Cornell Daily Sun and New York Times!

The Cornell daily sun (my cousin sushee) decided to rise in New York city for a change last weekend! And that was great news :) for New York Times (anu) !!

So the Cornell Daily Sun and New York Times got together n painted the city red!

We found two friends of her's who showed us places in the city which even i haven't seen after coming here.

The food festival in China Town was amazing and so was the view of Brooklyn Bridge from South Seaport.

It was brrrrr... chilly and Starbucks coffee by the Hudson Bay had no power to save us from the biting cold :(

The bull at Wall Street gave us a warm welcome and so did President George Washington with whom we had the privelege to click photographs!

It was a dull and foggy evening at Battery Park but nothing could dim the dazzling Times Square!!

We enjoyed a movie 'Interpreter' ....which scared me a bit too .
But anything shot in NY city has to be gr8 ,right??

The cornell and new york beauties (self proclaimed) hopped back into the 1 train drenched by the pouring rains and sped back home to have nupur's recommended rainy day supper--- hot khichdi and kadi!

Global Positioning at Hunter College

Ever since i started going to hunter , i have been using GPS regularly . No , not the GPS instrument thats gives you location on the earth , but i have been making friends from all over the globe! Its a great experience to talk to them, to get to know their lives, their backgrounds , their cultures.

Hunter college doesnt have many Indian students and that really turned out to be a blessing for me . I have Korean friends, Japanese, Chinese, Greek, Spanish and so on .... Most of the are Asians though and they have a culture very similar to Indians. Its nice to know little things like how they grew up , their ideas about their parents, about family , about religion , culture , about neighbouring countries and of course...the most important thing to me... THEIR VEG FOOD RECIPES :)

While I always liked to meet people from different countries and know them , this experience has been more wonderful than i imagined.

A different view of the world which cannot be had from facts and theories or from books

So here and now at Hunter College , do i position myself globally!

The Rock Philosophers

Every monday i have a class at the graduate center opposite the empire state building . its a nice place but i go there just once a week to listen to the research that my colleagues are doing.

Its interesting to see how people pick up such diverse areas of research ! today's proposal presentation was on geology . I shall not go into the nitty gritty details , but it will suffice to say that this presentation piqued my interest on the geological history of the earth

The journey back home with Damayanti was an experience of the geological order! She took me back 4.5 billion years ago into the Pre Cambrian age and then brought me to the present with interesting titbits of information on how sediment cores are drilled from ocean beds and how geologists count diatoms to obtain valuable information about the past!

I shall not delve more into scientific details of mass spectroscopy and carbon dating and make this a boring blog ...( thats assuming that its not already one hahahaha)

But strangely the discussion ended on philosophy! the motto of the geologist is

" THE PRESENT IS THE KEY TO THE PAST" & " TO KNOW THE PAST IS TO KNOW THE FUTURE!"

Some "rocky" philosophy this one!

Another interesting concept of geologists is that of "time scale"

Rapid or sudden to us is something that changes within a few hours or days . Rapid to a geologist is that which changes in 10,000 years or 1 million years depending on the era under study

So next time you bump into a "rock person" and he says I am in a hurry ... you know what he means ;)

Got a moment more to spare ? Take a look at this toilet paper timeline ;) and see where we humans stand on the geological scale!
TIMELINE

Sunset at South Ferry

This friday evening nithya and I decided to do something different from the usual friday routine.

We took our most frequented 1 train to South Ferry . South Ferry is the last station on this train and also the tip of manhattan. From this station there's the staten island ferry connecting manhattan with staten island.

Our plan was to go to Battery Park , a small park near south ferry, where we thought we would find kids playing and it would be fun to just sit and watch them and the sunset on hudson bay.
But unfortunately yesterday was terribly windy and there was no one around :(

Well, that didn't dampen our spirits, thanks to the Starbucks nearby and the smart coffee vendor who impressed us with his service ;)

Wondering where to go and what to do , now that "Vayu Deva" of New York had foiled our plans we trudged into the subway station. Luckily we found some nice seats in the staten island ferry waiting area with a lovely view of the bay. "Surya Narayan" was planning to set into the Hudson Bay and we kept admiring him and the smart guys and gals of New York off and on!

Daylight soon dwindled into twilight and twilight into the nightscape of new york and it was time to get back home .

The two sojourners hopped back into their most frequented 1 train and kept talking of gaucemole nachos, aurobindo ashram, and amitabh bacchan all the way back home ...

As the train pulled into Lincoln Center we felt the aura of our all time favorite star who was present at that very moment at Lincoln Center above us!!

the excitement grew and the two fans were elated for a few moments and then like a wave it died down into the Hudson as the train sped back to the Bronx :)

When the going gets tough ....

i have a friend who says ..."When the going gets tough , the tough go for a beer !"

He never fails to say this .. and it never fails to amuse me :)

But i do not drink beer , and maybe some of you do not as well so what do we do when the going gets tough?

Read this thought of the day I have for you

' We should be thankful when work is a little harder than we want.
A knife cannot be sharpened on velvet , can it?'

Have a 'productive day'

what a lovely day this one!

Wednesday mornings begin slowly. Just because i dont need to rush early in the morning i enjoy the luxury of a longer sleep! today was nothing different

Woke up , spoke to a few friends online , remembered the daffodils poem of William Wordsworth with my friend Madhura and celebrated the arrival of spring!

But little did i know then what was waiting for me outside. Bright sunshine , lovely pastels and fluoroscent colors on everyone's clothes, a cheer on sad old faces ...
New York's weather plays truant again!

It's unbelievably lovely outside today ..central park is full of little children playing , bikers biking and old couples enjoying the horse carriage ride!
well not only old couples ... young couples are enjoying too ... walking hand in hand with coke and sunshine!

As I walked into hunter college admiring the tulips on the roadside i was greeted with some really cool music!

It was a JAZZ CROSSOVER recital series by the students of music at hunter!

Inspite of being in a big hurry, i stopped for a while ...and then i didnt feel like going away ... the students were playing so well!!!

i heard BLUE TRAIN ( John Coltrane ) and GREETINGS and SALUTATIONS ( Thad Jones)

my heart skipped a beat with the energizing beats of the drummer and ....

well let me not go any further ...

My lovely day ended when i put on my machine at hunter college
coz u know why already... :D

Extended Brain

How can i make fried rice with tofu and gujrati kadi ?
what is principal component analysis ?
Where can i find research papers, delicious indian chinese, a day out from new york and movie tickets?
where can i find a site that calculates distances between latitudes and longitudes

I have the answers to all the questions these days! All of us seem to have the answers to our questions!

Is this the effect of "shatavari"? hehehe not really .... its our friendly GOOGLE SEARCH!

I just realised that i am so dependent on google search that i've stopped using my brain these days! (whatever little is left of the poor vestigeal organ :P)

Google search ... a boon or a bane ?
I dont know .... but one thing i know for sure...

that i simply enjoy the power of this extended brain :)