Penguin talkies

Arrrhhh….!!

No soul on the planet seems to be bothered if I write on my blog or not! *frowns with anger*

The big “WHY”..

What made me stay away from the blog ki duniya?

Well the author had the same questions in mind…

Off he set to the Antarctic to seek the answers!

Presenting to my blogdosts a Pingu’s page exclusive; a head on interview with the Penguin itself!

(Sorry Miss Shobha De, but I checked with patent office. The word ‘blogdost’ hasn’t been patented yet and hence its use cannot be considered as ‘intelligence theft’!)

Me: So Mr Pingu, correct my biology if I am wrong, but from when did Penguins start to hibernate?!

Pingu: Excuse me?

Me: Where have you been dude? It’s been ages since your last post! The bloggers are getting impatient awaiting your post…

Pingu: Impatient? Lol..

I appreciate your sense of humour! I really do! :D

 The number of comments on my previous two posts strengthens your claims da…

Me: wait a minute… Did I just hear you say ‘Da’?  My god it’s contagious! Have these guys reached the South Pole as well?

Pingu: Don’t beat around the snow! Come to the point…(no bushes on the Penguin land.. ;) )

Me: the blog!

Pingu: oh yeah…

“Christmas time buddy; the reindeers have retired.

Santa is recruiting penguins this season!

Been burning the midnight oil all this while…

Prepare a CV, browse the web, get the recommendation letters, the SOPs; and I haven’t yet mailed the Santas around the World!

Me: You mean you are trying for internships? But it’s already Christmas yaar!

Pingu: yup! nailed it… The dosa batter is ready, needs to be fermented for a year or so; and then put it on the tawa the next summer vacation...

Me: Goodness gracious me! Dosa? ??

That was the best analogy you could think of Mr. Penguin? So much for your tryst with ‘da’!

Pingu: pepepiii pupu! “Abuses in the local language”

Me:  And what makes you feel the Santa would select a penguin from the South Pole when there are already much more active, hardworking guys out there at the Artic? Polar Bears for instance..

Pingu: thanks a lot for the encouragement!

Me: ahh…I was just…

Never mind. So that’s it? That’s your only reason?  Nothing on your personal front that has kept u away for so long?

Pingu: I’m glad you asked. J

You know, we have a proverb in our native Penguin language, “Pi Pii..piiiii..puu pooo pi pipi poo”.

Me: Nice! J

Pingu: What nice? It’s not yet over!

“Pi Pii..piiiii..puu pooo pi pipi poo,

Po po popo po!”

Ok now is the time when u say the wah wah!

Me: Couldn’t understand a word, but whatever it was, sounds awful! What happened Mr. Penguin?

I smell something… I smell… a female!

Pingu: Nopes that’s the scent of Penguin Poop that has filled your nostrils! Mesmerising, isn’t it?

Me: eeeeeeeeeewww…that’s sick!

Pingu: Six months without the Sun! Scarcity of fishes… We penguins are left with no option but to “Pop the Poop”! :D Bon appetit…

Me: Very smart, diverting from the topic! The blogdosts would be very grateful to you if you tell them about the female penguin… whoever or rather whatever it is that is bothering you!

I see a new Zuckerburg in the making…

Pingu: Ok fine, but that would be 1200 bucks extra excluding the interview charge! ;)

Here it goes…

To be continued…

(If someone reads this posts!!!!)

The Good, The Bad & The K…

The 4^th thought on the last page of your Navneet notebook goes like this :

“At times, it is better to keep your mouth shut and let people wonder if you’re a fool than to open it and remove all their doubts.”

James Sinclair

This one is dedicated to you Miss Roy! :)

MUNNI BADNAAM HUI
;)

The story goes back to 1947-48, a day well mentioned and aggravated in the history books all over the country.(Have to confess, History was my favourite subject at school J)

Scene 1: Drum rolls in the background, sepia tone screen, and blurred images to hide the explicit content…(proceed further only if you are above 18! Viewer discretion is advised)

 Introducing Mr. Good and Mr. Bad, conjoint twins and the lead players in the tale. For 250 long years Mr. Good & Mr. Bad were infected with the same firangi parasite. A parasite, that drained them of all their strength and might, left deep unhealed wounds behind. Drowned them in the ocean of colonialism, panting for each breath.

The non violent RBCs and the fearsome WBCs fought with the parasite and sacrificed themselves for the cause; a movement analogous to the freedom struggle.  Battle lines were drawn, innocent cells killed and finally the parasite agreed to leave their bodies once and for all. But Mr. Bad had other plans. It made a demands for a separate body. And the only way to meet this demand was an operation! “Operation Partition” as they called it…

And so with the mark of a knife, their bodies were split and so were their souls…

The independent organs were given a choice to join either of the two bodies. Many joined Good, but a distant organ ‘K’ refused to join either and preferred staying independent.

The goodness curve of Mr. Bad suffered further a depression, when it decided to attack ‘K’. It first started with cutting its food supply; next line was oxygen supply to ‘K’. If the economic blockade hadn’t sufficed, it also sent its WBC troops to create further unrest. K naturally cared for its existence. It realised that its impossible for an organ to survive on its own and needs a fully functional democratic and non partisan body to survive. ‘K’ asked Mr. Good for assistance. And that’s the day the Organ transplant took place!

 But the devil in Mr Bad was still hungry for more. 1965, 1972 and 1998 are accounts of the same.

FAST FORWAD: 63 years later…

Scene 2: Calm track in the background, happy life being showcased on the screen.

K has been an integral part of Good’s body. Cells from other part of Good’s body have even started visiting ‘K’ for vacations. (The author too had an awesome Summer of ’10 @ k… More info on some other post! ;) )

Life seems to be fast approaching normalcy...


but suddenly…

Scene 3: Disturbing noises in the background. Sound similar to stones being pelted. Occasional gunfire too.

Today almost a generation later, a few voices are demanding the independence of K. They believe that organ transplant has been a failure. All this inspite of return of normalcy in ‘K’.

A doctor was consulted, the diagnosis is as follows:

·       MRI scan of K has revealed a cancerous growth in a few tissues. These cancer cells are a mere minority in K, but with their sheer evil intention hopes to multiply manifold.

·       Some of the cancer cells are being provided with the necessary carcinogenic agents by elements in Mr. Bad.

·       A few others live and survive on the food n Oxygen provided by Good, but stabs its own cell mates when it comes to the ‘K’ issue.

Chapter 4: Time: present.. this chapter is yet to take place.

Good seems to have following options:

·       Use of chemotherapy against the severe cancer cells.

·       Use of Radiation to eliminate the cancer cells once and for all! ( death of good cells while undergoing radiation is also a possibility)

·       Sit down for a cup of Tea, with representatives of Good, Bad and K on the table. Till the solution is reached, let the cancer grow till it reaches an irreparable stage…  Wah Taj..:P

PS: I wanna visit K the next summer again. This page is a prayer for the cancer to be cured ASAP!

Pal do pal…

The difference between our friends and pets is that friends we allow into our company, pets we allow into our solitude. Be it human or animal, touch is a life-giving thing. Inspite of the seclusion from the world out there and writing a blog post previously on the ‘act of touching’, I could never have the courage to feel it’s skin.

Not that it’s not beautiful. Chrome coloured texture, slim body, perfect figure (no idea about the ideal dimensions in its world! :-p). Symmetrically flawless with one hell of a diverging tail! Eyes that would put Ash to shame. An animal's eyes have the power to speak a great language. Lots of people talk to animals... Not very many listen, though....I didn’t speak. Just stared… Beauty is more in the mind than in a aesthetic feeling. Objects and things may not actually be beautiful, you just feel its beauty. This feeling is the last impulse to the brain, nothing else matters after the signal is transmitted through the neurons.

It was a “Pal”, a pal to reckon with in times of needs. When I say “pal”, I am flaunting my mother tongue Konkani. Yes, I am proudly a Goan, and Konkani is our main language; and “pal” literally translates to lizard! My pet lizard.

Introducing: my pet and my latest fanatic obsession.

We have a mutual understanding. There is something between friends that they don’t need a stamp paper for any agreement. I am ready to share my hostel room with it. The only thing I want in return is it to clean my ground floor room of all the pests!

“Bring it on!” it said. Never say no to free food. From moths, flies to little grasshoppers and our very own mosquitoes. Just like these fishes on my blog, it hogs night after night with no sizeable increase in its size! ;) (a lady's delight: Food for thought girls! :P)

We both have such contrasting lives: It is always one up over me; a life I am envious for not being able to live! It never has to hear the clock strike, just have to live in the night shift, it doesn’t have any human emotions to feel disheartened for not being able to get into any tech club inspite; nor does it have to experience partisan treatment when it comes to working for the tech-fest. It races with itself, with no one to compete, hence no question to worry about Profs screwing its relative grades!

My jealousy prompted me to do a weird thing once. I tried spraying it with my deo spray. Being a Chemical engineer I expected the 95%w ethanol to silence the lamb. I guess it even saw the wry smile on my face. If you can’t climb the tree, then its better to cut it so that no one else can reach the summit!

My satisfaction was short lived. Next night it was back with a mate. Opposite sex most probably (Section 377 isn’t yet legalised in their world :P ). Guess ‘the axe effect’ did its trick yet again!

From ‘ek’ pal

to ‘do’ pal…

Fun fact: Room no. 7 in 3^rd block is one of the only few room whose windows are open 24*7…

page break

A TOUCH to remember...

Back after a strenuous mid semester examination Pingu’s page is hungry for some more gossip… For a change there are no disclaimers…Or may be just one at the end!

Prelude:

"Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a 

listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all
of which have the potential to turn a life around."
Leo Buscagliga..( I have no idea who he is!)

Based on a true story as told to me by my very good friend…

A scene right from a movie:

“Excuse me, what’s the time?”, she TOUCHED him and asked.

Too busy in his dream world the hero of the tale could not reply her.

She repeated yet again, “Time yeshtu?”

“Ahh…6.25am…….

I mean 6.25 pm..

I mean 18.25!”, he said.

And a drop sweat rolled down in a matter of milliseconds.

There are these moments when you experience zero gravity with the faintest stimulus of touch. The laminar flow of blood in the veins seizes leading to a chaotic and turbulent blood gushing in out of your heart. Vibrations so loud that the brain senses the discomfort. The hair over your body stands tall with respect for the touch a state which we call Goosebumps. The nose forgets its primary function to breathe and instead fills the lungs with her perfume.

You tend to wonder what the physicists mean when they say that coefficient of friction can never be zero! (Yes her skin was smoothJ)

All these while when you wondered why do girls spend so much money on waxing in parlours..

And what does Katrina mean when she shows the victory sign in the Veet advertisement.

And how much your mom tells you to bath every day when at hostel.

And how much you regret for not looking into the mirror for the past one month..

All this flashes in those few seconds when the act of touching is being performed by her highness.

My friend told me she looked like Deepika Padukone( that’s because she is my favourite heroine and he wanted to keep me interested!)

A wise man once said ( that would be me;)), “There are only two kinds of girls in this world.

The ones who are within your reach and the ones who aren’t!”

This chick as I feel was well out of our reach. Was it just a coincident that she didn’t wear a wrist watch? Was her IQ so low that it did not strike her to check her mobile?

( no she wasn’t a blonde J) Was he the only person she found to ask the time in the entire mall? (Yeah it was in a mall)

Did she fall for the NITK t-shirt? (I gave off yet another clue about the person’s identity! )

Discussions were hot in the hostel. Such an irony when people spent hours on a 2 second incident. In the end it was concluded that this phenomena could only be explained by the new deodorant in the stores…

As they say it. THE AXE EFFECT…

Deo or no deo, but my friend still has her aura in his mind. His first contact with the higher order feminine species after a long time. It may be a unnoticed event in the girl’s calendar but he could never forget those few blissful seconds with her highness.

Disclaimer: Some great poet has once said( this time its not me!), that You come alone in this world and you go alone. You don’t have any good friends, YOU ARE YOUR ONLY BEST FRIEND!

No prize for guessing who plays the lead character in this tale! ;)

And the page gets a break…

When Schrödinger meets Nolan...

Disclaimer:

The following article is an original piece of the author’s imagination and has no scientific relevance.This article would be of interest to those readers who have seen the movie Inception. (For those who haven’t seen this masterpiece; May the Lord forgive you for this crime! You can still make amends by reading the synopsis on IMDB. But it’s a compulsory pre-requisite)

The readers have every right to question the timing of this article. Inception is no longer the “gossip talk” in friend circles. The hype has been neutralised; Mr Nolan’s art has been got all the kudos it deserved and the viewers have had their every single penny worth it!

Long and heated discussions and arguments outside the movie theatre was a natural scene at many places. It happened with me as well. Doubts over the authenticity, rationality and the out of the world plot! Some of my friends even termed it as ‘absurd’ (The actual word used wasn’t absurd, but for the dignified English men it means something close to absurd ;) )

But there was something in this absurdity; every genuine idea which one cannot understand feels absurd. And then I set to out with the whole Inception Investigation.

 So what exactly must have inspired Mr. Christopher Noran? And my search ended (or may be it is just the beginning!) with QUANTUM MECHANICS.

Recall: Pauli’s Exclusion Principle

• It states that no two electrons can have the same all four quantum numbers. More generally no two fermions (particles with half-integer spins) may occupy same Quantum States simultaneously.
• In contrast, integer spin particles, bosons are not subject to the Pauli’s exclusion principle. For bosons, any number of identical particles can occupy the same quantum state.

Note: Quantum numbers in laymen terms can be defined as the address of the particle.

So how many of you can already smell inception in Pauli’s theory? The people living the dream are simultaneously occupying more than one Quantum state. This means that a person can be at as many different levels as possible at the same instant of time. Either this is a direct violation of Pauli’s principle or may be Mr. Noran has assumed the characters and projections in the dreams to have Boson like characteristics!

Assume the characters are in a particular stage of the Dream and let then have the Quantum numbers Q₁.

Where Q_i = ( n_i, l_i, m_i, s_i )

n =principal quantum number

l  =azimuthal quantum number

m=magnetic quantum number

s  = spin number

Then according to the movie they go to a higher stage in some other mental state which has some other Quantum state; say Q₂. But there is an every possibility of a Q₃ or even a Q₀.

So according to Pauli only one of these quantum state is the right state, as it is physically impossible for a particle to occupy two different positions at one time!

Now the onus is upto the individual in the dream to identify which is the actual quantum state he/she is occupying. Here it is of extreme importance to understand what happened with ‘Mal’, wife of Cobb in the movie. She fell in love with a entirely different quantum state far away from reality. And she could not decide what is real and what is a dream. If only Mal had heard about the “Schrödinger’s Cat”!

Recall: Schrödinger’s Cat

For the better part of the last century, the most accepted explanation for why the same quantum particle may behave in different ways was the Copenhagen interpretation. It was first posed by physicist Niels Bohr in 1920. It says that a quantum particle doesn't exist in one state or another, but in all of its possible states at once! (gotcha Mr. Nolan! So that’s where you got the damn idea..) It's only when we observe its state that a quantum particle is essentially forced to choose one probability, and that's the state that we observe.

In Quantum mechanical terms this state of occupying different quantum states is called ‘coherent superposition’. This Copenhagen interpretation was proved wrong by Ervin Schrödinger.

In his theoretical experiment, ­Schrödinger put his cat in a box, along with a bit of radioactive material and a Geiger counter- a device for detecting radiation. The Geiger counter was designed so that when it sensed the decay of the radioactive material, it triggered a hammer which was poised to break a flask containing hydrocyanic acid, which, when released, would kill the cat. During its stay there, the cat came to exist in an unknowable state.

The only way to find out whether the cat is alive or dead is to open the door! Schrodinger’s cat in Inception is nothing but the ‘Totem’!

All that Mal had to do was to spin the totem, open the door and life would be as smooth as silk!  The totem remained locked and thus the Copenhagen interpretation stays!

Hats off to the director’s creativity with physics. All that I have investigated is the Quantum aspect of inception. I have completely ignored the preposterous space-time logic behind the movie. That’s for general relativity to take care. Time slowing down, zero gravity whacky stunts is not in the scope of this blog. May be a sequel is to follow, but that depends on the viewer response.

There may be people out there who may find this blog as absurd as my good friend found Inception! Whatever may be the opinion but comments are always welcome. 

NOTE: Some physicist may argue that Quantum mechanics is applicable only to microscopic particles and not to the projections in the dreams which are hugely macroscopic (I agree that Ellen Page is a bit short but that doesn’t make her microscopic!:P). Even if you consider the smallest elementary particle of each projection and apply the quantum theory than it would suffice! And if the arguments are withheld for every particle than obviously quantum theory can be generalised to macroscopic characters in Inception!

And the page gets a break…