A salut'

http://www.princeton.edu/cbe/news/archive/?id=7387

Stop!

Dear people of the World, please start accepting print-outs as valid documents. I requested a one-page letter from UK. It arrived via DHL. How much oil, man-power, time and money got wasted. If only I could use a print-out. I feel guilty of being so inconsiderate.

India trip

This time my visit to India was longer than usual. When you stay longer, you are no longer a tourist. You become part of the society. You stop planning your everyday visits. Living in a place is very different from visiting it. This trip was very interesting. I jot down below the major things I remember from the trip:
1. Politics was most interesting this time - Anna Hazare and co. vs the uncivil society aka political leadership
2. Delhi's ring road is now totally green. North to South Delhi travel by car takes as little as 15 mins at 1 AM, 40 mins during the day (non-office hours). I still did not dare to drive during office hours.
3. It appears 1 rupee coin is no longer in circulation. Shopkeepers distribute candies instead. Do they keep a different variety for diabetic shoppers?
4. RTI act is showing its mark - policemen have stopped taking bribes, government officials have started responding to even email complaints. I was challaned for Rs 100. (there is no zero missing).
5. The water situation has significantly improved in Delhi. For the first time in the last 12-15 years, I was able to take shower in fresh water during the day.
6. Inflation is rocking - you need to carry at least Rs 10,000 if you are going out.
7. Delhi metro has reached Gurgaon and the airport. It is so convenient to reach Gurgaon now.
8. Some of my friends are now faculty members in IIT.
9. India's doctors work very hard and are very good.
10. Bollywood scriptwriters have crowned investment bankers as the coolest people in the World.
11. It is still life as usual for most people.

White man's burden

"Research is all fraud", a friend of mine had told me. He is a graduate from IIT, an engineer by training and a trader by profession. "PhD is our national timepass" - CEO of a very successful BPO in India had once spoken these words in a townhall meeting of his company. He too was from IIT and an MBA from a top B-school in the US. When I had told someone that in the pharma company where I work, we design processes to make drugs. He did not believe me. We cannot design chemical processes, we can only 'buy' them. We, the citizens of India, are truly 'third world' in our attitude. And, it is not the common man, but it is the highly educated - even the engineers from the so-called best engineering colleges of the country. We believe we cannot create anything new. As a consequence, all research is fraud, a waste of time for us. This is the reason why I find that the most proactive peers of my undergraduate class are now MBAs and bankers. It is the 'white man's burden' to create technology and drugs and all the good things in life. We are happy to create their replicas and cheap 'jugads', we are happy to manage their finances, we are happy to invest their money in futures and derivatives trading.

Diwali 2009

Diwali 2009, 6.30 PM: I am sitting in my room in New York City and sipping tea. You can’t burst crackers here. No houses around me are decorated with lights. No candles or diyas. To any observer it will be just another day. But, there is traffic in a different domain. Lot of texts are being exchanged, lot of phone calls to old, forgotten friends are being made. Lot of Diwali dinner invitations being sent. Ya, we are celebrating Diwali. Not out loud with crackers, but at our homes or at friends' homes – by gathering together, eating food and lighting some diyas. If it was not for my friends, I would not have cared to do anything this Diwali. But, I am getting a feel of it now. I am getting emotional about it.

Happy

To come early to the lab, go back late.. work hard the whole day, exercise for an hour and read something before sleeping is what gives me ultimate peace and happiness. Nothing matches it.

P.S. - What would give me most pain is to see that somebody else has published what I was about to. So, I should stop blogging and get back to work.

How close to science we actually are?

How will a charged ion move in a uniform magnetic field (assuming only classical physics)? An easy question for most engineering graduates. What keeps the Sun burning? Nuclear fusion of course. But, how about this - why does coke lose dissolved CO2 when salt is added to it? Why do clothes become darker in color when wet? For the past three months, I have been wondering what reaction coordinate best represents protein unfolding. But have I (we) ever wondered what is the best reaction coordinate for our age? A reaction coordinate describing protein unfolding basically is an index to determine the age of the protein - how close it is to unfolding. We take the number of living years as the reaction coordinate for our age. We just assume it is by law, we don't question it, and it is universally used. But, you can die anytime - from 40s to 90s. There is a large standard deviation in this reaction coordinate. But we don't stop to ponder about another one. We would accept it without much thought, just like we accept our surroundings without much thought as to why things happen the way they do. Rather, while pursuing something in the scientific field we focus on more abstract things like, motion of a charged ion (which none of us can see but only know exists because of what we have read), or nuclear fusion, or protein folding. We are very far away from Science, which, losely defined, is understanding the physical nature of the environment around us. I recently heard that JEE is not what it used to be. Now its all multiple choice questions. The idea is to negate the coaching classes' influence. But I dont think they have managed to eliminate these institutes' influence. What if JEE is made into a test of knowledge of how well we understand things around us. Simple questions from what we see daily. Coaching classes will fail because there is no set course to attack this. And interesting would be - who emerge as toppers. Maybe rustic kids who have much more time to ponder about things, have to work with their hands to milk cows and do not sit in isolated air-conditioned environments.