View from my window

NCSU Bell tower on 9/11 Anniversary

Grandfather Mountain

Its the end of my internship, and I am headed back to school for the last semester of my grad studies. The best thing about the internship? The people. In my opinion, people around you directly affect your growth, be it career or otherwise. I got to work with some really good people, and thankfully, as it turns out, will continue working with them once my masters is done.

Well, graduating in 15 months was never on the cards, but that’s how its going be. Seems increasingly likely that I am going to settle in California’s bay area come this January. Well, frankly I admit I didn’t see myself in California after my masters- but man, I like how this is panning out. I wasn’t quite sure what was in store some months back, but now that its becoming slightly clear, I like it.

All right- Got to catch the flight. More later- maybe after I reach Vegas (my first stopover). Leaving you with a pic of my ride.

McCarran International Airport, Las Vegas- Rows and rows of slot machines at the airport, and shoe-shine booths with hot females, where else but Vegas?

The interesting thing is, there are very few seats at the aircraft gates, compared to the number of people here- and there are a lot of empty seats right in front, at the slot machines. Clever scheme for inviting people over to the slots? I wonder who owns them. Do ones at terminal A belong to Caesars Palace and terminal B to The Venetian? Interesting. I see all these people mindlessly plonking themselves in front of the slots while waiting for their next planes.

That’s what I like about humans- we never give up, do we? But Vegas looks very inviting. Luxor, the black pyramid shaped casino looked fantastic from up there. Definitely a must visit in the next year.

Slot machines at the airport

Anyway so now I am looking forward to being back in Raleigh and enjoying my last semester. This masters is probably going to be my terminal degree. PhD is a no no- its all about money honey. And I am not quite sure if I will go for a degree in something else. So well after 23 years of trying to educate myself, I think I am done. Twenty three years? Man that’s gone on too long, as it is.

Raleigh- Ah, I am back. My apartment in Raleigh is still being refurbished, so I am going to stay over at some friends for a couple of days. A dozen huge ass bags in the living room, a massive couch- and innumerable plastic bags lying around- get the picture of the living room? Now that I have stayed in California for three months, I think I have come to appreciate the old world, slightly idyllic, hi-fi research charm of Raleigh much better. This place is like the perfect setting for owning a house, having a family, maybe a dog or two. And yes, a 9-5 job, a pick up truck and a sedan. Very nice.

But who wants that right?

Now is the time for sixty+ hour weeks, clubs, some hot blood- you get the drift. But for now, I am content. Surprisingly, I think I have somehow learnt how to be satisfied. In the past, I always was in a hurry of- getting somewhere. You know, that whole anticipation of whats to come, which kind of makes you NOT enjoy where you are RIGHT NOW. But I think I have finally managed to get that under reign. Its just making me enjoy this whole ‘journey’, if I may call it that, completely.

Life is a surprise. But it is good.

So, I have now moved temporarily(interning) from east coast to the west coast of US. And I love California! Not only is it freaking beautiful, but it also appeals to my other senses- PEOPLE!! Its got lots of them. More than I have seen anywhere in US. So right now this summer intern seems like the best time I have had in my life. For once, I have some money to spend. (As a student, you feel like a cheap ass most of the time.) And if there is any place on earth you want to be single, its California! You will have a whole new life experience, believe me . Forbidden fruits.

Met my parents in San Fransisco yesterday. Felt amazing. Its been almost 11 months since I last saw them. Spent the whole day in the city with them. It was fun!
Leaving you guys with the shot of the day. Hope you all doing well, be steadfast.

South Main, San Fransisco

Suddenly,
I’m not half the man I used to be,
There’s a shadow hanging over me,
Oh, yesterday came suddenly.

Why she
Had to go I don’t know, she wouldn’t say.
I said,
Something wrong, now I long for yesterday.

Yesterday,
Love was such an easy game to play,
Now I need a place to hide away,
Oh, I believe in yesterday.

Why she
Had to go I don’t know, she wouldn’t say.
I said,
Something wrong, now I long for yesterday.

Yesterday,
Love was such an easy game to play,
Now I need a place to hide away,
Oh, I believe in yesterday.

Mm-mm-mm-mm-mm-mm-mm.

“What kind of music do you listen to?” is a very strange question for a person like me. It is also a pretty common conversation starter, and I suppose people think its quite weird that I do not have defined musical tastes (or they probably think I am not interested in the conversation-to-be). I listen to Coldplay, the normal techno songs that play on the radio- Usher, Pitbull, Black Eyed Peas, Far East Movement etc.

A month back, I stumbled across this huge treasure trove of the Beatles, Eagles, Bobby McFerrin, Don McLean, the Rolling Stones- and man! This is really my kind of music! A couple of days back, I was watching “Once upon a time in America”, and this tune of the Beatles’ song- ‘Yesterday’, started playing in the movie. I was like- wait a minute, isn’t that the same song I have played a hundred times past few days? Talk about co-incidences.

By now, I was curious and began to dig out the history of this ballad. My search lasted three days.

Yesterday is the most recorded song ever, according to Guinness Book of Records. Yesterday has been rendered via jazz, reggae, brass, salsa, synthesizer, soul, funk, folk, the Boston Pops and the harmonica. It hasn’t been so much covered as smothered. There are thousands of Beatles tribute bands.

Paul McCartney composed the entire melody in a dream one night. When he woke up, he played the tune on a piano next to his bedside, so that he wouldn’t forget it. Paul was concerned that he had subconsciously copied someone else’s melody. “It was just all there, a complete thing. I couldn’t believe it. It came too easy,” said he. So for a month, he went to people in the music business and played the tune to them. “Eventually it became like handing something in to the police. I thought if no-one claimed it after a few weeks then I could have it,” said he, in one of his memoirs.

Once Paul was sure that it really was his tune, he began to compose lyrics for it. The words did not come as easily as the tune though, and the Beatles called it ‘Scrambled Egg’ for some months. “Scrambled eggs, oh my baby, how I love your legs,” went the dummy lyrics. The breakthrough came when Paul was on a holiday in Portugal. “I remember mulling over the tune ‘Yesterday’, and suddenly getting these little one-word openings to the verse. I started to develop the idea … da-da da, yes-ter-day, sud-den-ly, fun-il-ly, mer-il-ly and Yes-ter-day, that’s good,” said he.

The song was recorded by McCartney on 14th June, 1965. Solo. In only two takes. The band tried to play it together, but no combination seemed to work. Till Paul sang it on its own. Although he had already fallen in love with the song, Paul had a hard time convincing the other members of the band that the song was worthy of an album place. The main objection was that it did not fit in with their image, especially considering that Yesterday was extremely unlike other Beatles’ songs at the time. This feeling was so strong, that the song was not released as a single in United Kingdom at first. It was however released in United States, and topped the charts for a whole month. The rest is history.

There is really nothing exceptionally different about this song- it talks about a breakup, like so many others do. As John Lennon said later of this song,”They’re good– but if you read the whole song, it doesn’t say anything; you don’t know what happened. She left and he wishes it were yesterday– that much you get– but it doesn’t really resolve.” Paul McCartney, only 22 at that time, was far too young to be looking backwards at life, and what’s more, to be so good at it. McCartney doesn’t sneak up on the song; he is already in the midst of it emotionally and vocally, and the artlessness of his approach is part of what creates the effect of fingernails scraping on the heartstrings. There is nothing sugar coated about the lyrics. They are adjective-free. They are direct. They hurt.

As for the ex-lover that McCartney is singing about – the one who “had to go” but why, “she wouldn’t say” – the lyrics are a classic piece of evasion. “You know perfectly well why I had to go,” millions of women are responding. “You hit me/flirted with the waitress/didn’t pick up after yourself/got fat/watched football during/fell asleep right after/had a sliver of glass in your cold, cold heart” Love works, or doesn’t work, both ways.

Everyone goes through this wretchedness. The genius of the song lies in its universality. Everyone, male or female, straight or gay, young or old, can identify with its theme of lost love.

“I remember thinking that people liked sad tunes; they like to wallow a bit when they’re alone, to put a record on and go, ‘Ahhhh.’ “ - Paul McCartney

P.S: Used Wikipedia and references there as my references. Some of the quotes are directly taken off Wikipedia.
P.P.S: No hidden messages intended.

I was reading random news today, and I came across this piece- Apparently, a group of seven workers in the state information technology department at Albany, playing regularly through their office jackpot pool, hit the $319 million Mega Millions jackpot. There was however, an eighth guy who used to pool money with them regularly, but had opted out that particular week because “He wasn’t feeling lucky”. Ouch!!

$$$$$

Imagine that huh. After cutting out federal and state taxes, apparently its $19 million per head. Haha. If I would have been the guy who dropped out, I think I might have kissed ass and asked for a million or half!! I mean, cummon! That guy probably must have needed therapy after that.

What would you have done? I think we can have an interesting discussion here!

Shortly after the operation, Jessie began to have nightmares- nightmares of an attacker and a girl being murdered. The nightmare used to plague her so often, that she was brought to a psychiatrist. The description Jessie gave was so vivid, that the psychiatrist was convinced that it was real. It turned out that the ten year old whose heart she had just received was murdered. Due to the violent recurring dreams, Jessie was able to describe the events of that horrible encounter and the murderer so well, that the police soon apprehended, arrested, and convicted the killer.

Science fiction? Not really.
This incident really happened in the early 90′s. I came across this fascinating phenomenon called as ‘cellular memory’ some time back. The theory states that the brain is not the only organ that stores memories or personality traits, and that memory as a process can form in other systems in the body like the heart.

Muscle memory, is of course a well known fact. Consider this- if you have played an instrument before, you would have realized that at first it is difficult to get used to the movements- for example, pressing the right piano keys. But as you practice more, you no longer have to think about the right keys. The hand just knows them. It is the same about any sport, or any kind of repetitive movement. The brain no longer comes into picture. You just know what to do.

Since most hospitals’ organ transplant programs do not allow the recipient to know the identity of the donor, most cases of cellular memory have been documented by scientists studying the phenomenon. The identity of the patients is normally not know, leaving the stories at large but in obscurity.

One of the few cases we know the patient’s name was a woman called Claire Sylvia who received a heart and lung transplant in the 1970′s from an eighteen year old male donor who had been in a motorcycle accident. None of this information was known to Sylvia, who upon waking up claimed she had a new and intense craving for beer, chicken nuggets, and green peppers, all food she didn’t enjoy prior to the surgery. Sylvia wrote a book about her experiences after learning the identity of her donor, called A Change of Heart.

Other documented cases have been perplexing and sometimes extreme. A 47 year old man receiving a heart from a 17 year old African American boy suddenly picked up an intense fondness for classical music. The boy whose heart had been donated was killed in a drive-by shooting, still clutching his violin case in his hands.

Fascinating stuff! Imagine waking up one day with someone else’s thoughts and feelings!

Some time later he found himself sitting on a bench in a park, smoking a pipe.

“You look miles away”, said an old man, joining him.
“No, I am here”, he said, “But I am sitting on the same bench with my painter friend, 20 years back. We are watching my wife, who has had a bit too much to drink, trying to dance a flamenco.”

“Enjoy your memories”, says the old man.
“But remember, the memory is like salt. The right amount brings out the flavor in food, too much ruins it. If you live in the past all the time, you won’t have any present to remember.”

Adapted from a story I read on Paulo Coelho’s blog some time back.

Birthdays. Not your own. But of people who are special to you. They are weird days you know. Weird, because they make you sad and happy at the same time. I have never been able to place my finger on why they give out mixed feelings. I guess they make you sad if you can’t be a part of the celebration. After all birthdays are about sharing right? Like, you won’t really sit in a room all by yourself and sing “happy birthday to you” thingy. And then birthdays are also about anticipation. Anticipation, of whether the person whose birthday it is, will like your gift or not. And then if they don’t, or worst, if you don’t give a gift at all, you feel all rotten. I have been at both ends of the stick- I don’t seem the type, but I had thrown a tantrum once because I didn’t like a gift I got (or didn’t).

My dad. Doesn’t read my blog. He doesn’t know it exists, for that matter. It is his birthday, a week from now. I wrote him a birthday card today. I hope the card reaches him on time (which as an after thought might be a small miracle, across the globe). But I really can’t describe the feeling I had while writing the card. I have never given a gift to my dad on his birthday. Does that sound very aweful? I guess it is. But it is only after getting my bum here that I have realized. Time you have with people you love is short. No, it really is. Who knows- it might not be the same always. What an ominous thing to say while talking about birthdays.

But it is true.

Sorry, I haven’t posted for some time. When I got here, I had like 10 days before I got started with classes, and could have easily posted, but I was just trying to soak up the new experience. Not to forget get done with basic stuff like getting the phone, the laptop, the internet, opening the bank account etc. etc.
And then since classes have started, I have had hardly any time to look up from assignments. Last week was crazy and nearly ran me down, so I decided to take some time off and just relax a bit today.

So, USA…
Its a nice country. You don’t really feel anything different from India- maybe because Raleigh is like that. Most of the time. But the moment you start getting too comfortable about it, you somehow get reminded that you are in a foreign land. Lets start off from the beginning.

While leaving from home, I wasn’t really scared, excited, nervous. I had even chosen to fly all alone. No friends with me this time.
It was very gradual you know- Like a small kid who sits in the giant wheel at the fair, and slowly the wheel takes him up and away from the ground, where his people are, looking back up at him.

I got on the plane, flew directly from Mumbai- Newark, NJ. Hah, that’s when all the fun began. I got off the plane to find myself at a huge-ass airport that didn’t have all the helpful signs to show where to go next. Plus I had a 33kg bag, a 23kg bag, an 18kg bag and a small back-pack (don’t ask me what I was carrying in all that). And I was lugging it around in the wrong direction. They got multiple levels at the airport there, and everyone was crisscrossing, and somehow question I was asking officials weren’t being answered properly. Finally after about half an hour of lugging that stuff around, I got into the right queue. And then bless you Continental Airlines. You know what these people do? For security, which is a valid enough reason, they make you take off your shoes, belts, wallets AND all electronic items from your bag- that’s all fine and dandy, but right at that moment, I had already flown 18 hours, and I wasn’t really game for all that (having done it already at the Mumbai airport). Anyway, I just wanted to be done. Finally I got through all that, breathed a sigh of relief. Found the nearest information desk, figured out which gate my flight to Raleigh was leaving from (they don’t have that printed on your ticket if you are in transit).

I sat down somewhere, took out my cell phone- Cingular had taken over from my Indian Idea connection- put through two messages- reached Newark, waiting for the next flight. Somehow, Newark airport was weird. I didn’t like it at all. Finally I got talking to one Israeli guy, who happened to be a student at NC State too. Sometime later I got on my WWII Bombardier aircraft . I really really liked that ride. Flying just above the clouds, with a roaring sound of the engines. Occasionally just dipping down enough to catch a glimpse of the green countryside and the lakes.

Raleigh- the city of oaks. I’ve been here for some time now, and its a nice city. There are huge houses, loads of trees, nice broad roads. But there are no people. Or very few people. There are like 5 skyscrapers, even downtown. And it is the capital of North Carolina. There’s so much horizontal space, that they don’t make them vertical here. There are lots of squirrels (which are pretty big, but don’t have stripes like ones in India do), but few birds. How can there be lots of trees and few birds? I really don’t understand. But its a nice place. People are nice and polite ( I guess that’s the case everywhere in USA). Well most of the times. Got sworn at by a crazy eyed woman in a bus once, but it is okay. You brush such things aside. Everything here is far off from each other. You either take the bus, or take a long walk. The university? Well, its awesome. I’ve never seen anything like this before- all the super high tech stuff and super posh buildings, its all all right here. Its a nearly two months here now and I am used to the Walmarts, the Foodlions, and ordering stuff online. You order everything online here. It ships to your home, and they give refunds if you don’t want it – I’ve tried it. I am also used to getting hungry at 3 pm, realizing there is no lunch cooked- then realizing the utensils are unwashed- doing all that and then having lunch at 430. Well, one thing worth mentioning is- I LOVE COOKING. I really really enjoy it. I nearly look forward to it most of the days.

Fortunately, I have good roomies. That’s a really important thing you know- you don’t want to get back home after a long day to have a trip-wire atmosphere at home. So far, so good. The assignments are really kicking some butt right now, and they just keep them coming. At anytime, I’m always sitting on two deadlines at the minimum. Anyway, that’s part of grad life.

I am not home sick as such, and I am happy most of the time, but sometimes I really feel the distance, and don’t like it at all. One thing is for certain, I will put up with it, and bear it for as long as I need to, but I will never get used to it. No, I will never get used to staying away from people I love. What they say is wrong, you don’t get used to such things. “Savay hoil thodya divsanni?”  “Sorry, nahi honar.” But it is okay for the time being.

Leaving you with some pics, will try to write more regularly . Adios !

The Memorial Bell Tower

A random building in North Campus

Trailwood Drive, just across my house