A new beginning

I thought I was addicted to the important and the interesting, but in reality, I was addicted to Ibuprofen!

Unbelievable !!!

Consuming 600 mg of Ibuprofen per day kept me excited - in all senses of the word. Not taking ibuprofen made me feel depressed, gave me headaches and tiredness.

I have thrown all the pills away, and experienced serious mood swings. Now, hopefully, everything is fine. Let us see how the next week goes.

I had a minor headache - non-stop - for 3 days in a row - but it never progressed to much. If it were a real headache, then I would have progressed into serious bouts of nausea and exhaustions. So, that is the proof that it was ibuprofen related.

Plan for today - July 7

Ok, it is morning of July 7. I have to do a few things today. First is to read up the paper I will have to present at 6 pm in the journal club.

Second is to actually go to work and leave by 5 pm to go to UCLA. that in itself will be a big accomplishment. In the end, I will mount the brain slices from yesterday and come home. This means that I will be skipping going to the chess club.

So be it.

Darshit's in Hospital

I woke up today to the news that Darshit is hospitalized! He took ill on the night of his birthday - he fell unconscious with the pain due to his kidney stone. Doctor says that they will monitor him for a fortnight and take a decision on whether a surgery is needed - we will be doing a non-invasive procedure.

But still, I am shocked ... .Darshit fell unconscious! He is in hospital!

Afternoon entry

My earlier afternoon entry got deleted ... so here is a new one.

I am feeling very sleepy. Need to wash my face and bring back focus. I am almost there - I have identified the piece of code that is creating all the useless junk. I have been successful at manipulating the img_assist modules to suit me. But not completely. There are still some glitches. ANd I am not entirely clear on the path forward.

So, I am goign to take a small bathroom break.

I still have to go UCLA in the evening.

Entry for July 6 Morning

I woke up today, and was glad that I remembered that I wanted to bring focus to my life. Will writing blog posts every few hours in a day help keep focus? Who knows? But I want to try doing it.

Today is Darshit's birthday. I talked to him in the morning, and I will be talking again to him a bit later in the day.

Most important things in life;
1. Health - this means exercise and diet.
2. Self-esteem - this means doing a lot of things in the short term - including keeping up one's words and commitments; it also means engaging in challenging tasks and meeting the challenges.
3. Meaning - To do something that somehow means something to you. For me, it is circadianbase, I think or I hope.
4. Joy - Have fun in life.
5. Peace - Be at peace with yourself and those around you - this really means not getting angry or irritated.
6. Direction - this really means that there is a long term direction to your life and you are doing everything towards it. Eventually, you will get there, but the life while you are getting there is as important as getting there. So, I have 1 to 6 as higher priorities than 6.
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Plan for today:
1. Help Andy with forum editor.
2. Help Takashi with immuno-positive cells.
3. Prepare for journal club tomorrow.
4. Talk to Vardhan regarding my tax
5. Blog at noon, 3pm, 6 pm and 9pm so that I am in touch with what I want to do today.

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Vision for steady state

Once upon a time, in my life, I had a chance to declare that I am retired and free to do anything. That is when I decided that I wanted to do biological research. Of course, doing a Ph.D. in biology was the most logical way of doing it.

In the meantime, my fortunes changed and I was no longer retired. Nonetheless, I knew the path I wanted to take, so I became a full time researcher, in spite of not having the financial luxury.

Today, I do not have a Ph.D. In fact, the degree stopped being important a while ago. I started viewing getting a degree a big hassle, considering the amount of slavery you have to put it. Yet, given financial independence, I will still choose doing research.

So, only recently, it started dawning on me that what I wanted was NOT a Ph.D. but "something to do with biological reserach". What I enjoyed about doing research - I wanted to retain. What I didn't like, I wanted to leave.

So, what do I like about doing research?

1. Given a choice between exploring a brand new system and a well-studied system, I will pick a well-studied system. For instance, I will pick up cancer or immunology over a brand new question like finding the tickle gene.

2. I like to study a system as opposed to going wherever a gene takes you - for instance, I will rather study the tickling system rather than study a "tick gene", and all the non-tickling pleiotropic effect that tick gene has.

3. I like to read a lot of literature and come up with testable hypotheses - well designed experiments that in the light of my hypothesis, seem simple to carry out and makes one wonder why they were never done in the first place. Such experiments, ideally, could have been carried out 5 years ago. These experiments distinguish between two possibilities - and yield a good result either way the experiment goes.

4. I like to do something in the lab - such as routine fly work or molecular biology or whatever. I do not like the pressure. I would rather learn one technique and do it really well, day after day, instead of just learning a million things poorly and trying to do them all.

5. I like to discuss ideas, both evaluating someone else's idea for consistency and submitting mine for the same check. So, in other words, I like authoring papers and reviewing them. I like writing grants and reviewing them.

THINGS I DO NOT LIKE ABOUT RESEARCH

1. I do not like that you have to Beg. I do not like writing grants with the aim of begging for money. So, I can help someone else with grant-writing, but I do not like grant-writing as a way of earning a living. I mean, if I were creating a tangible product such as an incubator, then its utility is clearly obvious to everyone, but a research on fruitfly's sleep wake cycle really doesn't seem to be worth millions of dollars to me.

2. I do not like spending 8-12 hrs a day on biological research - it seems too much. Life has other promising things that I would like to enjoy and it seemed to me that I had missed on a lot of things. I can spend, if necessary, at most 4 hrs a day, occasionally ...

3. I do not like the fact that in biology research, you have to do politics. It seems downright dirty to me. Ass-kissing, exchanging favors, etc. are beyond me. I like to be upfront about the value I am bringing to the table and the exchange of values needs to be fair, as agreed explicitly by all the parties.

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Based on all this analysis, I am inclined towards creating a resource exclusively for postdocs and grad students in the field of circadian rhythms that makes their lives easier. I will call it circadianbase - it will contain information about software and tutorials on how to use them; it will have a general overview of circadian rhythms and detailed discussion about every single aspect of rhythms, so that it is the latest review on the topic.

My ideal life would be to wake up in the morning ,spend 2 hours reading literature on circadian rhythms, then posting something on circadianbase and attending to various comments, emails, posts on circadianbase. I would lead my rest of the day any way I please (may be playing chess, volunteering in a rhythm lab for a few hours, etc.) and at the end of the day, I would go back to circadianbase and respond to various messages.

So, how am I making money? I will NOT be actively earning money. I would have retired and making steady income from my investments. I may be taking up odd software jobs to help people or causes that I care about. But, essentially, all my work would be for my pleasure.

So, in steady state, we will be having our own home and I will have a personal income of $4000 per month from investments - by the way of rents, interests etc.

This is the first time in my life that I have had such a clear vision of what I want my retired life to be. The funny thing is, if I have a software job in los angeles and work for 8 hrs doing it, then I am actually very close to achieving my "retired life" version right now, except that i would be working my ass off while doing software job. So, for the next few years, I will be working as a software engineer to make money. That much is clear to me now.

2.

Funny - I wanted an editor - just like the one I am typing in!

For the past few days, I have been working at Tritech on integrating a nice editor that lets one upload pictures and insert them inline into messages. The one we are using is called FCKEditor. It is really crappy. The trouble is that the whole thing is somehow integrated with Drupal.

I thought I will work on the damn editor during the long four day weekend. But so far, I haven't found the time. I went to Austin to see parami, suchi, nirav, kannukaka, manjukaki and bosky. Thursday was spend just sleeping, Friday, we did a little bit of golfing and mendicoat. Saturday, we did agonizingly huge amount of utterly useless shopping and a lot of fun mendicoat. On Friday night, or Saturday morning, my Birthday was celebrated - it was the best one I have ever had! Parami is the brand new daughter of suchi and nirav. I was so surprised that she was comfortable with me, I would just hold her and be in whatever weird position that she felt comfortable. For a 4 month old, she is amazingly clear about what she wants. She cries just when wants to communicate something.

So, my birthday celebs, holding parami and mendicoat were three highlights of Austin trip. In any case, the point is, all this was so mesmerizingly engrossing that I did not have any inclination to work on the editor.

In any case, I came back today to Los angeles, slept for the most part of hte day, and just now, was getting ready to do something useful in life. So, I decided to work a little bit. Or at least think about it. Then, I promptly got distracted and started looking at bosky's blog. But she had written nothing. Out of curiosity, I wanted to look at what I had written last.

That's when I remembered that I wanted to use blogging as a means of bringing focus back into my life gajini style. I mean, I lose focus in life all too very easily. I am very self-motivated. Which really means that when I am not actively motivating myself and just free-associating, I am just guided by pleasure and nothing productive ever gets done. Or, I am plain reluctant to engage in any boring work. Unless I convince myself that it is important.

Well, to convince myself that something is important, I need to be in a thinking mode, and I very seldom am. When I blog, I am thinking. Or, I am in a thinking frame of mind. At that time, it is mostly clear to me what is important and what is not.

So, in any case, I decided to blog, opened the editor and guess what I saw? It was the solution to my problems! This very damn editor that I am typing stuff in, is exactly what I want. After posting this blog message, I will view the source, download the javasript, play a little bit with it, etc.

So - that is it!

Puzzle: Importance of 1105

1105 is the smallest number that can be expressed as sum of 2 squares in 4 different ways. For instance, 1105 = 33^2 + 4^2 = 32^2+9^2 ...

Which is the smallest number that can be expressed as sum of 2 squares in 5 different ways?

Things should end on their own accord - Part III

Which is preferred - death of a relationship or death of a person? By very definition, if a relationship dies, then the death of a person is moot - because you would not even know about it!

So, death of a relationship is the preferred method. (I am going to make a Hindi movie to showcase this very fact. There will be three hero - heroines. All three heroes receive the news that they are going to die soon together and discuss their methods of dealing with it. They seal their methods in an envelope and send it to a writer. They all die their own way and many many years later, all their significant others receive this news. They are asked to comment on which was the best method, based on their own lives.)

Sooner or later, all relationships die. I was tempted to say - except ... - but could think of no exception. One might ask, what about the marriages that last years and years - and the answer would be that to continue to remain in a marriage or not is a practical decision - not one made out of love or affection. Perhaps the decision to enter marriage was made out of love/passion. But to continue to be in it, say after 10 years, is definitely NOT due to passion. All chemistry has died by then (see the thesis in A Certain Chemistry).

OK, so all relationships die. Why then, does untimely death of someone you love generally cause so much pain? Even if one is made aware of the inevitability of physical death and inevitability of relationships breaking, why does one feel pain? Again, A Certain Chemistry explains that it is just your addiction that is feeling the pain. It is akin to a man who decides on savoring a hundred different drugs, but only to a small extent. He chooses marijuana for a few weeks. Then stops smoking it forever! Then he takes up heroin for a month. And then stops heroin forever. He remains clean for two more months. Then he embarks on Cocaine. And so on. He tries out a hundred different drugs. What happens is he feels the joy for a few weeks and suffers the pain of addiction when he does not get it any more. Finally, he moves on. Then he is OK. He voluntarily chooses another drug.

In case of people, it appears that the people are PROGRAMMED to fall into relationships - programmed to savor a hundred different drugs compulsively. I do not know this for sure, but I would imagine, that while you are addicted mildly to one drug, if you were to taste another one, your craving for the first one would not become very bad. Suppose your job changes and you suddenly find yourself not having anyone to share your lunch, you feel very very bad. A few days later, you make friends and all is well again. It is so much better if there was someone to share your lunch for the first few days. Somehow with people, sooner or later, new relationships keep happening and pain over forgetting someone is minimized.

But when a person dies - there is NO ONE to replace that person. Every one is unique. A sudden death is necessarily painful on the survivors.

My first reaction to death is that of anger. I am angry that so many people are subjected to the needless pain - given a chance, people would have screwed up their relationships completely anyway! But they were not given a chance, and now we have So much pain - it is a physical emotion - a biochemical response - something that cannot be avoided but only phrased and paraphrased in a lot of words.

Also, this ends my series of blogs on things ending on their own accord.

Things Should End On Their Own Accord - Part II

What I was trying to say in the previous post can be distilled into following thesis:

How a relationship is created and maintained determines fundamental characteristics of the relation - including the time, power-structure and joy. Any serious change to any of these fundamental characteristics of a relation causes relationships to die a slow death.

Death of a relationship means that you just stop caring about the person you were in relationship with.

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Given that the life keeps throwing stuff at you, it is inevitable that almost all relationships will die. If you really really care about someone and not want to be forgotten by them, you should be careful about fine-tuning the fundamental characteristics of your relationship ...

Also, make sure that you spend plenty of time, in a way that you can continue to spend that much amount of time over a long run.

Do not move away from someone (this applies only to your spouse) if you cannot risk losing that person.

Things should end on their own accord - Part I

There was an episode in Seinfeld where George's girlfriend suggests that they change the topic. George is discussing with Seinfeld later about the propriety of suggesting a change in topic during the course of a conversation. Both George and Seinfeld agree that it is against the spirit of conversation to explicitly suggest a change in the topic - it disturbs the natural course of the conversation.

I tried to find an exerpt of this on the web, but was not able to successfully google it. Odd.

In any case, I was thinking about past - a lot of people in general, mostly forgotten. For instance, my classmates in 10th grade. I am sure there were some with whom I shared lunch. There were those who I considered my friends back then. Yet, now, I have no memory whatsoever about them.

Since I practise extreme information-weeding and do not really let my brain process any details unless it is absolutely necessary, there are people from less than two years ago, who I knew and was friends with, but now, I have no recollection. The relationships were not very deep - at least not deep enough to warrant gargantuan efforts needed to maintain a long term relationship.

When I consider all the teachers and headmasters and deans - some who I liked, some who I didn't - I realized that now, I don't mean anything to them and they don't mean anything to me. Closer to the home, there were some cousins, some uncles and some aunts, who used to mean a lot when I was younger. Now they don't.

What happenned? How is it that someone who means a lot one day can mean nothing the other?

Take my Dada (my mom's dad) for example. I loved him. He was my most favorite person in the family. I loved him more than my mom, more than my dad, more than my sister. I loved him more than I loved anyone else in the world. Until I went to college. I had to go away to Guwahati - and visit family only once every six months. The people I interacted with daily, suddenly were different. It was no more to my home (or to distinguish all my various homes in this blog, my parent's home) that I returned every night but to my hostel. It was no more my mom's food that I ate but the Mess's. When there was a festival, it was not to my Dada's home I went, but nowhere.

The mere change of location was sufficient to upset the delicate balance of a relationship. Now we met each other after a long time, and it was more about giving each other an update about what has happenned rather than just talking. It was to talk as much as possible in the limited time. When such artificial pressure is introduced into a relationship where there was always a plentitude of time, relationship suffers. All you feel is a disappointment that things are not what they used to be. There is a sad acceptance of a change in reality, an acknowledgement of "growing up of kids" and the inevitable change of focus from this disappointment to something different that is happenning in life, because life continues to happen at its inexorable pace.

For instance my wife called. I will continue this one later.

Not Letting Inconvenience Get In Way Of Accomplishing The Important

Somethings in life are avowed as important - at least in the short term. However, for one reason or the other, they don't get done - or at least don't get done soon enough. Eventually, the frustration of not having been able to accomplish an important task in a timely fashion overpowers the joy of accomplishment of an important task. There is no positive feedback - if anything, there is a negative feedback. We grow more wary of undertaking or promising important tasks. Gradually our lives attain only a fraction of meaningfulness that their potential promised.

I bought some gifts for my relatives in India about 2 months ago. When I looked at the gift items, I knew I just had to send them to certain people I know. I bought the items, and the only things remaining to do were: Get the addreses, go to post office and post the gifts. That is all. It took me all of the 2 months to do that! Unbelievable! When I originally bought the gift items, I thought I would be sending the gifts in time for the new year. New year came and went and I still had not gone to the post office.

What explanation do I have for this delay? The only thing I can say is that the post office does not work 24 hours. Had it at least been open until 11 pm, I could have dropped into it and done posting. During the weekdays, I am working at the time when the post office is open. During weekend, I am busy playing chess. With all the busyness, visiting a post-office becomes a very difficult task. Yet ... when I went to post-office yesterday, I went in the middle of the day, out of the way, not thinking about not showing up at work early, just not caring about the consequences, because I was too frustrated with not having been able to go to the post office for so long.

Moral of the story: I could have not cared about the consequences of turning up late two months ago, and sent the gifts in time, and felt good about it! Delaying the Important just because it was Inconvenient only meant Losing Joy Of Accomplishment.

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When I started writing this article, I predicted that I would be defending all the extra time it took me to go to the post-office. Instead, I surprised myself by concluding that I should have just recognized the inconvenience as a cost of doing something important, and done it without wasting time.

Other things that I have considered important for a long time are:

1. Writing a chess book on Colle Zukertort opening ... a book that is useful for recalling the important points in crunch time.

2. Spending time / energy and other resources on finding affordable technology to lengthen life span, especially of the old people.

I know that the second one is more important than first one in terms of overall importance. However, I have spent a long time on the first one, and I need to get it done.

They both need a commitment of a certain amount of time - time that was difficult to find a few days ago, but now, I have some morning time available on some week days, and some Sundays.

Wishing myself good luck on completing the chess-book writing project, before this month ends, I sign off.

Why Blog

I came across a thought written in someone's email as a signature:

"If you don't share your concepts and ideals, they end up being worthless,"
"Sharing is what makes them powerful."

I was very touched by it. Blogging was originally meant to refine some of the concepts and ideals that I had. I have fallen behind in blogging, but hopefully, soon, I will be back. The idea, of course, is to eventually share them. If they are interesting enough, then someone searching Internet using Google will find this blog and stick with it.

Got to work! Going Back.