Sudipta's Life

"You're too hot to be a nerd", she said, with a grin on her face. The you, in question, being yours truly. At 1:00 a.m. at night, in the middle of a semi-crowded sidewalk, I was told this independently by two different ladies within a span of about 2 minutes. Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to present to you the hottest wannabe nerd: me!!! :) It all began at about 12:00 midnight on Saturday night, when I was debating over whether to stay at home and study for my midterm exam on Monday or whether I should go out and see what the Austin halloween looks like. After some deliberation, the devil took over ;) and I was on my way. My room-mate was draped like Santa Claus and he promised me, "You think you are done with the cultural shocks, right? Wait till you see tonight". And I went there all prepared to get shocked. And a shock it was, indeed! Imagine the most bizzare costume party ever: guys were dressed as anything from an outlandish Martian with a 4-foot dick hang...

Hi all, This is an email that I just received from my brother. I'll copy-paste that here, with his permission, of course. Before you read further, I'd ask you not to generalise on any of the observations he has made; rather look at the incident and tell me what you thought. Also, I guess my mother's genes were inherited not just by me but by my brother as well -- everything down below (and the title of the post as well) are his. Family traditions, anyone? :) I got up in a public bus the other day, and found it packed. Packed in the sense, no one was standing, but there was no sitting space either: there was a passenger to every seat. But then I noticed that towards the front of the bus, there was this one seat by the aisle that was vacant. It was one of a two-seater; the seat by the window was occupied by a man. Down the length of the bus, the aisle divided the two seaters into two categories, the left side was reserved for ladies, and the right side was for gents. I sat d...

Up until about 6 months ago, I never bothered to hold open doors for ladies or push chairs for them, etc. There were two reasons for this: first of all, I thought it kind-a lame to do that. I mean, if on one hand I say that they are my equals and yet every time I am sitting and a lady is standing, I am supposed to offer her my seat, I see contradiction. I did offer my seat, however, to people who I thought needed it: be it old people or ladies with new-born babies, etc. Also, once in a while, a colleague (friend) would take the bus dead exhausted after her day, and I'd offer her a seat. Usually, after a little persuasion, it felt good to see the relief on their faces when they finally took the seat: after all I thought I could take the stress of standing better. So while I'd hold open doors for anyone who had their hands full (be it a boy or a girl), I used to care very little about doing the same when the other person was not so occupied. The second reason was that I did not r...

One of my friends, who regularly reads this blog, told me recently that the quality of writing has gone down in the last 2-3 posts. Even though the last post had found mention on Desipundit, I thought she was right. On hindsight, I think the last post was mentioned partly because it talked about love and relationships, finding the perfect woman/man etc. But she was right: the post on free pizza and drinks was a sort of forced humour: something that could have been written more hilariously or perhaps with a dash of sarcasm. The next post on the human billboards was well, sort of ok. But I'd rate it to be a 3/5, but not a 4/5 or a 5/5 because umm... something was missing. As I ponder over the phenomenon, I think this applies to a lot of things, not just writing blogs. When I used to go to debates or elocution contests when I was absolutely convinced of what I was going to say or speak, I used to come out with flying colours. When I wrote essays, or even answers in the language exams...

I was going through this post: " Banking on Love ", and it actually set off a train of thoughts that seemed so intuitively correct that I am writing about it. Go through the article: it will take 10 minutes of your time, but perhaps you will be able to see my point better. When choosing a mate, (or if you prefer the euphemisms then your 'love for life'), what actually do you look for? Yes I know that most of us will agree that if we were looking for the 'fling' thing, physical characteristics will be a far more important criteria than whats inside the head. In fact, when Dr. Li's research says that women tend to choose very similarly as men when they are looking for a short-term 'thing', I think I couldn't agree more. At the end of the day, if suddenly you feel like 'just doing it', how much will the other characteristics matter, anyway? Face it --- whether you are a man or a woman, these feelings just happen, they just grab you at time...

In my last post , I mentioned that I had a different stand on the issue of the free stuff being distributed around the campus. So, here goes: There is no such thing as a free lunch in this world, and similarly, there aren't any free pizza, T-shirts, drinks or anything of that sort in the world. Every time I am going to walk around the campus here wearing a T-short that proclaims "Amazon.com" written across the chest, I am transforming myself into a billboard for the company. So while I walk around in a T-shirt that says "I'm feeling lucky" and decide to try my luck in wooing the next blonde that passes by, I may not be so lucky. Microsoft distributed some T-shirts as well, and they surprisingly had just a small "Microsoft" logo behind the head at the neck. But they really rubbed the salt in by putting a logo on the chest right above the heart that said: "ftr", and down below in fine print was written, "Free T-shirts Rock!!". Yea...