Fusion 9

The world forgetting, by the world forgot.
Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!
Each pray'r accepted, and each wish resign'd;
Labour and rest, that equal periods keep;
"Obedient slumbers that can wake and weep;
"Desires compos'd, affections ever ev'n,
Tears that delight,
and sighs that waft to Heav'n.
Grace shines around her with serenest beams,
And whisp'ring angels prompt her golden dreams.
For her th' unfading rose of Eden blooms,
And wings of seraphs shed divine perfumes,
For her the Spouse prepares the bridal ring,
For her white virgins hymeneals sing,
To sounds of heav'nly harps she dies away,
And melts in visions of eternal day.

-Excerpt from Alexander Pope's "Eloisa to Abelard"

Invitation by Oriah Mountain Dreamer

I like this because it is a modern day rendition of the notion laid out in Kipling's "If"
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It doesn't interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for, and if you dare dream of meeting your heart's longing.

It doesn't interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking the fool for love, for your dreams, for the adventure of being alive.

It doesn't interest me what planets are squaring your moon. I want to know if you have touched the center of your sorrow, if you have been opened up by life's betrayals or have become shrivelled and closed from fear of further pain.

I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own, if you can dance with wildness and let ecstacy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful, be realistic, or to remember the limitations of being human.

It doesn't interest me if the story you are telling me is true.I want to know if you can betray another to be true to yourself; if you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul.

I want to know if you can be faithful and therefore be trustworthy.

I want to know if you can see beauty even when it's not a pretty day, and if you can source your life from God's presence.

I want to know if you can live with failure, yours and mine, and stand on the edge of a lake and shout to the silver light of a full moon, "Yes!"

It doesn't interest me to know where you live or how much money you have. I want to know if you can get up after a night of grief and despair, weary and bruised to the bone, and do what needs to be done for the children.

It doesn't matter who you are, or how you came to be here. I want to know if you will stand in the center of the fire with me and not shrink back.

It doesn't interest me where or what or with whom you have studied. I want to know what sustains you from the inside when all else falls away.

I want to know if you can be alone with yourself, and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments.

GLAT

If you subscribe to "Physics Today" or MIT's "Technology Review" you would have seen that Google started an innovative way to recruit people for their lab jobs.They issued a booklet containing questions.Think you have the brains to work with these super smart people working on cutting edge technologies.Try wrestlingwith these questions :

1. Solve this cryptic equation, realizing of course that values for M andE could be interchanged. No leading zeroes are allowed.WWWDOT - GOOGLE = DOTCOM

2.Write a haiku describing possible methods for predicting searchtraffic seasonality.
(A haiku is a short poem, usually having three lines and seventeen syllables (five syllables on line 1, seven on line 2, and five on line 3)

3.What's the next line?
1 1
1 2
1 1 2 1
1 1 1 1 2 2 1

4.You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike. There is adusty laptop here with a weak wireless connection. There are dull,lifeless gnomes strolling about. What dost thou do?
A) Wander aimlessly, bumping into obstacles until you are eaten by a grue.
B) Use the laptop as a digging device to tunnel to the next level.
C) Play MPoRPG until the battery dies along with your hopes.
D) Use the computer to map the nodes of the maze and discover an exit path.
E) Email your resume to Google, tell the lead gnome you quit and findyourself in a whole different world

5.What's broken with Unix? How would you fix it?

6.On your first day at Google, you discover that your cubicle mate wrotethe textbook you used as a primary resource in your first year ofgraduate school. Do you:
A) Fawn obsequiously and ask if you can have an autograph.
B) Sit perfectly still and use only soft keystrokes to avoiddisturbing her concentration
C) Leave her daily offerings of granola and English toffee from the food bins.
D) Quote your favorite formula from the textbook and explain how it'snow your mantra.
E) Show her how example 17b could have been solved with 34 fewer lines of code.

7.Which of the following expresses Google's over-arching philosophy?
A) "I'm feeling lucky"
B) "Don't be evil"
C) "Oh, I already fixed that"
D) "You should never be more than 50 feet from food"
E) All of the above

8.How many different ways can you color an icosahedron with one of three colors on each face?
(ote: "An icosahedron is not-necessarily a regular 20-facedpolyhedron! Examples include the regular icosahedron, Jessen'sorthogonal icosahedron, rhombic icosahedron, 18-sided prism, 19-sidedpyramid, or 10-sided dipyramid..." am I a geek?.)
What colors would you choose?

9.This space is intentionally blank. Please fill it with something thatimproves upon emptiness.
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10.On an infinite, two-dimensional, rectangular lattice of 1-ohmresistors, what is the resistance between two nodes that are aknight's move away?

11.It's 2pm on a sunny Sunday afternoon in the Bay Area. You're minutesfrom the Pacific Ocean, redwood forest hiking trails and world classcultural attractions. What do you do?

12.In your opinion, what is the most beautiful math equation ever derived?

13.Which of the following is NOT an actual interest group formed by Google employees?
A) Women's basketball B) Buffy fans C) Cricketeers D) Nobel winners E) Wine club

14.What will be the next great improvement in search technology?

15. What is the optimal size of a project team, above which additionalmembers do not contribute productivity equivalent to the percentageincrease in the staff size?
A) 1
B) 3
C) 5
D) 11
E) 24

16.Given a triangle ABC, how would you use only a compass and straightedge to find a point P such that triangles ABP, ACP, and BCP haveequal perimeters? (Assume that ABC is constructed so that a solutiondoes exist.)

17.What's the coolest hack you've ever written?

18.'Tis known in refined company, that choosing K things out of N can bedone in ways as many as choosing N minus K from N: I pick K, you the remaining.
Find through a cooler bijection, where you show a knack uncanny, of making your choices contain all K of mine. Oh, for pedantry: let K be no more than half N.

19.What number comes next in the sequence: 10, 9, 60, 90, 70, 66, ?
A) 96
B) 10 to the 100th power
C) Either of the above
D) None of the above

20.In 29 words or fewer, describe what you would strive to accomplish ifyou worked at Google Labs.
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If you do answer this then you can expect an email in the following format :

"Dear Problem Solver,

Thanks for taking the time to play with our little brain-teaser and forsending us your solution. While you won't find a confirmation of theanswer in this email, we did want to let you know that your message wasreceived and that we'll be taking a look at it. If you submitted a resume,we'll be spending some time with that as well. If it seems like theremight be a fit with a position we have open, we'll contact you within thenext few days.

And as for the answer to the puzzle, we'll post the ads and the solutionon our site within a couple of months, after those who are a little slowerthan you have had a chance to work on it a bit longer.

Thanks again foryour interest in Google.

The Google Labs Engineering Team"

Depression

"We act as though comfort and luxury were the chief requirements of life,when all that we need to make us happy is something to be enthusiastic about." - Einstein

The above statement seems to be true in my case.I do have the comfort and luxury needed for a person of my stature.These days I am chronically depressed and irritated at the same time.I am depressed I dont have anything in my pipeline or around me that I am enthusiastic about.I am irritated because I am unable to adapt to the changing environment around me.Growing up does not seem to be my cup of tea.I have a hard time accepting some things that routinely gets accepted in the workplace.I cannot stand two traffic jams (one to work,one to school)

I am seeking desperately some change to be brought about in my life.Something that could excite me or atleast engage me.Something that makes me feel Alive. People like me get bored too easily.I have to slow down and breathe in.I got to regenrate myself.Somehow this seems more difficult this time (I do this routinely and probably jinxed myself by bragging about it recently!)

I think probably in the next fornight something might light up my days.I can do this.I can bounce back.I can get back my groove and in fact I was told I am not losing my edge but rather becoming too sharp.Enough said.For the moment I console myself with these Alan Parson's lyrics :

"I know the truthBut I can't sayAnd I have to turn my headAnd look the other way

I'm not afraid And I won't lie, As long as I see no wrongI won't need to testify

I breathe the air While they're running in a rat race

Way above it allStanding on higher ground

I feel the blowBut I don't speak

And I have to close my eyes Pretending I'm asleep

Well I see the tears But I don't cry As long as I do no wrong I don't need an alibi

I see the world And I'm looking from a high place

Way above it allStanding on higher ground"

Silence

Wittgenstein remarked "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent".

So I extend it to say "Whereof one cannot write,thereof one must not blog".Thats the reason I didnt have a blog for the past few days.It does not mean you have nothing to write it means nothing worthwhile to write.

Ever had that feeling when one music track or a jingle or some tune alwways creeps up on your mind stealthily and you begin to wonder why in the world does this idea randomly gets associated with for no particular reason.

For some reason Bhartrihari's tune is dancing in my mind.I am giving a vent to it now.If my recollection serves me right, this was aired on All India Radio (AIR) early morning (used to be my wakeup call).Whatever happened to it or "Binaca GeetMala"

(Following is a phonetic translation from Sanskrit.CAPS are elongated/emphasized sounds)

kEyUrANi na bhUshayaMti purushaM hArAaH na chaNdrOjjwalah
na snAnaM na vilEpanaM na kusumaM nAlaMkRtA mUrdhajA
vANyEkA samalaMkarOti purushaM
yA saMskRtA dhAryatE kshIyaMtE aKila bhUshaNAni satataM
vAgbhUshaNaM bhUshaNaM !!

Please imagine the twang of a three strings plucked in series on a Veena at the end of each line.
Basically it means to say that there is no jewel that can adorn a person like that of a civilized speech. (My intrepretation here is a li'l rusty).

If you like this there one more pearls of his wisdom could be found here. Now I can go on without the haunt of this for the rest of the day....

The Last Friday

Yesterday marked the departure of Varun from US to India for good.He is nicely starting a well funded (more than a million Us$) company in India.Just for old times sake we wanted to meet.

Just to celebrate we started drinking early.I initially had 2 'Leffe' beligian ales.The we had Paani Puri at a local Indian store followed by some excellent Bowling action at a nearby alley.I did score some of my best spins ever recording more than 100 points in each.Meanwhile I have also sent a couple of yuenglings too.Nothing happened.Sent a couple of more drinks to find out about the previous ones.Hardly any response and I lost the game too by a margin of 6 points.Darn!

Then we started shooting pool.This time I gulped 3 heinekens for cheerleading the earlier drinks in my tummy as well as for setting some kind of gung-ho state that hopefully uplifted me.I won the game of pool.EhUwOh..I finished the night with one more heineken (I dropped one of the bottles on the floor too) which increased the rift between mind and body.

Then came back home and had a Yuengling to call it a day.I was dazed and confused.It produced a concussion/catatonic stage which completely separated the mind from the body.For several hours afterwards body started doing things without my telling it to.Stripped of its connections to the physical world the mind started running in circles like and engine that has torn its driveshaft and is screaming along at full throttle,doing no useful work while burning itself up.Kind of Like placing zeros after a decimal point.Doesnt change the value of the number but nevertheless fun.I usually didnt emerge from this state unless someone talked to me.

A Mouthful of Sky

Earth, Wind, Rain and Fire
Wealth, Power, Blood and Desire
One life to live, Before we die..
One Taste of Glory
One Story
One Mouthful of Sky

Now how many of you remember this serial which used to be aired on DD-2 11:00 pm during the early 1990s (Cant place it exactly.).Anyways the four elements, the four pillars of civilisation and some faily inspiring lyrics helped me jog my memory now for some reason..Anyways its a good jingle

Winds of Change

Hmm.Its been a while since I blogged.Long weekends are always like that.Leacves you yearning for more vacation.I need one more vacation to recover from this one.Ther's been a heck of lot thats gonna change soon so I better blog it down.

Left for Dallas last Thursday to visit a Friend whose gonna be married soon.I returned back on Sunday only to hear that my roomie got engaged.What the heck is happening.Is there a mating season around that somebody forgot to tell me..

Anyways played volleyball after 10 years for almost 4 years.I still got my serve intact but have to practice spiking and my fingering.People out there seem to be too religious to me.Fairly cheap and low cost of living.Played a little tennis and some pool.Got drunk properly to the extent I was completely dehydrated that I was left in a state akin to that of a car'sengine being locked.I had to stop there at the club and ask my friend to drive me back home.Flew back while recuperating.

I come back to find another friend from NJ drop in.Now this fella came all the way and requested him to show something around DC.I drove him to harper's ferry,WV. Back to work again.

Coffee..The Jet Fuel of Corporate America keeps me chugging along.Meanwhile fouind Work so boring that I had to request my leader to assign me a different client and hinting probably a change of scene would help me.Au Contrarie, I was tasked to do extra work long enough to keep those depressing thoughts away into the wee hours and weekends.So much for that.

Its been ages since I played Golf.Gotta get back to it tommorow.Watched "Vanilla Sky" yesterday.Made me think a bit.Penelope Cruz is awesome.I finished another book called "When the Wizards Stay Up Late". Almost a must for anybody interested in the origins of the Internet.

I signed up for parking permit so that I could drive down to my work instead of car pooling.Vey few things can do to mankind what I-495 and I-66 can do.For that matter getting stuck in a Traffic Jam tells you a lot about who you are.I amall cussing and ready to beat up peoplewho cut me off.Had to listen to music to get me calmed down and relax. Very few places where you can see amputated souls on the road. I think a part of my soul too was missing when I got back home.

Ahh! That reminds me.I am back in school learning a lot of Math/CS stuff in a course called "Quantitative Methods and Experimental Design in CS" where you deal with questions like how many girlsyou have to propose before being accepted? Makes it a wee bit interesting..

Enough of my yapping.Let me rest so that I get to write something nice instead of the egotistical crap I wrote above..I leave with this find recollection :

The wind of change
Blows straight into the face of time
Like a stormwind that will ring the freedom bell
For peace of mind
Let your balalaika sing
What my guitar wants to say

Take me to the magic of the moment
On a glory night Where the children of tomorrow share their dreams
With you and me