Thoughts thought, Travels traveled

Thoughts run around all the time, Some are worth putting down in a rhyme.. I love travelling, it is my favourite pastime, And everything is worth putting down in a story line...

[thinking-thought]

Endurance

Endurance. n. the fact or power of enduring an unpleasant or difficult process or situation without giving way.

Is to endure something unique to humankind? Yes and no I think. Non-human animals do endure for survival. We humans though endure for a multitude of reasons and most have nothing to do with survival. We endure things for joy, for a sense of achievement, for love, most times for just a sliver of hope. We endure alone, and we endure together. The more I think of it though, the more I get that sense that they are all in some way related to survival.

It is a word I do not use lightly. There are so few instances in my life when I can truly say I have endured something. That one time that I ran a 10 km marathon with almost no training. Or when I scaled Half Dome at Yosemite, after I had already done two full days of hiking. I will write about it someday, but as I write this more than a year after scaling half dome, I still don’t know why and how I did what I did. Though for those few minutes that I was up there, I was king of my world. I could do anything.

Most inspiring stories have an element of endurance. Douglas Mawson surviving by the skin of his teeth in Antarctica, the life of Stephen Hawking, the story of Juliane Koepcke, to list a few.

One such awe-inspiring story is that of astronaut Scott Kelly. Scott Kelly endured something that so few of us humans get to do. In fact he is only one of two humans to have ever done it. Lived a whole continuous year in space. He did it for science. He did it for the future of humanity. 

During his year in space, we heard and read about all the amazing accomplishments, we watched the wonderful videos he made; like this one of Scott playing ping pong with a water ball, but the story of how he ended there is one worth celebrating. Like all stories of endurance, this too is about the indomitable human spirit.

Scott Kelly’s Endurance is such a lovely book. A book that is so well written that from beginning to end, it felt like I was in a movie about his life. The story weaves through his year in space, and his life that led him to NASA. If you have read it, or decide to pick it up, you will see why “Endurance” is such an appropriate title, not only to describe his year in space, but also to describe his life before he became an astronaut, and everything he went through to be an astronaut.

Scott is one of the few humans to have flown to space during the American Space Shuttle program, and on the Russian Soyuz. There are so many interesting details and tidbits about the difference in the American and Russian programs. He also speaks about political tensions and how they mean nothing, especially when folks from different countries depend on each other for survival on the ISS.

While describing his life on the ISS, Scott interweaves it with stories about his early life with his parents and the challenges of raising a family as an astronaut. There is a bit where he talks about being physically separated from family while on the ISS without the power to do anything in the event of an emergency where unscheduled phone calls sent his heart racing that made my eyes moist.

As I read the book, I lived my dream in my imagination as Scott described details about astronaut interviews, astronaut training, and getting to see our planet from a vantage point where the beauty and fragility of it are breathtaking. I did realize one thing though. The things we see on television about astronauts are only a small part of the story. They are as human as the rest of us. Their lives too are filled with joy, anger, elation, disappointment. What sets them apart is their spirit to be curious, to explore and to endure for the future of humanity.

If at any point in your life, you, like me, have dreamed about becoming an astronaut and for some reason haven’t taken the steps towards it, this book does an excellent job of letting you dream about it again.

Every story of endurance shows that the human will is not easy to crush. I can’t wait to read Ernest Shackleton’s book of the same name. These stories give me hope and power my will to stand back up after any punch life decides to hand me. 

The word endurance reminds me of this snippet from The Quitter that Douglas Mawson remembered when he should have had no hope of surviving.

Just have one more try — it’s dead easy to die, It’s the keeping-on-living that’s hard.

[thinking-thought]

What does it mean to have a soul?

I had the wonderful pleasure of meeting Prof. Richard Dawkins last year when he was on tour promoting his book, Science in the Soul.

Part of the event the day I met him included him reading paragraphs from the book in a lovely little book store. One of the things I keenly remember is him reading the beginning of an essay titled “Fifty years on: killing the soul?”. 

In that essay, Dawkins talks about two kinds of soul. One associated with something that gives the body life and consciousness and lives on forever. The other kind of soul is what one would usually associate with how they feel when they have an awe-inspiring moment. Dawkins predicts that one of them will be killed by the scientific method and it is easy to see which one that would be. 

For me though, that first soul was already in it’s deathbed through years of curious questioning. It took its last breath the day I discovered the second soul. Since then, there has been no shortage of awe-inspiring, spine-chilling moments that have stirred my soul.

What does it really mean to have a soul then? I don’t know. I am fairly confident that the answer is not “that part of me which lives on after I am dead”. I have brought myself to think of having a soul as being emotional, and as having a mind that can think humanely and be kind.

I also think of it as the delight I feel when I read a paragraph like this.

“Uplift, however, is where science really comes into its own. All the great religions have a place for awe, for ecstatic transport at the wonder and beauty of creation. And it’s exactly this feeling of spine-shivering, breath-catching awe - almost worship - this flooding of the chest with epiphanic wonder, that modern science can provide. And it does so beyond the wildest dreams of saints and mystics. The fact that the supernatural has no place in our explanations, in our understanding of the universe and life, doesn’t diminish the awe. Quite the contrary. The merest glance through a microscope at the brain of an ant or through a telescope at a long-ago galaxy of a billion worlds is enough to render poky and parochial the very psalms of praise.

- Excerpt from “Is Science a religion?”

Or the many thoughts running in my head when I read something about evolutionary biology in a way that I haven’t read before.

“If a time machine could serve up to you your 200-million-greats-grandfather, you would eat him with a sauce tartare and a slice of lemon. He was a fish. Yet you are connected to him by an unbroken line of intermediate ancestors, every one of whom belonged to the same species as its parents and its children.”

- Excerpt from “The tyranny of the discontinuous mind”

Or the way I feel when I have an enlightening moment.

“The world is a thing of utter inordinate complexity and richness and strangeness that is absolutely awesome. I mean the idea that such complexity can arise not only out of such simplicity, but probably absolutely out of nothing, is the most fabulous extraordinary idea. And once you get some kind of inkling of how that might have happened - it’s just wonderful. And ... the opportunity to spend seventy or eighty years of your life in such a universe is time well spent as far as I am concerned.”

- Douglas Adams quote from “Farewell to a Digerati dreamer”

That is what makes Science in the Soul such a wonderful read. It encapsulates all the things that is wonderful about human emotion. It is a collection of Dawkins’ essays, lectures, articles spanning three decades of work. The format made it the perfect commute read for me. Some of them definitely did stir my soul, giving my mind plenty to think, and some others I found difficult to follow because of Dawkins’ vocabulary and his analogies involving evolutionary biology.

When I met Prof. Dawkins, I was so excited that I wanted to talk to him about all things evolutionary biology that I learnt from reading his work. But nervousness meant that I didn’t know how to talk to him about anything. I said hi and blurted something about how his “The Magic of Reality” was what I bought with my very first paycheck. I may have said more things about how it was such an honor to meet him and how I considered myself lucky to have been at the right place and the right time to have had the chance to meet him. He was patient, and he listened. After our conversation, he asked me how I spell my name and signed my copy of Science in the Soul. I asked him if he would be willing to sign another book for me and opened Carl Sagan’s Cosmos that I had brought along with me. I did not know what he’d say. He was a little hesitant at first, asked why I wanted his signature in the great man’s book. I explained to him that I was hoping to have it signed by the scientists that have inspired me and have been inspired by Sagan himself and he just happened to be the first one. He humbly signed on a little corner on the first page and handed the book to me. I was overjoyed given that I had just begun fulfilling a dream I had long ago, but I only managed a sheepish thank you look on me as Dawkins went on to talk to others who were waiting to meet him.

I do understand what Dawkins means when he predicts Science will kill the soul. But may be there is another way to put it. May be Science has saved the soul.

I say this because public educators like Carl Sagan, Richard Dawkins, Brian Cox, Alice Roberts, and many more are have done and are doing amazing work to spread the joy of finding one’s soul, or simply put, rekindling one’s childish wonder.

[thinking-thought]

Whatsapp, India’s echo chamber!

The human mind is easy to manipulate. The most recent evidence for this is the 2016 US General Elections. I say easy because we are susceptible to different kinds of biases without ever being aware of them.

All of us in one way or another succumb to unconscious bias. Unconscious in the sense that if we are not aware of what it is, there is no way of knowing we are being biased. Have you ever thought why you pick good looking vegetables over those with a dent or two at the grocery store? 

One form of unconscious bias is confirmation bias. It is the reason why we more often than not unquestioningly agree with things that fit our current understanding of the world.

This is what I believe happened during the 2016 US General Elections. The echo chambers of Facebook and Twitter were cleverly manipulated to reinforce peoples existing beliefs about the world regardless of any opposing evidence. 

I say echo chambers because on these platforms we are constantly fed the things we already think are right. These platforms algorithmically learn our interests based on the things we like and engage with, and feed us more of the same things. This is why the result of that election surprised so many people including me. I never saw anything on my social media timelines that led me to believe what happened would happen. I didn’t see any other kind of news because I only engaged with the kind of news that agreed with my world view.

So why is this piece titled “Whatsapp, India’s echo chamber”?

Most social media platforms are inherently public, in this case Twitter more so than Facebook. On both the platforms, even though our feed is what one might call an echo chamber, there is definitely space for people who are willing to see different sides of an argument. Reading through replies and comments is one way to do so. On Twitter, though a lot of conversations escalate quickly to name calling, the few that don’t are gold. I have discovered a lot of different perspectives by just reading through.

Here is how Whatsapp is different. It is a closed system. Like-minded people form groups and groups are essentially walls without doors or windows, and ideas that don’t belong in the group have no way of getting in. 

Family groups are great examples. It is easy to be unaware we are being fed with propaganda in the form of ‘forwards’ if everyone in the group has a singular political viewpoint. Whatsapp can then become an extremely effective tool for spreading misinformation especially if making use of people’s inherent biases.

If you are in one of these family groups, you have probably seen messages that promote or mock a certain political party, depending on the political affiliation of the group, or mock established scientific truths by quoting(or rather misquoting) something from the Vedas. If we could research this, we could probably relate the growing intolerance of non-conforming ideas to the way some of these tools are used for propaganda.

You might think it is not as serious as I make it seem. “Most of these messages are harmless, just people sharing what they think is right”. I have read some of them in detail over the last year and a half, and it feels like someone is cleverly orchestrating these to make people think or feel a certain way.

If anyone bothers to look up the content of the messages, they will immediately find out it is laden with misinformation, or quotes intentionally taken out of context, or fabricated ‘scientific truth’. But they are all worded in such a way that people with existing biases will read them as facts, without feeling the need to verify them, and without realizing they are being manipulated.

And since Whatsapp is private, no one really sees how deep this spreads. The number of people a message reaches grows exponentially every time someone decides to forward it. Before we know it, a lot of people suddenly believe “Eating during the solar eclipse is a danger to health” or “The elephant headed god is evidence our ancestors had developed advance medical technology” without the need for any proof. This in a country where one of the fundamental duties of it’s citizens as described in the constitution is to “Develop the scientific temper, humanism and the spirit of inquiry and reform”.

I recognize that this is a rant, but I want to get at what can one do to help. Like I said. although most of the messages seem harmless, some of them spreading misinformation about untested old school medicine could put someone’s life in danger and that is a risk that is too high to pass.

Here is what I do. For a good bunch of these forwards, I google the keywords, and more often than not I see results debunking the “fact” in the message. I then reply to that message with a link to the article, and in the politest way try to explain the importance of verifying something before spreading what could possibly be misinformation to a large group.

It is not easy to fight this gargantuan problem of the ‘spread of misinformation by confirmation bias’. But fight, we need to. Even the headlines of search results online that one chooses to click on can be influenced by bias. I try my best to open conflicting ones with the hope of learning something.

Here is what you can do and it is simple. You can do your part by choosing not to forward messages until you have clarified them.

Here in the United States, they say ‘See something, Say something’ in the interest of security.

I would like to say:

If you see something, (research to see if it is misinformation), definitely say something.

If not, the US Elections won’t be the last time people trust misinformation.

[thinking-thought]

Apeman Spaceman

Just over a hundred years ago, our species figured a way to unhook our earthly chains and take to the skies. Until then the only way to get to any where was by land or water. A hundred years ago is not a long time to go back to, given for thousands of years, we have either walked to places or piggybacked on a tamed animal.

From the very first flight we humans achieved, to us landing on the moon took just over half a century. (Around a decade of which was spent making technological advancements to help kill one another and annihilate cities). That is lightning quick in evolutionary time. For a vast majority of the ~200,000 years since we diverged from the great apes, all we have had to do is figure out a way to eat, sleep and survive.

On my best days, I try to imagine what it must have felt like; when the Wright brothers took flight for the first time; when Yuri Gagarin looked at Earth like no human before him had done; when the astronauts on Apollo 8 saw Earth rise from behind the Moon for the first time; and when Neil Armstrong first set foot on a world that was only thought possible in science fiction.

I sometimes wish I had been born before humans landed on the Moon. Just to have been able to see it in person. What a time that must have been! For thousands and thousands of years, the Moon was something we only looked at and told stories about. After that day, it wasn’t just a distant object anymore.

Having said I wish I had seen the Moon landings live, I don’t for a moment regret the time I live in. It did for the longest time look like my generation would never get the chance to feel the same kind of exhilaration that a few of the generations before ours were fortunate enough to experience. Over the last few years though that has changed, because of a handful of dream chasers. Thanks to them, our generation might have a slim chance of watching or even being the first of our species to land and walk on another planet, millions of miles from our tiny pale blue home. 

What a day that will be! It will inspire millions. And someday someone will look at Earth rising on the horizon pondering how it all happened. A few thousand years ago, we rose up from walking on all fours, and that freed our hands to build tools. Little did those Apeman ancestors of ours who looked at the stars and thought they were holes in the sky know that someday in the far far far future, their descendants would be looking back at home with a view like this.

Per aspera ad astra.

--

PS: I borrowed the title for this essay from one of more inspiring and moving pieces of television documentary - Apeman Spaceman from the Human Universe.

And thanks to SpaceX for this wonderful image of Starman from the Falcon Heavy launch.

[thinking-thought]

The Man in the Fridge

“Brrrrr, it’s cold”, said the man who lived in the fridge,

Blissfully oblivious to the world that surrounded him, refusing to step outside.

People walking by, laughed and quipped “Living inside a bubble, this man”.

Each conveniently overlooking the invisible bubble they lived in.

The bubble I talk about is the one that quenches our thirst to be right.

The bubble we refuse to step out of, for burst, it might!

Oh how different, yet similar, were the people who quipped and the man in the fridge,

For he didn’t step outside too, because he didn’t know if it would change him.

I wonder if he would though; if he knew about the butterflies.

If he knew about the whistle of the wind, and the songs of the birds,

Or about the hungry predator, and of the scorching sun.

I wonder if he wondered, is knowledge always a good thing or is ignorance bliss?

--

Pictured: Peter Fischli and David Weiss, Snowman, 1987/2016 (installation view, SFMOMA); © the artists, courtesy Matthew Marks Gallery

[thinking-thought]

Deep, Beautiful and Elegant

These are words from 2012′s Edge.org question “What is your favorite deep, elegant, or beautiful explanation?”. Answers to this question by some of the best minds in the world are compiled in this book called “This Explains Everything”. I saw this book at a store in New York’s public library. My curiosity aroused by the title, I wished to read the book. And the universe noticed.

This book is great to read in short bursts and that makes it the perfect commute book. Especially if you, like me, spend about 20 minutes commuting to or from work and are curious about the nature of our world. Every answer takes about 5-10 minutes to read, and I would spend the rest of the time thinking about what I had just read or if I was feeling rather adventurous, read another one.

One of the essay’s I absolutely enjoyed was Richard Dawkins’ “Redundancy Reduction and Pattern Recognition”. Here is why. I had spent a couple of semesters in university learning how we make computers do pattern recognition, using math and AI(Artificial Intelligence). Computer Vision has evolved significantly in the last few years to the point where we already have almost self-driving cars. So I have since been thinking about the challenges we face. We could train a computer to recognize a water bottle by initially feeding it with a million images of different kinds of water bottles. Then, given a crumpled water bottle to recognize, it would in all probability fail. You on the other hand, can see one water bottle, and recognize water bottles, crumpled or otherwise with an extremely low false positive rate. The human brain is unbelievably amazing when you think about it with these new perspectives. The fact that we can think and reason about these at all; blows my mind. Before I digress further, that essay by Dawkins gave a little direction to my thoughts about how this gooey mass inside our skulls accomplishes tasks that would be a challenge for our best supercomputers.

The book has many such wonderful reads and from a diversity of fields too, each giving the mind something to ponder about or just something new to learn and be wowed by. As the editor puts it, through them all there was a common theme for these explanations - “a simple and non-obvious idea that is proposed as the explanation for a diverse and complicated set of phenomena.”

As soon as I picked up the book, I started thinking what explanation about the world I would pick as deep and elegant. Those who know me well know what comes next.

Every thing that makes me me was cooked inside a star a long long time ago. More precisely every atom that makes me, that makes you, that makes all the things around us was forged in the insides of a star. We are star dust. Who better to explain this than Professor Brian Cox in this clip from The Wonders of the Universe. This simple explanation answers so many questions and partly answers deep questions like “How(Why) are we here?”. More personally, it connects me to the stars I love staring at, and gives me another reason to know we are all the same, even made from the same stuff in a world where more and more people seem to be setting out to find superficial differences.

It has been a few months since I finished reading this book, and every now and then I have tried to think of an explanation that beats me being star dust. There are some extremely interesting ones in the book though, but it will take a special something to topple “We are star dust”.

Like I mentioned one of the wonderful things about the book is to get to learn the various perspectives for the same question. So let me know what reasoning about the world gives you the chills. What explanation for you is deep, beautiful or elegant?

P.S: All the responses from the book are also on the website.

[thinking-thought]

Alone on the ice!

This book is a testament to the human spirit! The spirit to go on an adventure, to be curious, to explore, and to survive. It is the story of Douglas Mawson’s expedition to Antarctica, which is probably one of the greatest survival stories there is. It is hard to read this book and not wonder how exploration must have been in the early 1900′s. Some of the men on those expeditions saw snow for the first time in their lives on Antarctica. Think about it for a second, to go away for at least a year to an unknown land with absolutely no contact with the rest of the world. I don’t think I would have had it in me if I had the opportunity.

Of the many expeditions to yet unexplored Antarctica during that period, this one by Douglas Mawson and team stands out for many reasons. His biographer and author of this book, David Roberts had this to say about Mawson’s expedition.

 “...Mawson was completely uninterested in reaching the South Pole. What mattered to the man instead was the urge to explore land that had never before been seen by human eyes, and to bring back from the southern continent the best science that men in the field might be capable.”

That sums up the story of the expedition. To explore new land and to collect as much scientific data as possible.  They got to name every land feature they encountered. The entire expedition, right from the setting of the winter quarters in Cape Denison(the windiest place on Earth, they didn’t know it at that time), to returning to Australia two years later was filled with dramatic adventure that could not have been bettered by the best of script writers.

An image from Cape Denison.

The winter quarters that they build on arrival. I believe this hut exists to this day and is a museum now.

Their meal plan when wintering over before starting the expedition in the beginning of summer.

The general plan of the expedition was this. Head to Antarctica in the beginning of winter. Winter over in a hut and take scientific measurements every day. At the end of winter, explore the land in three man teams in different directions, and then return to the hut by the end of summer and back to Australia before winter sets in.

I would love to share the story in its entirety here, but it would do no justice to the adventure. Mawson, and his team comprising Ninnis and Mertz had the longest journey of all the teams, so they had huskies help them pull their sledges, which sometimes they also killed for meat when their time was up. All of the men carried diaries, and they all give a wonderful account of the journey. The men fell into crevasses multiple times and survived until one fateful one in which they lost Ninnis along with most of their food supplies. Mawson lost Mertz as well to fever. Mawson’s will to somehow get all of their diaries to someplace closer to the hut so search teams can find and learn about their adventure dragged him across the glacier until he fell into a crevasse too. He somehow mustered energy to pull himself out, when the mouth of the crevasse gave way and he fell again. At the verge of giving up and letting go of the rope he was hanging on to, he remembered a verse from his favorite poet, Robert Service.

“Just have one more try - it’s dead easy to die. It’s the keeping-on-living that’s hard.”

Those two lines pushed him to want to survive. What happened after that is just the most amazing thing I have read. If you are thinking it gave him some energy and he had a fairy tale happy ending, you couldn’t be more wrong. He let his will to survive overcome all the horrible luck that the last part of the expedition threw at him, and I have immense respect for it. You have got to read what happened, or at the very least, take a look at the video I link at the end of this post.

I for one think that this story of survival is everything that it means to be human. We are at an age where Mars is our next Antarctica. Our generation could live to see the first humans up there, and what a moment that will be. There are going to be so many hardships for those first few explorers just like the early explorers to a place unknown faced, but we will survive, and generations to come will read about it.

We are a curious species, we want to know the unknown, and when the going has gotten tough we have in our ears heard the same thing that Mawson heard when he almost let go of that rope in the crevasse more than a hundred years ago.

“Just have one more try - it’s dead easy to die. It’s the keeping-on-living that’s hard.”

--

P.S: This is a brief video of the story of Sir Douglas Mawson, told by the author of Alone on the Ice, David Roberts.

[thinking-thought]

A story of two worlds!

Imagine this.

Two worlds in the rarest of coincidences have had very similar evolutionary routes. In both the worlds intelligent self aware life has evolved.

You are on one world. You have no idea the other world exists. You are a technologically advanced species, and have radio telescopes and visual telescopes to listen to and peer into other worlds. You have a SETI like project to search for signals from hopefully intelligent life somewhere in the universe. The project has been running for over 200 years with no luck. You are the current scientist heading the project and you have been at it for 20 years now.

Then all of a sudden on one day, you see blips from the radio telescope telemetry. Something like the WOW signal, only more consistent. You are excited and have a feeling it is something special. You analyze for days and come to the conclusion that it is radio signals from a world only 4 light years away. After more number crunching, you find strong evidence that those radio signals are not naturally occurring. You are probably the first person to have come in contact with artificial signals from another world, another technologically advanced species. The project of listening for years has finally paid off. Excited? I hope you are with me so far.

You know that if they are listening right now, they are receiving signals sent 4 years ago by you. May be they have been listening for years to learn your kind of signals and finally decided to communicate, or may be they just started. It is hard to tell with the little information you have.

Here is the deal. The top leaders of the world entrust you with the responsibility of leading a team to decide whether or not you make contact. If yes, what would you send across and why? Remember that what you send will take 4 years to reach your neighbors. Think about it. Probably a good idea to ignore details like what would be the language of communication to avoid getting trapped in swirling thought.

“Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.”

-Arthur C Clarke

PS: To make this more interesting for me, I am thinking of giving away a book for the most interesting answer. I must mention its the answer I find most interesting to avoid ambiguities.

[thinking-thought]

A Second Chance!

I had two titles in mind for this blog. One was “I’m Shipping up to California” because I never got around to writing “I’m Shipping up to Boston”(I love that soundtrack) before I started my internship at Staples which was close to Boston.

Another was the more obvious, “Graduated... with a job!”. I knew I was graduating and then I received a job offer, which at the time felt like a huge deal because I honestly didn’t think it was going to happen.

I decided to call it “A Second Chance”, because I think the last two years was indeed a second chance. I am sure the thoughts of going back to school crossed most of our minds when we first started college. In just the same way, I missed college when I started working, because I thought there were a lot of things I hadn’t done. Fortunately, I got a second chance.  As much as we want them, we don’t usually get second chances in life, do we?

I still remember that day in Bangalore, I was traveling to work when I sort of made the final decision to pursue my Masters. From that day to this day as I write this, it has been a properly wild journey, and I am sure it will continue to be wild. I had applied to exactly three universities and I received rejects from two. Even the one I thought I would most definitely receive an offer from turned my application down. For some reason, Rutgers decided to send me that email on a Sunday morning, and I haven’t turned back much since then.

For someone that has never really lived outside of home, to leave not just home, but homeland was quite something. I didn’t think I had it in me, but here I am. In this journey as I would like to call it, I have met a ton of amazing people, not just here in the States, but back home as well, who have been there and egged me and I cannot not thank them enough.

It is a little hard to tell this story in words, so I will use pictures, some from memorable moments and others just because I want to, but I don’t think I will be able to put them all.

My very first week in the States I went on a hike. I love the idea of walking in the woods, that feeling of being a part of Nature. No countries, states, no borders, boundaries don’t matter when you are in the woods.

Orientation. Sort of the first day at school and the beginning of it all. I like how they call it school here. It takes getting used to, and I am still not completely used to it.

I saw this legend live my second week in the States. I couldn’t stop smiling. It was also my first visit to amazing New York City. A day I won’t ever forget and I have had quite a few such days.

The mesmerizing skyline of New York City. It is intimidating at first, but has always given me a sense of joy and wonder. A special city.

My first class at Rutgers. I loved it so much that I took this Prof’s classes for 3 semesters. He didn’t teach any class during my 4th.

My first hackathon experience. I didn’t participate in this one, as I had no clue what was going on, but I made sure I didn’t miss any more, even though I only had some clue about what was going on.

I met Scooby Doo and gang. I would have never believed Halloween was this crazy and this popular if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes.

My very first job at Rutgers. I would say it was fun and not fun at the same time. That first cheque was a special feeling though.

Grading was fun! Sometimes.

My first real trip to New York City. A reason to remember Christmas. We went there on New Years Eve too for the ball drop. It was cold and there were a lot of people. A LOT. The new land had already taught me a lot.

I saw snow for the first time, and probably enough to last a life time. I even got stuck in a snow storm once and thankfully, a friend offered me shelter. I did some shoveling another time during a blizzard for a little $$ and made it out alive. Apart from its inconveniences, I think snow adds beauty and serenity to any place.

Ahh! Interviews. I interviewed for internships, for the few interviews that I got called for. I couldn’t really figure out what companies expected. One company called me onsite and I thought it went pretty well, until they said “Thank You, but sorry”. A little bit of luck and not giving up later, I received an offer from Staples.

My second job at Rutgers. I worked there for a semester and a half, and made some great friends. I will always remember this place for the people. I had some yummy meals too. Ah, I miss the waffle and ice-cream.

My first proper hackathon. I love the environment of people coming together to build something. Oh, and free t-shirts are a thing. I have a collection now.

THIS! I saw the Professor up close. Bill Nye was there too. Neil deGrasse Tyson joined in on Skype from a plane because there was a storm that day and his flight was delayed. I hope I get another day like this.

I attended a Robotics hackathon. One of the most fun things I have done without knowing what I am really doing. Ours was the most entertaining “autonomous” car in the competition.

And then Staples happened! I did so many things during those three months. I traveled and visited some pretty places, definitely the prettiest of all the places I have had a chance to visit ever.

A lot of fun things happened after I returned to New Brunswick and moved to a new place.  A bunch of good memories with a bunch of good people. Good times.

My third job at Rutgers. Teaching. It gave me immense joy and satisfaction. It is another thing I think I wouldn’t have gotten a chance to do if I were not here. I definitely want to do this again.

I visited Philly, my first driving road trip in the States. Another beautiful city, and another day I cannot forget.

I ran a 5K marathon called the Big Chill just before Christmas. That many kind-hearted people running in chilly weather gave me a sense of joy that is very hard to explain.

I took a couple of courses that let me work with these amazing machines. Pure joy to see them do what you want them to do. A little scary when they don’t, cos we are humans and we write buggy code. 

I flew to India after my third semester, drove around a lot, and flew back. Time has never flown by so fast.

And finally interviews for a full-time job. A “fun” few months. The interviews were all actually fun, and I got a lot more opportunities than I did for my internships. I got to travel onsite for interviews and they were all great experiences, except one, which wasn’t really great. It sure felt like I was on a roller coaster which wouldn’t stop and then...

An app that I use the most, and think is one of mankind’s better ideas decided to send me this. I think the day I received that phone call can be an entire story in itself. I heaved a sigh of relief, and slept a relaxed man that night.

In the couple of weeks following the offer, I booked tickets for my parents who came for the graduation. They had a week from getting to know they would travel to actually traveling. A proud little moment for me. I graduated, and had the chance to see and listen to the President of the United States. It was quite epic. #Rutgers250.

I traveled to many places in the East Coast post graduation, courtesy my parents being here and it being the last few weeks before all of us friends moved to different places. The touristy places had a lot of people but some of them are still worth that one visit.

A picture from another epic day from my two years at Rutgers. Thanks to an awesome friend who organized this for me. A dream come true. Also, the poetry that evening from everyone at Project Voice was beyond epic. Left all of us smiling, teary eyed and laughing.

I traveled a little more in my last couple of weeks in the East Coast. I spent a week in Detroit, and got to try these rides..

It has been long this post, but those were my two years at Rutgers, almost. The longest I have stayed in any place that is not home. There are still so many pictures and memories that are not part of this story, may be another time. The one thing I can’t continue without is some pictures of the “fancy” food I have cooked. I wouldn’t have done it if not for these two years.

I have now moved to the West Coast and am two weeks old at Twitter. I love working there already, and I love my new place. I don’t think I could have asked for more. There is so much more to learn, travel and experience and I am on my way.

A lot of firsts and a lot of memories, all thanks to “A Second Chance”.

[thinking-thought]

“In today’s class.....

 ......” this is how I began two classes every week this semester and the last. It sometimes began with “Do we have any questions before we begin class?”.

Teaching to a class has been a little dream of mine. I have enjoyed helping out friends, spending a night a few days before exams trying to explain things in a way I thought they understood. I have explained Math to my cousins and they have told me they understood it better than they had in school. But I have never really had a chance to do it on a slightly larger scale until...

As a graduate student here at Rutgers, I got an opportunity to teach recitations for an Introduction to Computers and Applications class during my 3rd semester. I couldn’t get the job during my 2nd semester because I messed the interview trying to do something different, but I figured that out and got it the second time I interviewed.

I was extremely nervous before my first class. I was handed the responsibility of two sections of around 20 students each. The first class was only an introduction and trying to get a feel for the class. I think I did fairly well and there was no looking back. Each class, there were notes of everything I had to teach, and an idea about how I was going to teach them. Most times, these were entry level computer concepts, that don’t really seem entry level to those learning it for the first time. So I also made myself responsible to make the students feel comfortable. Not just comfortable learning, but also asking questions at any time during the class which for me is one of the goals for a teacher.

I learned two things in the art of getting students to talk. One is when you ask a question to the class, even where there is a majority of the class that knows the answer, everyone is going to think someone else will answer. Most of us are guilty of having done that. There are exceptions when there is that one student who wants to answer everything. Anyway the trick is to wait, for as long as it takes. Ask a question and wait. The awkward silence will get to someone and you will receive an answer and they will find out it isn’t that hard to answer. I would sometimes wait for as long as a minute to get answers and it worked quite well.

The other trick is to walk around the class when you ask “Do we have any doubts?”. More often than not, the quieter students are more comfortable asking questions directly instead of in front of the entire class. You get more questions this way. Then there were times when I used to ask “Name ten of your favorite ice-creams” or something like that which would create a more noisy talkative environment.

“Talkative”. Yes, I said it. I tried to do things in class that I wish some of my teachers had done when I was a student. Something like students helping each other instead of coming to me with a question. We would get a “Shhhhh..” in class, but I don’t think that is how that should be. I was always happy when students helped each other, and happier when they discussed and decided to call me to clarify something. 

My job not only included teaching, but correcting assignments every week which was a story in itself. Then there was proctoring and correcting exams. It got really tiring at times, but the thought of going back to class to teach was too exciting to let it go. And also getting answers like this was fun.

By the end of the semester, I could remember everyone’s names. In that one year I saw the sleeping ones, the talkative ones, the geeky ones, the ones I only saw during exams and more. I can imagine now why some of my teachers would say “We have seen the likes of you before!!” after 15-20 years of teaching.

My last class that first semester of teaching was extremely humbling. I ended that class and my students applauded. I remember I had a sheepish smile not knowing what to do. My last class the second semester I taught was no different. Some of the students wished me luck for my job hunt and interviews. The feedback I received made me smile with pride. I will share a few here. Now is a good time to say my students were really sweet.

Abhilash was very clear about his expectations and was able to teach concepts in a very clear and concise manner.

Mr. Narayana did an excellent job at going over concepts that were confusing to us in recitation.

I appreciated the warm environment and easy atmosphere for asking questions.

I sincerely have no interest in computing classes. However, T.A's like Abhilash have the potential to motivate a student like me to get to like the course.

Abhilash's punctuality, preparedness, and responsibility was something that I admired and was what actually encouraged me.

Mr. Narayana encouraged all the students to look at computer science problems from different perspectives. He made sure to help us throughout the assignments to help us better understand what was being asked from us.

He is a good TA because he puts in a lot of effort and listens.

My TA. If it wasn't for his help the level of difficulty experienced during my time taking the class would have made things a lot harder for me. He served a vital role in assuring success for all students.

Abhilash needs to project his voice more.

I put in more than I expected to, anyway this one is my favorite.

The teacher's assistant Abhilash Narayana, was extravagant. Such a word is necessary when you come across such a selfless, person whose priority is the success of others. Every time a student would seek help he was available and if not at the given time he would make time to meet with you as well as work with you on assignments to gain further knowledge and understanding.

Did I mention my students were very sweet?! This kind of feedback made me want to get better and I think I did get better throughout the year.

After moving to the States, I worked a variety of jobs. I worked at a call center, at a dining hall and did an internship writing code. But I think this was something that was truly satisfying. So was writing code, but this was different. I hope to do it again sometime in the future.

--

P S: I haven’t been able to write for a while since I was quite busy job hunting and trying to graduate. I now have a degree and a job offer, so I hope to get back to writing.

[thinking-thought]

What are the odds of that?

We use these words the minute we see something that we think is improbable. Meet an old friend when camping on a mountain top. “What are the odds of that?”. Thinking of a strange twist to the story line when watching a movie and that is exactly what happens. “What are the odds of that?”. The sun is out all week, and the minute you step out on the weekend, a sudden shower. “What are the odds of that?”.

I have been thinking about the probability of everyday events ever since I read “A Drunkard’s Walk”, especially about those times we don’t exclaim about “odds” because we don’t view them as strange. What are the odds of meeting new people? There are people that we meet the first day of university, or during a game, or anywhere who go one to become close friends and I don’t think we think about odds the very first day.

This is the random thought that I have been thinking about. What are the odds of the things that happen everyday, happening? Let me do a little hand wavy probability in an attempt to explain my thought. Do keep in mind that most of the numbers I am choosing are exaggerated lower bounds. I am now 25 years old, and let us say I have had the ability to make decisions for the last 20 years of my life. Over these 20 years, let us assume I just had to make one decision to select among two options every single day. The simple things like what to eat, what to wear, should I go to school, should I talk to this person, anything that includes two choices. That makes 2^7300 different combinations at the end of 20 years, or approximately 10^2200. A number so large, I don’t think we know what it means. Remember we have way more than one decision to make everyday, and most decisions are not limited to two choices. Also, this does not consider the other seemingly random events in life. You were driving and you took a left turn instead of a right. You were late to a party. You missed something and spoke to a stranger about what you missed. Give a thought about the many such incidents, and the many different decisions you have had to make to get where you are.

To put things in perspective, our best estimate of the number of atoms in the entire universe is only of the order 10^81. THE NUMBER OF ATOMS IN THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE. Think about what that means for a second and try to comprehend the meaning of the numbers. If at the beginning of your life, you saw the different places you could be when you were 25, the odds of you being where you are when you are 25, is zero for all practical purposes. But isn’t it exactly where you are? What are the odds of that?

Based on all of this, the probability of meeting someone you have just met is so mind-numbingly low, that you shouldn’t have met them at all, yet it is what has happened. It reminds me of Carl Sagan’s words. I would like to believe this too “underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another”. And of course it has to be followed by:

If a human disagrees with you, let him live. In a hundred billion galaxies, you will not find another.

-Carl Sagan

--

P.S.: This piece from “An Appetite for Wonder” made me think more about this and is what partly inspired me to write this. It was also comforting to know people do think about things like this.

[thinking-thought]

Alone on another planet!

*This post might contain spoilers about ‘The Martian’ depending on what you consider spoilers*

So what would it be like to be alone on another planet. What would you do if you had no way to contact home? Would you start looking at ways to survive? Or would you just give up?

I think it is in all of us to try to survive. The tiny glimmer of hope that says if we survive that extra minute, help might just come along. The story of Mark Watney who has to survive all alone on Mars is a story of just that. Of hope. Of survival. And of the human spirit.

Of course if you are still wondering what this is about, it is from this amazing book I read not too long ago called “The Martian”. I absolutely loved it. The drama, the science, and the character of Mark Watney, who you have probably guessed is the one left alone on the planet.

Mark Watney’s character is brilliant. Witty and smart, super smart, but the thing I admire most is his will to survive that shows up very well in his thought process. Yes, it is only a fictional story, but how many real life stories do we know of where people pushed through things that should have definitely killed them at the very beginning. 

If you love reading science-fiction that is closer to science than it is to fiction, this is a read that you will end up loving. The science in this book brings the story as close to reality as possible. Can’t help but admire all the research that has gone into it. Andy Weir has done well.

Speaking of Andy Weir, the guy who wrote the book, if you are looking to write or even to start anything that is classified as following a dream, but don’t think you will ever make it in the field, this guy is a new addition to the list of people you can look up to. I saw this talk and immediately saw where Mark Watney gets his character from. This guy oozes awesomeness.

I will end this with these lines from the book that caught my eye.  I don’t know if there is a more goosebumps inducing way of articulating the human spirit, the thing that makes us different.

“If a hiker gets lost in the mountains, people will coordinate a search. If a train crashes, people will line up to give blood. If an earthquake levels a city, people all over the world will send emergency supplies. This is so fundamentally human that it’s found in every culture without exception. Yes, there are assholes who just don’t care, but they’re massively outnumbered by the people who do”

[thinking-thought]

An Appetite

A word that is generally associated with the desire for food, but such is the beauty of language that words take meaning on context. An Appetite for Wonder is one such combination of words that particularly caught my eye. I am a firm believer of trying to keep our child-like curiosity intact as we grow up and the words “An Appetite for Wonder” poetically signify that child-like curiosity.

Being a non-native English speaker, I learnt new words reading this book, as with reading any of Richard Dawkins’ books or just listening to him talk. I admire his grasp over the language.

In the book, Dawkins talks about his early life in Africa, his schooling there and in England after his return and some of his parents’ adventures during the time. He paints a beautiful picture of that time during the days of war and after with his words, something you wouldn’t find in a history book. It reminded me of Carl Sagan’s “books break the shackles of time” quote.

Something I think about a lot is education. Teaching, like everything else is a job of passion, more so in the case of teaching I must add. You notice it in a teacher. See how well Dawkins articulates what I call passion as he talks about taking notes during a lecture.

Theoretically the idea was to use your lecture notes in revision, but I never looked at mine ever again and I suspect that most of my colleagues didn't either. The purpose of a lecture should not be to impart information. There are books, libraries, nowadays the internet, for that. A lecture should inspire and provoke thought. You watch a good lecturer thinking aloud in front of you, reaching for a thought, sometimes grabbing it out in the air. A good lecturer thinking aloud, reflecting, musing, rephrasing for clarity, hesitating and then grasping, varying the pace, pausing for thought, can be a role model in how to think about a subject and how to transmit a passion for it. If a lecturer drones information as though reading it, the audience might as well read it - possibly in the lecturer's own book.

I am fortunate to have sat in a class where a lecturer has actually thought out loud about a problem being solved on. The beauty is in teaching how to think rather than how to solve that one problem. That takes me to another thing I admire which is the way scientists think when they are trying to prove a hypothesis.

Dawkins as part of his DPhil research, comes up with a hypothesis to get answers about the age old “Nature vs Nurture” debate. He tries to find an answer by asking how does a chicken that has just arrived into this world know what to peck at and what is food? He sets up experiments and observes the chicken to collect data and to find answers. He then sets up another experiment to try to falsify the results of the first experiment. And that is science. You make a hypothesis, and set up experiments not just to prove the hypothesis, but to falsify it. The more you fail in falsifying, the more certain you are of your hypothesis. Simple and elegant I think.

“Scientific research doesn’t develop in the in the same orderly sequence as the final published ‘story’. Real life is messier than that.”

One part of Dawkins’ life I can relate to most is his love for programming. I can only imagine what it must have felt like to have been born in a world that did not have computers, and then one day get to program those big room-sized machines day and night just to crunch some numbers and then see a world where everything runs on computers. I envy him. He actually created two programming languages of his own which is brilliant I think. If you like programming, you will most certainly enjoy the chapter called “Computer Fix” in which he explains his addiction to programming and some wonderful experiments as well.

Finally the selfish gene or the immortal gene. Why? What? How? It has me thinking too much. Though I think I understand whatever little about the selfish gene is in the book, I must buy The Selfish Gene and completely read it.

Dawkins talks about odds at the end. The odds of life. What are the odds that he became what he did? What are the odds that we are here? Thought provoking. It is something I have been wondering since a long time and will be writing about soon. 

Dawkins’ adulation for Darwin shows in the final chapter and I understand why. Darwin was amazing. You read the “Origin of Species” and you cannot help but look up to the man. 

I will end this with a piece from Dawkins that has the same effect on me as the Pale Blue Dot by Carl Sagan. I think that comparison says a lot about how beautiful it is.

“In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here”

[thinking-thought]

Of Dreams, Omens and The Soul of the World...

I just finished reading The Alchemist and hence the title. A boy goes after his dreams, learning about omens and the soul of the world. I think that is what the story was. Though honestly, I did not quite understand what the whole thing was about. It felt like a completely stretched out unnecessary story to say “Go after you dreams”. The one thing I did like about the book was that the boy travels to achieve his dreams, and his travels, teach him things about the world.

I don’t have much else to say about the book, but I do want to share a recent travel experience, so I’ll just use this opportunity, because I dream of travel.

I recently went whale watching in Boston. I did not know what to expect from it, but I knew it would be exciting. I had booked tickets to the The New England Aquarium and Whale Watching.

When the day arrived, for the very first time in my life, I woke up late on a trip day. But fortunately, there was still enough time to make it to the place. I got ready quickly and my roommate and I were at the New England Aquarium in no time. It was my first time in Boston. I did land in Boston though when I arrived from India, but that was only the airport. This aquarium was beautiful. It had all kinds of sea creatures. There was this huge glass tank in the middle teeming with aqueous life. There were penguins too that reminded me of Happy Feet. It was amazing to get to the see the variety of life, and how well each kind of life is adapted to its surroundings. An hour and a half of looking at sea animals in awe.

There were so many kinds of Jelly Fish.

The varieties, thanks to evolution.

This was quite big. Probably a meter in length.

All the color.

Patrick!! Desktop wallpaper anyone? :)

This place had the most brightly colored frogs I have seen.

This was so tiny. Probably just a couple of centimeters.

Don’t sharks look majestic?!

We then went to the boarding area for the ship that would take us whale watching. The ship arrived on time. It wasn’t really a ship though. It was more like a large speed boat. It had three decks, and we went to the top most deck. Once we were out of the harbor, we picked up speed. I felt alive. The rush of wind as I looked back at the Boston skyline becoming smaller and smaller until it finally disappeared. After an hour of traveling during which time the naturalists on board explained about where we were headed and what kind of whales we would expect, we saw a shark.

Our speed boat.

That is a shark, right?!

I don’t know if anyone spotted it, because we just went by it without stopping. Another fifteen minutes later and a lot of looking out into the ocean in anticipation, we spotted our first whale. It was a humpback. It wasn’t exactly like I had imagined it to be, whales jumping out of the water and stuff, but it was definitely breathtaking to see such a huge creature. The naturalist explained that the whales eat a couple of tons of fish each day. It is a number I find hard to comprehend.

Humpback whale.

We also saw a pair of humpback whales that were diving and coming to the surface together. We spent some time around them. The captain then told the naturalists about a baby humpback whale and its mother that was spotted by another boat in the vicinity and sped towards it(I overheard this on the radio that the naturalist was using to communicate with the captain).

Pair of humpbacks that we spotted.

We could see the baby in a distance, jumping and splashing about just like I had imagined. It unfortunately calmed down once we got close to it and did not jump out again. The mother and the baby kept taking approximately 8 minute dives and we waited each time in anticipation for them to surface. We spent a lot of time with those whales and while the whales took their dives, the naturalist explained to us how they recognize whales by patterns on their tails and how they name them The whales we spotted had names. They were regular visitors of Stellwagen Bay.

Mother and child.

The kid doing a belly roll. Or may be it was the mom. I cannot remember.

The kid flapping us good bye!!

It was soon time to head back after almost two hours of watching whales. It was one of those experiences that I feel one must experience to truly know how it feels. On the way back, most people went inside the decks to shield themselves from the wind. It had gotten very chilly. I went to the bottom deck, and was staring out into the ocean intermittently taking photographs, when this really nice guy came up to me and asked if I wanted him to take a photo of me. That usually never happens, so without a second thought I handed the camera to him. He clicked a few nice pictures and explained to me about how photographers never have their pictures in albums, which is why he usually offers to take photos of photographers themselves. We spoke for some time about quite a lot of things, the weather included. I regret not taking a photograph alongside him.

The Boston Skyline.

As we got close to shore, a couple came up to me and asked if I could click a photo for them. I took a few and they were impressed and heartily thanked me a couple of times. The guy who took my photo was standing right there, pulled my leg a little about my photography skills. Now that I think of it, this little incident was probably an omen. An omen indicating I should travel more often, and meet more people. 

The couple came back after a few minutes for another photo. They were thanking me and an Indian guy who overheard this asked if I could take his photo too. I did. We got talking. He asked me where I was from. I told him I am from New Jersey, studying there, and originally from India which I suppose he had already figured. So he asked where in India and I said Bangalore with pride. His next question to me was in Kannada, asked me where in Bangalore. Small world I thought. We exchanged more details, and at the end he gave me his email address asking me to contact him anytime I visited Washington DC. Another omen?!

We were at the shore by this time. I looked for the guy that took my photo, thanked him again, and bid goodbye. We got off the boat, walked to the parking lot and headed back home.

Like I said before, I dream of travel and every time I do travel, I learn so much, and the experience only makes me want to travel more. Some might call it omens, but I think that is just the beauty of travel. As far as the soul of the world goes, I have no idea what that is.

The book I started this post with quotes an Arabic proverb that I thought was kind of nice.

Everything that happens once can never happen again. But everything that happens twice will surely happen a third time.

So make sure you break your routine not once, but twice to travel the world, and the rest might just become history.

As always.. Explore. Experience. Enjoy.

[thinking-thought]

Why I think we live in exciting times!!

We are all living on this pale blue dot of ours during the same period as Elon Musk. That for me, is exciting enough. So much has happened in the couple of years that I’ve been reading about him. I was telling a friend the other day, “Steve Jobs had a vision to make some people’s lives easier, but Elon Musk has a vision to make everyone’s lives better.” There is more to my story than Elon Musk though.

This comes from my experience over the last few months, working on a robot as part of my course work. A robot for the Amazon Picking Challenge. On the face of it, it looks a trivial task. Automate a robot to pick objects from a shelf and put it in a basket. You could do that from a shelf in front of you as you are reading this. But think about how much work you have just done to pick up that object.

You have to first comprehend what object you have to pick. Then look at all the objects on the shelf. Recognize which one out of those you have to pick. Stretch your hands to the right position. Grab the object firmly enough so that you don’t drop it. Move your hands close to the basket without colliding with anything, and then place it there. Of course, you are not consciously thinking about any of these while you do it. You just intuitively do it. The human brain is amazing.

Now think about programming a computer to do the same. You have to make sure it performs all of those actions one after the other. Object recognition. Path planning. Collision detection.  Grasp planning. And more. Each one on its own a hard problem. I got to see all of this in action. So many algorithms working together to do what is relatively an easy task. The brain not only does all of it without needing a fan to cool it down, it has without ever overheating, come up with algorithms that enable robots to do it, albeit not as efficiently. The occasional headaches may be considered overheating, but I’m willing to give it a pass.

The Robot in action.

Object Recognition before the grasp.

Error detection on grasps that I was working on.

All this research to do as simple a task as pick and place objects. It just shows the enormity of the task at hand when people talk about bots from the future that can mimic human intelligence. But there are cars that drive themselves. Robots that dance. Those that climb ladders. Robots that can walk like humans. Robots that can sketch. Those that recognize emotions and react accordingly. It is a really long list. Is it only a matter of time before we put it all together?! 

From my experience though, we are still quite a long way away from completely mimicking human intelligence, but some of the things that computers are capable of these days make me think we are not really that far away. Those who have seen these AI dreams, which as I write this is what is making news in the field, will agree.

Then there is this kind of research. Giving us new senses, to feel experiences we have never felt before. Exciting things like this are being developed everywhere. Some make the news. Some are secretive.

I cannot go without a mention of my favorite of the lot. Space Science. Space science is in good hands, though we are definitely not investing enough. We are getting closer everyday to figuring with high certainty if there is life or not anywhere else in our solar system. A small step considering the vastness of the universe, but a step nonetheless. The James Webb telescope will give us a never before seen views of the universe. The Hubble was awesome, but this will be better. 

There are definitely many more exciting things, most that I’m not even aware of. That is why the future excites me, even the hopelessly dangerous future that we seem to be headed toward. Only because I believe we’ll step up and say enough is enough before we cross that point of no return. Until we do that though, there is one man who has already stepped up, and we all like heroes to look up to and draw inspiration from, don’t we?!

P.S: If there is anything that excites you, and I’m pretty sure there is, I’d love to hear. It could be something you are doing right now that super excites you, or something you read online from a field you have no idea about that super super excites you. In my case, the latter is a common occurrence.

[micdotcom]

Watch: Bill Nye’s graduation speech was as fiery and inspiring as you’d expect 

[sagansense]

There’s much more of this inside his book, ‘Undeniable’.

[thinking-thought]

This was at my university people. I so wish I had been there but unfortunately I slept late that day. I still cannot understand why we are debating things that need action and not more debates. My best guess is because we as a civilization are still young. But if we want to live to a ripe old age, we have to take action, we have to work together, and only then can we, as Bill Nye said “Change the world”!!

[thinking-thought]

Thank You. Sorry.

These words are probably the most used words in the English language. Individually polite words too. Put them together and they become a weapon against confidence I have learned.

The first time the combination of words hit me was two years back. I think. I hadn't given it much thought then.  Over the last few months though, I have seen these words more often than I would have liked and its led me to writing this. I had to look for an internship for the summer and I was fairly confident I would land one. I knew it wouldn't be easy, but I didn't think it would be super difficult too. So I started applying. A few at first. The first few “Thank You. Sorry” mails as we have started calling them(reject mails) came through. They were companies that expect a lot from the applicants, so I did not expect an interview. More applications went through. More “Thank You, Sorry”s. Companies I was sure I’d get an interview with rejected applications. Everyone had the same format.

“Thank you for applying. Thank you for your interest. Thank you for considering us. But sorry....”

Every blow from a reject mail would induce an application spree and I applied to 10-20 more companies. I did manage to get interviews with two companies. One of them I cleared three rounds of telephonic interviews and had three interviews at their office. I received a “Thank you, sorry” the next day. It was the biggest blow of them all. I tried really hard not to give up, but as I was on the verge of giving up, something turned up, I got an interview and did well and got a “Thank you. Congratulations” instead of the words that I was so used to seeing that I expected those words. The first thing I checked as soon as I read that mail was flight tickets to India, because as they say “Home is where the heart is”.

There is more to this story than meets the eye. All those moments spent discussing with friends about being on the same boat. All those thoughts that go through the head thinking “What if..?”. And then the most dreadful of them all “What do I do for the money to go home?” I don’t really think I can put how it felt into words, and I genuinely feel for the many more in the same position.

This reminds me of what Sarah Kay says in her wonderful poem, “If I should have a daughter”

“And she's going to learn that this life will hit you hard in the face,wait for you to get back up just so it can kick you in the stomach. But getting the wind knocked out of you is the only way to remind your lungs how much they like the taste of air.“

- Sarah Kay

I guess that is true. My lungs sure will do well to remember how much they like the taste of air. *takes a deep breath*