The true damage

We rarely know the true extent of the damage we have done to ourselves. In most cases we 'move on' after the incident unaware that the incident's aftereffects still pursue us. Sometimes the only way in which you can move on is by telling yourself that everything is ok, by which we are actually lying to ourselves. Take affairs of the heart for instance, how can things be ok? Every aspect of our day to day life is driven by our self, which in turn is regulated by our emotional wellness, and if some incident has occurred which blows said emotional wellness out of the window, then how can things be ok?

They are not.

In the words of my best friend, "There is a hole in my chest, and I cannot fill it, only ignore it and hope that this works".

This works in the sense that most of your usual activities return to normal, and you are functioning as people around you expect you to function. However, the true extent of the damage, the scars become visible only when we are by ourselves.

I took a look inside myself recently and was scared by what I saw inside, or rather the absence of what I expected to see. A huge part of me has become reduced to nothing, there is simply a void there, and the infection spreads. 

The story which comes to mind is as follows. The child who is confronted by his worst nightmare keeps on rocking back and forth, hugging his knees to his chest, whispering over and over again "you are not real, you are not real, this is not real,,,this cannot be real".... does that make his ordeal any less real than any other element of reality.

The reason for my state is far away from me, but I do have means of contact. One sided contact. The messages are never returned. There is only maddening silence.

The psychological concept of closure after some nerve wracking event, is so important, and the problem with the so called "clean cut" is that it offers no closure.

The "clean cut" concept is the one which says that the only way to take care of a life threatening problem is to cut it off immediately at the source, no questions asked, no goodbyes said, nothing. There is only the swiftness of the blade as it descends, whistling through the air, delivering sweet and terrible release.

I might never be ok without the closure I require, yet there is nothing I can do about this. 

Today I sat here thinking about band practice later, and I thought about taking a break in between practice and coming out of the warehouse and calling someone to talk to. Thats  when it struck me, I had no one to call. Not a single person.

How frightening is that? 

I guess I am probably going to come outside and stare at the stars or something.

damn it all...

wraith.

wind mage..

you can just tell from the title that this is gonna be a weird one right? yeah you can...

I'm gonna tell you bout somethin I do now and then. When I'm walking down an open kinda street or somethin, I just spread my arms out to either side like im about to fly, and the wind just picks up, swirling all around me, feels amazing. Heres the funny part though, if your imagination is strong enough you can make it such that you are the one summoning the wind and making it fly here and there. This is not akin to the other forms of magic, since those mostly require a master-slave approach, with the wind however, the caster and the wind are associates. There are no commands, only requests.

I've always told anyone who was interested in listening that of all the elements, the wind was my favorite. Somethin about the freedom inherent in the wind just calls out to me. At the end of a hard day, I've found myself wishing so many times that I could just transform into one of the many winds and just fly about for a while. High over the lands, where no one can see me, and no one can judge me. 

Another thing I love about the wind is the way in which it plays with my hair. One of the reasons why I like having long hair is because, it looks so cool when its being swept about by the wind. Therefore in order to have long hair which sweeps about I make a sacrifice on the overall quality of my appearance, meaning, I go out looking like a caveman.

The seaside is amazing in that respect, it is so windy and the sound of the waves crashing on the shore is so cool. Mountains are even better, not the real cold ones, im talking more like, the grassy meadows kinda mountains. There was this one show on cartoon network a long time back, and I've seen it in passing, it was called heidi, and even though the show was essentially queer  the setting was amazing, it was set somewhere in the swiss alps. Now that I think about it, there might have been a geographical inaccuracy there, since as far as I know the alps are snow clad most of the time, and in this toon they showed the mountains as being full of grassy meadows and the like. My word, they looked amazing.

Another comic which I was crazy bout was Asterix, I loved the adventure the humour and the setting. For a while in my childhood I think I actually started a search for gaul so that I could relocate there, I mean come on...even the barbarians looked friendly and as long as you knew a druid you would be ok. Everything about that comic was cool, the camraderie it portrayed, the simple life versus so many complications brought in by the romans. I appreciated greatly the way in which the authors had addressed so many serious issue by means of something so funny and innocent. I never get sick of reading Asterix, irrespective of how many times.

thats it for now dudes,

magus.

a funny lil person

yea, this ones gonna be about one of the funniest people I know..shes this friend of mine from UF..and shes pretty diminutive..

I always have a lot of fun talking to her, because she is so darn funny and isn't even aware of it..plus some of the jokes I try to crack, they may be as obvious as daylight, but she still wont get them..and ends up with this perplexed expression on her face...which is so darn funny and cute..

Today, i was talkin to her in the mornin, and this was our first meeting after some time...and apparently she has picked up a few new quirks..

during the course of our conversation in the lab, I heard her talking "Oh, this guy....wont let me go" or something similar...i was wondering who she was referring to.....and thats when I found out that she was in fact referring to the computer as, "this guy"...my immediate response was "You've been alone for quite some time haven't you?"... this got funnier since, we have this thing in our lab where if you have exceeded your profile storage then the system wont let you log off until you have cleared the excess memory...and the program which checks for this is one of the wonders of the cyber world.. i dont believe it is possible to ever again come up with a piece of code that is so retarded...hmm, however, hold that thought...im getting better at screwing up every day, so I cant say that for sure...i might just end up writing something which is even worse.

The one word which popped into my head when she said this was, anthropomorphic.. darn GRE vocab wont leave my skull..

so life went on in the lab..until I heard her come out with this one exclamation which made me go like "Whoop!!" the whoop being a sound indicating a sudden stop, or mebbe "Screech!!" like a speeding car whose driver stomps on the brakes just before a zebra crossing or somethin like that...

She actually asked the computer, "What is your problem in/with life?"...

at first I thought that she had in fact flipped her lid, and was enquiring about the computer's failed dreams in earnest.. but then I realized that the PC was not letting her take a few prints, and this was her retaliatory remark..

My first response to her, or maybe this was in my head, "Seriously?"....

and then when I asked her as to the source of her extremely interesting verbal talents, she refused to divulge any further information....I wish I knew where she got these from...

cause If I knew, then I would go to that place stand around all day, and listen to people talk, and laugh until I burst apart at the seams...hey, it can happen..

but once again, darn it all, sometimes she can be so funny without even knowing it, which is basically why I like spending time with her...that and the fact that shes an all around cool person...

yea thats about it..

hey why isnt the minimize working?

darn it....work!! work!!

"what is your problem with life huh? What?"

LOL!!

 magus..

About this and that

ahoy there.. 

I like that word, Ahoy, its fancy..maybe that is due to its marine origins..I dont know..

this ones gonna be about my fear of not getting a job.

I came to the US to do my MS, and in my spare time I started playing in a band, things were looking great, but then the hard times hit, and we lost a drummer and the vocalist.

For once I wish I could have arrived on the scene after the bleak months had passed, and everything was all spring like and cheerful again, but I suppose that would be a lot to ask for. That would be like asking for the gain without the pain or something along those lines..and now that we are having so much trouble finding a drummer, I ask myself is there some cosmic law which states that no more than a few indians can ever make it on the rock scene. If there is some such law, then I would have to say that the cosmos is a bloody racist. 

ANyway, now that the goin has become tough, the bass player is thinkin bout callin it quits and so am I, but no one believes me when I saY im gonna quit. Its kinda funny, when I was back in cochin, and I used to tell my friend Vinay that I was gonna quit the band thing and stop doin the music thing, he would say "Yea, sure you are" since he had heard me say the same damn thing so many times before.

However this time around, I think this might be it for me as far as my musical aspirations are concerned. I dont know if im gonna be sad, I mean, its going to be a shocker of course since for so long I had refused to give up hope that there might be something musical in store for me as far as my career was concerned. Quitting this band is going to be like admitting that was nothing but a dream. I mean, I came to the frikkin US and im playin in a band here, with all whites, how much closer can an indian guitarist come to making it big on the rock scene? I dont think much closer. However, even given this proximity to my dreams, I feel them getting farther away.

Therefore, the time for me to make my choice is coming soon.

not much else to add in this post..

later

magus.

When to stop chasing dreams..

Interesting title eh? its a question i've been asking myself for quite some time and as always, no answer.. We hear so many tales given to us by our parents, friends and society itself about winners and losers. The winner stuck to the dream, persevered against seemingly insurmountable odds and he won in the end. The loser on the other hand, either didn't try hard enough or tried too hard not long enough. Therefore, I wonder, other than their rockbottom level bank balance, what other indication does a loser have that he has lost? In his mind, is he still on the way to a success?

The reason for the brand 'loser' on him, is simply the fact that society sets a timer by means of which it passes judgement on everyone in this gigantic race called life. 

When this timer runs out, you are put under the microscope and analysed. Are you rich? Do people like you, are you the life and soul of the party and so on. Are you married with kids, beautiful wife, intelligent kids, preferably a boy and a girl to further maintain this absurd notion of balance.

By the above metrics, one is judged. The so called losers, they might be on their way there too, but for them the timer has run out and judgement has been passed.

No one shall recount their glorious tales, no one shall remember them as anything other thanexamples of what not to become. 

Thus, I find myself wondering when must we stop following our dreams? Wouldn't it be the greatest irony ever if we decided to stop chasing our dreams a day before, an hour before or even a few seconds before when they were all destined to come true. What happens then?

Well, I guess pretty much nothing.

Blessed are those who have the luxury to follow their dreams while still maintaining their grip on what is, rather than constantly dwelling on what could be. I consider myself one of those.

Even after 22 years of being on this earth I still have the chance to chase my dreams.

For a long time I asked myself, what do I want to do? There was silence.

When in school I started playing music with a group of guys and I discovered that I had more fun doing this than most anything else. I found not beauty in the grace of a mathematical equation, the logic of a physics experiment, or the bubbling mysteries of chemical activity. I found beauty and harmony in music.

Thus I knew what I wanted to become, I wanted to play in a band.

Nothing worked out.

So now here I am following the sane path, and carrying on this marriage to my second most loved path, computer science. I am no fool, I know that dreaming without caution is a scary and rarely recommended path, and so I do not follow it.

I am playing in a band here, and things are looking good. Is this it? Am I gonna throw everything away and run after the music dream? 

Once again I repeat, I am no fool.

I dream with caution, yet I still dream.

And the music goes on.

Magus.

About a network

If there was ever a science which could drive a practitioner crazy, that would be neural networks. Many scientists in the field give it up and move onto greener pastures since the pitfalls of this one has convinced them that it is going nowhere. They all say that the networks are not resembling actual neural units enough, I think it is the contrary.

They resemble actual neural units to an amazing level of similarity. However, the neural unit they are imitating more often than not, belongs to a child, and that too an exceptionally dumb and obstinate one. You know how when you try to teach a kid something, and some days they just refuse to take it in. You might come up with amazing ways to put it across to them, the collective souls of all the great teachers who went before you might be lookin down at you from a higher reality and smiling benevolently. The kid still wont get it. 

Half way through your collossal attempt you will become convinced that the child is a manifestation of pure evil, and that it must be purged. 

Parents who have arranged tutors for their children have often come back to witness the aforementioned children being  chased around the house by a tutor wielding a heavy book and having righteous fires burning in his/her demented eyes. I suppose that patience is the key and all of that rot, however the truth in my eyes is that, if you've tried patience and that failed to light the flame of reason in the child's brain, try another approach. Hey, the cavemen lit their first fire by scraping and banging rocks against each other, maybe similar action applied between a heavy book and the child's noggin would yield similar results.

The same is the condition with most neural networks, like obstinate brats they refuse to learn. The results are comical in most cases, like just today, I programmed a network which was supposed to run with twenty neurons, and once I ran it, I found out that of the 20, only 1 was doing anything at all. This ticked me off not a little.

The one punishment which would not work on a neuron would be electrocuting it, i think it would get a buzz outta that. Or maybe not, I'm not sure, any brain specs around?

"hey there frankie"

"urrrrr"

"so....umm....whats happenin?"

"urrrrr"

"I see...."

"Zap zap no work, me be zapped lots, me still plenty smart....urrrrrrr"

"Right......"

"urrrrr"

"Oh, we're doing that again are we?"

so im gonna keep tapping away at this network and see what i can make it do..maybe if i feed it some castor oil, seemed to work on kids in cartoons...

here....lets see....take that....oh crap!!...sparks and crackles.. wait theres a windows error message..

"NOW YOU'VE DONE IT..!!"

magus

My greatest foe: The internet

The title kinda says it all. The internet has lead to me looking like a complete jackass so many times. If not for the fact that is an inanimate entity, I would actually have believed that I had wronged it in a past life. There have been so many incidents where I have ended up with my foot in my mouth, in a manner of speaking, due to incidents which took place on.....wait for it....the internet. A scrap on orkut that no one was supposed to see, which not everyone saw but was seen by the one person who should not have seen it under any circumstances. A blog post which was intended as a joke, which was interpreted as the gravest of insults by someone who had been mentioned in it. Status messages, which were just supposed to sound cool, and dark, and foreboding, which just led to my mom scolding me like hell, saying "Are you some kind of death obsessed psycho freak job?", not the exact words but you get the idea.

The above are a few incidents which led to direct repercussions, there are so many that had side effects which were less than desirable. So many times you start talkin to someone and you have this nice feeling inside that maybe this can grow into a nice friendship or somethin like that. After a few days you start talkin to the aforementioned person wholeheartedly and you realize that they are paying as much attention to you as someone would devote to listening to an ode to a slab of concrete that they found one day in their parking lot. Thats when you start thinking about all the negative crap in the world and suddenly you find yourself depressed.

My usual approach to this kinda thing is to instantly delete the contact from my chat list, and from my phone contacts list. 

My reasoning being as follows, if you dont have their contact info anymore then you wont try to contact them and have them not respond making you look like nothing more than  a pathetic loser. My reasoning has been working pretty fine till date. You wouldnt believe the number of times this has happened to me.

One of my good friends/worst foes told me once that I was fantastic at making friends, but I sucked at keeping them. Since I never took the time to talk to them afterwards and so on. This got me thinking, am I simply doing what people do to me? since no one talks to me after the initial few chats,I go and do the same when it comes to friends I make. Its kinda weird, in a karmic sorta way.

However, one thing was put to me today by someone I know, I was told that it is not proper to ask a girl out on a simple walk, after you've known her for half an hour maybe. It doesn't matter what your intentions are the girl is still gonna think you are a freak. By the term 'Girl' here I am referring to those of the feminine gender who are not as loose as the lid on my ketchup bottle, how loose is that? Well, suffice to say that I now have a red T shirt and just lost a white one.

After thinking about what she said, I realized that she was right. Of course with this realization came the feeling of unbelievable stupidity. However, I have resolved to never try the "hey wanna come for a walk ?" thing ever again. If I wanna go for a walk, I'll go, spend some time alone with my thoughts and come to new and more frightening realizations about the world I live in.

Its a weird life, but its all I've got.

peace.

evolution

Where are we now? where do we go from here? is it even possible for us to go anywhere at all from here...? there are so many questions and hardly any answers, these questions belong to "that" category...

when i was a kid, I asked my mom on many occasions, "what is the universe contained in?"..

I always wondered..I mean, we all know the structure of the hierarchy untill we reach the universe..whats outside that? where is the universe in the grand scheme of things..?

my mom always told me, dont ask those questions, there are no answers, they will drive you mad ultimately..thanks to her I was saved from many a headache in my earlier days..

In one of the books I started writing, I wrote, in the farthest corner, of the largest hall in the highest tower of the biggest palace, there stood a pedestal, and upon this was placed a globe. On a closer look into the globe one could see the universes existing in all their glory, upon a closer inspection one might be able to make out the galaxies, and their residents, the various star systems and so on..

I suppose this was in a way, my own version of the way things might exist outside the boundaries of our knowledge..

many races have come and gone before us, and many will do so again once we are gone..

the dinosaurs, got killed by some meteor something, or so the stories go..

when our time comes, I wonder what it will be due to..I have a feeling that it wont be due to any natural calamity, its more likely that we will end up slaughtering each other in an all out war..things appear to be leading up to that..

there has always been the concept of, survival of the fittest which has in turn called for evolution, if you dont evolve chances are that you are not gonna make it too far..humans have stopped evolving, somewhere along the way when we became too complacent with the things we had brought into existence. We told ourselves, "we have TV, the internet, heck I can do anything I want on this tiny cell phone" we became convinced of our arrival at a non existent evolutionary pinnacle..

we then went on to say "Why do I need to listen to my neighbors talk, or my relatives? its all so mundane, that talk show host has so many more interesting things to say....I am absolutely dying to find out which celebrity slept with which other celebrity.." and thus we cut all the social ties that used to be so necessary for our combined journey down the evolutionary path..

now, the world comes packaged to you, on the back cover you can see the various channels that are available, and you can also see the EULA, which you have to agree to before you can live,

a few terms and conditions are

1. you will become materialistic and care for no one but yourself

2.you will not be social

3.you will lie to yourself about everything your instinct is telling you untill your instinct learns to accept what your eyes see

4. you will not gather knowledge

and so on..

but no one cares, I mean, the packing is glossy and attractive, and if you follow the EULA, you're ok right? A few of us can see...and we are horrified by what mankind has become..

If only we could get a second chance at this...we might do a better job, no guarantees though..

weird post, but i dont really care..

About a walk

among the funny things that have happened to me, this has to be one of the funniest and strangest..me and my roomie gyan,we go on long walks along the side of the freeway. These walks are usually a time for contemplation about how everything is goin to hell and such topics of general reality. The walk is quite scenic and I figured that people  would like it, and a few friends who accompanied me on said walk mentioned that they had in fact enjoyed it. Therefore, on a few occasions, I extended invitations to a few girls I had come into contact with. These invitations to go on the walk with me were made with complete innocence and lack of motive, however not a single one of them took me up on the aforementioned invite. There was in fact no response whatsoever, this baffled me, now the baffling element in the above was that if the feminine gender does not give us the opportunity to try and become just friends with them, this shall lead to a mass objectifying of them. This objectifying phenomenon, I have observed here in the US, a couple of my American friends, they cannot look at a lady without making crude comments, and these comments are always in a sexual context.Initially I thought that mayhaps this was because of the guys being narrow minded, uni dimensional so to speak, however, now I have cause to think otherwise.

What if, the only reason why guys and girls can never be just friends, is because the girls dont give them the chance to. I am just thinking out loud here.

The other day in the bus, I was talking to this chinese girl whom I had never met before, however it was a fun conversation since I had so much to tell her about my trip to china over the last christmas..so here I am sitting around thinking that things are going kinda ok, and I get her number. At this juncture, I know I am not coming on too strong since Im hardly coming on as it is. I get home, and in the evening I called her up and was talking to her for a while, then I extended to her the same invitation, and I sincerely thought that maybe this time around, I could finally go on the walk with a member of the opposite gender..

alas, it was not to be, I did not even get a return call the next day...therefore, I suppose that is that..

What am I trying to achieve by all these stunts? I honestly do not know..tis no secret that a huge part of me wants to be in a relationship, and also wants to have more friends. Unfortunately that does not seem to be working out for me, or who knows maybe it is for the best.

The more I wait for that special someone, the more its going to mean when it finally comes to be I guess..I hope..

yea thats about it for this post

peace