My Knowledge of Chennai

It all started a month ago when I had a bet with my friend on which station would lead us to Chennai Egmore. We were using the MRTS. I lost the bet of course and thats when I realized that I knew nothin about Chennai (By the way its been 5 months since I have been in Chennai).

My knowledge is relative to Matscience which is near to Indira nagar station ("not Kasturibai nagar not Thiruvanmayur but INDIRA NAGAR STATION!!!!! " This is what you will have to constantly repeat to the auto walas if you take an auto from Adayar).

There are two main multiplexes in Chennai. One at City Center which is INOX and one Satyam movies near Thousand lights. So if you wanna use the MRTS (we use the train which is by the way the best way to travel around Chennai), you get down at Lighthouse and walk from there (a short walk) to city center where you will find INOX. For going to Satyam on the other hand you need to get down at Chintadripet station and from there take an auto which shouldnt cost more than 30. A direct auto costs around 100 during the day and 150 during night (You will definitely need to bargain though).

Oh! I almost forgot. Say you have to go to Chennai Central or Chennai Egmore. There are three stations which cause one hell of a confusion (and this is the reason I lost the bet) Park, Park Town and Fort. I have finally figured it out. To go to Central you have to go to Park Town and walk up or go to Park and the station is right across. To go to Egmore you need to get down at Fort and take another train. 

And just last week I found out that to go to Marina beach, you again need to get down at Lighthouse and walk the opposite direction to city center. The very famous Queen's Mary college and Stella Mary's college (if you see tamil movies you would know why these are so important) are on that same road connectin city center and marina beach.

As of now this all I know about Chennai. More exploration after the semester end!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Frustration :x:x

A few days ago, (on the suggestion of one of the faculty here at my insti) I had decided that I would continuously sit for like 8 hours and work on character tables... It is a bit abstract but I thought what the hell I can do it.....
First thing in the morning what do I see, our sink was broken, so had to brush in the kitchen.....
Then went for breakfast and there was supposed to be pav bhaji!!!!!
Naturally i was excited... I was waitin in the mess for almost an hour doin nothin as the smell didnt allow me to do anythin .....
Then it was almost time for class mech class and then quantum mech ...
So it was 1 ... Time for lunch ...
And time passed so quickly I didnt realize it was 2. So finally I thought chuck it, lets forget about sitting continuously for 8 hours and just try and finish the character table thing ....
As soon as I reached my office I checked the insti mail and found that since we had completely pissed off our math phy prof, (due to some ppl who didnt attend the lectures) he was planning to make it a reading course and wanted to meet us at 4.30pm at his room. Next there was a mail from the dean and he wanted to discuss this issue (the math phy prof had sent a copy of that mail to the dean...) and wanted a meeting at 3.30pm in our regular classroom. So I completely lost my mind!!!
So I thought I will work till 3 .....
And people kept knockin on the door looking for someone or the other!!! So no work!
After all the frustration and wasting time, finally at 5 I sat and it was again tea time ......
So went for tea... Then by 6 I had to go to buy fruits and came back by 7 after which a zillion phone calls .... People didnt find any other time to call!!!!
And then the day ended by dinner and a peaceless sleep!
Moral of the story: Either dont plan anythin or if you plan for somethin just get lost somewhere !!!!!

Reservation

A few days back, I was having a chat with few of my friends at the insti about "Reservation". I wanted to make a point which I couldn't due to some interruption in our conversation (It was almost 3am and the mosquitoes were having an early morning snack!!!). I would like to share my point here.
To do that let me tell you about a girl in my class. She was from a SC caste(creamy layer). When the rest of the class used to pay roughly Rs5,000 as our fees for M.Sc., she used to pay just Rs500. She was not so good in studies but did a great job at mugging up stuff. So she scored a decent grade. She was not interested in pursuing a career in physics and had joined M.Sc. only because she hadn't got a seat in MBA. She was the most well dressed and fashionable person in our class. You would understand why if I tell you her background which goes like this. Her father was working in a government job and was earning a decent 2.5 lakh per annum. She had two brothers, both had finished their MBA in good colleges and were software engineers working in big companies (so you can imagine their pay were of the order of 10 lakh per annum). I think I forgot to say her brothers were bachelors. They had a bunglow in their hometown. They were building an extra floor and were dealing with the agents to buy a new house as well. I think you must have pretty much gotten the picture.
Now the question that I ask myself is "does this girl deserve a scholarship?" Is it fair to the other students in the class that she was given privileges when other students who were much better academically, wanted to pursue physics and not so well to do, were struggling to make ends meet?
Reservation should be there for deserving people. It should not depend on what caste the student belongs to. Casteism is a major problem facing our country and we should try to abolish it as soon as possible.

Stage fright

Few days back in our insti we had a freshers welcome party ... My friend sings well and I had asked her to sing a song for the freshers... She agreed to that on one condition that I should sing along with her ... I agreed to sing and we chose a beautiful somewhat romantic song to sing ... Just before we got on the stage to sing I got stage fright and I was sweating like hell even though there was ac!!! I didnt want to go to the stage and sing... We had rehearsed the song and we were really sounding good together .. But once I got on the stage I got all nervous and messed up the song ... It was horrible and embarrasing ... After that song there were other songs sung by some little children and looking at them I thought these children have no stage fright !!! They just go on and say what they wanna say ... Nothing in the world ever stops them .. They dont think what others may think ... They dont think how people are looking starngely at you as though you are some alien from outer space ... I can safely say they just dont think... They are not shy to talk to people ... Why is it that when we become adults all the fear creeps in? Why are we so conscious? Why do we have to do some special things to impress people who may or may not be part of our life? Why cant we be so free as the bird and fly? Why cant we be free from all our fears ? I see the topic has deviated from the heading well I am just writing everything thats going on in my head right now !!! Hope i get the answers to my questions and soon !!!

Today we had two seminars presented by the profs in our institute. One was on complex systems and the other on quantum field theory. Why is it difficult to present talks on string theory in ppt? I wonder...
Questions like
"How does the cell know when to die?"
"How are the signals transmitted through our body?"
"How is the system able to distinguish between the actual signal passed and the noise that may arise due to other signals?"
"How does the brain work?"
intrigue me...
Trying to answer these question we land on the ground of the basic particles that build up to make molecules or higher and complex systems.
How is it possible that in the process of building it adds life to the system?
What is a living thing exactly?
What is knowledge?
Ohhhhh the questions triggered by the talk are infinitely many..........

Questions

Today looking at one of my seniors i was remembered of the poem "solitary reaper" by William Wordsworth. He was roaming around in the campus all alone. And then I thought why at all would someone need anyone? Like if you fall sick, you would definitely appreciate greatly the presence of someone who takes care of you. From where does this feeling of loneliness actually come? What kind of programming has gone into this feeling? I don't know..................

Quote

Quote for the day
"There is many a slip between the cup and the lip "

Let it go free

This is something i have grown to believe in.
"If you love something let it go free. If it comes back to you then its yours forever, but if it doesnt then it never was yours in the first place".