Flyover

there’s this tune which used to play in the browser 6 years back… all the time. does anyone know which tune i am referring to, and that tune is by whom? i desperately want to listen to it again… i dont know if its a popular one or not… i just really like it… it makes me feel eager, and warm, and full.

here i quote sandeep from a comment on a previous post:

@Kalyani: It is high time, that you start doing so (share the limitedness of his interests ) …:P

it just got me thinking, what i should actually start doing… and i should probably try to find that out from what i have enjoyed in the past, and that reminded me of a beautiful statement in eliyahu m. goldratt’s latest masterpiece ‘the choice’. he says that he wanted to live a full life. and for that he made a decision, which has impacted everything. to understand, really understand, everything that interested him. his work, his relationships. and ‘really understand’ means a complete analysis of the causalities of a situation. understanding the cause and the effect, down to the simplest level…

and i think goldratt makes sense… because a complete understanding automatically gives you the power to understand the best possible way to solve problems in your areas of interest, within which you are going to function mostly. so this really gives a boost to your survival. and that is probably why i prefer physics to bio. because in physics, we as a race, have progressed into a lot more depth, than in chemistry and biology… so its but a natural tendency to seek that area, which at the present moment gives me maximum scope for understanding. however, that brings the question, why did i ever choose medicine then? well the answer is understanding something has no importance if it doesnt give you power. at the crux of everything is power, which leads to survival. in medicine, you have a lot of IMMEDIATE power even without so much understanding… so without a lot of input really (percentage of the total), you reap a lot of visible benefits… so its very attractive because of that.

and that, somewhat disconnectedly, reminds me of some holmes-watson conversation, which was to this effect:
watson: the case gets more and more complicated!

holmes: on the contrary, dear watson, it gets simpler. because with every added detail, i have to test fewer theories.

so, the more complex a problem appears to be, the easier should be the solution…

food for thought?

since kyntaji (the bassist) graduated, we were in a bit of a fix… but now one of our surgery profs, robin kaushik, has stepped in… but it’s going to be really weird with him… for one, he was an hour late today, and then he went stomping away, while saying a lot of stuff abt regularity etc., coz our drummer had loosies and couldnt turn up.

but i have heard he is a cool chap, and maybe once we get started, the gap wouldnt be that bad.

like i have mentioned in my previous blogs, “altruism” has a justified existence when it’s in order to propagate your genes… like patriotism, parental love. but this question stumped me a bit recently. your sibling has 50% of his/her genes common with you, and so has your child. then why is your child more important than your sibling…
think before you read my hypothesis….

ok, so i think there are 2 reasons, and priority wise:
1. sibling is about your same age… when you were younger, you couldnt protect him/her anyway, and now that you are older, he/she doesn’t need it anyway. but your child can truly benefit from your protection.
2. in case of your child, you have some control over what other 50% genes enter it. you can choose your mate, so that he/she, by contributing his/her own genes, enhances the survival of YOUR genes with genes that complement them. and you want your genes to survive in the optimum environment for future safety, and so you want to protect not just your genes, but also the gene environment that your partner (whom you chose with a lot of thought, esp. females — remember the theory abt females being choosier than males?) provides. so you want to protect your child because not only it has your genes but also a good environment that you chose to the best of your ability, and is likely to be better, in your opinion at least, than the environment your genes live in, in your sibling. if you know what i mean.

comment please!

all those who know me from my previous blogs, would know that i like to form opinions… and i have a hell lot of opinions about certain things. not rigid, inflexible opinions, but opinions not easily shaken.

that book… ‘The Goal’… it talked about a philosophy, and you know right there that it’s completely true. the logic is blinding… it’s so obvious that it has to be true. but then alex starts applying it to his plant, and you feel like… oh well, now how is he going to wriggle out of that one… you fear he would REACT rather than PLAN, coz planning seems to be impossible… the situation is too complicated. but then he figures it out, and all is well. and you have a real-something to back up the theory.

i know i should be good, i know how to define good. i know how to define good coz i know WHY i should be good. and anything that helps me achieve that goal has to be good. i have a set of protocols which in 99% of cases are, if followed, successful in driving me towards the goal… but 1% of times they are not. i try not to think about those 1% of times, try not to figure out the correct way then, coz i am too scared to move against the protocols. the set of protocols have been there since the moment i was born, they called it conscience (though its only now that i can justify it). and now this conscience is so deeply ingrained that i hate not to go along with it blindly. i feel guilty if i dont. and i think, THAT, at some level, signifies hypocrisy.

so now, what’s happening is that i am trying to discard, bit by bit, the sense of protection offered by the protocols. which is damn hard. especially since i have no idea what I believe to be true in these particular circumstances… i dont doubt my theories for one moment, but i just dont know how to apply them in these particular circumstances to figure out the correct way. i go for the short-term survival instinct, which is in contradiction to the protocols and i feel guilty. but i feel i dont know anything anymore… i am big time confused.

an ultra-simplified, hypothetical eg.: your friend A wants you to find out something in secret from friend B, something that could potentially jeopardise B’s relations with A. you also believe that even if what A suspects is true, it’s not so bad that justifies A punishing B for the same. and A has given you the ultimatum… the kind… “cant you do this for a friend? i just need the truth. that’s all. you are not even my friend if you cant do this.”. your problem is the opinions you suspect A might form. so the confusion is, is it more important to be loyal to A (a good quality) or more important to respect the privacy of B (a good quality again), especially when A is faaaaaaaar more important to you than B, albeit very stupid.
protocols say ’support B’, i think. but i have no idea what i say.

so you see, i end up reacting, rather than planning, and i am afraid this is going to lead me to my doom. the situations where one is happy at the expense of the other, are especially hard.

this is a book, by a certain eliyahu m. goldratt. the narrator, alex, is a plant manager with a failing marriage, and a plant operating with losses and about to be shut down in 3 months’ time. one day, he meets a physics professor of his from his student days, who helps him get back to the basics, and he reorganises the whole plant bringing productivity to its all time best. its an impressive book, with extremely logical and well explained fundamentals. read it if you come across it. its supposed to be a classic book of management… but very gripping and non-boring. the downside, of course, is that i’ve been reading it instead of pharma… sigh!

ever since i got out of school, i cant concentrate. presently i have been studying 4 pages of Katzung an hour, and thats like really good speed by my current standards, and i end up being blank for at least half that time… like a prolonged absence seizure. pretty irritating actually… but last night i finished a lot of work in just 3-4 hours, coz i was able to concentrate far better since i wanted to get it done and over with since i happened to be very very sleepy. weird, right?

and i rewarded myself for that today by watching chronicles of narnia- prince caspian and sleeping, the end result being havent studied more than 2-3 pages today. btw, edmund is pretty sweet, and i think prince caspian was nice too…

this is sort of old news… but we had cc (chief coordinator) elections at the end of june, for plexus (our intra college fest)… i lost. The tally was Sanjay: 35, Anuj: 19, Vaani: 17, Me: 16. So sanjay and anuj became the two cc’s. I had rated my popularity between that of sanjay and anuj, and i think it was avinav’s lobbying against me the whole of that day, which caused the fall. and frankly, it makes my blood boil to even look at avinav. i want to hit him bad sometimes… i shouldnt, but unfortunately, i still do… perhaps coz in my opinion, his opinions were unfair, but most importantly, coz the way he did the campaigning was very ummm… sick, for lack of a better word. i mean, its good to share opinions, but its bad to be sickeningly derogatory.

but, you know, i shouldnt be angry. i know i shouldnt be angry. as in, i am glad now that i didnt get elected. at least i’ll be able to study. ok, relax…

my promotional exams are down the line… and that just reminds me, i have wasted the whole past year of my life… i have no idea what all syll has been covered in the class, and most importantly, have hardly read my thick fat robbins. which is critical, since i want to take my step 1 next year. btw, i have got my strategy vaguely planned out.

during mbbs: electives, clerkships, conferences etc.
pre-pg: some research position for an yr or two, like at univ. of minnesota, like divyanshoo kohli.
pg: internal medicine- hopkins/harvard

which brings me back to the present. i need to actually DO something rather than just plan… planning is addictive, unfortunately going by the plans is a tad difficult. sigh!

we went on a small vacation a few days back, right after my court case on 6th (which was a bit confusing, since some point of territorial jurisdiction came up and that was out of my legal depth. the next date is 28th aug). i drove to roorkee that night (dad drove abt 2 km in the way, coz mum was bugging me to eat something, and tried his best to get the car smashed at least 10 times), then to haridwar and rishikesh. dont get me wrong, but i kind of hate crowdy, messy places, and religious places are all that. so it got kind of irritating when mom wanted a stopover at haridwar and then a trip to neelkanth (where i got separated and lost with no cell signal ). but anyway, i drove to mussoorie after that, and that was pretty ok, albeit a bit cold, and after a night’s stay, we started early the next morning, and through a LOT of rain the whole way, we got back to chandigarh in abt 5 hours. some of the places before nahan were very disney-ish… i half expected snow white to walk out any time with seven dwarfs following.

so, anyway, the crux of the story is i DROVE.

while in rishikesh, i re-watched ‘the matrix’, and there’s this thing that agent smith says to morpheus towards the end, when he’s got him captive so as to obtain passwords to hack into the Zion mainframe, that made a sort of impact on me. he says, “i tried to classify your species, and i have come to the conclusion that you are not mammals coz most mammals live and die out at a place in equilibrium. whereas you humans move to a new place, grow there until all the natural resources are exhausted and then move to a new place. the only way you can survive is by spreading to new places. you are like a virus, a plague on this planet.” Fascinating, no?