Limbo

“From now on, I’ve decided to quote my age in base 18. That way I can feel like a teenager for a few more years.”

I have to quote Cecilia, from PhD Comics for giving me the idea. She does it the other way round and quotes her age in base 7, so that she gets motivated to graduate soon. I think, my academic shell is as thick as the Earth’s crust. I’m not breaking out of it any time soon.

People ask me for my reasons for doing a PhD, and trust me, sometimes they are not always clear. It is like, there is light at the end of the tunnel, but i could be the milkman on his cycle with a headlight (I was going to say, a train, but the light is not all that bright)

It is tough to get creative ideas, especially when you are battling a monster that takes up all your time. For those of you, who stood by me, in those difficult times, I salute you. I promise that if I ever graduate, I’ll make a special mention of all your names in my thesis, but since I’ll probably be the only one who reads it, you might not get the recognition you deserve.

So, here I am today, hoping for a miracle. Hope something interesting happens soon, so that I can blog about it. Till then, see ya

Please Make it stop now-II

It was a day of high drama. It all started normally until my nurse came up to me and said, they were going to do a procedure on me, in my room at that very instant. “What procedure?” was my reaction. A colonoscopy apparently. The GI doctor walked in and said, he was talking to the other doctors and they were wondering if they really had to wait until later in the week to do the colonoscopy. With all the diarrhea I was having, they were sure, my colon would be clear, and they can go in and do a few biopsies and resolve this faster. They brought a few computers and some tubes and scopes. They had the anesthesia ready, and they also explained all the risks and made me sign a waiver. I was asked to lie down on my side and slide my pants off under a blanket and they were just about to sedate me, when the GI doctor came back and asked them to stop. Apparently one of my stool tests had come back positive for C. Diff, and the infection was something that had to be treated for, before they could do the colonoscopy. “Thank Goodness”, I thought. I wasn’t too excited about the idea of getting my bottom probed.

I was under the impression that people were allowed to walk around in hospitals, but not me. I was on enteric isolation. Apparently, the C. Diff infection can spread very easily in hospitals. I was not allowed to leave the room and the nurses and doctors were wearing isolation gowns and masks when they entered my room. A week long state of house arrest. I was allowed visitors, but I tried my best to avoid physical contact with them.

After four days of antibiotics, they decided that it was time to scope me, and this time they were gonna do it right. I was asked to drink a gallon of a preparatory solution. I managed three quarts before giving up. Have you hit the restroom 32 times in one night? Well, that is what this stuff does to you.  It is supposed to completely clear your digestive system so that it can be probed. It is like cleaning your insides with liquid soap.

I wasn’t allowed to drink water the next day. I was thirsty and hungry. They were supposed to scope me at 9 am in the morning, but the doctor was busy with another patient. I had to wait till 12. The nurse asked me if she could get me anything. I asked her if i can get some water. “Sorry, the only thing I can offer you right now is a warm blanket”, she said. I wondered why she bothered to even ask me then. I had ECG probes monitoring my heart rate, a blood pressure monitor that periodically measured my BP and heart rate, an Oxygen meter measuring the O2 levels.  I asked her if she can unplug me, so that I can go to the restroom. It took her three minutes to pull all the wires out. After i was done with my business, she had to hook me up again. That was no easy task either.

Finally it was my turn, they gave me a sedative, which would help me relax, but i would still be responsive. They struck a tube down my throat. I could feel the tube press against m throat, and I almost threw up. Breathe through your nose, said the doctor. i tried, but i think, i was still trying to force something out occasionally. The tube then went in the other direction, and finally, my entire digestive system was on video tape.

With my diagnosis complete, it was time for treatment options. They found a few ulcers in my colon, so it was a little serious. The doctor told me that it was important to treat the ulcers, but the treatment for ulcers would weaken my immune system, so it was not recommended until the bacterial infection had cleared up. One option he said, would be to surgically remove my colon. That meant that I would have a bag attached to my waist, which would collect the wastes from my stomach. Even though a part of me was shouting “No Way”, there was a part of me that just sunk into a depression so deep, I think decided i’ll stop eating for the rest of my life.

Fortunately for me, the infection cleared up in the next two days and they didn’t have to take any such drastic steps.

The next day, they started treatment for the ulcers, and in two days I was responding and feeling better. Finally, after 11 days of hospitalization, on July 4th 2011, I was discharged, and yes, there were fireworks to celebrate my discharge

 

Minneapolis celebrates my discharge, and that independence thing

 

 

 

Please Make it stop now

It has been a while since i wrote a blog post. It has also been  a while since i got dumped, had water thrown on my face, slapped or punched in the stomach. Yes, my life is getting really boring. To make my boring life a little more interesting, I decided to go back to the land where I was born.

India was so amazing, even Bangalore with all the construction work, and mysterious water that kept falling on my head from time to time. I was feeling bad that i could only do a really short trip this time, just 10 days. The first couple of days went fine. I met my friends in Bangalore (Incidentally, all were from TI. I should get back with my college friends. Hi Rach, I know you read my blog sometimes, may be next time we can meet up. Sneo, read your articles babe. Have fun in Singapore).

India was perfect until I had to take a long train journey from Bangalore to Kakinada on the “great” Seshadri Express. That train travels through the weirdest places and stops for a really long time in places like Atthilli, a town proabably the size of Rajajinagar area in bangalore.  Some where on that route, i ran out of water. I didn’t find my trusted “Kinley” brand anywhere. Thank you “Coca -Cola” for ensuring that there is no clean bottled water, in places where you actually need it.  So I came back, with the name you can trust, “Jeppiar mineral water”. I opened the bottle and drank from it, and the water very suspiciously tasted like the water i used to brush my teeth in the train that morning. May be, I was being paranoid, I don’t know. Somebody told me that Jeppiar was an industrialist in Tamil Nadu, and the water was definitely reliable. I even found out that he was the founder of a lot of engineering colleges in that state. The guy seemed genuine, but I guess the water was not.

If you haven’t guessed already, the rest of this article i about Diarrhea. a 2000 word blog on the “runs”. I don’t know what started them, I don’t think i’ll ever find out, all I want is to make it stop.

To make things worse, I was at a wedding. I was in a room that was closest to the wedding hall, and the only room without a lock. An old man walked up to me, and asked me for help coz he couldn’t find the bathroom. I thought i’ll be a gentleman, and told him that he could use the one in my room, because it is right there. I wonder why that gave the guests the wrong impression that my toilet was a public restroom. soon enough I had people barging in and just walking into the restroom, kids shouting “uncle uncle, I have to go first,”. They pissed, pooped and spat in my restroom.

At this point, I can imagine some of you rolling your eyes and saying “Oho! Mr. NRI”, to all those people, I’m gonna say “Shut Up Bitches, you weren’t there”.

I thought the worst day of my life was when I got dumped the first time, then the second time, then the third, but I realized that the worst day of your life is when you have diarrhea and you are on a 14 hr non stop flight from Delhi to Chicago, sitting on a window seat, with a 70 year old, hefty man blocking the aisle seat. He just slept the entire time. and it was impossible to wake him up. I stood on my chair and jumped over him and I had to keep doing that all night. I was like a circus monkey on a plane.

If you aren’t disgusted by this story, already, you are my kind of reader. The real fun began when I came back to America. I went straight to the clinic for treatment. It was a very simple case of food poisoning for them. Guy, comes back from a trip to a developing country, and has diarrhea and abdominal pain, It is just something he ate. They followed the rule book and did a stool test, found some bug and decided to kill the guy with a week strong dose of antibiotics. But it didn’t stop. The doctor at the clinic thought that a stronger dose should do the job, and he gave me another week of a stronger dose of the antibiotic and sent me back home. Unfortunately, things just kept getting worse. The doctor asked me to get a stool test again and tested me for the same bacteria. Everything came back negative. He was also going away for a week on a conference, so he forwarded me to his Colleague Dr. Crazy Quack and left town.

Dr. Crazy Quack as his name implies is a slightly crazy guy, whose medical credentials are seriously questionable.

Do they have malaria  in India? he asked me. I wished I could say “Duh! Do they have real doctors in america?’, but I just quietly said yes. We don’t see malaria in this country, does it cause diarrhea? This is the point where i should have left, but I just continued to listen. He Google searched malaria and started reading the symptoms online, right in front of me. I was amazed at my tolerance levels for bull shit. He found a page which said, it could cause diarrhea, and decided that it is best to test me for malaria. When the test came back negative, he repeated the test twice, just to make sure.

When, all the tests came back negative, he said, “This is not good, I mean, it is challenging for me as a doctor, but not so good for you”. ”Are you for real!!!” was my immediate reaction. I was starting to feel a little bad for myself. The guy called the Gastroenterologist at the university hospital. The gastroenterologist recommended a few tests, which included a test for C. Diff, a bacteria which is always present in the human colon, but can flare up with the use of antibiotics.

The quack came back to me and asked me, how comfortable was I with the idea of getting admitted in the hospital. “Anything that will make me feel better again”, I said. Well your hemoglobin is dropping down to dangerous levels, just sign here and the nurse outside will take you to the hospital on a wheel chair he said. I didn’t bother to think anymore, I just signed the papers and crashed on the wheel chair. The nurse took me through a bunch of tunnels (If, you are from the U of M, it was a Gopher Way, from Boynton to Fairview) and I was in the hospital.

The hospital was a different experience all together. Doctors who know what they are doing, trying to get done with it really fast so that they can get you out as fast as possible.  The doctors talked to me about getting a stool and blood culture test, and a colonoscopy in the next few days. The next thing I was put on IV and was flushed with fluids all night.

The next thing in the morning, the nurse tells me they are taking me for a CT scan and that that i should skip breakfast. I remembered my old CT scan experience, with the bottle full of Barium Contrast that I had to gulp down after fasting for 8 hours. It looks like paint, smells like paint and tastes no different. “would you like to drink the contrast with sprite or apple juice,” asked the nurse. “Can you do that?” I asked. Yah, you can’t drink the contrast directly. It doesn’t taste that good. She said. “Okay, Sprite would be great” I replied. She brought a cup and filled it with a clear liquid from a syringe and then filled the cup with sprite. “What happened to the big bottle of paint?” I asked. “Oh, the Barium, We don’t do that anymore” she replied. I was a happy man. I drank my sprite, and then i drank some more after one hour. The CT scan was done in no time. It took them longer to wheel chair me to the CT scan room.

This blog post is getting really long, and I have decided to break it into two posts. The next one coming up soon

Stay Warm

I walk around telling people that I love the Minnesotan winters and people think I’m crazy, so I’ve decided to write a blog on why it is the best time of the year. The cold winter is part of the culture in Minnesota. People say, “Bye now, and stay warm”, instead of the usual “bye now and take care”. The best part about winter is how things seem to slow down a bit. You cannot just get up and go out to get lunch. There are procedures for stepping out of the building. You need a sweatshirt followed by ear muffs, winter jacket, gloves and heavy winter boots. Putting all of that on, takes about 5 minutes. Walks just take longer. The ice and the snow make it impossible to walk faster than a sloth in the amazon rain forest. Cars cannot travel faster than 20 miles an hour. The wheels just spin and the car skids, and the interstate is as fast or as slow as the narrow bylane. The sun sets early, but the street lights are scattered by the snow and the night is almost as bright as the day. Winters are the best time of the year. Come to Minnesota and one day u’ll agree with me

 

Monotony

Have you ever noticed that we spend so much of our time in pointless routines. I never thought I would talk about this, because I always thought I was a very spontaneous guy. I just live in the moment. Then I had something that I would call an “Out of this world Experience”.

I might have to go back a little  and explain it to you. There is this Vietnamese sandwich place on Washington Avenue. The place has a whole lot of sandwich options and they are pretty reasonably priced, but that is not the point of the story here. The point is that I’m vegetarian. I’m a vegetarian because I was raised vegetarian. I like it, and I think it is a healthier diet. Okay, back to the story. There are only two vegetarian options at the sandwich place, Mock Duck and Tofu. I used to alternate between the two every time I went there, and I ate there often. The greeter at the restaurant knows me by my first name and she knows what I eat. I went there the other day and ordered Mock duck, and the greeter said, “You ate Mock duck yesterday, it’s Tofu day today”. Life doesn’t get any more monotonous than that. When a greeter at a sandwich bar knows what you eat. I eat at Chipotle now, but that is getting a bit monotonous too. If you guys know a great place to eat around the university area, then please leave a comment below. I was watching a movie the other day, actually I watch a movie almost every day, and I realized that even that is a routine. How many movies can a guy really watch. Netflix is running out of recommendations for me.

I would like to end this blog post with a link to a photograph. There is nothing much to it, it is the most recent change that happened in my life, plus i wanted to get more hits to my flickr page

 

Someday

I hadn’t met “Her” in ten years. When she got married, her husband wanted her to break all ties with me. “No connections with your ex”, he said. Things had changed now. They were married for ten years, and I was pretty much out of their lives. I ran into her at a shopping mall, and she thought that I should meet her family for lunch.

I was really nervous when I rang her door bell, not knowing what to expect. A kid came running up the stairs and walked up to me, while I was waiting at the front door. She waved at me and stood next to me. “Give me a chocolate”, she said. “Sorry dear, I don’t have any”, I replied. “Yes you do, you have one in your left pocket”, she said. I was really surprised and pulled out a chocolate bar from my pocket. I was carrying one in case my lovely ex girlfriend had any kids she didn’t tell me about. I gave it to her and she started eating it. “What’s it like, meeting your ex-girlfriend after 10 years?” said the kid. “How do you know?”, I said, turning to the little girl. I was shocked at her knowledge of my personal life.  ”Do you wanna know a little secret”, she said. She pulled my arm, signalling me to get down on my knees, so that she can whisper in my ears. “I’m imaginary”, she said, when i got down on my knees.

“What?, Did ‘she’ set you up for this? Is this a prank?”, I asked the girl. The door opened, and ‘she’ was standing in front of me. I forgot how beautiful she could look. “Wow”, I said, looking up. “Hey, glad you could make it. Slight change of plans though. My dearly beloved, has to work today, so we are meeting him at a restaurant near his office”. The phone in her bedroom rang and she went in to take the call. I guess I was supposed to let myself in. Just when I thought I was in the most uncomfortable situation in my life, Things just got worse. Now I was alone in an apartment with her.

“You are in some serious s**t now”, said the girl. “Hey, watch your mouth. You are lucky I’m not gonna wash your mouth with soap, for talking like that”, I said. “You watch it, I’m just a figment of your imagination, remember”, she replied. “Who are you talking to?”, my ex yelled out from her bedroom. I heard footsteps, she was walking towards me. For reasons I cannot explain, I grabbed the girl and hid her behind a couch, and leaned on the couch to block her from crawling out. “What are you doing?”, asked my ex, when she found me leaning onto her couch in a very weird position. “Nothing, I was feeling a little uncomfortable. Just gas, I guess”, I replied. “Okay.. I guess we should stay away from Mexican food then” she smiled and shrugged her shoulders.

She went back in to get her keys and her purse. “I hope you understand, that was totally unnecessary”, said the girl, crawling out. “She cannot see me”. “I still think, this is a prank. I don’t believe a word you say. I am not crazy”, I replied. “Check your pocket”, she said. I put my hand into my pocket and found the chocolate that she just ate a few minutes ago. “Did you slide another one into my pocket?” I asked the girl. She promptly pulled out the cover of the chocolate she ate and handed it to me. I compared both of them. The batch numbers and the manufacturing date were exactly identical. It could have been a prank, but I was starting to believe that I might be crazy. I always knew that the PhD was a bad idea, now I knew why. “Holy Cr*p”, I said, still shocked from my discovery. “Now, you watch your mouth”, said the girl. “You are just a figment of my imagination. I can say whatever I want”, I replied. “Yes, but I’m still six years old”, so you can’t swear in front of me.

“Are you ready. My husband just called, he is waiting for us”, my ex was standing near the door. “Yah, Where are we going. I’ll follow you in my car. I think i’ll leave after lunch”, I said. “Really! I was hoping we could catch up on the way to the restaurant” she said. “No, I just remembered something. I’m crazy, I mean, its this crazy thing from work”. I put on my shoes and we were ready to go. I walked up to my car and sat in the front seat. “Kids sit in the back seat. It doesn’t matter if they are real or imaginary” I said. The girl opened the back  door and got into the car. “You know why I’m here right. You created me because of the uncomfortable situation that you were in”, she said, putting on her seatbelt. “Ya, well I just wish you would go away” I replied. We drove to the restaurant and walked up to the front entrance. Her husband was waiting for us. He was a few years older than the two of us, he was nearing forty and he looked a lot older. She put her arm around him and said, this is my husband, and I believe you have already met my daughter.

This is definitely the strangest dream I have had in years. It was interesting how much I remembered after waking up

10 things of the narcissist

I got tagged by Sneo to confess 10 things about me. This is kinda tricky because I might have to confess 30 things about me, DFT and Ingrads. Here are the details of the tag

* Tell your readers 10 things about you that they may or may not know, but are true..
*  Tag 10 people with the award, and be sure to let them know they’ve been tagged (a quick comment on their blog will do).
*  Link back to the blogger who tagged you.

1. I love Cheerios. When I miss breakfast, I eat Cheerios for dinner.

2. I use “Abbey” a lot. Most of my sentences start with “Abbey…..”

3. I eat a lot of junk food

4. I like the freezing Minnesotan weather.

5. I cannot keep secrets.

6. I workout quite a bit. A lot of cardio goes into burning all the junk that I eat.

7. I get bored easily. I’m actually bored right now.

8. I am not good at saving money. I spend every penny I earn.

9. I can be very sarcastic at times. I know a few people who would love to see me dead, or at least in a lot of pain.

10. There is only one person on this planet who knows everything about me.

Ending this tag here. I don’t know a lot of people who blog.

Honesty

Honesty is highly overrated. People don’t want to hear the truth, they are just looking for someone to reaffirm their faith. You cannot go to a creationist and talk to him about evolution. I once talked to a guy about fossil evidence and he said that there is no proof to say that the dinosaur actually lived 65 million years ago, and radio carbon dating might be way off. He even argued that the average life span of people has decreased in the recent years because of the increase in the number of non believers. His grandmother apparently lived for a 120 years because she believed in God and prayed everyday. It didn’t matter to him, that the average life expectancy in those days was 7 years or less. He wouldn’t even accept that vestigial organs like the appendix or  wisdom teeth as evidence.

Having said that, It appears to me that creationists aren’t the only ones living in denial. A friend of mine recently got into a relationship and her guy wanted to know everything about her exes. She said, she was not ready to discuss it yet and when she is, she will tell him everything he needs to know. I don’t know how much she told him, but in my opinion, all he needs to know is that, there were a few men before him, and it doesn’t matter now. I follow a simple rule with my relationships. When my girlfriend asks me how many bases I have covered with my ex, it is always “One less” than the number of bases I have covered with her. That is usually the answer that they want to listen. It might not be the truth, but it is better to lie and be in a relationship, than give out the truth and stay single.

The truth hurts. I learnt that the hard way. If all the people in my university found out, what I really think of them, it would kill them. This is after I have openly insulted a few of them. I find it easy to be honest in emails, because I cannot see the rage on the other person’s face, but when I’m talking to them in person, I prefer to keep it low. A friend of mine interpreted my silence as lack of a valid argument. I kept quiet and reaffirmed his faith.

A friend of mine kept two business cards. One of them said he was a business analyst at a multinational company and the other one said he was an author for a world famous travel guide. He carried both of them in his pocket, when he went to bars to pick up girls and decided which card to play, based on the girl. The truth is that, he quit the multinational company a while ago and he hadn’t published anything for ages. He wasn’t lying about what he did. He did both those things, but right now he is just an unemployed writer with no money to travel. He can never pick up any girl by telling them the truth.

What would you prefer as your facebook profile? A picture of you, with the hottest women, which makes your friends think you are a player, or a picture of you standing next to your fat wife. I’m sure a lot of you will say that love has got nothing to do with the physical appearance and criticize me for being superficial,but what you are doing here is lying to your self that you actually love your super fat wife. If you know what is good for you, you will never admit the truth.

How many of you guys will admit the truth, when your girl friend asks you “What are you looking at?” Even though she is your girlfriend and you are allowed to check out her cleavage or figure, your answer will always be “Your Eyes”. If you ask your girlfriend if she thinks you are “better than” the other guy, her answer will always be a big “Yes”. Trust me, you don’t want your girlfriend telling you that she has seen something better before.

Lie to me my friends, lie to your husbands and your wives. They are good people. They don’t deserve the truth.

War of Words

I have recently been accused of being “Unnecessarily Harsh” on online forums. A man accused me of calling other people stupid and senseless beings. In my defense.. I want to say, “Well, atleast I provide comic relief for the readers”. The same person also accused me of “not being funny”, which ticked me off a lot. I had formulated a really long reply email, but I didn’t post it because people begged me not to prolong the debate any further. I am still going to post it here, because I think it is a good read.

@xxx:

What is the source of this aggression? The person who was the target of the joke is probably laughing right now, while you are here attacking me for a ridiculous joke. Did I strike a nerve here? Did the mildly insulting joke, bring back childhood memories? Were you bullied by a little girl when you were a kid? Are you now married to that girl? Were you the subject of all the jokes in your family/friend circle?

THAT, my dear xxx is called, being mean. What i typed on the forum, was a joke…

Having said that.. I would like to quote Scott Adams’ statement “Stupidity is not an all encompassing 24 hour phenomenon. It is a condition that people slip into from time to time. Life is just too complicated to be smart all the time”

Everybody makes stupid mistakes. If you don’t believe me, take a look at the list of your ex girlfriends (Oops!, I just realized that this example might not be applicable to you. Look at this way, think about all those stupid women who overlooked you and married other stupid men, THE result of which, you are currently married to your childhood bully ). Our stupidity defines us. How can you take offense when someone calls you stupid? Stupid mistakes which are overlooked become habits. The ones which are pointed out, make valuable life lessons.

There are different degrees of stupidity and so, there are degrees of punishments

1. Mild Stupidity:

The question posted by the originator of this thread, is an example of mild stupidity. This is usually punishable by a mildly insulting joke, which is what I posted in reply

2. Moderate Stupidity:

A slightly more serious form of stupidity. Ex: Engaging in a war of words with you.

This is usually punishable by emails and phone calls from friends and other members of the forum, asking me to SHUT UP. This email, is a desperate attempt to clean up my mess

3. Extreme stupidity:

This is usually punishable by death. Examples of this include, driving under influence, falling on a rusty nail and reading this email till the end.

I like cracking jokes, that habit is a result of never encountering a person like you, ever. I was in a great dilemma as to, whether to send this reply to everyone on the list, or just to you, but I decided that, this could be a good read for other comically challenged engineers, which is why I’m posting it on the forum.

Yours Truly

Ingrads

fables and fairy tales

There was once a man, who was trying to save a scorpion from drowning in a lake. Every time, he would pick it up with his hands, the scorpion would sting him and he would let go of it, dropping it into the lake again. A passerby walked up to him and said, “You moron, that is a scorpion, that is it’s trait. It stings people”. The man replied, “My point exactly, if a scorpion cannot let go of its trait, because it is drowning, why should I, being a human being, let go of my trait of helping other living beings.” He was another  Saint in the making, but we didn’t hear much about him, because he died of  scorpion venom that day.

Moral of the story: Kindness isn’t everything, pick up a scorpion with a stick, or a net. Don’t use your hands, use your head