Category: Uncategorized

To waste not a second, being busy like a bee, was always my dream. But in medical college it's the rule and not exception that you be busy, always.

And I'm finding a strange feel of order and happiness in it.

You wake up, do the record work for the day, preview the day's class, brush, rush through breakfast, ride to college, attend lectures till noon, rush back to hostel, have lunch, rest for 10 minutes, return to college for practical, go straight to library from there, come back half an hour before dinner, take a bath, wash, have dinner and chit chat, start reading till midnight, and sleep. Repeat this for every weekday with occasional inclusion of exercise. And on a holiday you pay back your sleep debt, go shopping, do NGO activity, call old friends, family, go around the town, and sleep tired.

It's not hectic, but there's a continuity, a flow of activities from one to the other, with no time sucking in between. And this flow is addictive, albeit tough to achieve.

And not to forget the mental stretch the textbooks give. It's one great balancing act that brings out your mettle. Medical college.

Google’s transliteration feature has been of great help to Indian’s looking to type in their own languages. But to use it one had to be connected internet.

But our dear Google (G capital for God and Google) has again come for our help. They’re providing an IME tool which when installed works as a new language in your windows system (yeah that language bar you tried so many times to hide, you’re gonna need that)
You can just type in the language you choose even in notepad.

Google Transliteration IME is currently available for 14 different languages – Arabic, Bengali, Farsi (Persian), Greek, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Nepali, Punjabi, Tamil, Telugu and Urdu.

First you’ll have to download the language pack you need from this page.

And don’t cut the internet connection

Then when you run the file it will download the files it need, install itself and disappear into nothingness.

Then when you’re clueless about what to do, go to the Google Transliteration IME help page Google Transliteration Input Method (IME) Help there. (You can’t find that link by searching, they show some Chinese pages, so rather save it now)

There, they will tell you to enable the language bar (by right clicking on taskbar, pointing to toolbars, selecting language bar) and then to select your language to see the Google IME.

Rest is explained nicely with pictures over here:
Google Transliteration Input Method (IME) Help

Just go there, start typing without pain…

Image via Wikipedia

I was bedridden last Saturday and Sunday, and parts of the preceding Friday, of fever. The fever that comes along with the rains. This year, we forgot to clean our surroundings. I mean, everyone in Kannur forgot to do so. And what more, our family decided to shift to the urban Kannur this month. And so, when it started raining, I was conveniently located for the mosquitoes to have a bite. They were here, they were there and they were everywhere. We managed to keep them out of our bedrooms using Mortein. But Mortein actually works only when we have closed every door and window so that no mosquito can enter from outside. And there was this colony of mosquitoes in the bathroom. They come through the closet, like ghosts in Hollywood movies. So, there was no stopping them from looming around us, posing a deadly threat of numerous diseases including malaria, yellow fever, dengue fever and filariasis. Still, we managed to escape their deadly stingers.
But it so happened that on Friday evening, when I was returning from my new school (Chinmaya Vidyalaya Kannur) I was very tired and the next thing I remember properly is that I was sleeping in bed.

Now, it was a confirmed case of viral fever. But I didn’t take any medicine. I knew that there was no efficient anti-viral drug with my father. And so I knew that whatever he gives me would be of no use. But, evenif he had a medicine, my father would not tell me to take any medicine. Becuase after almost 20 years of treating patients, he knows that it is better for the body to take no medicine at all rather than take all sorts of anti-biotics that suppress the symptoms of the disease and give momentary relief, destroying the body’s capacity to fight and win over foreign bodies while doing so. And I believe him completely. There can be no medicine stronger than the white blood cells in our body. Just trust your body, give it rest and give it a chance to show what it can do, I’m sure, no disease will ever haunt you for more than a week.

What I learned from having suffered fevers, alone, for the last 10 years of my life is that, the best way out of a fever, is to suffer it completely.

This, so nicely explains my way of dealing with God that I can’t put off quoting it here.

Marcus Aurelius: “Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones. I am not afraid.”

If at all there is a God, we need not be afraid or even be bothered about him, because after all, if we are doing good, then no God can complain that we must be punished, just because we did not find it logical to prey or worship God.

Now, another idea that has been looming around the corner for as long as afraid-to-be-atheists existed is

“I don’t believe in God as a person, but I believe there is some force that is controlling everything, the way earth rotates around the sun, the way we do things, etc”

Now, this is an insane idea. Science can explain almost everything that is running around now. And it will find explanations for tougher questions too. But, every science reaches some point where there is no answer, and the scientist says “It so happens”. This is where almost all theists give place to God. The point at which science stops answering, theist answers God. And when science expands further so as to reach the next level, the theist takes God to the next level. God was not that, God is greater.
This game between the scientist and the theist is going to go on for ever: The universe has enough mysteries to make sure that no science will ever crack it all, and the theistic imagination is 1000 folds quicker than every science.

And so, again, we reach a point where talking about God is meaningless, and completely useless.
Let God exist or not, who cares? And why care?

I’ve decided to join medicine and become a doctor, while loving Physics to the core and after dreaming to be a physics professor for a few years. Why?
My liking of Physics is just fascination. I read every new theories presented in the subject, but believe few. I may get an MSc or PhD in Physics, but what if I don’t trust the subject I like?

In the period that Einstein was active as a professor, one of his students came to him and said: “The questions of this year’s exam are the same as last years!” “True,” Einstein said, “but this year all answers are different.”

I don’t want to risk my life and learn this western science.
I just want to live a life that can be of any use to others, (and comfortable to me) and I believe being a doctor can perfectly fit my needs.

But you’re hurt like a nail down your throat when you think about somebody you’ve missed.

And this is what’s happening to me right now. Tomorrow, my class 10 results will be announced, along with thousands of others’. But mine is going to be special, because whatever the figures tell, I’m going to school tomorrow. With that result which that school gave me. And I’m going to meet my teachers. The teachers who made me. The teachers who touched me.

But I still don’t understand why it’s only when you are lying on the bed just trying to get some sleep on the eve of the results that you think of the work that you did to have been waiting for those results that are going to be announced in a few hours. Why doesn’t it strike to you at any point of time before that hour that you go to school only once. And why don’t you understand that you have only one set of teachers who taught you what you had to learn. No one else can teach you those basics anymore, because you’ve already learned it and repeating is not learning. No one can be your teacher anymore. Then, why don’t you let yourselves out, and make those souls know what they mean to you. Can anything else be more appropriate on the day of the results.

Yes, I am going to school tomorrow. (And I’m going to love it this time around much more than I’ve ever had)

Source: Revised NEW FIND OUT GK book for class 6 OXFORD University Press

Human beings exist. And unlike all other organisms, he thinks, not just of himself but also of the world around and also of the world inside him. And this self-enquiry is what takes us to this fundamental question. Why do we exist? And the answer, the answer I don’t know.

But let us think of evolution. If Darwin is right, human beings evolved out of the common ancestor between him and apes, and this species in turn evolved from another less complex species. And it all simplifies to reach the simplest organisms. So, it all started with a single cell of life. But does it end with human beings? In other words, are human beings the pinnacle of evolution? Biologists agree that human beings are nothing but another variety in the pool. They might be much more intelligent, but they are just another species.

So, my first big question is, “Are we authorized to question?” And the answer is simple, “We can, we must”

“But just because we are able to question, does it mean that we will be able to find the answers?” “It’s just a matter of belief“

If you believe in the idea that somebody created this universe, and we all, and it is he who decided what we do next and what the next letter I’m going to type, then you are completely free to search for your soul’s ultimate aim and live or die for it.

But this is a risk that many find unwilling to take, including me. Because, they believe that they are here by accident and there’s no point in trying to understand why this accident happened. And this is what I call the theory of accident.

By this largely humanistic theory, I mean that we are here by something that we don’t know, and that we needn’t know. We know we are here, then why don’t we just be here? Why don’t we live happily knowing that we are here and there’s nothing that we can do to undo our existence or nothing that we can do by knowing how we came into existence. Why don’t we live here being a lot helpful to other beings? Why don’t we live here as if no one ever wanted us to do anything? Why can’t we just ignore this meaningless question and start living the life that we happen to be into?

But it is when we start living such that this question again pops up. Why are we here? Are we here to just live and die like a prisoner in jail? Or are we here to do something else?

And when we try to answer this, we find that even if we are here to do something great, what is greater than helping others and living happily? What promise does knowing your life’s aim give you rather than infinite bliss? Does any spiritual theories promise you anything other than infinite bless and an escape route from all your miseries? If we can get this all by not doing what these theories tell us, then why should we?

To sum up, I believe that we just need to live and live happily, because that’s all that you can do

A lot of hackers have achieved great success in their pursuits by using porn to trick susceptible internet users. They usually show a single but luring obscene picture and make people go to their website for seeing more of such pictures.

And now, someone has started the trick in orkut. Recently I saw in my friends list an extremely vulgar picture of a topless girl named Sexy Riya. Instantly I smelt something and went to the profile. I knew that this was someone’s profile hacked. So, I looked at the email id and found out that it was one of my actual friends whose account had been hacked. I went to his scrapbook and saw this scrap

and this too

hey.. thats not the new version man…. it hacks the password…..

Why? The profile had links displayed in two ways. One, in the status bar, it had said:

Then, in the about me section

You know what is going to happen if we go to that site. (Though I did know what, I just followed the link, Please don’t misunderstand me, OK?)

Now what was there is a page similar to orkut login page, asking you to log in with your google account to get access to porn albums in orkut.

I didn’t go further, so I can’t tell you whether they keep promises or not. But I can assure you, once they get your username and password, they just take over your orkut profile and replace it with a profile similar to what we started with. So, at your place all your friends are going to see a naked woman, and if they don’t control themselves, the virus spreads like swine flu.

So, the next time you see something similar, you know what not to do

N.B. I don’t want you to give it a try, that’s why I am not giving the link to anything mentioned in here.