blah-017: The Vagabond

Give to me the life I love,
  Let the lave go by me,
Give the jolly heaven above
  And the byway nigh me.
Bed in the bush with stars to see,
  Bread I dip in the river -
There's the life for a man like me,
  There's the life for ever.

Let the blow fall soon or late,
  Let what will be o'er me;
Give the face of earth around,
  And the road before me.
Wealth I ask not, hope nor love,
  Nor a friend to know me;
All I ask, the heaven above
  And the road below me.

...

--

from Stevenson's The Vagabond

Life update: have been in a village named Bannerghatta in the City of Guards since 22nd June: enjoyable and full of fascinating people. Might be here for 2 years.

A few worlds apart

The pursuit for testing the limits of my 150 pounds of meat, bones, cartilages and neurons, often results in me reading pieces like these (and often no ensuing test of limits)

Somewhere, there’s a guy who did it in half the time it took you.  He suffered.  Plasma forced its way into his lungs, causing him to hack on repeat.  He choked down bile halfway through, and ended on his back, pupils dilated to the size of dimes. While you were walking around, telling your friends how hardcore your workout was, Guy Number Two was still collapsed, the prospect of driving home as daunting as climbing K2 during a snowstorm. When he finally stood up, he didn’t say a word. (.. againfaster.com )

or the famous Sydney Olympics ads which celebrated humanity

too many inspiring lines .. for instance the "To be a giant" , "you can't me courage" , "you'll smile, I'll smile" or to best it all the "you're my adversary..." one ..

or the lines of Boorstin

We are.. in search of our limits. We start with a single step, but, none of us stops there. With determination, a step becomes a stride, and a stride becomes a leap. With discipline and desire, we push ourselves to new heights. When we rise to the challenge we discover new strengths, our muscles grow stronger, our minds more agile. The body responds performing its marvelous inner dance of life.  We share a design so magnificient, we can delight in movement itself. To find joy in the struggle to be our best - this is the adventure that defines the human spirit that drives us to the limit. (...)

It always strikes me as to how different a world they portray compared to the world of Sahir and Ghalib and Frost and Sakhi or for that matter how all these worlds are so far apart from the ones of Landau and Euler. Who says we have only one life and one world to live it in.

Moreover, in some sense there is such a sense of physical apodicticity , for lack of a better term,when it comes to all our endeavours physical. Something which is in strange ways analogous to the purity in Ghalib's verses or the palpable realism in Micarelli's Music from a Farther Room or Remy Zero's Somebody Save Me, or the elegance of the Lagrangian or the profundity of the Hamilton's principle.

What better proof is needed to realize how much Human spirit is in effect just a ramification of our guts and blood and bones.

Being moved and titillated by something has the often (unexpressed but definitely not ineffable) side-effect of a subtly noticeable derisive view towards things which appear evidently facile and banal to a purist. I for one, while not even a remote Crossfit purist and  who could not claim to have pushed my limits more than any average guy, find such pursuits as hypertrophy, "gymming", jogging, dieting, other associated efforts to maintain an appearance or a healthy weight ( i am referring to average people like me ..say 15-40 years old?) etc.. somehow very.. well childish to say the least. Of course only as childish as breast implants, "hall tempo", devout priests and authors who write content-less thick volumes.

--
Narcissistic miscellany follows (er. i mean other than the obvious exposition above)

I started swimming again, not to mention an ecstatic 45 m dynamic apnea without fins ( read horizontal swim under water for us laymen) -- though a pittance compared to the world record (AIDA) of 213 metres ; see a 200m(with fins) video  or this one ( without fins 25m pool), though ofcourse with a static apnea ( holding your breath) of more than 10 minutes, AIDA records would freak anybody even a bit uncommon -- along with improving my breaststroke and freestyle technique and thereby times. I am obviously way too bad a swimmer. Tom Sietas, you are the Fred Rouhling and Yang Wei of water.

Even though I have run sporadically since April, I realized today to my great relief that my aerobic capacity and lactic acid tolerance seem to have not been affected much.

--
1. just now, caught a house fly ( Musca domestica) with my thumb and fingers.. Must have been a drunk one..
2. re-visited facebook after more than 2 years. seems like sticking around for more than 2 weeks is unlikely.

Post Poll Analysis

( Inspite of the slimy title and it's slimier political undertones, this is of course about something much worse -my own narcissistic poll about my irrelevant future which i had conducted. )



A surprising 117* (sic. / sick) people voted . Since own optimistic estimate was 35, let me say i am more than shocked at the surprise voter turnout. Now as is usually the case with most elections and polls, most of the options doesn't make sense and to make it even more convoluted there were combination options resulting in people voting for some clubbed together items which they wouldn't have voted for individually in the first place.

the conclusions are as follows

• 85% think that i should not continue my sabbatical


• 51% think that i should not go to IISc


• 43 % think that i should not go to IIMB

Even though I knew that the IIM brand was a bit over rated, I am suprised to find that only 26 % really found some value in it by itself. The only way of explaining this would of course be by criticizing the weirdness of the Poll conductor (moi) and the resulting demography selected. Another notable fact is that most people who felt that i should not join IIM Bangalore or for that matter a managerial career at all, were concerned enough to actually come forward and talk to me about it. So eventhough in the numbers game IIMB wins, i believe more people really "care" about me not ending up a corporate bloodsucker or at worst screw up two years of my life doing pointless and completely irrelevant stuff (er.. haven't i been doing that for quarter a century now? ).

• 36%** think that i should not do GSoC

I still remember how ecstatic/surprised/shocked I was when i first got funded by google for my idea in the field of architectural morphology, mentored by Portland State University. I think I had walked around 3 or 4 km before coming to my senses. The fact that the news had come to my attention after around 10 days of the official date shows my expectation level. Over the next years, I had the opportunity to work with amazing people. This year when I got funded again for working with brl-cad, as grateful as i am for this amazing opportunity, I'd be lying if i said it had the same sense of euphoria as the first time. It is true that i learned much more in the last year than any other time. More than anything else, there is the apprehension of whether I would be able to do justice to my own milestones and plan. Add to that two computers failing on you by frying up, things are not exactly very convivial.

Some other obvious facts
    The loser was of course IISc at 10 % . In spite of being the most elite research institute in India and not to mention an amalgalm of a lot of brains and talent.. seems like it is not so much of a crowd-puller . Either that or the voter populace really hates me. Even after being coupled with GSoC we have only 28% who seem to favour IISc. My dear friend gurra's elementary explanation for these votes are the people who are in the waiting list at B, further showing the apprehensions about the value? of a research position in Indian academia.
     The single largest winner was the option of being at IIM Bangalore along with IISc and GSoC ( never mind almost an impossible thing to handle ) with 31 %.
     Coupled with other things - either gsoc alone or gsoc+iimb - IISc has achieved a 49 % support.

Next Step
The logical move would be to wait out for a month ( *** June 22nd is the registration at IIM Bangalore) and work on the gsoc implementation as much as I can ( hopefully the laptop returns  in a couple of days) If nothing happens I would be just another guy who ended up beneath the pergolas at IIM Bangalore purely out of indecision / not having anything else to do ( which if I am not mistaken is a pretty sizeable portion of every batch there. ) I sincerely hope that I don't screw up anybody's life in there ( that would be the egotistic narcissism cropping up .) and equally importantly not get kicked out considering my Kharagpur attendance records.

Further facts regarding what would happen at Bangalore, for instance would i still have control over my breath , only time will tell. Regarding IISc, I still have time to decide and probably too little time to give. Things I am most excited about Bangalore in "roughly no particular" order.

1. Friends
2. Sports climbing
3. Nice ground/weather to run.
4. Possibly better swimming pools ( which won't burn my pockets ? )
5. Better access to gymnastics facilities?
6. Drama (Theatre .. not to mention the Human drama )
7. Riding (Bangalore Amateur Riding Institute)

Notes:
* 8 people who informed me that they did not vote but stated that they would like me to do something not among the options, have not been taken into consideration in the percentages.
** plus those of the 15% Sabbatical votes who though the sabbatical did not imply gsoc
*** The fact that I got a fees waiver for the first year does influence things to a large extent.

blah-016: Last Boy Scout

“Water is wet, sky is blue, women have secrets–who gives a fuck”

--

1. almost as profound as Chef's prostitute payment explanation.