Blissful Life

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Notice: after planning it for years, I moved this blog out of blogger/blogspot (which google has abandoned long ago) to wordpress on a fine evening in Dec 2024. This notice will stay here to warn that things might be broken. Let me know if you find anything.

  • 6 Things To Do When You Are Stuck In The Elevator With A Girl

    For the introverts

    1. Check your smartphone. See if someone has left you a message. If not, play “Temple Run 5” or “Angry Birds Lift”. Act, the same way you would when you are confronted with someone you hate, like there is something really interesting happening on your 4 inch display and keep stroking it with your fingers.

    2. Stare at the floor count. See if there’s any change in the speed at which the numbers change. Think of what you will do if the elevator fails and shoots to the ground.

    3. Think hard, or act like you are doing so. Assign yourself the task of saving the world from alien invasion or climate change. And rake your brains for a solution. If you are a dumb medical student, scratch your head and twirl your beard, as if you are answering an essay question.

    For the extroverts

    4. Talk to the girl stuck with you. If you don’t know her, ask her what she is or where she is going. See if you can make her smile. If you do know her, just shut the fuck up and start talking to her already.

    5. Flirt with the girl. There is nothing as boring as a casual conversation.

    “Hi” “Hey!” “What do you do?” “I work in the grocery store, what about you?” “Oh, I work in the other department” Weird silence. Trnim… (Announcement) “Ground floor”

    If you are good at it, flirt with the girl and make her eyes twinkle.

    For the drunk horny extroverts who are single, or who don’t mind getting their marriage broken

    6. Hit on the girl. Compliment her and make her aroused. Make sure she is single and is up for a game. Exchange phone numbers. Make her feel comfortable and while parting maybe gently touch her on the shoulders and say “see you soon”. Then follow that up with as much romantic foreplay as you can, and try to get laid soon.

    But never ever go faster than how fast the girl wants you to go. This is what Tarun Tejpal and all other idiots get wrong. If she doesn’t want to talk with you, stop talking. If she doesn’t respond to your flirting, shut up. If she feels uncomfortable, stop the lift at the next floor and get out of it. Do not ever fuck things up by making any unexpected advance, because even if you do not end up in trouble you will ruin the chances of your entire gender on being comfortable around a lady.

  • On Facebook

    Facebook is an excellent social networking tool. It has features that makes reconnecting with old friends nostalgic, sharing photos beautiful and staying connected seamless.

    And that’s where it ends. Facebook is not the best content discovery tool. It can show you news from only those people you know or follow. Technically it can show news from world over, but it doesn’t by default. That immediately restricts the sample size of links you chance upon.

    You can actually change the defaults and use Facebook like a feed reader, by liking pages of a good content creator or a good content curator. And then going through a myriad of settings to make all of their posts visible to you.

    But Facebook defaults to “suckery”. In an effort to make page owners pay for advertisements, Facebook buries page posts deep inside news feed.

    And then, Facebook, by default, gives the microphones to all your crappy friends and turns the volume up on all of them, simultaneously!

    Even if you quit reading twilight after the first few chapters, you can relate yourself on Facebook to Edward Cullen in classroom. You get to read everyone’s mind, without even listening. Unlike Cullen here, you have to turn off each single person who litters.

    And in such a system, diversity dies off. You post about what your friends post about which is what their friends post about which is what their friends post about which is what you post about. It’s like inbreeding depression. And this leads to the same stories recurring on your wall day after day walling (pardon the pun) you from all the different, never–thought–about things that actually happen on the internet. You will be stuck with Modi’s comment on Rahul and Rahul’s comment on Modi and Modi’s comment on Rahul’s comment on Modi and Sachin Tendulkar’s comment on Bharath Ratna, and Bharath Ratna’s comment on Sachin Tendulkar, and your neighbour’s comment on Sachin Tendulkar and your friend’s comment on your neighbour’s comment on Sachin Tendulkar and then Modi’s comment on that. And to vie for your attention, each news source will add more masala, more drama to each story they post. While the internet goes forward with splendid things.

    Click here to deactivate your Facebook account now.

    And then, decide on one standard news site, one standard niche site and one standard content discovery tool, and live a beautiful life.

  • Assorted List of Things 20-Something Should Know

    This post on Making254movies:
    26 Things Every 20-something Should Wish to Know

    It needs a little restructuring so that we can actually remember it and apply to our lives. First, go read the post. Then, revise it below.

    To begin with:
    2. Invest in yourself.
    23. Habits now, will stick till the end.
    25. Don’t worry about things that aren’t good about you, spend time on the good ones.

    Knowledge:
    7. Get educated formally.
    22. College won’t take you everywhere. Educate yourself.
    10. Keep a personal library.
    26. Learn the art of rhetoric.

    Health:
    9. Take care of your body before it’s too late.

    Finance:
    12. Have a budget.
    24. Save money.

    Relationships:
    1. Don’t feel urged to go behind a girl.
    4. Don’t cohabit outside marriage.

    General social life:
    6. People let you down. Expect it and learn from it.
    20. Be charming, help others.
    8. Put people together. 
    19. Stop trying to save everybody.
    13. Don’t compare yourself with others, say on social media.

    General life:
    5. Don’t necessarily go with hype.
    11. College -> Confusion -> Real life. That’s the order it comes in.

    Innovate:
    3. Take jobs that need travel.
    15. Take values out of crappy jobs. 
    17. Be passionate, be willing to fail.
    16. Accept failures, move on.
    14. Keep changing your plans, as needed.
    21. But don’t listen to unimportant people.
    18. Explore.

  • On Disposing Garbage From My Reading List

    Up until two months ago, I would have been heading to facebook.com if I ended up in a long queue for chappati at the mess. No, I wouldn't waste a lot of time reading worthless status updates. I'd only click on external links and read articles (which feigned importance).

    And then, I deactivated my facebook account (as I've described here on quora).

    I started reading more of thehindu.com, and my textbooks.

    And that's when I realized that there's a difference between articles that you land up on after surfing social media, and articles from high quality news sources like The Hindu.

    For example, till a friend told me about how sad it is that naive criticism is floating over the web and social media about Sachin receiving Bharath Ratna, I didn't know that people could even think of blaming Sachin for being conferred a prize.

    But did I miss anything by not reading such hate-posts? No. There will be thousands of opinions about every event that occurs. Not all matters. A vast majority of opinions are fit for not even the trash can. Unfortunately, we meddle ourselves in all that rubbish, all day.

    If I go to Google News, it's again those articles which are "hot" that is displayed more prominently. And those are most often not the ones that are comprehensive accounts of reality. People tend to click on eye-grabbing headlines. And sites like NDTV capitalize on that by publishing "news" that sounds more like gossip.

    A comparison

    Hindu article:
    Heading: C.N.R. Rao bemoans lack of funding for science
    Relevant section:

    For a brief moment, Professor Rao lost his cool and criticised politicians for having given “so little.” “But for the money that science receives, India, I suppose, is doing well,” he said.

     

    NDTV article:

    Heading: Bharat Ratna CNR Rao calls politicians 'idiots'

    The same section:

    Venting out the dissatisfaction in the scientific community over "inadequate" funding, Bharat Ratna awardee and eminent scientist Professor CNR Rao today had an angry outburst as he called politicians "idiots" for giving them "so little".
    …
    "….why the hell these idiots, these politicians have given so little for us. Inspite of that, we scientists have done something," Prof. Rao said, losing his cool.

    This, as I come to know from wikipedia is called sensationalism.

    Which of the two articles above are people more likely to share on facebook or google or twitter? We don't have to speculate. The answers are on those links for everyone to see. At the time of writing, there's 155 fb shares, 5 tweets and 3 google+ shares for one. And 1.3k fb shares, 200 tweets and 137 +1s for the other. Which's which is anybody's guess.

    It's natural for any business to try and maximize their revenue. And we can't actually blame them for trying to entice us into reading their articles. We should blame ourselves for continuing to promote such valueless journalism. We should stop reading them.
    I'm not here to blame media barracks for sensationalism. I'm here to help you out of it. Human beings are naturally curious. But we don't want anyone to exploit our curiosity for their ulterior motives. Let's preserve our curiosity and apply them to find solutions for problems that genuinely need our attention.

    To Do
    There's only one thing to do. Mercilessly prune your reading list. Whenever you find a sensational article, remember how the author of that article must have been forced to write insensible incredulities to vie for your attention. Then, simply ignore it. Ignore your urge to open and criticize and comment and share. Ignore it and keep your mind fresh; to read a beautifully written, thought provoking, inspiring, educating article. Like, this.

  • Why Bother Writing?

    Thoughts are vague. No matter how clear a thought is to you, it would not be fully formed. That is, till you decide to write it down.
    When you write down anything, you assign an (imaginary) audience to it. And you start explaining your idea. Any explanation has to go down logically. Every digression will have to be thought through to its completion. But this is lacking in “just thinking” about it. Your brain deceives you into believing that everything is logical and that branches of thoughts are self explanatory or irrelevant, or somehow not any which require that it be pursued.

    Thinking gives a false impression of completeness. Writing makes a thought concrete.

    It is like a construction. You can plan everything down to its last detail. But it is only when you start building it that you realize which structures are vulnerable and what modifications are necessary in order to make the building stronger.

    And that makes writing difficult.

    So difficult that when people actually sit down and try to write, they give up, and worse, they think of writing as a futile exercise because they have “already thought everything about it”.

    You get my point. If you are thinking that you have thought everything about something, you should be able to write about it without any difficulty. If you find writing about it even slightly difficult, it means that you have missed out some critical piece of thought in your mind tree. It’s only when you’re forced to write, that it becomes complete.

    So, write.

    …

    PS: Writing this made me consider another related process – “talking”. Wouldn’t talking also force us to solidify thoughts? I think the answer is “Yes, but…”.
    Pros of writing:

    • A written document can be read by anyone, any time.

    Cons of talking:

    • Conversation gets very messy if you try to go back and delete a wrong word from one of your previous statements, and come back and continue the sentence and then change another word in the previous statement, and so on. There is absolutely no way to delete a paragraph.

    Okay, from the above point onwards, I’m considering only digital writing. And I seriously don’t think anyone will be writing with pen on paper any more.

    Perceived pros of talking that is levelled by internet:

    • In a conversation with an interested soul, you might get help from the conversational partner to finish your thought. Blogs with commenting system set up lets anyone else forge a new direction from your idea.

  • Happy Teacher's Day

    Disclaimer: This post is entirely based on the author’s experiences in life, learning. It is not intended at any single person, neither is it intended to insult or hurt anyone.

    I abhor the lectures delivered in my medical college.

    No, I love medicine. I don’t have any problem listening. And I don’t have ADHD.

    But I simply don’t gain anything from hours spent listening to lectures. I think I know why.

    When I was in my school, my teachers used to tell stories. They used to ask questions. They used to ensure that my mind stayed involved in the subject.

    In college, I’m lost.
    There are no stories, there is no logic, there’s no participation of students in the class.

    In the beginning I thought it was my problem, it was students’ disinterest, them not asking questions to teachers, them not interacting. But today is teacher’s day, and so, I’m attributing the failure of lectures to teachers.

    Here is how a typical lecture goes:
    A teacher comes in to the class. He writes down the title of the topic he is discussing on that day. And then he goes on – definition, classification, importance, prevalence, usage, mechanism, details, examples…
    Somewhere in between there might be two questions asked “what are the examples of…?”

    Just the way textbooks are written.
    A perfect validation of the title “Reader”.

    But, who wants the details? Who remembers them?
    And, more importantly, if they are just going to narrate the textbook, why do we need them, teachers?

    Here’s how my dream lecture is:
    A teacher comes in to the class. He asks the class a question that is at the core of the topic he is gonna teach. He narrates an incident that is totally related to the question and the topic. And then he asks us to think about the possible causes, or treatment, or mechanism.
    He listens to our responses and classify them. He tells us the various things that scientists have come up with in answering the same questions. He lets us relate with the solutions. He analyzes our response and tells us where it fits and where it doesn’t with actual science. He drops in important details in between. He makes us explore, and think, and absorb in that process. He shares insights and not details.

    No. Too much to ask for. Actually, I don’t have any right to ask for anything, because I’m neither an expert in medicine, nor one in teaching.

    But I can say what I can see. I see PGs who sit with students late till night to answer fundamental questions. I see one or two professors who set the mind of everyone in the classroom thinking hard about the problem and the solutions.

    But then, I have to regard the advice of that senior on the first night at my hostel: “See the fingers of your hand? Teachers are like that. Each one is different. Do not compare.” He followed that up with a warning, about how my life can be ruined if I do.

    But then, I’m not comparing. There’s nothing to compare against. It’s all bad, worse and ugly.

    You learn yourself in a professional college, they say. Yes, I’m better of teaching myself. And thus the title of the post.

    –written during a lecture

  • Save the Patient, not the Doctor

    Recently a nation wide campaign has been launched tagged “save the doctor”.

    The cause: making life easier for medical students.

    The appeal:
    1) Increase PG seats
    2) Include rural service within UG and PG course.

    The arguments:
    That there are 45600 UG seats and that there are only 12000 PG seats in clinical subjects. That this will make the UG doctor to work hard for years for a PG seat, based on the premise (one which I want to talk about in this post) that a clinical PG is absolutely necessary for serving as a doctor.
    That one year of rural service will increase the time taken to start earning and start living.

    The rural reality:
    People die because there are no doctors to treat them.

    The problem as statistics see it:
    From Rural Health Statistics 2012, it can be slowly understood that around 25000 PHCs in India work with just one doctor where at least 3 are recommended.

    About 5000 CHCs, with at least 4 specialists required, need around 20000 specialists, but only around 7000 are working as such.

    The problem as Dr Deo, et al. sees it:
    There are enough UG doctors, there aren’t enough PG doctors.

    Their solution:
    Increase PG seats. Easy!

    The way I see it:
    Nobody likes to go to a village. There is no bus, no electricity, no roads, more mosquitoes, no broadband, no mobile coverage.
    Naturally doctors do not want to go there either.

    Everybody likes to enjoy life. Doctors too. And more the money, easier it is to enjoy.

    When there are many UG seats, thanks to the competition in cities many MBBS doctors move to rural areas and work there.
    When they get PG, they have better opportunities in the cities, more facilities, better way to work. They don’t go to villages.

    So, the ‘fact’ that PG is necessary for working as a doctor seems counter intuitive for me.

    Of course you need a PG if you’re interested in the academic curiosities and the such. But to work as just a doctor, all you need is a basic knowledge of treating cholera and pneumonia and a will to have a small life.

    Save the doctor campaign seems misguided.

    Ask me whether I won’t enjoy life:
    I just need broadband connection to enjoy life.

  • When Doing Good is Bad For You

    This is a choice that the social revolutionary in a not so bad democracy has to face. He is confronted with injustice or inequality that doesn’t harm him directly, and won’t harm him at all if he ignores it. But if he decides to try and eliminate that evil, his future will be in risk.

    So, the revolutionist faces a dilemma. Options are:
    a) Risk oneself and improve the situation
    b) Ignore the situation and play safe

    The potential pitfall a revolutionist might fall in is thinking that they must always act against injustice. The right approach would be doing a risk-benefit analysis.
    The revolutionist will have a better chance of choosing the correct answer if he asks himself “How important is it to the world that this situation improves? How important is it to the world that I spare myself for better things?”

    With those two questions, he easily reaches an answer.

    To be precise, if there is sacrifice involved, spare yours for the biggest cause that you can win.

  • If Childhood Could Not Influence You

    I am going to take you through a very unfamiliar ride. You will have to trust me completely and prepare to be thrown around. The idea I’m about to give is going to shake your fundamental beliefs and core values. And that is invariable owing to the nature of it. So, if you have your seat belts on.

    Let’s start with a complicated question.
    How much of her skin can a woman expose?

    You might have an answer to that question. But that is irrelevant to me. I’m asking you to think of how many answers that question can have.

    Men and women will have different answers. Those answers will vary from country to country, region to region, culture to culture. And within men or women, the young and the old will have different answers.

    No, we are not here to resolve human morality. We are here to observe. Why do different people have radically different ideas about something as simple as clothing?

    [Think for a minute]

    I am going to propose an answer very soon. Before that, let’s explore one more question.

    What do you eat? Fruits and vegetables? And milk? And eggs? And meat?
    Why do people have preference for different food based on where we get it from?

    [Think for another minute]

    Here is the answer.

    Your childhood.

    Not as ground-breaking as you thought? Think again.
    All your biases, all the unconscious decisions you make, your intuition, and emotion –  everything is a learned response. Your brain which was more or less like dough when you were born has been getting remodelled and shaped ever since.

    And anything that you do, is only an output of all the existing logic gates the stimulus has to pass through.

    You have now begun to question. You are now claiming that all your decisions are built upon carefully weighed out reason.

    Ah, now you realised the folly of that argument too. Even the way you reason depends upon how you have learned to reason, when a child.

    Any statement that you make now is a product of the neurobiological circuits already in place in your brain. There is no way you can escape the clutches of your past.

    Or, wait, is there?

    Is there a way by which you can get rid of all the unconscious influences on you and think with purest reason?

    There is, albeit a difficult one. All you have to do is revisit all the assumptions that you have made in your life. Go back and recheck each and every “fact” that has been thrust upon you when your guards were down. Meet the defences of your own mind with the spearhead of question. Persevere in eliminating all those contaminant ideas that have occupied your brain/mind without a reason. Challenge all existing presumptions. Keep questioning the integrity of every single thought that comes to your mind.

    “Have I thought about the validity of this thought, or is it seeming naturally true for me?“

    If the answer is the latter, you need to think, examine, dissect that thought. Make it answerable to all the assumptions it thrives on. Do not let it survive if it does not have strong pillars of undeniable logic supporting it.

    Keep doing this for a while.

    “Why do I feel my country is better than any other?”
    “Why do I feel my culture is better than any other?”
    “Why do I feel passionate about this particular job?”
    “Why do I have faith in this?”

    Keep questioning.

    Slowly, you’ll evolve into a fully grown man.

  • A Lot Can Happen Over Coffee

    Yesterday, I met two scientists. One is a neuroscientist about to join Yale, the other, her husband, an immunologist in NY.

    And they changed my perception about how I should pursue my higher studies after MBBS.

    No, the meeting wasn’t a coincidence. I’d never be in CCD on any given day unless someone invited me over there. But the events that led to it, was undoubtedly a long chain of logical but random choices (even involving a confessions page in facebook).

    So, what was so earth-shattering about this meeting that my career plan has to undergo a complete overhaul?

    ***

    Here’s a slightly modified transcript of the conversation:
    (KI = the neuroscientist, AG = the immunologist, ASD = me, SSB = my friend)

    KI: So, how are you liking MMC?

    ASD: To answer that, I’d have to go back in history. Till about the end of grade 10, I was going to be a Professor of Mathematics. Because back then, I liked and understood the subject really well. But at the end of grade 10, I decided that I had to do something relevant and of importance to the world (not that Mathematics is pointless). I decided I’d do MBBS. And after MBBS, I’d choose IAS and enter social service; or do DM in Neurology, so that I’d be doing some research in brain and cognitive sciences later on.

    And then, at the end of grade 12, I had a real chance to pursue Computer Science and Mathematics. But then I stick to my ill-logic of practical importance, and choose to satisfy my curiosities in CS and math as a hobby while I become a doctor.

    And what makes me confident about this all encompassing polymath style approach, is the over-confidence that my study technique lends me. I believe that even in a fact-oriented subject like Medicine, when you go deeper with your understanding of the concepts (sometimes hypothesising on things) you’ll have made facts intuitive, thus avoiding the need to memorize them, and at the same time making you very good at the subject. That’s why I started learnlearn.in and I’m just waiting for the results.

    So, in short, it doesn’t matter to me, the college. I like it, because I’m in it.

    AG: So, you thinking of developing a brain-machine interface, or the like? You know what, the research on all those is going full swing right now, and probably by the time you reach there, it’d all be over. They’re mapping out all the connections in the brain, and the US government has given nod to a $300 mn bill already for the ‘connectome’ project.

    ASD: Okay! But that’s so going to fail.

    AG & KI: If you look at it, it’s much like the human genome project. They’re just trying to figure out the connections as perfectly as possible, and once we have it, possibly we’ll end up with a whole lot of applications of it. You know how the CNS pharmacology is not based on our knowledge of the brain, but on pure luck.

    ASD: Okay! I meant it wasn’t going to solve consciousness or intelligence or anything. For health, of course, yeah. So, tell me your stories.

    KI: I did my MBBS starting in 1999, while AG started in 1996. Towards the end of it, I realized that writing an entrance examination after graduating, and then getting into post graduation rate race, was so not going to happen for me. But, I also knew that to get into research positions abroad or in India, I needed to have something in my c.v. So, I went to the National Centre for Biological Sciences in Bangalore during my internship and stayed there for 3 months, doing their work, closely learning how the entire system works. And I convinced the director there of my commitment to do science, that they wrote a recommendation letter for me.

    And with that I could join a neuroscience research team. In essence, when you apply to universities, they ask you what you have already done, because they need some way to separate the grain from the chaff. They need to find out who is really committed to doing this, who is capable of doing this, and who knows what they’re going to do.

    But that’s not an excuse to neglecting your academic performance in college. They really aren’t waiting for a guy who took 5 years longer to finish medical school just because he was interested in doing much cooler things. They want someone who is good at whatever he does.

    And, you gotta compartmentalize your academic studies from the things that you learn for your research interest. Because they could well be at odds with each other.

    And then +swathi sb comes in after finding her lost scooter key.

    SSB: Sorry I’m late. I know you’re talking about career. I wanted to do something in public health, for the poor who are suffering. So, does this all apply for me?

    AG: Well, we aren’t pretty confident about that sector, and there are people who’re better qualified to answer that. But still, there are a lot of ways you could help the community. You needn’t necessarily be working at a rural setting, because that’d only make you a practising doctor in rural areas. You could gain experience while working as the doctor for NGOs that operate in rural areas. That’d fetch you insights into how things work or doesn’t work there. Then maybe you can use it to do some work from the cities.

    SSB: Okay. Forget about me, continue your story?

    KI: Ha, so I did some work on astrocytes, the glial cells. Now, to do my post-doctoral work I’m joining Yale Medical School.

    ASD: Wow! The Yale?

    AG: Yes, the Yale. Like I’m joining Sinai for getting some clinical practice.

    ASD: Okay, you haven’t told us your story.

    AG: Ah, I finished MBBS, like she already told you and then I went to Bombay to stay with my mother. While doing MBBS, I had done some studies in P&SM, and with only that experience I went to the nearby Tata Hospital. And I didn’t know whom to meet there. So, I went to the Director directly, and told him “Sir, I’m a medical graduate. I am interested in doing research.” And he was amused. He talked with me for a while. And then he wrote a note.

    I took that note to the lady it was addressed to. And she was an immunologist. They were working on genetics and stem cell therapy. And I worked with them. And I was among the team which discovered a therapy for ADA deficiency, which was also first of its kind.

    ASD: That is the example for stem cell therapy in biochemistry.

    AG: Yeah, so you know how important that was. And then I was thinking of doing some stuff, when I stumbled upon the much cooler stuff that one of my colleagues were doing there. He was trying to make changes in dendritic cells that’d enable them to better identify cancer cells. And then the T-cells would be able to identify them and kill them naturally. So, I’m working on it, now.

    ASD: So, what progress are you making on it?

    AG: In research, you usually do not make any perceivable progress in a short term. That’s, maybe, one disadvantage of it. But you shouldn’t really get bogged down by that. You will build on someone’s work, and then someone else will build on your work, and maybe credit you. That’s how progress is made.
    And if you ask us whether we’ve made the right choices, we are not old enough to say so, but so far so good.

    ***

    Thinking of it, my idea of doing a DM in Neurology is stupid, when all that I want to do was research on the brain. The most natural thing for me to do is, after MBBS, to join some institute where they do some actual research on the brain.

    And so is it going to be.