Travelling

It has come to pass finally. I have been denying it for awhile.

I am travelling to a conference in Vienna in the end of November. And I have included a trip to Germany before the conference. So I will be there for two weeks before the conference. I thought if I am travelling this far, why not visit my Sister and Brother-in-Law. I had two options: 1. To visit London before Germany, 2. To visit London after conference in Vienna. With my parents already in London and planning to leave early November, I convinced my professor and decided to visit London first.

Thus here I am in London. I will be here for 10 days and then leave for Germany. The flight was LONG but enjoyable.

I am too tired to write more, so Later!

Importance of a “hello”

Year 1875, Thomas Christopherson’s home.

Thomas was a scientist in France. He had just finished making a machine that could possibly enable him to talk to a person at a far off place with a similar machine.

He picked up the instrument, dialled some number.

He heard “Trrrrrinnnng, Trrrrrinnng, Trrrrrinnnng….”

Cut to Alexander Bell’s home. Mr. Bell is working furiously on a machine, similar to Thomas’s, in his lab. It suddenly starts making this funny ringing sound, “Trrrrrinnnng, Trrrrrinnng, Trrrrrinnnng….”.

Bell’s assistant, Watson, urges Bell to do something to stop the horrible noise. Bell lifts a piece of the instrument which was connected to a bulky music player-kinda base through a wire. The ringing noise stops.

Cut to Thomas’s house. The ringing noise that Thomas was hearing had stopped and there was complete silence. Thomas could hear some noise from the other side.

On the other side, Bell and Watson were talking to each other in English trying to figure out how the sound had stopped.

Alas, Thomas did not know English, he thought it was some static signal he was getting.

A year later, on March 10, 1876, in Bell’s lab.

Bell had realized that the ringing noise he got an year back was actually the first phone call ever and that there was no conversation purely because there was no agreed upon protocol of speaking. For the last one year, Watson and Bell had many serious brain-storming sessions on what should be the protocol. Mrs. Bell had to stop them many times from entering into a fist fight. She would barge in saying "HELLO! there is a lady in this house, Don’t you have no manners?”. Only yesterday they both had reached the decision that the one word they had heard most in the last year should be the starting word in this protocol. And this came “Hello”.

Yes, of course it also helped that both Watson and Bell knew English and what Hello meant. Poor Thomas, if only he had learnt English.

PS: Of course, it is another matter that Watson and Bell had heard each other in that iconic telephone conversation purely because they both were loud guys and the wall separating them was made of thin layer of single bricks with lots of holes drilled into it.

PS:PS: You may doubt the validity of this story, you are welcome to Google for it or go to this web-link.

An interesting video about the Rich South Indian Culture

Yesterday, as a part of my research ;), i stumbled upon this very interesting video. This video runs for an hour and talks about the rich and prosperous culture of South India which has been forgotten by almost many of us. It is worth watching and will learn a lot. For those who were excited to know how the pyramids were built, there were much bigger and tougher buildings built in more mysterious ways. Many of the temples in South India are so rich and big and beautiful – not many of us are surprised at how they were built. Not many of us are inquisitive of how cities were managed.

Many such things are talked about in this video. Watch it.

Being a Si©k man

It was Friday evening – one week ago. I was on the bus home. I had just completed the game had to rush home to leave to a friends place. I was hoping for dinner there. I am a regular post-graduate research student who likes free food. On the bus I began wondering about my physical ability. I had been in Sydney for 2 years and had never been to a doctor. In fact I did not even know the procedure of how to make an medical insurance claim if i had to see one. I was proud of myself, 2 years and no doctor.

Disaster struck the very next day. I was in another house and talking with a paati in tamil. Suddenly I felt a chill run down my body. Something was wrong. I quickly pulled on my jacket. But the chill did not go down. My body was burning. I struggled in their house for 2 more hours and we were given big bars of chocolate(this is apart from food). On the drive home, the chocolate in my hand, melted. Yes inside the cover was molten chocolate. I did not realise i was burning so much. Sunday was more of the same, was having fever. I took paracetamol. I did not want to go to the doctor and break my track record for a silly fever. It was supposed to be alright by Sunday Evening. On Sunday after noon, I was repeating to myself this, I am not sick, I am not sick. Then I suddenly started laughing. My friend was surprised, he thought i had gone nuts. I replied, It is true, I am not Sikh.  That was a sick joke.

Come Monday morning I was supposed to go to the city to collect my passport from the German consulate. I managed that. I say I managed that because I did. It was so difficult. I was taught the definition of ‘Giddy’. I cannot even remember talking to the person in the consulate, it was all over-my-head. However I did have enough left in me to check the passport and the visa. I came back to Eastwood. On the way up to the city, I had decided that there is no postponing things, I had to go and see the Doctor. My 2 year record, I was so proud of it. I always felt like an iron-man, even though i knew it was a lie. How many of us lie to ourselves to make us feel better about ourselves? This was one of those lies. And it worked very well. But now I was going to let go of it. That is exactly when I realized, I think far too much even when feeling feverish and Giddy!

Then I made a flash decision – going to the doctor, no debating it. And I went to the doctor right from the railway station. Registered myself in, met the doctor. The doctor stuck something inside my ear and it beeped very loud, and she told the eternal truth. YOU HAVE FEVER. Wow! was I surprised, she only had to ask me. She said carry on with the paracetamol, you might have caught a virus. How did she deduce that? Some doctor trick, I guessed. But as long as it works. She said carry on with paracetamol for 2 days, it should die down by then. I religiously paid 35$ for this invaluable piece of wisdom and i still have to claim it. I walked out and came home. I have been dutifully taking paracetamols for breakfast and dinner every day since. Things have become better than before but no where close to end. So I went to the doctor again.

Yes, I went to the doctor for the second time in a week. It was Thursday. Gone was the no-doctor record, let us make yes-doctor record. That was not the idea really. The Doctor looked at me as if saying, Oh! you again. What is wrong now, you could not cut your toe-nails? I told about the current situation. And she said, it is a virus, you should give it time. Dont worry. If it does not go down by weekend, take this anti-biotic. I was ecstatic, over the moon, i managed to get a prescription from this doctor. But the weekend is just 5 hours away and I still am not looking hale and healthy. May be I should use it?

I dont know what, why and how I wrote this thing, it has been a bit spinny up in my head today. Hopefully I can break my 2 years record in the coming years. That is all i am thinking of. Being sick is really sick.

Anyways, dont read this.

raghav