Candlelight Dinner

For Husband and Wife
A Candlelight Dinner is Romantic.

For Husband, Wife and a Toddler
A Candlelight Dinner is Dangerous!

:-)

First Snow of 2011!

A sign of good times...
A sign of bad times...

A time for a smile...
A time for a sigh...

First Snow of 2011...
First Snow for Tontu...

:)

Dumb

Mother: "What do you want?" Voice filled with exasperation, hearing the daughter's continuous wailing.
Daughter: "Ilchik." She pointed a crooked arm at an angle of 100 degrees, pointing sometimes at the main door and sometimes at the shelf. She looked where she was pointing and looked back at the mother hoping mother understood.
Mother thought daughter wanted her (mother) to take her (daughter) outside through the main door. But it was 10 pm.
Mother: "I can't take you out now. It is 10 pm and it is cold outside."
Daughter repeated whatever she had done earlier, and wailed once more laboriously.
Mother: "What do you want?" She then looked at some books on the shelf and asked the daughter, "Do you want me to read you a book?"
Daughter gave a bright smile and started dancing, glad that mom finally understood what she wanted.
Mother: "Oh you wanted me to read you a book?!" She got up to get the book.

For the mother, the baby is literally dumb.
For the baby, the mother is figuratively dumb.
Just goes to show that at some point of time in each of our lives we were all dumb in a way...

6 in 12

In the last 12 months of our stay in US (starting from 2009 May and with a break of 1.5 years), my wife and I have stayed in 6 houses.

Phew.

9.11.11

It has been 10 years since the fateful day.
Each year I get to hear a new story.
Each year I get to see a video and feel as if it is the first time I am seeing it.
Each story and each video moves me.
Each year I cry.
It was a day when many, many ordinary men became heroes and then became immortal forever.
I salute them all...

Commonality in Nursery Rhymes

There is one common element between the following four nursery rhymes:

Ring a Ring o' Roses
London Bridge
Humpty Dumpty
Jack and Jill

It all talks about 'Falling Down'!

:-)

Name-Value Pair

In my current project - as in most software projects - we have a robust name-value map configuration. For the lay man, this basically means that if the calling program specifies a name to the configuration, a value is returned back to the program for further processing. Like if a door bell button is pressed, the door bell makes a sound.

Seeing my daughter grow (she is now almost 11 months old), I made a startling discovery that our brain is wired with full of such name-value maps. Majority of our brain is like an enormous configuration which keeps storing information and making an "index" (like yellow pages index), which is akin to "name". When this name is invoked, it responds back with a "value" which is carried out by the nervous system.

For example, the first thing which I remember my daughter learned was reacting to the phrase "Smile, please!" - thanks to my wife's mother who taught her this. When someone said "Smile, please!", my daughter smiled back in response. I was initially perplexed as to how she can understand English at such an age (6th month) and dismissed it as an one-off event. But the fact was that she kept repeating it. Which meant there was some science behind it.

The discovery was simple. She really did not know what "Smile, please!" meant. She was just doing what the person who was asking was doing. Note the exclamation everywhere. "Smile, please!" Each time this phrase was uttered, the person who used to utter this was smiling and, this in turn, made the brain register that "Smile, please!" meant smiling. So, there we have it! Utterance of "Smile, please!" is the name and smiling is the value.

Learning continues for the infants whether it is intentionally taught or not as long as it is oft repeated. For example, my wife keeps talking to the baby explaining what she is doing. She talks about bathing, about putting on the diaper, about food that she is feeding, etc. Such oft-repeated conversations (and even actions) register in the child, even though it was not really meant as a learning. This could be because children at this age have a tremendous amount of grasping power. Think of it as a brand new computer which does everything (like booting!) so fast. It is only with age that worries and thoughts occupy the brain more; add natural wear and tear of the body and we get a PC that takes over 5 mins to boot! :-)

So one fine day, when we simply asked our daughter to get diaper (heretofore she was never explicitly shown what a diaper is), she promptly crawled on all fours to the place where we keep diapers. This shocked us! Her brain had mapped the word "diaper" to diaper automatically. Similarly, "Twinkle, twinkle, little star" meant  making an action like twinkling stars using fingers, "Tummy" meant patting her tiny stomach, "Shake hand" meant putting out her hand to be shaken, "High-Five" meant , well, High Five, "Nose" meant showing her nose in her own unique way, "Head" meant patting her head, "Teeth" meant baring her mouth to show the 2 teeth (!), "Kiss" meant opening mouth and coming near the face of the asker(!), "Frock" meant showing her dress, "Hi" ("bye" and "tata" too) meant spreading the palms of her hand and shaking, "Water" meant looking at her water bottle and expecting someone to put it in her mouth, "Poojyaya Raghavendraya" ("Vittala, Vittala, Govinda" too) meant clasping palms together and looking at the idols, "Clap, clap, clap" meant bringing the palms together, "Aeroplane" meant seeing something high up in the air, "Gubbacchi" meant seeing birds, "Moon" meant seeing that bright thing in the sky, "Thaala" means bringing her hand down to her thighs imitating Carnatic Classical music pundits(!), "Dance" meant shaking her body, "Amma" meant seeing mother, "Pappa" meant seeing father, "Paavani" meant seeing herself in the mirror, so on and so forth.

I didn't intend this post to show case Paavani's development but it looks like it has just become just that! So be it. I couldn't stop myself! But coming back to the nub of it, it just goes to show how our brain stores all the information as name-value pairs.

Thinking more on these lines, it becomes slightly complicated later on. Take English for example. The word "Lead" will first mean the pencil-end for school-goers. Then, couple of grades later, this will take another meaning of guiding. Couple of grades later, this will take another meaning of a chemical substance [No, pencil lead and chemical lead are two different things]. This kind of complicates the brain. That is perhaps why it is often said that English is a funny language! Now how can indexing work when we cannot define a primary key?! Once indexing is broken, the brain starts slowing down. So we humans have ourselves to blame for our own brain degeneration! Why couldn't we invent new words instead of overloading same words?!

Well, I have said all that I wished to say in this post. I only wish that my Tontu's brain continues to be as sharp and grasping as ever!

:-)

Cubicle Hang-out

During my first US visit between 2005 and 2006, I did not have an office cubicle of my own. I was sitting in a lab-turned cubicle which hosted from 2 to more than 10 people at one time depending on the projects that came and went. Although I felt 'left-out' of having a cubicle of my own, I grew fond of my lab-like office setting. It was nice to share the place with others - to talk of this and that when work became monotonous, although it sometimes felt congested and difficult to concentrate when you can hear every single syllable of your neighbors despite their efforts to be soft. Apart from this, my place was a 'hangout' for lot of people. Perhaps it was because I was in a lab and not in a cubicle where one has to talk in whispers, people used to stop by and have chit-chat for some time everyday. When one person has stopped by, others used to join and before long, there were a swarm of people gossipping, making plans for the long weekend and yapping in general. I liked this setting although at times it was annoying when I had lot of work to do.

Then in 2007 and 2008, when I was in India, I was amongst a relatively new team of about 20 folks amongst which I was one of the seniors. So most folks used to look up to me for resolutions, for guidance and when they became closer, started stopping by for general passing of time. It was not long before my cubicle became very much akin to my US cubicle. My cubicle became the favorite hang-out place for planning weekend getaways, for parties and for general chit-chat. We spent lot of time talking about getting away from software engineering and taking up other kinds of businesses such as agriculture, mining, schooling and we were all in the same frequency of discussion and hence it was enjoyable taking absolute rot knowing fully well that we were all building castles in the air. But it was fun. I enjoyed the adhoc gatherings.

After being so used to this position of 'center of attention' (literally) for last 4.5 years, it came as a quite a jolt to experience the pre-2005 era when I was all by myself in my own cubicle and immersed completely in work from start of day to end of day. From mid-2009 till date, I have not had the opportunity to experience this bonhomieness. I was in US again for about 7 months in 2009 and my cubicle (again a lab-turned cubicle) was in an isolated location.  When I was back in India in 2010, I got the same cubicle I had in 2007 and 2008 but it was a new team and it did not gel as well as the 2007 team. Now, back in US, my first 'real' cubicle in US (finally) is conveniently located but, again, it is a new team and not many know me well enough nor have time to hang out.

So, just the other day, for the briefest of the periods during the day, when about 4-5 people were over at my cubicle yapping in general, talking of this and that, I had this nostalgia of the good old days between 2005 and 2008. Sigh. How I miss those days...

Missing the Sign-Board

To exit out of the Boston airport’s Terminal E, international passengers ought to cross an inner door, bear slight right to cross an outer door to reach the waiting family members, and from there, the exit is but a few steps. If positioned correctly, waiting family members can see through the outer door up until the inner door, and the steady stream of passengers flowing through the inner and outer doors.

I was so positioned that I had this exact view as detailed above. I was waiting for my mom. This was her third visit to US but it was her first alone. So I was slightly tensed. Plus I was blaming myself for having reached the airport late lest I had missed her and she had gone wandering in search of me.

That being my state of mind, I saw an elderly Indian couple cross the inner door and stand hesitantly wondering what to do next. A few steps to their right was the outer door – the correct one – but if they took left instead of bearing right, there was another exit at the end of the corridor – an infrequently used exit but an exit nevertheless which did not lead to waiting family members.

I started wondering how dumb can one be. I mean there they were standing few feet from a door clearly marked as ‘Exit’, and they were standing there dumbly wondering whether to go right or left. This elderly Indian couple’s decision was crucial because if they took left and took the infrequently used exit, then passengers behind them will blindly follow them. Quite a chump the waiting family members will look if the relatives come up from behind and start thumping on their backs!

Thankfully, few impatient passengers rushed past them, took the right outer door and ran to waiting kith and kin. Seeing this, the couple – now assured of the trodden path – came out too. I was glad that now there was no confusion created.

A few moments later, I saw my mom come out of the exit and after the usual chit-chat of how the security guards in Paris had thrown her home-made masala powders, we made way to the airport exit. Just before we exited, I expressed my desire to visit the rest room. Not to miss the moment of seeing my mater coming through unscathed after a ghastly 24 hour air journey and also to allow her to experience the joy of seeing a waiting son, I had held up the urge to relieve myself however tough it may have been. Now that the goals having been achieved and the rest room being a few feet away, the Nature exerted Herself.

Asking mom to stay put, I entered the nearest rest room entrance. Imagine my surprise when I saw an elderly lady walking in the opposite direction! Such a simple action as a person of the opposite gender walking in the opposite direction while I am entering a supposedly gentleman’s haven fired up a million questions. The brain and nervous system – being as it is – is not used to react heretofore to such a situation in its past 3 decades of operation, and it was at a total loss. Brain said “What’s going on here?!” and Nervous system replied “I am damned if I know!” At a situation like this, when brain and nervous system were looking at one another, the Ego raised its ugly head and started laughing at the lady. It started spreading the message that the lady had inadvertently entered into gentleman’s room and was hence retreating back. But a moment later Reason raised its hand and thumped the Ego’s head and split it into two. I was, in fact, in the lady’s room!

Assuming wrongly that the door nearest to me was Men’s room, I had sauntered in without even seeing the signboard. I murmured to the lady who was seeing me perplexedly that I was sorry I had entered the Lady’s room by mistake and I too retreated along with her. I was not sure if I heard a few folks giggling at me but the thing that was on my mind when I headed towards Men’s room was the incident that had occurred a few minutes ago of me critically thinking of the elderly Indian couple’s hesitation at the outer door:

How dumb can one be.

B to 6

So, I got on this elevator at the Basement.
There were 2 guys with me.
I pressed the button 6 - the top floor of the building where I stay.
One guy pressed 2 while the other guy pressed 5.
The doors closed and the elevator started.
It stopped at Level 1 and 3 more people got in.
They pressed buttons 3 and 4.
As the elevator made its way towards Level 6, stopping at every level of the floor, one thing dawned to me.
For the first time in my life, and perhaps the only time ever, I traveled in an elevator that stopped at 5 Levels before I could get off.
It is not everyday one sees 5 out of 7 buttons pressed in an elevator and the elevator stopping at the remaining 2 levels too.

:-)