Heroes are born in times of turmoil

An item on the front page of Wikipedia reminded me that on the 30th of January (same day as today) but in 1948...... that's just days before Sri Lanka regained independence from the British Empire, In New Delhi, India, a man (not worth remembering his name) wished Mahatma Gandhi well, and then shot him to death.

That was the sad end of a great man, who introduced the concepts of "satyagraha", "passive resistance" and " non-corporation" to the world. It's not easy to describe him, so I won't go into that.

But, I've been reading Nelson Mandela's autobiography "Long walk to freedom", and the discrimination Gandhi faced while in South Africa is confirmed by the incidents Mandela describe there.

Both men were thrown out of a train (on different occasions obviously!). Gandhi because he refused to move out of the first class compartment since he had a valid ticket. And Mandela simply because he was black.

Both were sent to prison, and endured severe discrimination. (Apartheid was not in place till 1948, so Gandhi escaped that, which was designed to legally discriminate the blacks and the coloureds from the whites. Yeah.. there were separate legal acts that deprived them of their rights.)

And the ironic thing is that both of them were lawyers, who were very backwards at early ages (in his autobiography Gandhi recalls his first court case, when it was his chance to speak up as lawyer, he got up slowly, found out he couldn't utter a word, and sat back down again) And both men were pushed into the political world due to their experiences in South Africa.

Finally India gained independence in 1947 (Gandhi refused to become president) and in 1994 Mandela became the first black president of South Africa.

Happy ending....

But, the struggle is far from over, even today it's sad that racial discrimination is still a part of our society.

Australian Open

Roger Federer won the men's finals last night as expected, but I was hoping that Fernando Gonzales would win it, well, not a very realistic hope, but... he did put up a very good fight! But still Federer was simply unreal! I can't understand how any person could smash a ball over 200 kmph without even flinching a single muscle in his face!!

Serena Williams won a well deserved Women's finals the day before, which was a nice comeback for her.

So, the 2007 Australian Open is over. However, the cricket world cup is coming up in March in the West Indies!!! So there's always something to look forward to!!

Research proposal submitted! Yepee!

Finally, finally... finally!!!

After making all the corrections, additions, subtractions etc, and printing....... well, one page - the time plan was too big for A4 and there weren't any Legal size papers around - only A3, but the printer wouldn't take A3, so after running back and forth between the main lab (printer) and the resouce room (papers) had to cut down A3 to the size of Legal to get that printed.

Next the bureaucratic work! 10 pages of questions to be answered, about this and that, with 5 people to sign (one person out for lunch, another at a meeting, the other on leave, the other on the 5th floor!!$@&#!!)

Half the day wasted on that! But the good news is that it's finished now.
Cool! let's see...... back to the journal database!!!

Supervisor's Democracy

My research proposal is almost done! (almost - because here nothing is certain, you think you've finished with something, only to find out from your boss that there's something more that you can add)

The tv in the main lab is always turned on these days because the Australian Open is going on. It's the quarter finals now, Federer and Roddick are already in the semi finals and so are Sharapova and Serena Williams, the other 4 will be decided today. Our supervisor doesn't seem to think that the tv belongs in the lab (even though it's in the dining area). However, he doesn't object much to tennis as much as he objects cricket. Probably because he can't understand the rules of cricket. So if there's a cricket match going on, he takes great pleasure in turning it off, despite the groans and objections from all the others. That's about 8 people vs 1, and they call it democracy.

Crime and Punishment

Been trying to figure out this messy optics problem for 3 days now, finally I think I just broke the code, so it shouldn't be too hard from now on. Just to take a break thought of writing about the last book I read, "Crime and Punishment" by Fyodor Dostoyevsky.

The book has been a revolution in literature at the time. The story develops around a young and talented university student in St. Petersburg (in former USSR) who, finding himself in extreme financial trouble, is pushed into desperate means of finding money. I.e. committing the crime of murdering a money lender to rob her off her money.

The crime leads to a life long battle with his conscience, which seems to be a much cruel punishment than if he had gone to prison. The story deals with the psychology of the criminal, at times regretting what he did and yet again justifying his actions, by some lame excuse.

The beauty of the story lies in the way the author unfolds the events. It makes the reader feel like he/she is part of the story. It is said that during the time the book was first published, readers often found themselves depressed for days after reading it.

It is also ironic that Dosteyevsky wrote the book during a time he himself was in financial ruin, this together with the experiences he had during the time he had been in prison, may have contributed to the success of the book.

The pursuit of happyness

Yesterday we went to see the new movie "The pursuit of happyness" (that's happyness with a 'y').

The movie is based on the true story of Chris Gardner, a homeless man with no steady income, raising a five year old son single handedly and struggling to make ends meet. But his determination at creating a better life for his son (which he didn't get from his father) keeps him fighting for life. The film is a 'from rags to riches' story filled with heart touching scenes and a lot of inspiration.

The real Chris Gardner walks across the screen at the closing episode of the movie.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_gardner

Will Smith who plays the character of Chris Gardner in the movie, on the Oprah Winfrey show commented about how he felt when he met the real Chris Gardner, he compared it to the time when he met Nelson Mandela, "(when u come face to face with such a person) you get this overwhelming feeling, of how small you are, but at the same time, how big you can be"

Imagination is more important than Knowledge

It's Monday again. Had a relaxing weekend reading "Crime & Punishment" by Dostoyevsky. Still some more to go. Went swimming on Saturday but was mostly at home.

But now back to work. Forget the relaxing times, it's time to bury your head in the books, or does it have to be that way?

The funny thing is that some of the greatest discoveries in science were actually made "out of the field", either by accident or when the person was not really thinking about his work. The concept of gravitation hit the mind of Newton when he was relaxing under an apple tree. Rontgen bought some rock material and wrapped it up in a photosensitive plate, and later found some weird patterns in the film, and not knowing what, he named them as X-rays. Alexander Fleming discovered Penicilline while doing some other experiment (which was not successful).
The structure of Benzene which baffled scientists for years was resolved after a Stradonitz had a bizzare dream. Maxwell first thought about electromagnetism when he was up in a mountain, and a lightning strike caused his compass to run wild. and the list goes on.

However, I guess that it doesn't mean that you should just sit around until something strikes you. If someone else encountered what Newton did under an apple tree, what might have probably crossed his mind would have been to eat the apple, but Newton had an inquisitive mind, and he went far beyond what was visible. And so did Maxwell and many others. So, to come up with bright ideas and new discoveries you still have to do the ground work while keeping an open mind. And as Einstein said, "Imagination is more important than knowledge".

Diagnosis Unknown

I've been having this annoying toothache for sometime now. It started off as a toothache, and made me stay at home for a week (about 3 months earlier) with an excruciating pain. I hate toothaches, they are unbearable, not like headaches and stomach aches, even Shakespear had a poem about it in "Much ado about nothing"
For there was never yet philosopher
That could endure the toothache patiently.

So anyway, I was worried that I would have to visit a dentist. But after 2 days at home, I realized who the real culprit was, Phlegm! With this dry weather, it has dried up and is causing me the toothache. So I turned to my home made remedies; steaming, drinking hot water, ginger tea, lemon with pepper etc. And the toothache went away, leaving the phlegm. Next week I was back at work.

But unfortunately that wasn't the last of it. It just kept coming back, and for about the last couple of weeks, it appeared and disappeared as it pleased, much to my annoyance. Finally I realized that home remedies are not going to chase it off completely, and after much persuasion from Vishuddhi, today I called up the University medical centre and made an appointment. Luckily there was time available today itself.

So went there. After much examination and discussion, the Doc told me what I had already assumed; Very mild form (or early stage) of Sinusitis. Prescribed me an antibiotic (I'm not really keen on taking pills, still no choice) and a nasal spray to keep the nose hydrated from this dry weather. Cool! and goes without saying, lots of water to drink.

Back to work!

The vacation has come to an end too soon. So, back to earth and back to work. Re-search! Searching for the best way to put up a telescope or a lidar reciever to be precise. Finally today I thought I drafted up the perfect sketch of the set up, and was dreaming of getting down to the lab and starting hands-on work! So I went up to my supervisor feeling like the man of the moment, to update him on my findings. but just leave it to him to point out a reason why it wouldn't work!!%$@^(@?!!

Ok, so back to the desk trying to figure that out! And spend the rest of the day (or week for that matter) scrutinizing the library database, reading through "greek" research articles and Googling the entire internet trying to find the perfect solution for that problem, and when the solution is finally figured out, the whole process of why it doesn't work that way starts again. aaaah!!!

There's a nice site, quite popular among my research group, with a huge collection of comics concerning phd students.

http://www.phdcomics.com/

But a word of advice to those of you who are considering doing a PhD in the future; Better leave the site un-visited.

Monarto Wild Life Park

On Sunday we went to see the Monarto Wild Life Park which is about 80km from the city. We left early hoping to spend the whole day there. The drive there was pretty much uneventful through rough terrain. The Australian landscape a little further from a populated city is practically a desert. It's not difficult to believe that it's the driest inhabited continent in the world.

The Monarto park is spread over a large area of land, most of which is still under development, even the road leading to the park is still unpaved. And the temperature was 39 Celsius which was torture.

However, all that was worth the service and what the park had to offer. We were booked on to the first safari bus at 10:30. The $20 price of the ticket ($16 for me as I’m a student) includes everything other than food.

The bus ride lasted more than an hour, where we got to see motionless Giraffes, lazy lions, and cheetahs, Bysons, zebras, antelopes, rhinos, camels, ostriches etc etc.

There were separate sessions where the keepers of the animals talked about the animals. We missed the meerkat keeper’s talk, but we went to see the giraffe and rhino keeper’s talks. The keepers were very enthusiastic about their job. They simply adored their animals and seemed to consider that they’ve got the best job in the world, which was really nice. The rhino was huge (more than 2 tons) and the keeper who was a small lady loved to talk about him, calling him “good boy” and rubbing his big belly.

We spent the whole day there and decided to pay a visit to Murray bridge which was just a couple of kms down the same way. After just one wrong turn, we got there. The bridge was long over the Murray river, but nothing particular to visit.

Overall, it was a really nice experience, specially if you are interested in wild animals and safaris.