Why is Monday not Myday ?

Everyone who hates work hates mondays. There are enough reasons already which proves monday is not a good day to start a week with. Here are 10 reasons why I hate monday.

1. Its tough to get up at 10 AM after sleeping till 2PM over the weekend. I need a day or two in between for the transition. Monday is just not good for that.

2. Monday is still far away from friday.

3. Monday comes every 7 days. Its not like you live with it once and will never have to face it again. Its a recurring problem.

4. I feel good if I drink beer on friday but I do it on monday I feel guilty. ( I dont know why )

5. Monday is my cooking turn at home. (That makes tuesday a bad day for my roomies !)

6.We have lab meetings on monday.

7. I dont like the class I TA on monday. They are way too grown up to learn biology 100.

8. Yesterday I had a bad day and that happened to be a monday.

9. December 4th falls on a monday.

10. You got to hate someday and I chose it to be monday.

Crappy Poems

To me writing crappy poems is big time fun. The more stupid they turn out the better I feel.

Writing poems are funny in a number of ways. You never expect to come out with one but thats when it happens. Look at this one for instance..

sleep tight
the whole night
you might .....
not feel light...
but dont diet...

This happened to be a conversation between me and one of my best freinds over yahoo messenger. I think it very much qualifies for a crappy poem. I thought it was really cool. It rhymes and for me thats a poem.

It reminds me of another converstaion I had about cats with my freind. I dont remember how exacty it happened but it just happened...but what happened was awesome..

kitty kat...
u are fat...
u stupid cat...
now stop doing tht?

That was an awesome rhyme scheme..isnt it??

NO BEERS IN BALTIMORE

Today for the first time after comming to the United States, me and my friend set out in search for beer. Although I have had beer lot of times over the past 1 year I never had to buy them...it was there and I just had to grab one. Today was different though...we felt we need one bcoz there is nothing much one can do on a hot sunday afternoon in Baltimore. Going to a pub (in the afternoon?@???) could have been a good idea. But we were too lazy for that and decided get the fluids home from nearby liquor shop. Apparently most liquor shops here dont work on sundays and we did not know that. Now that was something embarassing for someone who claims to be a connoisseur in this field.

So lesson for the day was " No beers on sunday afternoon in Baltimore. If you want it bad, rush to the pub".

Jose PEKERMAN . Do you know him ???

Coaches win matches. Coaches lose matches.

Sometimes it doesnt matter how good you are, you still dont end up where you should be. Had talent, flair, style and quality been the benchmark of deciding who wins a soccer match it would have been argentina forever. I would say that I have never seen anything more artistic than the way they play. If they play ,they play with flair. No matter what the results, they win the fans.

As has been the case every four years , argentina started out as favourites even this year at germany. Noone could deny the fact that they had in them to beat any country in style. They lived up to what was expected of them - play football on a different plane which noone would dream of. Pooled in the 'group of death' they emerged unscathed. After riding over ivory coast they creamed serbia only to be held to a goalless draw by the dutch. The round of 16 offered a display of quality football with argentina being challenged by a highly motivated mexican 11. This according to me was the best match of the world cup so far.

But all through I did not understand I thing. Why hide talents? What is Lionel Messi good at sitting in the bench. To me, Messi should play 90 minutes every game if he is fit. Not every coach is lucky to have someone that talented in the ranks. Why is Pekerman messing up with Messi???

Heights of mismanagement was evident in the quarterfinal clash against germany. No Messi the whole 120 minutes of play (Messi on 1 leg is still better than Cruz on 10 !). No Saviola. No Aimar. Riquelme substituted in the 78th minute. And to add Klose ran into their No.1 goal keeper forcing him out of play in the 75th minute. Jose Pekerman looked like a man missing his family. He wanted to get back home soon I guess...leaving people like me ask the question - Jose Pekerman, Do you know him????

THE BMW DREAM !

I prefer swtiching on the heater to burning twigs during winter. I prefer buying clothes from a showroom than checking out for deals at wallmart. I prefer having a burrito for lunch to rice and bean. I hate being just another desi on road.

So it was natural that I began my search for cars with BMWs. It took me less than an hour to realize that a brand new one would cost me more than 3 years of my salary put together. Quite hesitant(ly), I lowered my bar to used BMWs. An intense search landed me on an awesome deal. A perfect 1998 BMW convertible for 8k. And more to it..it ran just over 50k miles !!!! Bingo...Achu this is the 'The Deal' . I began publicizing my new car among close friends. Not having the lisence did not prevent me from driving it in my dreams. I could feel the machine...the interiors were impressive...and fully loaded. She was indeed the most beautiful car in Baltimore. Hey but what will I do in winter? Its not a hard-top convertible... the hard-tops are beyond reach for graduate students .Will I have to settle for another toyota and be another desi on road??

(* - By desi I dont mean 'DESI'. I meant the attitude of ppl which prevents them from parting with their hard earned quarters. Please dont make me centre point of any controversy...)

First two days of a Publically Humiliated Dog

Day 1

I walk into my PI's office room.
He says " Achuth,I am delieghted to have you..welcome."
And am like..."eeeeeeeeeeeee" .
He : " Well what made you choose my lab for PhD? "
Me : "errrrrrrrr....did you say something? "

Day 2

After much struggle I find a place for myself in the lab which is little short of room to accomodate 8 grad students, 1 post doc, 1 technician and 2 undergrads. As I begin to ease myself on my chair he stops by my bench..

He : " hey, how you doing? "
Me : " Good ( ...rather was good till this point )"
He : "I want you to think of an hypothesis that would be worth chasing for a PhD degree?"
Me : " ...@#$ ???? ( thats not a good joke to start the day with !)"
He (continues) : I want you to think as to how you can connect what you did earlier with the lab's central focus .
Me : :-0 !!!
He: So I want you to do some homework...
Me : Does it have to be related to the lab's central theme???
He : It can be something else too as long as you have a reason to convince me why we should do that !
Me : :-0 !!!!!

Never knew hypothesizing is this difficult. I claim am a thinker !

Lessons I learnt from the Drug and Alcohol Class.

1. Drinking alcohol can make you impotent.
2. 12 cans of beer = 1 serving of 100 pr0of alcohol = 4 servings of wine
3. A 100 pr0of alcohol will have 50 % alcohol..the other 50% determines whether it is vodhka , whisky, tequila..etc.
4. If u drink a lot , you will pee a lot.
5. Peeing helps reduce the alcohol content in your blood.
6. I can halucinate if I have drugs.

I also heard the instructors wife yell bad words at him. That woman.... trust me had an awesome vocabulary.....

FIRST NAME UNKNOWN

Can anyone not have a first name??? According to my passport I dont have one. Thanks to the officers at shastri bhavan. They printed my first name as 'FNU' - First name unkown. You definietly dont need a PhD to realize that no dad would leave their child un-named. I had not noticed this untill the guy at MVA refused to believe that I am 'Achuth Padmanabhan'. Cummon man...why would anyone want to claim that he's me.... I am no Hugh Hefner.

As of now I have an identity crisis .... :-(

WHAT DO I DO?

My friends have had this complaint that I keep giving some silly responses to their offline messages on yahoo messenger and that I dont keep them informed about what I do. Well what do I do ???

My dear freinds ( who are desperate to know what I do... ) ....this is what I have been doing........

My exams got over a long ago...( when i say a long ago i dont mean the last ice age !) . It was good. I got my grades...errrr did I say that...I'dnt have....

what else is happening in my life...I get up around 9.30ish and hurry up to show my face in the lab by 10.30ish. I try my best to hang around there till 1 AM next day trying to get things I very well know will never work going. As usual I understand at the end of the day (or rather the start of the next day) that I thought right and should have taken rest rather. The frustration ensures I sleep well for the next 7 hours.

Yea things with atmost importance - In between all this I do find enough time to stay clean,have food, go around irritating fellow Indians in the department, play soccer/cricket/basketball/tennis. Yea I am trying to play them all knowing very well I am making a monkey out of myself.

I check my YM for offlines everynight before sleeping and I blog on days when I dont feel sleepy till 3 in the morning.

What else do I do with my life...watch movies sometimes..gossip around big time...pull my roomies leg...drink beer on friday evenings... talk to my parents regularly...scrap my friends on orkut.... try and stick around girls who get a 8/10 or above on my scale knowing very well that they would have the slightest interest in hanging around with me...

When nothin to do I read things that might help me get a degree.....

And yea, from this month I plan to do a couple of more things...go and attend all my friends thesis defence (most my friends are in the comp science..and I understand squat..still I make a point to be there for the donuts and snacks they give at the start...and for showing them that during hard times achuth will stick around even if he's of not much use )....and yea I am planning to learn swimming ( frog in a pool ) ...going to gym (to impress you by building my muscles)...and I also plan to get my driving lisence...

....and I might do a lot of other things which you might not want to know...

I guess thats all I do. ........

...........................................Wish I could sleep now

I feel so hot hot hot...

A chenniatte should never complain on such issues but I will. Baltimore is as hot and humid as chennai during summer. Half an hour of soccer yesterday left me drinking fluids for the next 12 hours and then I went on to set the record for peeing for the longest time.

WORKING ON MICE BALLS !

Yea I chose my lab for PhD after 6 months of pondering... I wasnt going to be the 'worm boy' in the vulva lab nor gonna look at eye balls of vertebrates....It was mice balls that I chose to look at.....How good a prostrate they have I'll tell you in a month.

Another proud Bieberich'iite...

12 hours was pretty bad.....

I have probably done this just a couple of times before but it wasnt that bad then.May be I was younger then . After Sitting on the same chair for 12 hours on the trot trying to read scientific literature I feel completely exhausted. This would happen to all who postpone their project till the last day thinking you can stay awake the whole night.....

Had this work not been on wiki I might have wrapped it up in about half the time..the fact that people who know you would get to read what you crap made the difference - an additional 6 hours without brushing your teeth. Its wiki's fault. I could have finsihed it otherwise.

Wiki Down Down.....

WILL THINGS CHANGE FOR BAD ?

Last 8 months I have kind of enjoyed VIP status. With each lab trying to recruit new students they have taken care to be really nice to students rotating in their lab. All the blunders I did recieved the same response " Oh..dont worry ...you are not the first one to do that...just forget it" . Forget what ? Forget that I just washed off 200 dollars down the sink? Forget that I used a protien that took some poor guy 6 months to purify in a completely irrelevant assay and came up with a result that said nothing much? Boy , you'd have definitely heard them wrong.

But trust me thats the fact. New graduate students are allowed to make errors.Big or small they mostly get away with that. With the huge amount of money involved in every step in biology it often amuses me as to how can people be so cool about it. The sad thing is after a month it may not be tolerated anymore. I need to get used to people frowning at me if I am to play around as I did. But I havent messed up much anyway..it was just a couple of times. The mere fear that if I mess things up I might have to repeat the god damn thing all over, makes me overly careful as to what I am doing. Did anyone tell you before ...laziness can sometimes be of help.

But what makes me think of this now? With my cells taking days to grow, I perhaps am absolutely bored. Cummon cells...double up.

Getting out of the shadow - an Argentinie Folklore..

It has been two full decades since a Maradonna inspired Argentina tasted glory in the heights of Aztec. It was shear magic that probably no person would ever achieve. Maradona probably had much more in him than what was required to get past 11 men. He almost did it again four years later in Italy when by mere strength of his name he got a not so known team to the cup. And it took am Oscar winning performnace by Jurgen Klinsman to give Germany their most valued penalty and the cup. Nothing but an elegant display German helplessness.

Things did not look much different in USA-1994. Inspite of clearly lacking the famed speed, the Argentinie No.10 and his team looked favourites again. How I wish he never did drugs. For me and a lot others who still sit watching his games in awe that was the worst that could happen. "Mardonna tests positive for drugs-out of World cup! ". This probably shocked the argentinie camp and they never looked what they were.

France was no special but for a second-round victory over England - yeah it meant a lot, afterall its the India-Pakistan version of soccer. A red card for David Beckham did make the south American's celebrate ( Being a big time Beckh fan I opted out of the fireworks). Surely on the high after this, the Argentinies were shocked by the superb Dennis Bergkamp strike in the final minutes of the quarter-final. They ran into the in form Holland and did not make it this time too....

The side was surely competent but ceratinly lacked the spirit and flair of the team that qualified in style for Korea/Japan 2002. This was probably the best they had after they saw the last of Maradonna. On paper the were by far the best the wrold had to offer. By now a samba fan I realized what it wouldmean to the Brazilian hopes if it had to meet the Args in Yokahama. And it wasnt surprising that a lot of people hoped a argentinie fairytale in the east. Afterall the hype Simone's men were unceremoniously and surprisingly dumped out of the competition in the first round - a loss to England adding to the woes.

However star studded Argentina hasbeen it has never been the same since Maradonna. Probably that is what makes Maradonna special. He triumphed with a team that very few expected to win. Be it with Napoli or Argentina, Maradona inspired the other 10 to perform.

Even this time they look good inspite of dropping to the second spot in the South American qualifiers - first time since 1994. They win or not, surely it would be entertaining to watch them play- any south american team for that matter.

CAN ACHU WRITE POEMS?

He claims to have done it all
be it with the bat or the ball
two decades of existence
and still all he has is a bunch of freindz

Look, he is tring to write
poems he claims it right
Its just about getting words to rhyme
Isnt he wasting his time?

Its all rubbish they'l claim
Coz its easy to catch and balme
To talk nonsense you need sense
All he is trying to do is make more friendz

I agree its all crap
Go kid take a nap !!!!

"POET ACHU ACCEPTS THE ABOVE CREATION TO BE A COMPLETE BULLSHIT"

DONT FORGET THE WORLD IS A SPHERE TOO

Its not everyone neither is it their fault
Not fate nor my fault.
Cant be stars wars or pact,
but that doesnt deny the fact.
He needs them all, good and bad
Even if it makes some good men sad
Talk to me I am the one
Just good; The rest is no fun
Everyone around is boring and nice
Its just that life lacks that spice
Its never been the same before
Some good friends had then come to the fore.
No longer here I feel that good
Some of them would never be any good.
Din' ask for any of them
To fight them I need no helm.
Circle, still the most preferred shape
What you give comes back in someway
Man is the dirtiest of all creatures to have evolved so far,
Thats been the story at 'Arbutus' so far.