Midnight snack of filter coffee and bhujia. Not a good combination. I think it'll keep me awake (which is the objective here) one way or other. Anyway this week's collected bits of idiocy:

We had a lecture on Schizophrenia the other day. Given its negative connotations, a certain do-gooding section of the society felt that calling Schizophrenia something else would be a bit of an image-cum-morale booster. And so some names were suggested. Notable among these are (really, I kid you not) 'My-mind-lies-to-me'(!) and Martyrdom(!!). Hah, morale boosting indeed.

Apparently (or at least if my neuropsychology prof is to be believed) people with tattoos can't go near an MRI machine- the metal in the ink gets attracted to the very powerful magnet in the MRI, and results in um, injury. Ouch.

In other news, James Cameron tries rather too late to cash in on the Da Vicni craze, but everyone laughs at him. American restaurants launch the concept of 'extreme eating',a.k.a 'angioplasta'. Each dish contains is quite literally a calorie bomb at 2,500 calories. Exactly what the doctor ordered.

Orkut's latest avatar: matrimonial website. No, really. Boy meets girl on Orkut. He in Kuwait, she in England. They become friends, profess undying love, vow marriage all presumably over scraps, and all without having met even once...

One year later. Cut to village in Kerala, girl is back home after obtaining MBA. Here (for lack of a more convenient option probably)she meets boy (also visiting family in nearby Kottayam) for the first time. FOR THE FIRST TIME. But, danger lurks. Unbenownst to them they are spied on by evil relative, who telephones parents of girl with the bad news. Girl forced to confess about boyfriend, and shock, horror! She be catholic, and he protestant! *Swoon*

Many tears, and much chest beating later, girl is confined to house arrest. Girl now chief traitor of the family values and syrian christian traditions that they have so valiantly upheld from the time they were proud, newly converted Namboodiri-Catholics. A thousand years of inbreeding down the drain. And the sheer bad taste- she fancies a lowly protestant! Some liberal relatives meet the boy and reject him. Brother of girl being rabid fundamental catholic hacks into her account and deletes all boy's emails to girl. Probably scraps too. Girl swears to family she won't have anything to do with boy anymore (a lie,but what else is she to do?). She is released from house arrest.

One month later. Family repents (thanks to boy's Mercedes and billions that did it) Girl's marriage to boy fixed. All's well that ends well. Joy, happiness, Yay, hurrah and all that.

This is a true story. They should make it into a movie. It has the romance and the drama, the wailing women (Yeh shaadi nahi ho sakti! Or the Mal equivalent thereof. Eye, would you be so kind as to provide the words?) and the vengeful brother, the villainous relative and all the right morals- love that is not physical, but spiritual, love that transcends boundaries geographical and religious. And family values, and tolerance etc etc etc.

[Disclaimer: I'm being evil, I shouldn't be sneering. I happen to know the girl in the story, and she's really nice. I've got nothing against people meeting on orkut and getting married afterwards (or not), although how practical it is to make that decision without meeting each other, I will refrain from commenting upon. But the family's reaction:(and these are really nice people, I've met them) to foam at the mouth over something as minor as catholicism/protestantism is imo, worthy of contempt. I mean, I would have even understood their alarm if the boy was hindu/muslim/parsee/mormon/whatever else.]

Dear Person-who-has-borrowed-300-from-the-local-library,
Return it now, I say- one week is plenty of time to read it, you hog. Stop hoarding! I'd like to a)borrow this one and return what I've got in a single trip-I don't have a car, (probably) unlike you. b)finish reading it before March 9, when the movie releases. So be a good boy now, and get your ass down to the library at once!
Thanks,
Nina

Want to watch 300 on imax. The nearest theatre with imax is 10 miles away, and (predictably) inaccessible by public transport. But, but, but we think (we hope, we pray) that we may have found someone we can con into taking us. Please don't disappoint us, dudewithcar!

In my inbox today:

"This month’s student Alumni discount includes professionally-fitted teeth whitening trays and dentist quality whitening gel. A generous quantity has been delivered to university affiliates at a significant discount. A whiter smile (free from coffee, cigarette and food stains) has been proven to be important for job interviews and first impressions. These teeth whitening systems are exactly the same as used by dentists across the country. Please visit the website below and use the unique gift code to receive your discount."

!

There's something oddly comforting about drinking water out of a stainless steel (in a foreign country anyway) -or to use the correct technical term- eversilver tumbler. It's the right size, holding enough water to quench your thirst; just the right weight- as you lift it up to to your mouth...

My grandmother, like all Tamilian women of her generation adored eversilver (for its durability, I suppose), and filled her kitchen with it. She held in contempt everything fragile- china, glassware etc., all lumped together under the single category, and pronounced with snort of derision- Peengaan. The provenance of this term, I am not aware. My pet theory is that it might be a corruption of 'Bingham' (sitting bored in a boring lecture on fluid dynamics, until the professor said something about Bingham plastics, which sounded so much like Peengaan that I was jolted out of my state of semi-wakefulness. I believe that it is no coincidence that the prof in question grew up somewhere in Tirunelveli district). Slight problem: I haven't been able to find any association (however tenuous) between Bingham and glassware/china.

Steel tumblers also remind me of the days sweet taste of maN paanai- stored water. Man Paanais- now obsolete, long abandoned even in our Tirunelveli home. A real pity, that.

ABCDEFGHIJ: American Born Confused Desi Exported From Gujarat (with) Hotel In Jersey

Heh.

Astrologer to my mother:

Your daughter will be a scholar. She will then take on an administrative job that takes her to many, many countries.

Your son will be a great mathematician. He'll get into a business that involves water.

I'd really like to know what we both end up doing, that fits above predictions.

Presenting... Lola Kutty and Boney M(enon)!

Thoughts as they run through my head:

I hate, hate, HATE waiting for my code to finish running. Does anyone else feel this way? I'm bored, and can't access orkut while on blogger. Darn it. Which reminds me, does anyone know of a better alternative to bloody bloglines? It's swallowed some of feeds whole. Anna Nicole Smith is dead, cause unknown. OD? Suicide? Who cares. It suddenly occurred to me yesterday that maybe men probably don't write long rambling emails to each other. Do they even write emails to each other? When is this fucking program going to finish running? Don't tell me MATLAB's hung again. It hasn't. Back to the interminable wait then. It's 2.15 pm, and I've run out of things to think about. Hitting publish. Ooh it ran. I'm not sure if I'm happy with the result or not. Wise move, not taking computer science in school. May have ended up a software programmer. *Shudder*
Solution to orkut/blogger problem presents itself: use two different browsers. Elementary, my dear Watson.

It's frickin' -20 C outside. I'm going to die of hypothermia one of these days.

Chocolate milk leaked over two brand new textbooks. Reading one of which, I discover that fourth semester Probability and Statistics has come back to torment me again. Dirac delta function (click on link at your own peril). Whatever the hell that is, hmph. Bad memories of a loathsome professor and of very nearly failing. Grr.

Just spent an hour disinfecting my bathroom. The closet clogged itself and overflowed yesterday. After much grief, we managed to get rid of the water.

And tomorrow I'll be blanker than ever in Computational Neuroscience class.

Dudes, life sucks.

Also, notice migration to new blogger, and new (non) title.

Err, do you have to be male to appreciate Duck Soup? How is it even funny? Utterly bewildered. Kindly enlighten?

Oh, also watched Notes on a Scandal. Judi Dench is brilliant, as always. IMO, much better than Helen Mirren in The Queen.