Sudipta's Life

It all began when a professor at my (undergraduate) college showed up in our lab and asked, "So who here is the guy who knows everything about computers?". Admittedly, such people have never existed. However, for all practical purposes, when a professor in his fifties comes and asks the system administrator of the college about "computers", you can be reasonably sure that the sys admin has the skills to do/fix whatever the professor is looking for. The system administrator in this case being yours truly, and the professor being someone not from Computer Sciences (no offence!). Like any good "computer-person", I dutifully asked, "What do you need? I am the system administrator" He literally looked me up and down, and said, "No, who is the person here who knows everything here? The person who takes care of all this?". He was pointing at all the 100+ computers around the room. Had it been the Sudipta of today, I would have deferre...

Reference: Confessions of an all-nighter Yes - I am posting this at 9:30 am. Yes - I am happy and elated. No - the achievement is different this time: haven't written down 1000 lines of code Yes - it was productive work, and I have learned to use a new software which will be useful for me for a long time to come. No - nobody clapped for me at 7:30 am this time either! :( Yes - this post (like the last one) is technically a cop-out: not those ponder - laugh - hate - ponder ones I usually post. Yes - I still want to continue my quest to report success to myself. And yes, many many more posts are coming.

This was during our graduation ceremony from UT Austin, for our College of Natural Sciences. Inside the grand ceremony with the tassels hanging from the right side of the hat, we were having our traditional walk through the podium. You would stand in a queue with your classmates, your name would be called, you would walk across the stage where the Dean of the school would honour you with a hood or band across your shoulders or chest, and then you get your picture taken with the Dean and you move on. To maintain civility and also to make sure that everyone's name is heard during the announcements, people were generally asked to hold on to their applause until after the ceremony was over. This indeed was the case - it was very calm and quiet all through the presentation with smiling faces and the voice of the announcer booming through the speakers. Except, this one time... There was this one guy, on a wheelchair. It looked like he had to go through a large part of his adult life on...

Well, if you make it an hour, then its not just building Rome. Defending it, destroying it and then having a discussion worth a dozen PhDs and at least three history books about the causes behind the fall of Rome. Yes sir, all three bags full, within the span of an hour or so. Welcome to Age of Empires! :) You see, there is always a good intention behind a lot of ideas people come up with to help 'education'. Someone had come up with an innovative concept called the Preparatory Leave or PL in engineering colleges, to allow people to 'prepare' well for the exams. Basically, this was a period of about seven to ten days after the classes ended and the exams began. Somehow, this ensured that most people considered attending classes during the rest of the semester futile and the PL was deemed sufficient to cover the entire syllabus. It became a bragging point that you had finished reading through three whole chapters of a book overnight and answered questions from the whol...

During a trip, it might be a little disconcerting to come across the antics of different kinds of tourists at some popular destinations. At least here in the Bay area, I'd say at least 50% of the tourists are Indian whichever ride/spot/drive you might be at. To make your tour experience a little more enjoyable and a little less scary, here is the guide to your fellow brethren at said locations: The newly-weds: By far the most obvious type. Draped all over one another with a coy smile on the girl's lips, they somehow tend to be lost beyond the instructions of the tour guide or the park ranger. You might happen to catch the dude giving a beleaguered stare at his bride after watching the young punk rock American teenagers make out like there's no tomorrow. If so, don't forget to catch the bride in turn returning a cold big-eyed admonishing stare that could make little children wail for no apparent reason. The stag party: Usually a bunch of recent graduates or interns from ...

The kind of Holi celebrations I've seen outside my engineering college, I would say, are really tame compared to what used to happen within. At home and the colony around us, it was a sort of tame affair with the womenfolk mostly remaining away from the guys or at least refraining from playing with strangers. The occasional adventurous dude who decided to propose on this day by putting a red sindoor mark on the girl's forehead was usually beaten up badly, whether by his own friends in congratulations or by the girl's brother in retaliation is another story. The situation here in the US is entirely different. With the creeps outnumbered by far and a more vociferous female populace, the percentage of females coming out for the university Holi celebrations is much higher and the occasion is therefore understandably a lot more fun. The exact middle ground of this was in our engineering college: with everybody an adventurous dude and no females at all. In Gujarat, Holi celebrat...

Ever since I read the desi romeo guide (much, much before I republished it here on the blog), I have been wondering if a similar guide exists for the juliets as well. Similar to biblical history wherein Eve was created after Adam, I am venturing to create the desi Juliet guide. This document may be copied and reproduced freely, except for commercial purposes, provided you mention the source of its first publication here at this URL:. http://sudiptachatterjee.blogspot.com/2007/11/desi-juliet-guide.html I love to say that I have observed only a small percent of the traits I am going to describe in actual people I've met. The rest of it is purely the work of my imagination, and I don't claim that the uncanny resemblance with you in one of these categories necessarily means that you inspired it in the first place. :D So, here we go: %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% THE BALLERINA (Julietofus Dansicus) ================================================ Ever since she ventur...

As a grad student, you can choose two out of three things in life for every semester: good grades, good sleep and good socializing. However hard you try, you can't get all three. And the fine print on the good grades is that sometimes you have to survive through tons of assignments, project deadlines and other bizarre TA issues, for which you need to stay up overnight. The funny part of putting in all those hours of thought and effort is that you're not grudging the assignment. You like the class, you love solving the problems, and you actually feel happy when you're done tackling the brain-teasers hidden in the problems. But the only catch is: they require too much time and effort. And add to that the innumerable bugs, logical errors and infinite loops that are so silly you want to tear your hair out (I've been bald four times over)... staying up all night trying to make stupid programs work doesn't seem such a bad investment after all. Midnights are magical, you k...

Minus the books in the picture (click to enlarge), the fruits of two and a half hours of career-expo-touring in the university career fair: 6 T-shirts (yes that car in the bottom left is one) 1 cap 3 USB drives 2 free iTunes track gift cards 4 yo-yos 4 dancing light balls 8 mint packs 2 digital calendars/alarm clocks 30 different good quality pens 12 highlight pens 2 cloth frisbees 2 packs of playing cards 1 pair of binoculars 2 flashlights 1 stapler 5 fighter jet stickers 8 post-it note bundles 2 photo holders 1 mouse pad 1 calculator 1 electronic pocket Sudoku Not bad , definitely. Fruits of labour, eh? :)

Like any self-respecting grad student who has to pay 200$ per semester as gym fees, I decided one fine day to go and visit the gym at the university. The first day, there was a whole feel-good factor about seeing so many instruments, such huge facilities, etc. The initial excitement prompted me to use every machine, try the various weights, and I also looked around for the shortcut ways to building a Dara Singh physique. It all felt really nice until I woke up the next morning aching all over my body and having trouble even while brushing my teeth. Hmmf... that was sort of a dampener to the enthusiasm, but I managed to cling on. However, assignments, midterm tests and the lack of company ensured that I left going to the gym midway. I've picked up the habit here again while I'm interning, but I don't know how long this will last. The frustrating part, however, is not the kind of lacklustre routine I follow about going to the gym. The real jaw-dropping phenomenon is the kind ...

I'm posting this as a blatant copy and paste from here: http://www.ce.berkeley.edu/~ubasu/iitk/jokes/desi-romeo.html But worth the read... every single bit. %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% %%%% THE DESI ROMEOS GUIDE-BOOK %%%% %%%% By Prem!(prem@prem.lbl.gov) %%%% with contributions by ACReddy (aceman@netcom.com). %%%% %%%%(PHYLUM: Desi,GENUS: Romeonensis) %%%% %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% Since the annual induction of new recruits into s.c.i. is under way, let me start the ball rolling on the touchy topic of the intrepid romeo's courtship ritual... I would love to say that any resemblance to people living or married is a coincidence,but unfortunately that isn't really the case.It has been my misfortune to come across despos who fit at least one description very well.Some of the descriptions here are based on the outrageous opinions expressed by our dudes in private in an all-male environmen...

Ugh... what is that unearthly noise blaring at this time? I just slept! Hands grope about towards source of aforesaid noise, both eyes still half-closed. Wham! And yeah... thats taken care of for now... go back to sleep mumbling. Uh... again! 10 minutes of snooze time past already? Hmmff... thats bloody murder! What time is it anyway? Noooo..... it can't be 8:40 already! My alarm was set for 8:00!!! :( Wham, wham and another bloody wham! *Whimper-whimper* Do I really need to open both eyes now? Yeah I think so. Take off warm blanket. Darned the air is cold... that A/C will kill me some day! *Grumble-grumble* and wear the crumpled T-shirt from the floor. Room-mate in bathroom... *grumble-grumble some more* I'll get up when he's out --- get back inside the blanket. Ahh... doesn't it feel good already? Peace.... Room-mate comes out.... dude, you ought to take at least an hour in the morning! How can you be out so early? I don't want to get out of bed today!! :( :( *Mak...

The best ideas come to me at the worst of times. What else can explain me sitting down to write this blog post at 3:00 a.m.? Actually, blog post ideas take some time to coagulate in the head. The seed, or the little irritation is planted by some event or some random memory. And then it sits there for days, sometimes weeks, gathering layers upon layers of ideas and coherence in the warmth of the oyster shell. And then, one moment of inspiration and a cup of warm coffee later, they tumble out, sparkling as ever to form the beads on this necklace. Even as I write, I have at least 4 unpublished drafts sitting in the list of posts, waiting for me to find words to express them with. And then there are some more ideas that are just churning in my head --- some deliciously sarcastic, some chuckling-ly funny and some others that talk of serious topics. But these aren't all that keep my head occupied all the time. There are thoughts about assignments and presentations which are due in a coup...

Interacting with different people of my own age here in the university leaves different impressions. And even if you are not interacting, it is difficult not to overhear snippets of conversation between others (especially undergrads) who discuss a lot of things. I find that the word that dominates these conversation is, "Like". A typical conversation snippet is this: "And I was like... totally, like [eyes appropriately squinted, shaking head in disapproval] and then he was like [raised eyebrows] ... and then I was like, OH MY GOD!! [bulging eyes and throwing up arms] ". Please interpret the above ...-s to mean a sufficient pause in the conversation. It used to be unnnerving at first, because the 'like' word can take a thousand different meanings at different times, sort of like the universal pronoun. Most of the time, it means exasperation at something, or when the speaker is at a loss of words to actually convey his/her feelings. But the rampant use of th...

I had ranted earlier about me pouring butter milk into my morning coffee upon my first arrival in America. But when I was reading through this post by Anjali , I was horrified to think that someone had set up a video surveillance in my kitchen and had just recorded my experiences there! Believe me, even though that post is nearly two years old, I think it might have been written in 1000 B.C. and would still have held its ground through the ages. This comes from a guy who just about a year back had a long debate with his friend whether you should put a heaped tablespoon of salt or should it be a heaped teaspoon when you make a single omlette. All this intellectual discussion happened while the oil kept magically disappearing from the pan on a oven at its highest flame. Needless to say, we did not really eat the "omlettes" we made that night. Things haven't changed so much since then, though. All the curries I make out of frozen vegetables end up magically tasting the same...

Orkut does a lot of good things, such as connecting old friends, help form new connections and fraanships, etc. So when the other day I received a friend request from a person I knew in school, it was a pleasant surprise. A couple of scraps were exchanged, with the general CBI-meet-FBI information exchange and 30-second elevator talk. He was in India and had graduated recently and was employed. Then one fine day I saw a chat request from him on google and was glad to accept it. Soon afterwards, there was a little window blinking in the toolbar. "Hey, hru?" was how the conversation had begun. I obliged with the typical "I'm fine, thanks" and was about to reciprocate the routine when he popped the second question: "So you've been there for about 8 months now --- how many girlfriends do you have?" I was a little taken aback: I did not really expect a friend talking to me after about 10 years to be interested in my set of girlfriends as the first thing...

I rather think I should call this post, "How to beat graduate school stress" or "How to boost your heart after you've collapsed in the middle of the road". After last Thursday's little excitement surrounding me, where various theories ranging from heart-break to heart-attack were suggested as the cause, people were really sceptical if I was up for a full day at the Six Flags over Texas amusement park at Arlington. But, people like me don't let little excitements stand in the way of much larger excitements, and so early on Saturday morning we went off to Arlington to have a first-hand taste of amusement in America. The day started off with a roller coaster ride inside a pitch-dark tower ---- the fun of the ride being the unpredictability of the rolls inside the darkness. But that was just the beginning of the fun for the day! We were soon out in the sunny Texan daylight, dropping down 255 feet at 85 miles per hour on the Titan , or being hurled around st...

When I came to the university about 3-4 months ago, I was all charged up about doing research projects, publishing papers, etc. I always imagined myself to be this hidden wizard of computer science who will just race through the tons of research papers and practically become an authority on research in my field within a span of a year. Pretty soon, I signed up for some reading groups where they discussed papers, I took courses that dived straight into the core of my research interest, and was suddenly beginning to feel good about myself. More importantly, professors and other senior researchers here are more than happy if you go up to them after having read an extra paper or two and ask questions about them. So I tried to bury myself in the research papers and journals and stuff like that. But it was then that the realisation struck that I know practically nothing of the field and the subject! So while I would plough on and on through 15 or 20 pages of a research paper, I'd hardly ...

"!!! FREE PIZZA & DRINKS !!! Group meeting of Alpha-Phi-Sigma !!! FREE PIZZA & DRINKS !!! Come to XYZ building at 6:30 p.m. on 9/30, Saturday !!! FREE PIZZA & DRINKS !!!" Posters of this kind are in abundance around the campus. Right from group meetings of interest groups in forensics to special meetings and get-togethers of Astrophysics alumni. The common theme you notice in all of these is the free pizza and drinks. Nobody wants to know if you are really interested in forensics or if you really care about dying pandas in China. As long as you are a face in the crowd listening to all they are saying with rapt attention, clapping when the crowd does so and making a suitably sad face to know about the death of a waste recycling factory in eastern Yugoslavia, you are in. In fact, if you can plan properly, I believe you can manage to get all your lunch and dinner sessions taken care of by the university for almost all days of the week. Even a small cottage industry...

One of the strange things that one needs to do in life, I find, is that he or she needs to learn to cook. There is no escape, if you haven't learnt it yet, you will have to: some time or the other. In my case, all these years in hostels I have never learnt or needed to learn to cook. Someone, somehow, was always there to cook food. And I was absolutely efficient in dishwashing! I really mean it --- friends would cook using all the utensils they could find, take all the time they need, while I would lounge about in the sofa in the living room, flipping TV channels. And after a hearty meal, it would take me 15-20 min to get the whole place sparkling clean! Things were so good for me and for everyone else then :) But then I came to America, and found the quintessential invention that will take away my job: the dishwasher! So I woke up the next morning, and found my room-mate in the kitchen area, sipping on a glass of coffee. Jetlagged morning time needed coffee here as well, and I tho...