Here are the first emails that I received ever seeking free advice.

"Dear mighty-all knowing-amazon of the universe, (A standard greeting for me which wasn't included in reality)


Hello,.
Read your blog about advising
Can you advise me on my questions regarding relationship.


Thanks in advance."

This followed another email:

"Hello.
Actually I want to give her a valentine gift
help me urgently.


Thanks & Regards,
Mr. Random Romeo +91-98-------"

Dear Mr. Random Romeo,

Thankyou so much for contacting us for advice as its seldom that our views are sought by the public and once in a while, when they are, our soul is filled with so much of gratitude (and a slight shadow of embarrassment) that we can't exactly explain to you how it feels, but it must be enough for you to know that we feel and we feel much better. And now I should be focusing on your feelings (which are the concern at this moment), instead ranting away at an innocent fan seeking advice.

Well, in the matters of relationship and love, I mostly suck, but then the most awesome advice comes from all the suckiest corners of the world, so you are not in that bad of a receiving end. Uhm-uhm.When giving gifts to ladies or women or female creatures of any sort, soft toys, bunnies, stuffed lame animals (consider sheep) etc most of the times do the job and I hope that you're aware of this universal fact. Of course we shall not pretend that you're unaware of the power of expensive Jewellery but guessing by your emails and the tone of urgency I can predict that you're looking for smarter/cheaper options and "Jewellery" is certainly not what you want to hear. Certainly not.

Hmm, crossing out stuffed toys, Jewellery, you may consider the normal clothes or apparels from some branded showroom but then again you may be doomed if you mess up on the figure/size and that option may also devour your pocket. (Sorry, we don't know why we're sounding so stingy today, but if you can afford stuff, go ahead, get plenty of gifts for her, play safe)

Lastly, what "we" would like ideally from our valentine (in some lucky, parallel universe we might have a handsome valentine waiting for us) would not be something expensive bought from a fancy showroom* but it would be something personalized, something unique (here's the point where girls go vague and incomprehensible), something that wins our heart! Something crafted, moulded just for us and our relationship, even if that's as trivial as a couple of old pictures stapled together in the shape of a heart with golden frills/glitters all around, it would work, in a nut shell something which would show that my guy spent time and effort on making that gift, and making that valentine's day special for us, just for us.

Regards,
Tanya

*On a second thought, for us, expensive Jewellery would work just fine. Thanks.

As you may have guessed from my absence that I've been terribly busy (assuming, no, rather hoping that there are people who actually care about this blog), I kind of feel bad for not writing for a while. Life has been such that there was some travel and then there is growing pressure of my MS graduation coming closer.

I don't know how to explain the situation that I'm in as clear as I hope I ought to tell but I'll give it a shot anyway. Basically, I'm looking for PhD positions at various universities and turns out funding and stuff is terrible rare these days. And I had two unofficial offers from two normal univs in whom I was never interested in the first place and the profs sounded kind of pushy and wanted me to say yes immediately, which made me shrink away further.

I mean I would rather continue with Prof. X rather than go out and find a worse devil to be my jailer for the next 4-5 years. But lately, as the awesome universities I've applied to are acting lazy in sending me back their decisions (rejections?), I am constantly haunted by an old conversation that I had with Prof X.

"So Tanja, did you figure out where you gonna do your PhD?"

"Uhmm, no? I just finished applying. How can-"

"See Tanja, you must decide fast. I can't hold funds for you till the end. Either you continue your work here at 'Jaali University' or you tell me right away that you plan to leave. I've a Japanese girl on my top list that's planning to come here for PhD, I can't support you once I hire others."

"B-b-b-b-b-b-ut, how can I decide before hearing back from any univ? Couldn't you give me some time to decide? ("Oh you bastard, don't you blame Japan now" <- This is what I wanted to say but couldn't say)

"I don't care where you go. I need a PhD student starting from the next semester, either you or someone else. Maximum, I can wait till February, after that if you come to me asking for PhD funds, I certainly can't help you. Have a good day."

And with that he trotted away, that son of a ___, leaving me in turmoil. This happened three months ago, and so far I'ven't got a single offer. And I don't know what's gonna happen to my future. Worst case scenario, I return back to India, jobless and hopeless, with a degree which no one cares about.

Three days ago things somewhat changed. A university has now invited me for a campus visit on their expense; it's not an offer yet, but it's something like a streak of light, a droplet of hope, a flicker of a flame, or really I think it represents the loose, abandon, window door in my dark and dusty attic.

Well, so I've been thinking there's a whole bunch of us, struggling writers, random bloggers, horsing around on the Internet. We spend time creating identities, looking for our own identities and god knows what else we're looking for all the time in the address bar of our browsers. I mean, there's a fair amount of writing talent that floats on the Internet, scattered here and there on lonely blogs whose authors keep checking their visitor stat counter everyday to see how many people came and actually read the shit they came up with.

So, I figure how serious we all are about all this writing stuff. I mean, are we going to be good writers or not? Are we going to be published authors of our novels or not? I've always thought of writing a novel, but I never wrote one. The first one I started last year, has only a chapter or so written. Lame, isn't it? I can't even call myself a writer. Are we really gonna write something worthwhile ever? Or are we here just to fool around, cater to anonymous comments, have discussions on useless politics and biased opinions and views of life?  Don't we want do something with our writing? Don't we want to write something that will actually come in print and be read and passed over generations?

If so, and if your answer is a strong and guilty yes, I guess it is not too late to make a new year resolution.

So, how do you celebrate a cold Christmas when you're all alone for the winter break and your flatmates are gone to sunny California?

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Eat a lot of pie and watch F.R.I.E.N.D.S.

This french pecan silk pie was killer. Had a ton of whipped cream on it. Also, as you may already know that I live in the land of obesity. That reminds me I gotta do some ab crunches next morning.

My education has rendered me no choice but to seek out and characterize everything. To put labels to things, to set patterns and logic behind every existing phenomena, and to find rationale behind every happening. No matter how far my science may be from the truth, it's hard for me to not to give out personal and biased judgments.

There, there you have your disclaimer.

                                 

I've often tried to explain to myself and my friends the definition of a genius and what separates him/her from an average person like me or anyone who is modestly willing to accept himself/herself as average. Thus I'm attempting to make some theoretical claims based on the graph above. The graph belongs to spectra collected from a Raman spectrometer, which I just got from google.

Now imagine the X axis is a span of all possible fields of art/science and Y axis be the magnitude of input in arbitrary units (a.u./intensity). While an average person would try and fool around different fields in life being able to put only limited effort in each due to constraints of a lifetime, his spectrum would be like a noisy spectra. Just pure noise, wobbling, shaking line along the X axis (see 700-800 cm-1).

But a genius would spend a life which would result in a spectra with sharp peaks at 1-2 points, spending his/her 40 years of life in a single, very specific field and making the most out of it (eg 950 cm-1 and other selected peaks). That's what separates an average person from a genius. An average person, at least me, is often afraid to put too much energy into one thing, so I'll try to do 2 things at a time, and then 3 and then 4 things, ending up as well-rounded human being who is perfect at nothing. But mark that I'm not saying, that a person by birth is a genius or average, it's simply a matter of motivation at a given point of time. If someone gets highly motivated in one specific area at some point, he/she may do well in that field, but then the question is will she/he stay motivated long enough? You could argue that geniuses stay motivated all the time, working on a problem unflinchingly, long enough till they solve it. I leave that open for interpretation.

If you want to make something out of your life, reduce the noise, and get some peaks. Focus.

                                         


Trivia#1: By the way, I know a bit about crystallography and I can tell you that in the results of most spectroscopic techniques and X-ray/neutron diffraction methods, sharp peaks denote crystalline material and wide humps denote amorphous material. Noise is simply subtracted or removed from the figures for convenience of knowledge dissemination. And most researchers try to study crystals because they are so precious and so rare.  (oh and of course some people study amorphous materials like Glass too, well good for them, not so thrilling as crystals)

Trivia#2: There's a reason why all women like gems and diamonds. Now you know why. (because they are crystalline and give sharp peaks in their spectral features, just like geniuses!)

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