, move an inch,
Wind, wind, wind,
Euphoria!!!

I bet all that sounds super sweet in Urdu.

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Cinque Terre is Italian for "Five Lands". The "Five Lands" are five villages on the coast of Liguria, flanked by hills on one side, and the Ligurian Sea on the other. Sun, sand, waves and terraced hill-slopes used for farming grapes make for an incredibly beautiful combination in the Cinque Terre. The villages and surrounding hills are now part of a National Park which is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

After a day in Genova, I set out for Monterosso al Mare early next morning - as early as Trenitalia would allow me, that is. Monterosso, is the first of the five villages going north to south along the coast. As the train came into the station of Monterosso, I was ready to explode with the anticipation that had been building up over the past few months, ever since I had heard about the Cinque Terre, and researched travel guides for this trip. It was a wonderful day in March, in the early days of spring, and yet warm as it can only be in sunny Italy. As I walked out of the station, a fresh breeze hit me, and I laid my eyes on the heavenly beach at Monterosso.

Hub:
eyes meet,
it is like a touch...
a spark...
          ---Attraction

I congratulated myself on the timing of the trip. It was warm enough to walk about in a T-shirt, but early enough in the year to beat the hordes of tourists that would descend upon these locations later.

The five villages are connected to each other by railway (ugly Trenitalia trains), but also by a foot path that takes you along the coast, over hills and through vineyards. The foot path is, of course, what you should take.

I took in the great views, felt the soft sand of the beach run through my toes, and walked along gently towards where the path begins. It is a gentle trek, and accessible to anybody who is used to walking reasonable distances. The path climbs steadily, as it goes round the first hill. As you turn round this first corner, you come directly into the green vineyards. These are an essential part of the fragile ecology of the region, as they help bind the soil together and prevent the hill-sides from eroding and collapsing into the sea.

The path from Monterosso to Vernazza, the second of the villages, takes about two hours, including time spent admiring the views and taking pictures. As it follows the curves of the hills, parts of the coast hide from you, and then reappear. Vernazza is hidden for quite a while, but at a point, you come round a corner, and suddenly spot it shimmering in the distance, against the sparkling blue of the sea.

Vernazza rests on an outcrop of rock into the sea. As you come closer to Vernazza along the foot-path, you can make out the pretty houses, and the jetty. Everything is 'piccolo' here. The part near the jetty is at sea-level, and paths rise up steeply from the central street towards both sides, including a narrow path that squeezes through houses towards the tiny castle with its tower, clearly visible from a long distance. A visit to the castle and a climb up the spiral staircase to the top of the tower is highly recommended. You get great views in both directions along the coast, but also an awesome view of Vernazza itself. Lunch was at Vernazza, sitting idly on one of the rock benches at the jetty. As you spend time in this tiny place, it grows on you, and is without doubt, my favourite among the five.

Uns:
the touch of the eyes
was as if,
it was...
          ---Infatuation

Through the main road in Vernazza I continued, and rejoined the foot-path to head towards Corniglia, the third of the villages. This part of the journey takes about an hour and a half. The path is similar to the first one, but there are less vineyards here, and more natural greenery. The views needless to say are just as stunning if not better. There are quiet places along the path where you can sit down, have a drink and carry on. If I remember correctly, there is also a path midway which leads down to a secluded beach. I didn't venture along that, but headed on towards Corniglia.

As the afternoon sun took full effect, the small number of white clouds that had gathered since morning dispersed. The sky grew blue, and the sea returned the compliment by growing even bluer, and shimmered down the middle where it reflected the sun. A strange sense of calmness hung over everything, aided no doubt by the fact that I was literally alone on the trail. It is hard not to be overcome. You can simply sit down and absorb the goodness of the moment.

After much sitting down and absorbing of the goodness of the moment, Corniglia arrived. It is much bigger than Vernazza, but perched completely atop a cliff. Going through small alleys between houses, you arrive upon a terrace which overlooks the sea, and where you can indulge in some more of the sitting down. I proceeded to do exactly that.

The fourth village is Manarola; unfortunately the path from Corniglia to Manarola was shut that day due to a landslide. So I had to take the train to Manarola. From Corniglia you climb down a long series of pretty steps to arrive at the Corniglia railway station. It is a stunning locale for a railway station. There are tunnels on either side of the station: the station with its two platforms is on a small clear portion of the cliff between the hill atop which Corniglia stands and another hill next to it. Next to the second track, is a sheer drop down into the sea (guarded by a railing, of course). The Cinque Terre seem to conjure up surprises every time you think you have seen it all. My disappointment over missing out on the foot-path evaporated as I sat on the platform looking around in wonder, with the sun beating down upon me.

Ishq:
the flame
of her body is felt,
his breath starts igniting...
          ---Love

Truly, by this time I was head over heels in love with the Cinque Terre. And as I discovered later, some of the best parts were still ahead.

The train ride was quick. Manarola is another riot of coloured houses perched precariously atop a cliff. If you were a resident there, I would highly recommend conditioning that prevents one from jumping out of windows in emergencies. You would end up a few hundred feet below, in the sea, if you attempted that. As you descend towards the jetty in Manarola, paths lead to the left and right. The one towards the right is actually the path that would take you to Corniglia (the one that was closed). As I mentioned earlier, the goodies never stop coming. I took the path towards the right, which takes you to a nice patch of rocks in the sea. You can climb right down to the sea, and sit on them, and gaze at a natural arch carved by waves. At another point there are rock-cut steps which lead you down onto a large outcrop of volcanic rock.

Manarola is a heaven if you like to sit down and watch waves crash into rocks. The path to the left leads to several large jagged rocks jutting out just beyond the cliff. Another place to sit with your feet in the water, observe the solitary gull on one of those pointed rocks, and hear the sea whispering to you.

Aquidat:
she touches him like a whisper,
as if silence is mixed in her eyes,
he prays, a little consciously,
a little unconsciously...
          ---Reverence

I could go on and on about perfect solitude and inner peace, but I imagine this conveys my feelings.

As evening drew close, I beamed upon myself again for the perfect timing. The last part of the path is the via dell'Amore ("the path of love") which connects Manarola to Riomaggiore, the fifth and final village. It is a very short path, which is completely paved, and almost level. I would be walking along that just as the sun would begin setting and reach Riomaggiore just before sunset. That walk was magical. There is a kind of tunnel which you pass through on the way, with large windows looking out onto the sea. I can distinctly remember the pink-orange evening sun light filtering through the windows and dancing on the stone walls, and it gives me goose bumps. At Riomaggiore, I stopped on the via dell'Amore, and watched the sun go down. Finally, in twilight, I set about finding the accommodation I had booked for the night.

The night at the shared flat makes for another tale completely, to be narrated when I am in a lighter mood. It involved a couple I was sharing the flat with, and a drunk Canadian whose girlfriend had just dumped him. Minor distractions.

I was up early, and walked around Riomaggiore a bit. There is a nice and small pebbly beach round the corner. My plan earlier was to take a train from Riomaggiore back to Genova. Small chance! I was soon traversing the foot-path in the reverse direction. It was no less stunning. An entirely different experience in the morning air and light. A breakfast at Vernazza. Back to Monterosso, a small trek north of Monterosso towards Punta Mesco. You want to keep exploring, keep walking, and above all keep coming back.

Ibaadat:
he is entangled on her path,
entangled in her arms
love now turns to...
          ---Worship

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According to ancient Arabic literature, love is classified into seven different shades: "hub" (Attraction), "uns" (Infatuation), "ishq" (Love), "aquidat" (Reverence), "ibaadat" (Worship), "junoon" (Obsession), "maut" (Death). I am very happy to report that my journey to the Cinque Terre did not include the last two; it was, unlike "Dil Se", a journey through five shades of love.

Humble acknowledgements to Gulzaar, Mani Ratnam and Dil Se (http://www.rage-india.com/dilse/love.htm) for the concept and the quotations (lines from the song Satrangi re).

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That was literally it - a tour of the Lord's Museum (a loving gaze from two inches at Cricket's most cherished tradition and trophy - the Ashes Urn), the Long Room, the MCC Committee Room (long debates over the "Leg Theory"), the visiting team's changing room with the famous balcony (picture Ganguly's shirt-waving payback to Flintoff and England) and the Honours Board (Agarkar's splendind hundred earning him a place alongside other more illustrious centurions); a round through the Grand Stand where you can lean over the boundary and touch the grass, and see Old Father Time in the South Stand; towards the futuristic Investec Media Centre, and then when you get inside the spaceship, and watch the last rays of the sun part company with the hallowed turf, you feel you can die in peace.

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The only labs I have been to in quite a while now are computing labs, which have nothing but rows upon rows of PCs, with a printer here and there. How boring! Now the bioinformatics lab, boy that was a different proposition altogether. The lab here is a set of connected rooms, one leading on to another, with offices and seating areas for graduate students scattered here and there. The walls are full of diagrams of double helices, photographs and pictures of a thousand interesting organisms and fossils, and what not. The equipment is extremely varied. They have gas cylinders, ultra low temperature refrigerators, and shelf upon shelf of glass stuff. In one corner, are two gene sequencers of the capillary electrophoresis type. They look like sophisticated extra-large microwave ovens, and are worth about two hundred thousand pounds each. Next to them are a few PCR machines. On the adjoining shelves, there are spares, and worn out parts (which we were offered as gifts to take home). All impressive stuff.

The place has that typical hospital smell. It has the air of housing people who live and work there 24x7, with nay a moment to spare. It is quite a shock for a person who spends all his time in dainty computer labs. Feels like there is some kind of an ecological/biological disaster waiting to happen there! These guys play around with neurotoxins and stuff like that all the time. Then they probably have lunch there. I can't imagine how! If I worked there, I would be running to the basin to wash my hands every ten minutes. But on the other hand, it does look like a place where something is getting done. Not like a computer lab, which looks like a cyber-cafe, with people idling their time away.

After this exhilarating trip, I think I am going to feel a bit flat working in my lab on Monday.

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On Saturday, I finally moved to my official University Accommodation. It is in a street called Ratcliffe Terrace. For two months before this, I was staying at serviced apartments in Grove Street, provided by the university, because the accommodation that had been allocated to me was still under construction. Yes, such things happen. After several postponements, the date of the shifting was finally fixed, and everybody who had been allocated Ratcliffe Terrace moved in. As university accommodations in Edinburgh go, it is a very nice place.

It is work in progress. Outside the building, they still have temporary fencing along the road. There are notices on the walls announcing that it is a construction site, and one should not enter without proper protective equipment. I don't remember them handing out helmets when we moved in (which would have been daft anyway), so I am assuming the notice is now defunct. The lift has yet to see the light of day. We were told that it should have done that today, but then we were told lots of things. The backyard is beautifully landscaped with heaps of soil, spare bricks and artfully scattered blocks of concrete, and a few cranes (not of the avian variety).

And I am in a flat with five other people, and we make an interesting multi-national, multi-ethnic mix: India, Indonesia, Italy, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, and Poland. We have rooms of our own, with a common kitchen and dining area. I have a nice little room with a window facing east, which means that I have a beautiful view of Arthur's Seat and the Salisbury Crags. I woke up to a beautiful cloudy and pink sunrise today, which really made my day.

Everything went smoothly until I sat down for dinner in the evening when the fire alarm went off. I am an absolute pro now, as you might have gathered from my previous fire-alarm posts. I leapt up, gathered my keys, wallet and phone, closed all doors and ran down the stairs. Slowly everybody gathered there, and somebody made the call to the fire brigade. The building has sophisticated, state of the art fire-alarm technology. At the ground floor, near the main door, there is a big box with an LCD panel, which was saying that there was a fire in the kitchen of one of the flats on the second floor.

It is astonishing how many jokes you can make in such situations. All I had on was a T-shirt and pyjamas, and in the chill evening air in the street, when someone asks you why you didn't get your coat, you say you were expecting to be warmed by the fire. The fire brigade arrived surprisingly quickly, and the firemen found that there was no fire. There's no smoke without a fire, but apparently, there are lots of alarms without a fire. Now, the alarm was ringing all this while, and the firemen couldn't turn it off because the system requires a password to be entered to do this which they didn't know. So the university security people had to be located and the firemen asked us all to return to our flats and enjoy the music. So I went up and sat down to finish my dinner trying to figure out the frequency of the wailing alarm. When I got down to the dessert, the alarm suddenly stopped, and everything was back to normal.

I'm loving my new home! Ten more months here... woohooo!

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The simplest thing that presents itself is my day today, and being that the most interesting thing that happened was the cup of tea I had in the morning, I shall refrain from engaging in further discussion about it. So let me generalize a bit and talk about a typical day faced by a typical student studying at the University of Edinburgh.

The day begins for our hero not by waking up, but by being helped home (not necessarily the hero's) and put to sleep by his more sober friends after a night spent getting sloshed at the local pub. He is up at noon. Attendance in lectures is optional, so the occasional missed class is not a problem. Even if you miss it as occasionally as every day. But his favourite Society meets today for lunch, and oh boy, that is not to be missed at any cost. The University has about a hundred and fifty different Societies; if you can find ten people with a common interest, you can go and form a society. It can be anything - the Zulu Dance Society, or the Windows Vista Appreciation Society or the Old Chinese Proverbs Society. By a strange coincidence, the meet is in a pub. Every society has its own patron watering hole. They religiously stick to it. So it is a nice lunch, with a pint or two to down it all, with some pleasant conversation about the Rugby and the party last night. Or was it the previous night? Anyway, that's the afternoon taken care of. Maybe it's time to get some work done for the day. Our hero heads to the computing facilities. The next hour passes by reading and forwarding emails. Soon he thrashes out a few pages and graphs for the assignment that is due in two days. That is a lot of work for one day, and with a sense of achievement, he flies out of the lab, runs into a few buddies with whom he goes for a walk across the Meadows. All roads lead to a bar in Edinburgh, and there ends another day.

They love their drink here. Every occasion begins and ends with a drink at the pub. A two cows description of Edinburgh would go something like this: "You have two cows. Yeah, whatever. Fancy a drink?"

So those were my simple things about simple things. On second thoughts, the next time I am faced with a block I better simply pick it up or navigate around it.

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And it is not just about the university. You are bound to be overjoyed when you find yourself in a place where,
- People drive on the correct side of the road, unlike the Europeans who prefer to drive on the right side. Big relief!
- People know what cricket is, although it may not be the number one item in their TODO list for the weekend.
- Enough people are eccentric enough to consider you absolutely normal.

So Edinburgh it is - my home for the next nine months at least. These chronicles will continue on, in the form of Life @ Edinburgh, with bits and pieces of Mumbai, Pune, Trento and elsewhere thrown in for good measure. Cheers then!

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So many dreams
were left undreamt;
that we may dream tomorrow

That I may dream your dreams
That I may think your thoughts
For ever and ever, and ever.

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This is what my group came up with (click to enlarge):

Needless to say, it was a riot! The footnote was a Puneri classic: "Aamchya itaratra shaakhaa naahit" (We have no other branches). I remember that we managed our entire sales pitch with straight faces. The Q&A session that followed was completely unrestrained. After all, we were trying to send people to the moon for their honeymoons. The questions kept flowing in, and we managed to toss them all aside.

Q: What 'recreational' facilities do you offer?
A: Mud-baths in the soft lunar dust
A: An 18-hole golf course
A: Open air musical concerts under the stars

Q: Do you require a visa for the moon?
A: We have an entire legal department devoted to emigration issues. You can consult them. Visit our office. They do not have any other branch.

Q: What about the gravity?
A: There are provisions for artificial gravity. In fact each room will have gravity regulators like fan regulators. You can just turn the knob and increase or decrease the gravity as per your liking.
Somebody from the audience: Yeah, at night you can just keep twisting the knob back and forth!

And so it went on for about half an hour, until the instructor finally cut it short and moved on to the next team.

Those were the training days, and were they fun!

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During my two years in Pune, we stayed at three different places. The second of these was on Paud road, next to Chandni Chowk. The society was called Runwal Paradise, and it was a nice place. Except for the water supply problems. Those were the days when Paud road was Paud road, and had no Corporation water supply. Water came from bore-wells and tankers. Every drop was precious. There was water on the taps only for a fixed number of hours. You had to store it up for the day within these hours.

One evening, when my room-mate and I arrived from work, a funny(?) sight greeted us. Water was seeping out from under the door of the flat next to us. Now this flat was unoccupied. They were having some interior work done, and labourers would come and go. One of them had probably left the tap open! We knocked on the door, but of course there was nobody inside. This would be a disaster for sure. At this rate the entire overhead tank would empty before too long, and we would be stuck without water in the morning, and all of next day.

This called for action! Any opportunity at something dramatic appealed to me in those days of sedentary life as software engineer. To cut the suspense, I leaped from one balcony to another over a sheer drop of four floors

I ran to our balcony, and looked across. The balcony of the neighbouring flat was next to ours - with about a four foot gap. But we were on the fourth floor. Didn't matter. Precious water was at stake. My shower of the next day was at stake. So I told my friend that I was going over. I climbed over the railing, and stood on the outside of our balcony. Then, I leaned over with my upper body, and caught hold of the railing of the other balcony. Then I dragged over both my legs, one at a time. Thus I was on the outside of their balcony, and hoisted myself over the railing into the inside. Hurray! All done within a few seconds.

Next job was to get inside the house. The door was obviously closed. The window however had been left slightly open. I heaved at it, and it slid aside. I climbed in into an inch of water. I could barely see, but I didn't want to turn on the mains for fear of electrocution. So I waded through the water, trying to trace the source of the leak by listening to the sound. Through the hall, into the corridor, along the bathrooms and into the kitchen! There it was - a tap fully open, water gushing out and flowing down from the clogged sink onto the floor and everywhere. I quickly turned it off. Mission accomplished. I started going back to the balcony for an encore of the stunt, and then realized that that was now not necessary. Like a good boy I went to the front door, opened it and got out, leaving the bolt across the door so that it remained open. After that we contacted the secretary of the society, and a few people gathered there discussing the situation and arguing about it.

Of course the story goes on - how water leaked into our house, and the house below, how people were pissed off, and how nobody at all asked anybody how the hell the tap was closed off when there was nobody in the house. Hence, this little piece to set the record straight

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Is love worth it,
if, in the end
you aren't allowed to love any more?

Is waiting for love
worth either the wait
or the love?

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I will miss you.
A lot.

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I had this subject this semester called Numerical Simulation of Complex Systems. At the end of everything, I had a program that would solve a system of M X N differential equations in M X N unknown variables, and it would do it Z times. Typical values of M, N and Z would be 300, 200 and 10000. In simple terms it would make the poor processor of my laptop work really mind-boggingly hard, and extract the last drop of processing power from every cycle. Side-effects of all this programming included frustration, joy, unkempt hair and I am sorry to say, more global-warming. The processor would get very hot very quickly, and the fan would go into overdrive. On several occasions, I found that I could come after a bath and use my laptop as a hair-dryer. Run the program, wait a few seconds, lift up the laptop to your head, and enjoy drying your hair in the hot breeze.

Disclaimer: Please do not try at home.

Warning: Patent pending.

Current Mood: Must post something. Must post something.

Note to self: Don't Panic.

Aaaahhh...

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In sunshine it rains.
Each droplet of spring,
a glittering diamond.

These days time flies by
doing nothing special.
And special nothings.

Words - sometimes they flow,
Sometimes they fail me
...like now.

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1. Running an Italian Windows XP Home on my laptop for seven months (yes, I have my reasons), without an antivirus or firewall, and without disaster so far.

2. Being to Rome and back without having my passport or wallet or bag, or the shirt on my back stolen.

3. Surviving for eight months without an internet connection at home (I need to go down to the department to venture out into cyberspace). Yes, there is hope for all.

4. Resisting the temptation to throw a stone from the top of the Eiffel Tower, measure the time taken for it to fall down and thence calculate the tower's height.

5. Getting a hair-cut from an Italian speaking barber without ending up looking like a cross between Lasith Malinga and a porcupine.

The reason I talk about these things is that I added another feather to my cap today. It is a huge, multi-coloured, peacock feather. For the first time, I was able to take out all the clothes out of our front-loading washing machine without dropping a single item on the floor.

Washing machines seem to occupy a lot of screen space in my life. I have written before about a few adventures with these. Those of you without any experience with front-loading washing machines will not truly appreciate my achievement of today. It is a diabolical creature, the front-loading machine. Whoever designed it should be made to sit down and ponder over the magnitude of the errors committed.

The problems start with the most basic of operations - dumping your clothes into the machine. This should be as simple as - well, dumping your clothes into the machine. But you cannot, as you can in the simple top-loading machine. You have to put them in one by one, through the stupid opening in the front. I have no problem with bending down, otherwise I would be complaining about that as well.

Secondly, the inventor has chosen to completely ignore the Fundamental Law of Washing Machine Mechanics - "After a washing cycle has started, you will realize that you forgot to put in an item of clothing that just has to be washed." For top-loading machines, you can just lift up the lid, and plonk the item in - five minutes, ten minutes or whenever during the cycle. The front-loading machine has to stay shut once the cycle starts, else there will be disaster. So you have to wait for the entire cycle to get over before you can put in the must-do item. At least that is how it is with the Italian machine we have here.

Finally, when you take out the clothes, it has to be done as while putting them in - one by one. The clothes always end up entangled with one another, and however hard you try, one item will always drag out another, and gravity will do the rest. Try to do it slowly, and maybe you can identify the item being dragged out and hold on to it as well, but somewhere, there will be a small something - a sock, a handkerchief that will defy your most careful and patient manipulations and simply fall to the ground. Now falling to the ground is not a catastrophe. All you have to do is pick the darned thing up. But I find it very very irritating. Even when the bathroom floor is spotlessly clean. It is just one of those things.

Which is why I was so elated today when I got out all the clothes without anything falling to the floor! Although something tells me that it was just a one-off thing, and everything will be back to floor-dropping normalcy the next time. But till then, I rock!

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The French are proud of their engineers and encourage engineering. They especially groom slightly looney engineers who come up with slightly looney projects. Like the Eiffel Tower. Then they go right ahead and build the darned things. When they build anything more than two stories high, they make sure that they build stylish elevators and stairs to take people right to the top. They put a restaurant up there somewhere near the top if even a remote possibility of such an enterprise presents itself. When all is done, they already have hordes of tourists lined up to pay exorbitant amounts of money to go up the elevators and stairs and have a look at the New Marvel of French Engineering and see how Paris looks from there. And the French laugh all the way to the bank. The engineers are happy, the tourists have their photographs and are happy, and Paris smiles away to herself.

Quite a racket it is, what the French have got going in Paris. The Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triomphe, La Grande Arche in the La Defence district, the tower of the Notre Dame cathedral, the Pantheon, and even the freaking rectangular block of a skyscraper in Montparnasse can be climbed up to have a grand view of Paris. All at a nice little price. And so does the Parisian economy prosper.

There's another scam they have going on now. There is this American writer they have hired who churns out books set in Paris that inexplicably turn out to be massive bestsellers. Then they offer tours which invite you to trace the path taken by the lead detective through Paris, and "uncover the Da Vinci Code". They even have a "The Da Vinci Code Tour" inside the Louvre.

Even now, you can bet your bottom dollar, there is a group of French Engineers somewhere planning the next big thing in Paris. In ten years time, be prepared to climb up it, part with about five hundred Euro for lunch in the restaurant at the top, and then haggle at the bottom with African characters for two-euro souvenirs of the thing you just climbed.

But let's give it to them, they deserve it. I mean, they work hard for it. They are partially driven by their envy of their neighbours, the Italians, who just inherited everything like spoilt kids of rich parents. What are the odds of getting a "Leaning Tower of Paris"? Or of having the Pope shift his headquarters to the Louvre? None. So the French innovate. That is their forte.

Sometimes, they screw up as well. One of their engineers constructed the metal-framework glass pyramids, for instance. When they were finished, it was found that they were too small, and were no good for a restaurant. And not good enough to attract tourists on their own merit, no sir, not with the Real Things out there in Egypt. So what do they do, they just dunk them into the courtyard of the Louvre and put the biggest one on top of the entrance to the museum. They really are hideous, and look completely out of place at the Louvre. I mean, it is hopeless how ridiculous it looks. Does not deter the tourists though. Glass pyramids! More photo opportunities. Hurray! And the Parisian economy chugs along merrily.

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Jokes apart, Paris is a BEAUTIFUL city (apart from the glass pyramids at the Louvre, that is). For a city that is so big, so populous, and so swamped by tourists, it is astonishing how pretty it manages to be. The wide avenues and tree lined boulevards, the efficient mass transit system, the shops and boutiques, restaurants and bistros, showrooms of top fashion labels, the Seine, and above all the pretty pretty French girls are a sight to behold! The view from the top of the Eiffel Tower at night, whooshing down the Champs Elysees on a bicycle, and a boat-ride on the Seine just cannot be missed. Don't miss it for your life.

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But the fact remains that note-taking is a practice much practised by the taught, and much appreciated by the teachers. Here in Trento, I have come across the Note-Taking Gods themselves. They come to class armed to their teeth with note-taking equipment. The preparations start five minutes before the lecture. Ruled or block-note paper is neatly laid out in a pile. It's exact future location in the exact file has already been determined. Out comes a pouch, which is unzipped to reveal the tools of the trade. Out comes a blue pen, a red pen, a green pen, a pencil, an eraser, a whitener, a ruler. As words emanate from the mouth of the lecturer, ten fingers perform an intricate martial-art dance-form, switching from the normal-text blue pen, to the red-penned warning, or the green coloured special note, to a pencilled diagram drawn with the aid of a ruler and perfected by rubbing out small errors with eraser. As words flow out, the dance continues. Errors in ink are quickly whitened out and over-written with correct things. Concepts crystallize into ink and graphite patterns, painstakingly recorded, for posterity it would seem. In the meantime, other people have filled up the margins with Necker cubes and flowers and seven pointed stars, and have started off with mountains and the sun. The Note-Takers care not, indeed they are aware of nothing but the lecture and the notes.

And thus is the universe divided into Note-Takers and Star-Drawers, and they must exist together, for they are the Yin and Yang of college life.

If you belong to the latter category, read on.

Tips for those seeking emancipation from note-taking:

I have had a long history of fake note-taking. I have cultivated and polished these skills over several years of sitting in tortuous lectures. Of course you can always resort to doodling, but that gets monotonous after a while if you are not a gifted artist. I mean there is a limit to how many stars one can draw in the margin, even if you can do seven, nine, eleven and thirteen pointed stars without lifting the pen. Here, I share with you some of my most successful techniques. Do remember that everything takes hard work and patience, and that if you are the kind of person who would rather put in this hard work into listening to the lecture, then you are advised to completely skip this article from here onwards.

The worst situation is when your teacher actually dictates something to you. You have to pretend to write down whatever they say, otherwise it would appear that they have put in a lot of hard work for nothing. Fortunately, such situations lend themselves admirably to self-amusement. I enlist a few simple techniques I employed in junior college that will produce much mirth:
Write down every alternate word of what the teacher says -
For action is equal opposite.
To or to that the.

Try it once. It is quite tough to do it in real time. You can make it even more complicated by inventing arbitrary rules - for example you can choose to skip two of the eight parts of speech in every sentence. So if you have chosen to skip adjectives and verbs (further complications - choose to include or exclude infinitive and gerund forms), you get -
For action there an and reaction.
Or not that the question.

My personal favourite - polish up on your Leonardo da Vinci skills - write in mirrored script with your wrong hand. For me that translates to writing left-handed, from right to left. This will be very slow and difficult to start off with, so you can combine this method with the first one - alternate words, or even every third word.

If you promise that you will recycle the paper, you can try writing vertically - each word or even letter on its own line. Or make patterns - one word on the first line, two on the second and so on till the entire line is filled and then one less then onwards, to get diamond forms in your notebook.

Diagrams can be made more interesting by drawing half on one side and half on the back of the same paper, so that the entire diagram can be made out if you hold the paper against some light.

Another toughie - write everything down in the form of poems. For some guidance, you can refer to this.

You can also try to write down English notes in devnagri script, and vice-versa. If you are used to chatting with friends in Hindi and Marathi, the vice-versa part should not be too difficult.

Finally, remember that if you are doing any of these activities, it is because like me, you have no use for notes. And I would love to hear about your innovations!

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