The family that bots together

Kingdom of Loathing was this funny, weird, and fairly simple (in terms of interface) online game I played for a few months last year. Many of us from flickr/GNE really got into the game and spent a lot of time on it. We even had a clan of our own.

Then, quite as suddenly, many of us got bored with it. Some though, were still very into it. Notably Shambly Hermit. He kept playing and playing and eventually worked his way into the 1337 crowd. He is now a member of some warehouse whatever clan which apparently controls a lot of what happens in KoL.

Shambly also spends his time commissioning art and avatars for other KoL players. He also runs my two players on KoL. Shambly is the dog you never know is on the internet. (I bet his dog is online too!)

Of sunrises and sunsets

The Old and the New

Last night, against my will, I watched the 1995 movie Before Sunrise. Quite to my surprise, I didn’t mind the movie at all! While I was skeptical at first, and didn’t actually look at the screen while the movie was playing, I continued to listen to the dialogue. Essentially, that’s what this movie is. A dialogue between an American and Frenchwoman who meet on a train heading from Budapest to Paris. They hit it off and decide to spend a day in Vienna from where the American will be flying back to the US the next day, while she will continue on her way to Paris.

My friend raved about the movie and so do some of the reviews on IMDb but I think they go a touch overboard. Many praised the screenplay. I thought it was quite cliched and trite. The story? Mush. The end? Atypical but not surprising. So why did I like the movie then? I don’t really know, the whole is more than the sum of its parts, I guess. Maybe I was in a funny mood last night and this movie appealed to my particular mood. I don’t really know. I do think the movie is worth watching though.

A sequel was made, called Before Sunset. My friend has laid his grubby paws on a copy of that too and I am sure I will be made to watch that one soon. Although I guess I may not have to be coerced this time! 🙂

Home is where the hearth is?

On one of the four bus journeys I make during a regular work day, I suddenly got to thinking of what if feels like to be “at home.” To me, Bangalore has always been home. I was born there, I grew up there and only left there for a long period of time just about five years ago. Yet, I don’t recognise that city much anymore. And I feel vaguely uncomfortable in my parents’ new home (They just moved in November.)

I lived in a hostel (a dorm for my American readers!) for two years after I left Bangalore. I never felt much at home there either. My first few months in that city I hated because I resented being put into the programme I was in and I was generally annoyed with classmates and other people. In short, I was being a brat. I grew to like the people and made some of my best friends there, but I still didn’t feel at home. It was always just this place I was at to study.

I moved to the US then to join grad school there and I thought I would never feel at home there since everything would be quite different. I was wrong and I was right. Some things were not so different, I had to fend for myself, cook my own food, etc but I was surrounded by other Indians and had very few American friends to start off with. (Not too many at the end either but then my excuse is that I wasn’t in the US long enough!) You’d assume I’d feel at home since there were all these Indians around me. But no, most were so different from me in so many ways, in thoughts, in ideas of what was “cool,” in backgrounds back in India, and, not the least, in the subject they were in grad school for. All engineers! And me a biologist! My first few months were spent in some sort of denial, I spent hours online chatting with my friends back in India and spent hundreds of dollars on long distance phone calls to India!

It took a while, but I finally clicked into a routine in America. I had more (and new) friends and I was out doing things, school began to occupy my time and teaching turned out to be a lot of fun! (Not the grading though!) I began to enjoy the “creature comforts” that were so easily available in the US. Netflix, highspeed internet a given where ever I was, fairly comfortable living for cheap, good food and drink was affordable on my student stipend, and generally scratching the consumer itch that we all have. I was just thinking I could feel at home there. I was planning to get a car and maybe move out on my own or with a single roommate.

But then, I moved again. Back to India. I decided I wouldn’t be too heartbroken about leaving the US, and that I should be back into the groove when I was in India. Once again, I was wrong and right. It took me a while to confirm the job I was offered here and that job was in Bombay and not Bangalore. So it meant moving to a city I was not very familiar with yet again. It meant having to strike it out on my own in a city in India which it is supposed to be the toughest to do. I’m doing pretty well I guess. I still don’t have a place to stay and have to live with my god-parents for now, but I’m confident I’ll be finding a place soon and living the “cool single life!” *grin*

I do miss some of those things from the US and of course I do miss my friends, and I have a hell of a lot of gripes about this country, but on the whole I don’t mind being in India at all. It’s home.

Finished!

I finished reading Bill Bryson’s A Short History of Nearly Everything a few days ago. I’d actually put it down for a few days while I read through some other books. (In point of fact, one other book.)

I started this post thinking that A Short History was the first book I’ve actually finished in a while and then realised how stupid I was being, since I have actually finished the other book too! And that one was The Science of Discworld by Terry Pratchett, Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen. Looks like I’m beginning to slip into my role as “absent-minded professor.” It won’t be long before I start living in a crumpled labcoat, grow frazzled grey hair and wear thick nerd glasses. *grin*

Well anyway, A Short History is a brilliantly written travelogue of science. A journey through our existing body of knowledge and how we came about it. Bill Bryson captures the essence of science with fairly succint and readable explanations with short (though not always) excursions into the lives of the scientists and thinkers behind it. The book is divided into sections that lead almost seamlessly into one another and are also ordered in a way that seems to make innate sense. I was quite happy to see that the largest number of chapters were devoted to life! My bias as a biologist! hehe. Read this book!

I’d write about the Science of Discworld too, but it’s similar to A Short History the difference being in writing styles (of course) and the interspersed chapters of a Discworld story. Essentially, the wizards of Unseen University split the thaum, this generates so much magical energy that it must go somewhere. So HEX, their computer (Anthill Inside) suggests starting the “Roundworld” project. And just like that a universe pops into existence on the Discworld. (If you haven’t guessed, it’s a universe much like ours.) The wizards proceed to watch this universe, and being wizards, interfere with it too. (Like smashing comets into planets and trying to make pocket-sized suns like the ones in their universe.) See? I knew you wouldn’t be interested!

Both good books and both good expositions of science and our present understanding of the universe. A Short History has a broader canvas and talks about a lot of other things too, but I think The Science of Discworld has two sequels too. (Now to get my hands on those!)

Old habits

So although I was in the US for just 2 years, I walked a lot there. I’ve gotten so used to pushing the button for a “walk” sign when I cross a road, that the few times I need to cross a road here in India, I always look instinctively for the post where I can push the button!

Of course, I always looked the wrong side when trying to cross too, but I lost that habit pretty quickly. Evolutionary adaptation? 😉

Commenting anew….

I’ve switched Blogger’s commenting on and in a while I will remove the Haloscan comments. Not like anyone reads this, but what the heck. Oh and Emily, you were right, I guess! 🙂

Books!

I just blogged two weeks ago about the new book Rebecca sent me. Well, I’m about 200 or so pages into that book and still enjoying it.

Of course, that doesn’t stop me from buying more books! The Strand Book Stall in Bombay has an annual sale on a large scale. The sale is being held in a large auditorium (boxes of unpacked books stacked on stage!) with books displayed on long tables that ran the length of the hall.

My haul:

  1. The Simoquin Prophecies by Samit Basu
  2. Best New SF 15 (from 2001) edited by Gardener Dozois
  3. A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson (paperback) and
  4. The Ancestor’s Tale by Richard Dawkins (illustrated ed.)

More later…

Life as I know it

This used to be the name of a friend’s blog, she has since changed it. Twice. 🙂

Anyway, I decided I was not boring the few readers I do have enough, so I might as well write about my daily routine… hehe

So prop up those eyelids, fasten those seat belts (so you can’t run away) and away we go…

So the first interesting thing, I teach at an all girls’ college. Which means, being the cool, young prof makes me very popular (or so I like to think!) The department doesn’t have me take any lectures or assign work to students, so no one hates me yet. I spend most of my day talking students through their work, their lab experiments or any other questions they may have. The general purpose trouble-shooter, thats me.

The main mandate of my job though is to take care of the department’s intstrumentation needs. Currently, this means I have to co-ordinate the negotiations and purchases of a million different things since we have just received a sizable grant. This part is not fun, except when I get to ask the college to issue huge sums of money! 😉 But once all the instruments are ordered and delivered and installed, it means I have so many toys to play with! Yay!

The worst bit of my day is the commute. I spend anything from 45 to 90 minutes travelling one way to work. But this can’t be helped, Bombay is that kind of a city. I’m still working out a good routine which will help me minimise this travel time. Of course, I can’t really fix that since I haven’t yet found a place of my own to stay and am still living with relatives.

/me pokes everyone reading… Hey! Wake up!