A week to remember

Last week was a week to remember for me. Never has it been this desperately bad, I think. And hopefully, never will it be again. It started with me missing a pretty important deadline of my research on 20 december. It set back my PhD by a few months at least. But, resolved an important issue while missing the deadline though. After that went to Dallas. It was lovely on wednesday and it snowed there. Pretty much my first time in a snowfall. The joy was shortlived though, as I crashed my car (A M3 on loan from my big bro) after skidding on the black ice which had formed by the evening on the highway. This was not my first time driving on snow (having driven before in new mexico and colorado snow), but first time with a rear wheel drive car, which skids more. I was extra safe, with lower gear and no brake, but to no avail. Luckily with Hema by my side, we braved the subzero temperatures while waiting for 2 hours for the towtruck to show up and tow us back home. There were lots of such crashes that night, as Dallas city and drivers were not used to the snow, and nothing was cleared at all. Towed it again the next day to BMW dealership who estimated 4 weeks and 4000$ worth of repairs. So, I fixed up the car by lots of duct-tape so that the mudguard does'nt rub against the wheel and drive back on friday to houston slowly, taking 5 hours - a distance which I take less than 3 & 1/2 hours. Picked up dada-boudi that night. Bro was coming after almost 2 years to drive his car, and this had to happen just 2 days before he came. Then after reaching my cool new garage apartment - oh, forgot to mention it. I had shifted into a cool new garage apartment 5 minutes walkable from my department. Though I faced a few initial teething troubles, had settled in nicely. - we found it to be quite a bit cold. It had snowed almost throughout the day in Houston - first time after 15 years - and it was freezing. The extra heater that I had bought had switched off from over heating. Decided to go to Anshu's apartment. He had moved to Chicago and kept his keys with me. While moving, the fuse went off, so we shifted our sleeping bags and comforters in the dark with a flashlight. The next day we went back and shifted the whole house - got quite a piece of dada's mind too. And oh, forgot to tell. My cell phone display had also conked off. I could just send and receive calls, but no display. So, with Anshu's apartment, Amit's Car, and Raj's Cell Phone, I could live through the week.

Finally everything got more or less fixed. Living in Anshu's apartment till 31 jan, the M3 was made drivable today and will be completely fixed later, and cell phone was fixed too. So, things back to normal (and boring? :-)

Swades and AID

Saw an awesome movie yesterday - Swades.
It is based on a true story of a couple of guys leaving their US job to go back and work for rural development in India. A moving and touching story. And spent the rest of the night in discussing how we can contribute better.

A nice opportunity came by soon, through the campaign by AID called One For India, and jumped at the chance.

Debugging Indian Computer Programmers

Debugging Indian Computer Programmers: Dude, Did I Steal Your Job? - this book was pushlished recently. Ordered it. shipping now.
It details an indian H1-B immigrant life story in this country. the ups and downs. the joys and the slurs. Interesting reading was the slashdot discussion after it was posted.
slashdot
Ranged from get-off-my-country people to realistic people. people cribbed that how on earth will the compete against indians/chinese who do the same job at 1/3 the price.

A sudden realization dawned on me. Globalization, for all its ills, is the ultimate social and economic equalizer. perfect socialism. if anybody is poorer than another, he will do the job at lesser price, and hence be more productive. And ultimately the difference would reduce. nice. controlled globalization is good. of course, exploitation needs to be checked.

NYTimes Firefox Ad

The long-awaited firefox ad came out today in New York Times. Here it is. The pdf file was not searchable (the names, I mean), so took a printout, which took 30 minutes to print, and scanned for my name. Found it finally amongst the thousands of other donors. Being alphabetical helped of course. It was the largest open source fund raising campaign in history. It already has 11 million downloads, and it is bound to rise after this ad. Am sure very happy with my firefox. One addition will be welcome - the capacity to download and keep a bookmarked page following a specified k-level deep from it.

Bhorer kichhu raag aar amar onubhuti

Ek oshadharon bondhur oshadharon shristi:

Lokey bole srishtir prothom shabdo holo "Om". Aar somosto
raag-er aadi raag holo Bhairav. Sei Bhairav diye shuru hok
amader sokal, sandhikhoner brahmo-muhurto. Ekhono ektao
alok-rekha sporsho kore ni akasher gaaye. Bhairav-er prothom
komol rishav-e akasher booke bhorer kompon, Naad-Brahmer avahan.

Er por Lalit-er chhoNway mon udhao kora sokal...kothao jeno
bhor hoye aschhe. Dheere dheere pakhi der kakoli, Sharater
prothom shishir, raater shesh tara, surjomukhi phota aar ek
raater brahmakomol-er papri buje jawa. Ganga-r ghat-e torpon.
Purboj der utsorgo kora anjali ei nadi diye bhese gechhe koto
jug dhore. Anjali dewa jol theke thhikre esechhe surjyer
prothom rashmi. Bhorer pabitra ta jeno Todi-r Pancham-e.

Bhairavi diye sokal sampurna. Jeno jiboner somosto kaaj
samapto hoyechhe...ebar kuasha ghera bhor belay ghore phire
jawa. Nishobde chole jawa pothiker paayer chhap kebol pichhone
pore thake. Ei gaan samapti-r gaan, sampurna-tar gaan. Bhorer
kalakakoli-r majhe hariye jawa raat-er shesh smriti tuku.

The man, The machine

The man, The machine
Originally uploaded by santapc.

Finally have a cool pic with my car to post.

Flickr

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

Once was Bombay

Finished reading this fascinating book by Pinki Virani, about the deterioration of the city of Bombay from it's glorious past to the riot-don-filmi present. Particularly fascinating was "Crime and punishment", "Mazagon, Bombay-10", and "The lala in Winter". It was a very well-researched book, and one could get an inside look into the filmi, don, police worlds.

I did'nt like her being offensive to changing the name of Bombay to the native tongue of Mumbai, VT to Shivaji, etc. As if all our painful history, is just supposed to be meekly accepted. We should forget our local tongue, and start speaking in a firangi accent. That is so demeaning. I feel so proud to say the name of my city in both Bengali and English as Kolkata. Not the stupid anglicized cant-bend-their-tongue-english's Calcutta.

Long Bike Ride

Today morning, it did'nt rain as predicted. And we were overjoyed. we, as in Raj, Vivek, and myself. I was the latest to join the bike club, and it was to be my second long bike ride today. Biked all around Allen Parkway and downtown, and Hermann Park. In total biked 26 miles - 42 kilometres - in around 2 1/2 hours. With breaks of course. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Not biking on the streets though. Houston drivers actually were honking at us to get off the roads; so bike unfriendly place. And I was expecting the pain at night, so took tylenol before going to sleep. Need to buy bikers shorts despo, if I want to bike this long again.