Asexuality

So, House: Season 8 Ep 9
There is an asexual couple - not celibate, because celibacy is a choice - and House, of course, is intrigued. He bets 100 bucks with Wilson that he will prove that the patient is not asexual.
And of course, he does. The guy was asexual because of a tumour, blah blah which interfered with his libido and his member's ability to sit up - and his loving girlfriend, and then wife said that she too is asexual.
All's well that ends well huh...

Wilson: "I think they were happy, even if it was based on lies..."
House: "Most happiness is."

However, the episode was more interesting because of a patient who had Alzhiemer's. His wife takes care of him and is emotionally attracted to another guy, which makes sense, but she continues with the marriage - may be out of duty, may be out of love, who knows...

Anyway, towards the end, she says that she has had enough. And yes, one would right? What's the point of taking after someone who reboots his memory every 15 minutes or 1 hour and barely remembers you? And what if you can't form lasting memories with that person? Why should one be stuck to another just because of a religious custom, social dogma or a legal shackle?

Fund

So I have started what can be termed as a proprietary fund and at times when I think back at what I have been through and what I am currently going through, especially the last 4-5 months, I feel fortunate for having access to such an opportunity. I already see myself developing in odd ways. However, the risks are difficult to comprehend.
As an employee, one's issues are competitive and seniority oriented. One looks forward to promotions, appreciation, beating another person in the team/ company, getting recognition from a senior but is never too worried because diligence tends to pay off.
As an owner and as a fund manager who is responsible for a corpus, everyday is an intellectual and mental struggle which is also very rewarding because of the freedom and control and lack of fear. However, the risks are such that I could not have comprehended them a year ago. Here I am, sitting on a corpus which needs to be invested, but I am slothy about it because it needs to be deployed qualitatively and carefully - not rapidly for the quick buck. The strain of sitting on cash is quite something. The strain of waiting for an investee company to perform is also difficult to adjust to because in a normal business, one is more in control of what is happening whereas here, one has to hope for the investee management to do good work. 

A Stolen Essay

" Today, I thought of how much I detest what this city has become. And then I thought that the standard of living has improved and is still better than those in many other cities.

Sadly, humanity, civility and simplicity have been lost.
I want to fight for these things but find it simpler to overlook them and potentially leave this city and may be this country. "

Rumination

Europe has changed me for the better (or less worse). Today, I attended a lecture on 'superparticles' which could be a part of particle physics; may be for the first time I sat for a lecture without the compulsion to learn and remember and that made the lecture quite enjoyable...
I read about Sufjan Stevens, Casimir Pulaski, Nick Drake, Modigliani and I see the horror that this society has transformed into...
I still thank my friend for telling me about Into the Wild because it made me sincerely question materialism. Yes, yes ... I'm not a complete disaster yet (or would I be called a victor?).
We still have artists and brilliant scientists in our midst (not so much in our midst, but you get the vibe...) however, they don't seem to be as strong as earlier. They seem weak, succumbing to the lure of materialism which is understandable but deplorable for society as a whole.

Yes, a decade from now people might appreciate some artists whom we don't right now but I don't see a painter, a sculptor, a writer or a poet then... I see successful bands which will have made people happy not through their art but through their canvas.

I said that Europe has been beneficial because I saw a weird joy in people - as the french say "joie de vivre" which means "the joy of living". I see in India people who are old at 25 years of age where the only form of them being young is partying and boozing (extreme generalization).

Next week I'm going for a contemporary dance performance at the NCPA. Will I like it? I don't know but it's a brilliant mode of escapism.


I love the world of particle physics and quantum physics - particularly because it is so difficult to imagine some of the things postulated or proven.
2 galaxies colliding 4 billion light years away?
A very small amount of energy in daily life, such as 1TeV, which is difficult to 'create' or 'capture'...
Weakly Interacting Massive Particles which could hold the key to finding a 'theory of everything'. For the record, experiments are underway in a mine where supercooled Germanium crystals are used to capture the faintest of vibrations from particles such as WIMPs.

Take a step back my friend and you will see how inconsequential our lives are...
We live for 60-90 years.
We pursue money and affection.
We are heartbroken and we feel loved.
We sleep less, we sleep too much, we smile too little, we are serious and not as jovial as we ought to be...
You ask me why I loved Into the Wild?
Here's why:



"So many people live within unhappy circumstances and yet will not take the initiative to change their situation because they are conditioned to a life of security, conformity, and conservatism, all of which may appear to give one peace of mind, but in reality nothing is more dangerous to the adventurous spirit within a man than a secure future. The very basic core of a man's living spirit is his passion for adventure. The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun."
— Chris McCandless

"The core of mans' spirit comes from new experiences."
— Chris McCandless

7 minutes to write this post...

As an amateur and largely ignorant human it's quite grounding to read about the universe.
The nearest quasar, for example, is at the least 780 million light years away.
A light year is the distance that light would cover in one year which amounts to approx. 10 trillion kilometers.
A distance such as this is almost impossible to relate to.

Another thought: Everything we look at is the past. Because light takes a finite amount of time to reach the human eye, whatever we see has happened in the past.
It is insignificant in daily life but, for example, the sun we see is as it was 8 minutes ago. Similarly, when we look at the oldest quasars in the universe - approximated at 28 billion light years away - we are looking at that which existed a really long time ago, probably at the beginning of the universe (if the universe did indeed have a 'beginning').

The hypothesis behind the existence of a blackhole is quite intriguing. Earth is a small planet and therefore has a very small escape velocity - 11.2 km/s. The sun has a larger mass and therefore its escape velocity is estimated at 617.5 km/s. The hypothesis that Feynman came up with was that there could possibly be a large enough mass (or gravitational force) that would not let even light escape. Escape velocity higher than 300000 km/s.

Information from Wiki and from 'Universe in a nutshell' - Stephen Hawking. Why do these things intrigue me? Because once in a while, I like to take a step back and look at humans. Hawking said something to the effect of: We should not try to find extra-terrestrial lifeforms because the odds are that they will be more advanced than us and possibly hostile. The future for humans lies in space because the Earth will one day be too small a place for humans.

I just wrote about quasars being 780 million light years away. We can confidently say that humans have developed themselves quite rapidly in the past 2000 years. It is not plausible to discount the existence of other lifeforms even 10000 years ahead of us, let alone millions of years ahead of us.

Calling time a dimension puts a new twist to all that we worry about because in the grand scheme of things everything is quite irrelevant.
What is also questionable is that which we assume to be real and why reality should even matter to us.

With this post I can say that I have come a full circle. Questioning reality has been my most fruitless pass-time. Questioning purpose and daily illusions can also be added to the prior sentence.

Special

I write in a diary. At the last page of my diary, I have a cut-out of an article that was published in Times Life Sunday April 12, 2009.
I kept that article because it encapsulates a lot that is dysfunctional in society as we see it evolving. I have had the luxury of studying in the US for a year and I did not see the same emotions there, but I do see them in Mumbai. In short, people believe they are special and they ought to be doing something better than what they are going towards or are currently doing.
It also tells us of how simple life ought to be and how complex we tend to make in pursuit of that which is never static - happiness.

Hubris

There are times when we are confident, when there is a spring in our step, when our head is slightly raised high and an attitude creeps in... Those times are good, because it's not often that we feel that way. But once in a while, the confidence gains permanence and that gives rise to a peak; a peak from where it is easy to fall down and from where the fall is hard. The pinnacle is not an issue, getting down is.
Once we fail to look within, continually, we develop a sense of self-esteem; a sense that is, at times, baseless.
"We are the all-singing, all-dancing crap of the world." - People utter this sentence often, trying to sound cool that they liked such a weird movie, but rarely do they realise the different connotations of this statement.
Pride is good, but it should be largely independent of external forces. Just because you are good at something, does not imply that you deserve something.
We deserve nothing. Happenstance is oft overlooked and there is very little that we have worked for. Remember, justness is a human creation; we have come to believe that life is a natural progression based on meritocracy.
"We are the all-singing, all-dancing crap of the world." We are nothing, and what we are here for is to try and exist or to try and prove ourselves (to whom?).
Hubris shall lead to your fall; I suffer from it, and I shall fall, for I am human too.

Take No Logi(c)

I wish, at times, technology had not driven humans to being slaves. No surprises, no astonishment. We live with it each day and nobody is too far away. But still, people are far away. And people are growing less fond of each other. I chat through the web at times, and wonder whether I am chatting with my real friend or is it some artificial intelligence at the other end. Technology, if you think about it, has made everything fake. Emotions are perceived more than they would have been some time ago. Dependence on the internet, the news, the people, the friends, the irrelevant, the curiosity. Nothing is real and yet everything is closer than it ever was. But we all know how this argument pans out. Too many things are possible now, that would not have been possible earlier. This is a useless post, but serves as a reminder of where we are right now. I believe that slowly, there will be a tendency for humans to start escaping civilization, if only for a bit. I know I want to. Looking forward to my 24-28 hour ordeal of getting from Champaign to Mumbai.

Decisions and Fear

I think to myself - too often and too much for my own good.
I thought the other day that it completely reasonable to assume that I will not get a job in the US after MSF, nor will I get a job anywhere else.
In which case, I will be going back to India.
What then?
The idea of being away from this field that I love, is sad.
There will definitely be pressure to work with my Dad and I will do my best not to work there.
Then again, will it be possible to shun a ready, stable and strong financially business for ambitions?
It scares me.
I believe in myself - in terms of my capacity to resist pressure and in terms of my potential in this field.
I could fail, but the chances of my success based on my understanding of myself are very high.
It shall be a joyous ride.

The road ahead - 7 months and less

Time flies by and I miss you each day. How did things come to this and where shall things go from here? I sit here as I see the sunny sky and I look for my purpose. There is nothing in my head and I cry to myself. I cry to myself as I long for sleep. I am deprived of joy and crave for a high. My heart burns now, as I see things that are not really real. It is all in my head and may be I go nowhere. All that is there is pretense. Eventually, everything pans out well methinks. However, I cannot help but whine. For now, I believe there are 2 broad things that I need to attain and those 2 things ought to make me stable in my outlook. This is what makes happiness a pursuit. It's all about a hope and I have made no contingencies. I am scared of what things will be like if I don't attain these 2 things. Then again, memories are short and life has a way of paving a road. A few tears here and there, and I should be alright.

Detours

Judgments about people and their behaviour is - well - resourceful. It allows one's mind to function more clearly. Judging one's own behavior is also fruitful. A friend asked me 2 days ago - "How is it like on the other side?"
I said, "O, it is nice. . . the dark sky looks nice"
He said, " No, no, not that way - - how it like being, umm, antosocial. . . ?"
I smiled and said, "Well, it is uplifting, depressing and grounding. You can feel lonely after a while - but all in all, it is a highly interesting feeling."

It is just that when you look at people with a different set of eyes and think of them as puppets or machines or cartoon characters or aliens it is highly amusing.
I am not THAT antisocial; I just try to have a different view so I can pass judgments and for me it is a beautiful feeling. Human behaviour intrigues me to say the least and looking at people and their mad world gives me a smile.

Self Doubt - that is what a friend of mine wrote about and I cursed him because those 2 words capture what I have gone through especially in the past 2 months. The time that I have had to spend with Tirath and the movies I have seen and the lyrics I have heard and the music I have heard and the people I have seen and the new friends I have - I have digested all of this in a different manner.

Evolution is a loosely handled world and I believe I may be flaky to say that I have been evolving esp. in the past 3-6 months.

I never thought I would want to plan a getaway like the one that is in my head right now. Planning a trip to Goa or Kerala end May or beginning of June with Tirath, Tiru and Tir.

Something that is so disorienting about the days I go through nowadays that I need to look at these days from far away. I can do this because I have the luxury of doing this.
Ignorant people I envy because - "Dude, lets go to Goa dude! Babes and beach and music and freedom - dude its gonna be awesome dude!"
Aaaaaah - Alas. I am not to be.

I may be sounding all ' high and almighty ' as my friend likes to mock me. Braaaahh - -I am far from it. I am too crazy right now - that is it. I am trying to find meaning to this life and all that it may hold when I should realise that life is just meant to be lived and enjoyed; not to be assessed and mulled over.
Then again - the way I am living right now seems like the only acceptable option.