Feelings

The feeling of going inside your home after getting fully drenched in the rain.....The feeling you get when you see your childhood friend.....the feeling you get when the old gang is back together....
the feeling when you clear 12 subjects in one semester....the feeling you get when you are on your motorcycle on an empty road on a warm sunny day.....the feeling when you eat home food after a long long time....
the feeling you get sit by the window and watch the world go by........the feeling when your old man buys his first new car with his blood sweat and tears gone into the money and your there with him to take delivery......
the feeling when you pound the living daylights out of the guy you despise.....the feeling when your alone in your car with pink floyd in the background, huge mountains on the right of the road and an ocean on the left.....the feeling of drinking a cold beer after a long hard day.......the feeling when you realize you just avoided a huge mistake......the feeling when the lines you used on a girl actually works...the feeling when you have a warm shower on a bitterly cold day...
feeling when you wake up at 6:30 and suddenly realize its a sunday........feeling when you realize that your german is good enough to actually make jokes........feeling when you realize your old man is really really proud of what you have done......the feeling when you realize cool people think you are cool........feeling when your on the dance floor and realize that you know that song........feeling when you know you have done it.....
feeling when you have begun to realize the magnitude of the success you can achieve........the feeling when you realize how far you have come in life......the feeling when only you know the solution to the problem......
feeling when you get what you really want....feeling when you get who you really want......feeling when you realize you are being missed by somebody......feeling of solitude.....feeling of belonging.....feeling of inner peace...feeling of detachment.....
feeling of owning the damn world.....Simple yet so on an other level......

Meine Indien

Well...60 years of independence. 23 years of my existence in that place. And what a place! It has been an extreme ride of sorts. No half measures whatsoever. Cities with huge population exceeding 10 million. People with varied cultures. We may look them same but we are culturally different. But we are Indians. Unity in diversity. Democracy which actually works (trust me on this I was really cynical till the last elections but now I do believe in our system) and biggest at that. Sea of people at the crossroads of the cultural boundaries. A country with 1.3 billion, well represented by all major religions of the world. Country which got its independence through non-violence. Country which was plundered right from Alexander the great of the ancient Greeks to the Chengis Khan to the Arabs to the Europeans. Country which in the 17th century was the 3rd biggest economy in the world was reduced to a 3rd world country by 1950s. But, but.....we were taught to believe in circle of life (what goes around comes around) and its coming back for sure. In all this economic boom and money hype, we will not lose the core of existence. We were happy with whatever little we had and in future too we will be happy with what we have. A country which sees more terrorist attacks in one year than the whole of west Europe and US collectively. But we will never back down or seek help. We will achieve our goals on our own. No one can deny the fact that its difficult but not impossible.
In the end, We are responsible for what we are, and whatever we wish ourselves to be, we have the power to make ourselves. If what we are now has been the result of our own past actions, it certainly follows that whatever we wish to be in future can be produced by our present actions; so we have to know how to act.
Thanks, Marcela for letting me realise the value of my country.

Just random thoughts

In Sam's words "Mac when did you become so philosophical!?!?" Why the fuck have I become so philosophical nowadays? Why am I taking life so seriously? The other day I was walking back to my place from my work / internship. Ok, Firstly the background, my internship is in a research institute where I will have to "design" (hahahahhahahaha) a self centering system for a CNC machine. This involves interfacing a laser sensor and an actuator. As boring as it may seem, it is made worse by the fact that nowadays weather here is awesome and it is hard to sit inside 4 walls. And also since I invented procrastination, all I do is browse the net, chat with people (damn windows messenger and google mail talk!!), day dream or drink coffee. So all this idleness coupled with caffeine from 4 cups of coffee has kind of scrambled my brains. Hence I tend to do "out of the box" thinking, or so it seems. Yeah, while walking back from Fraunhofer Institut I started thinking generally about the reasons behind this whole engineering charade of mine. Who would be so anal to worry about the offset of a workpiece and a chuck by 1 micron? Am I the right person to be so fucked in the head to think about such details? Do I need really need this? Am I a real engineer?

Serious Advice

Kids...... today I will teach you how to get drunk and by that I mean totally smashed so as to not be able to remember what happened to you during those hours. Firstly you will need to take some necessary steps before "putting a major booze session". No sharp objects around. No loose footwear(especially chappals or sandals....ever wondered why there are single pieces of the fore mentioned footwear lying on the road.....here is the answer). Next, no wrist watch. Always drink out of a plastic cup. Make sure nobody has a camera around so that they dont take pics of you when you' re making an ass out of yourself. Better yet, get the camera person smashed.



Now lets talk business. Firstly, the golden rule, know your limit and do not stop there. Its the biggest mistake one does, which, if otherwise would mean that we would be in an utopian world.

Next, always mix and this advice, kids is not only in life or parties but is gold even when it comes to alcohol. And I mean not in tuity fruity "oo!! look at me I am drinking stuff with umbrellas in it" kinda cocktaily way but in a manly (disclaimer - me not an MCP) way. Something like beer with vodka for starters. This is an awesome drink where u chug half a bottle of beer (500ml bottles) and then fill it up with 60ml vodka. Then James bond style "shaken not stirred" the bottle. This is for beginners.

For the kids in "mittelstrufe" another good concoction is single malt whiskey with vodka. 60ml of whiskey with 60ml vodka just topped with some sweet drink to blunt the bitterness. Believe me this drink is lethal and it fuckin kills you. You will wake up the next day with your clothes dirty and your socks missing and no way in hell will you figure out what exactly happened. But the major advantage here is you will talk to smokin hot chicks who if you were sober wouldnt have even had the "eier" to talk to them. Ofcourse you will end up more spitting than talking, but in your head you will be thinking you're fuckin Stephen Hawking's cousin.

The next and the most dangerous mix is vodka with absynth. Now this absynth alone has been nemesis to many a people. Now mix it vodka and boy!! its a fuckin killer. But hell!! it kicks you in the hypothetical gonads so hard that you will wish you would rather stand in the way of a fired canon ball. But my advise here is please drink this in the confines of your house or a that of a friends otherwise there is high probability that you might end on the next flight to Antarctica.

Anyway kids lastly keep in mind this famous quote by the one and only Homer Simpson "Alcohol is the cause of and solution to any problem" and to that i would like to add "Prost".
(Disclaimer: Author is not an alcoholic and in no way is encouraging anybody to drink although they are the biggest losers if they dont)

Solitude....Pink Floyd Way

Solitude.........for me is the positive side of loneliness. Sometimes nothing beats a Sunday afternoon chilling in your space after a "nice" (well, not so much when you cook'em yourself) lunch listening to Pink Floyd. Especially when the weather is gloomy outside. The drowsiness combined with the soulful guitar patches and fiery voice of David Gilmour and astoundingly simple yet so real lyrics of Waters and Sid Barett. I mean, songs like "Time" or "Breathe" from their album "Dark Side of the moon" are just mind bendingly simple but yet it hits you. It makes you look life in an other way. You will just realise life is not so complex rather its too straight forward. Its like those complex fluid dynamic equations which will haunt you for the entire semester but suddenly like a bolt out of blue, you get it at 3 AM the day before the exam (sorry about this nerdy analogy, the bloody engineering kicks in all the time).
Its really not difficult to trip on their music. Many hardcore floyd fans say that Division Bell was not good enough to have pink floyd name on the covers but this, I believe this represented the pure genius of David Gilmour and his hauntingly smooth guitars patches which melts something deep inside you. Dont believe me, listen to "coming back to life". That song is enough to trip any true music fan. Their music is really spaced out. Its just like the late great Aryton Senna on a hot lap in his Mclaren Honda where the car would flow from bend to bend kissing each apex as though it was a hot girl's lips. (again sorry about this analogy, but its coming from a hardcore automobile addict and a huge huge F1 fan).
Anyway coming back to Floyd, for me there are two floyds....one which was hugely influenced by Sid barett and the next is the David Gilmour's floyd. Of course, due credit should be given to Waters for his lyrical abilities. These lyrics may not be Wordsworth but hell! they make more sense in this post modern world than any poet of medieval times.
I believe Pink Floyd will be what Beethoven is. I can picture high nosed people with their wine glasses in their hand listening to pink floyd and discussing about the "divine" note here and classic note there. I will be laughing my ass off then.....

Berlin Germany....is it really what you think it is?

Germany.....What the first thing that comes to one's mind when they hear this word?

a) World war 2 and nazis

b) beer

c) cars

When I told my parents that I will be going to germany for further studies...what did they say? "Oooo!! no no germany is a racist country, why do you do this always? why cant u be normal like other kids and go to the US?" Well, fast forward one year later and here I am in Berlin, the site where 3rd world war almost broke out. The place so rich with modern history, the place which has seen so many pitched battles fought, the place which was the final battle site of one of the most deadliest wars the world has ever seen. The place which was carpet bombed by the allies to break the nazi back, the place which at one point of time was the cultural melting pot of Europe (still is). The place which was a crucial for the soviet union and the US during cold war. The place which housed the Gestapo, SS and later Statsi headquarters and not to forget the one and only "the wall". What a crazy place!! and I fuckin love it!!

This is the place where you can reach any part of the city using public transport 24/7, something I never used in India and was very skeptical about. This is the place where nightclubs are actually nightclubs and not some seedy illegal dancebar and not some place which closes down at 11 in the "night". If you not into night life, there is amazing spread of cultural activities one can indulge in. Right from Berliner Philharmonie to ever running painting exhibitions right from Rembrandt to Dali. Beautiful but contrasting architechture right from something which looks right out of the red square built by "komraden" to one of most post modern mind bending styles all round the city. Admist all this nestles a huge huge park which i am sure has seen action of all sorts. Combine this with a life which sees students from all over the world living together in a huge student residence complex. A right concotion for the craziest parties one can see!! Trust me on this.

From a personal point of view, this has been one the most amazing years of my life, where I have had the chance to meet people from countries such as Greenland!!! What are the odds?!?!

It is always said that Berlin doesnt represent the true German stereotypical city. It is said that it more or less the New York of Europe. Well, I dont know, as I have never stayed for so long in other German cities. But all I will say is Berlin >>>>> Paris!!!

Why?

Well life sometimes can be huge bitch......But when you are alone in your claustrofuck of a room, you tend to think about your life so far. The good things that have happened, generally and I tend not to think of the shitty things that has happened to me for some reason. So I guess I am a damn optimist.
Incidents in my recent past has got me thinking things happen for a reason. Suddenly I have realised that things are not gonna be the same anymore. It has made into more of a man so to say. So there comes a time in one's life when he or she has to stand up and be counted and I guess my time has come. Ofcourse there are pros and cons. But hey! thats life.
This whole thought process is kind of like a view of you as a being from above. It is like you observe yourself from a distance. At this very moment you would think what am I doing here and why am doing this. Why? Nobody knows.....