General blade

Sitting in a shrink's room at 8.30 am on a sunday morning post a three-fourth hearted session at the gym and an extremely erratic sleep cycle. Wondering if the sleep cycle was busted by the pasta (roasted red pepper, sausages, zucchini, olive, fresh basil and tomato) and the vodka with cranberry juice that went in around 9 last night. By shrink's room it's not a couch-freud thing, just a friend who I can't link to due to the lack of a definite online presence. And who is probably going to saunter in in sometime hung over from some saturday night extravagance.

Not quite sure if I need to go to work today. Primarily, since I'm not quite sure if we're on strike. Threats of an indefinite strike (thank you lord) have been coming in on the airwaves at regular intervals but nothing's confirmed. In any case emergency services will still be on so those of you who are sick AND dying feel free to drop by. Another scary thought that's been cropping up is what if the people in charge of deciding whether to strike or not are perhaps benefited by the reservation. I guess a black badge is the result of that. More scarily, are the people in charge reading this? Again unlikely since most of them are electronically challenged or luddites or just plain cretinoid (?).

Anyway, sitting around trying to waste time on a sunday morning when I should be negotiating the traffic that I can hear honking from the windows does lead to idle thoughts. Todays are particularly idle. First is on cheapness. I have, with substantial reason, been called cheap for a majority of my life. Today I justify that accusation. Turns out that the shrink's being wooed by major drug companies by gifts galore. As of last count there's a carpet (not persian or flying but a carpet all the same), a folding table, curtains, assorted texts on psychiatry and here's the rub, this morning I see two shaving kits with drug logos boldly embellished on them. They contain a mach 3 turbo (each), a set of extra blades, shaving foam, after shave gel and a little towel. This is not counting the one the shrink already uses. Normally I'd have reacted to this with some socialistic/idealistic/jealous line. This time it's particularly painful since a similar drug company gave yours truly a shaving kit too. A Vector Plus. Despite aggressive advertising involving a screaming Irfan Pathan running up to bowl and a cool little knob at the back of the blade that facilitates cleaning, it's a bad razor. A terrible one, in fact. Almost feels like the monster.com advert that shows a chef with a meat cleaver shaving a sorry looking cad. Which brings us to another concept involving razor advertising... Long years ago a friend pointed out that the earlier twin blade ads showed an animation of a hair being shaved where one blade would shave half and the second would remove the rest of the hair. Mach3 ads showed three blades each progressively shaving a third of the hair. So would that mean that the SensorExcel (finally remembered the name) blades were better since they removed a greater percent of hair per blade...

Sorry, a general blade about blades.

Read mohayana's post on chemical brothers and wondered what could make him zulu dance. If you've seen him you'd know how traumatic that sight can be. But turns out that the first few seconds of Galvanise by chemical brothers can initiate tribal choreography. More about that album once I get the rest of it.

The final idle thought that I can have before I drive off to work like there's no tomorrow is inspired by this. Conniving classics. There has to be something wrong with a book called Moby Dick that revolves around a sperm whale. And Shakespearean references in Taming of the Shrew to Petruchio's tongue in Katherine's tail...

The world is ending. Carry your towels. Don't Panic.

Mutant.

Started a post about a friend. Meant it as a eugoly/elegy whatever they do when the person is still alive. Turned out to be so vitriolic, I scrapped it. Friend if you're reading this, you don't know it's about you.. hopefully a mildly toned-down version for public consumption will appear shortly. Have also made note to self to moderate comments soon after.

My mp3 player has turned prescient. In a momentary lapse of reason I filled it with random pop/rock and put the thing on shuffle (a la the pod). It then played (in sequence) Picture of You (Boyzone, OST Mr. Bean), Father and Son (Ronan Keating and Yusuf Islam/Cat), Last thing on my mind (Ronan and LeAnn Rimes) and When you say nothing at all (duh.). Before I get the brickbats for these four songs I've said momentary lapse already. But how on shuffle did it get these four songs? Technology now is taking over my life. I sometimes feel like Alice... tumbling down the rabbit hole...

Then when driving through the crashing rain it played Flood (Jars of Clay). And then we had Evil Woman (ELO) and well it's losing touch but two songs later I ended up listening to Beep (Pussycat Dolls). Freaky. But at some point of time when the rain and the traffic were beginning to take their toll on my qi, started the strains of Lie in Our Graves (Dave Matthew(s) Band, Live in Chicago). What an amazing song it is. Ten-odd minutes of Dave's voice, that brilliant violinist/fiddler and that ambidextrous drummer.

But how cool is an ambidextrous drummer... It's almost scary... But not half as scary as an ambidextrous surgeon. That is a treat to watch. Some of the People (with respect) in plastic and reconstructive do that and it's so cool .

Watch High Fidelity for the umpteenth time and again wished I could read the book. Again.

Also watched XMen the Last Stand. Frightening sometimes the fact that the crowd for the Code is about twice the size of the one for Xmen. Not a bad movie at all. Not much of a story, good looking women (even Rebecca Romijn-Stamos at some point of time sheds all the blue and the make up and looks the way god made her), nice effects, a little too much sentiment, Cool new mutants (Beast, Jaggernaut, Spyke on a cameo before Wolverine makes sheesh kebab out of him). There's supposed to be an undercurrent of philosophy that being different is ok and there is concept of a cure for... well, being different. Hugh Jackman as usual does the slice and dice retractable claws thing with panache. Bottom line you'll enjoy it if you're either twelve or a fan (some people think I'm both, it's not a bad thing).

Nothing else new on the horizon outside of the Met Dept screwing up monsoon predictions again and a patient when asked some technical question regarding when she had her first child/second child/menopause etc replying, "If I could figure all that out I wouldn't be on this bed. I'd be a doctor like you or something..."

Looking for a nice long rope to string myself up.

Like father...

Did some cool html nonsense and put a google search bar right on top. Seems like the computer industry is constantly coming up with nefarious ways and means to take over my life. First it was windows that more or less refuses to do my bidding till it's whipped into a no-frills shape (a lot like Air Deccan except that they don't do your bidding in any case). Now it's google. My reasonable computer-illiterate dad decided one day to download a sudoku package. He now has the paper all to himself by the way but still he downloaded it. Now he's depressed that there are people in the world who can solve a level 5 puzzle in one fourth the time he can...

But that's not the story. Turns out that along with the game I get Google Desktop Search Bar Free!! This nifty little thing goes through the entire computer and catalogs all there is for easy search and retrieval. SUICIDE. Got rid of the damn thing in no time. Incidentally blogger.com is a google initiative I think.

Saw the new Amul billboard (the one just beyond Vellara Junction). There's something to those ads. Simple and yet the funniest ever. This one showed a crashing graph and 'Nonsensex. Amul the Safe Investment.'

Was wondering about why we like certain kinds of music or food or whatever. And almost everything can be split into classical and pop. We all start off liking pop. Be it Destiny's Child, the Pussycat Dolls or the new Shakira song. Be it a double cheese burger, fries or even chaat. Then we gravitate at some time in our lives to what we really are deep down inside. Vethakozhambu or Avakkai and everybody from Mozart to Muthuswamy. But then again it's a random thought primarily brought about by this horrible taste in my mouth resulting from (again) dad's extreme intelligence.

For many years we had a water filter. You know the usual candle filter ones that needed to be dismantled every once in a while and sandpapered to remove a film of algae or whatever that grew into them. Then as technology caught up with him (about five years after it catches up with everyone else... Incidentally he can be the Nokia poster-boy for user-friendliness. He's coming to terms with T9 now.) He bought one of those cool wall-hanging power-consuming devices that, due to the well known fact that electricity and water don't mix, shorted out in a week. Thank you, lord, since that awful sound it made was just about driving me to short it out myself. All the neighbours would know when water was being filled at home. It was just short of expecting a queue in front of the door with people lined up with bottles going, "Since you're filling anyway how about..."

So we went back to the medieval ages where water would be filled in this huge steel vessel and boiled till it... well boiled. And the cooled and drunk etc etc. Till one day I pulled a major con and convinced the higher authorities to invest in a swanky new filter. Sleek, made of newer composites and biofilters and whatnot AND an instruction manual. But the man in charge shrugs it all off ("an instrution manual for a water-filter? are you joking") and puts it together and pours in the water and and hour later (lo and behold) we have potable water.

That tastes like molten plastic.

The manual on closer perusal says - wash all components before installation. Soak filters in warm water for half an hour prior to usage. Discard the first filtrate, wash the device and refill. THEN drink.

I think I'm going to be sick.

Got home dead...

... tired today after the NLEP was renamed to National Limb Eradication programme where I work. Was too tired to tread any sort of mill so drove home through a nice drizzle and decided to settle with a cup of earl grey, blog a bit and then get down to some textbook of surgery. Things nowadays never really go as planned.

Was shot to hell for liking Amjad Ali Khan and sons. Now it turns out that the person who shot me to hell is (at least according to the internet) pretty... and that puts me in a quandary of sorts. My testosterone fuelled ego wants to retaliate like there's no tomorrow but my testosterone wants to do nothing. Will take a middle path partial to the right and say it is a free world and since Amjad Ali Khan is the only sarod player I've heard I do not have a yardstick to measure him up to and will be extremely grateful if I could be introduced to non-amjad sarod music, and better yet if I could be given some. Till then will still maintain, much to the disappointment of certain quarters of society, that I like him.

Now before all this writing happened and after I read the fateful comment, power disappeared. So I sat in the drizzle on my roof sipping earl grey thinking of things to write about and I actually got a lot of good thoughts that never made it past the power shut down. But some still remain, mixed with strains of the blues in hindolam. Which brings us to profound thought #64 - the blues are not five notes... they're a way of life.

Pondered more about the reservation deal and got messages of 94 brethren (and sistren) passing out on the fast and AIIMS and PGI on complete strike no matter what the world tells you. Then spent the next five minutes laughing because I imagined a OBC dude in medschool caught up in the whole anti-reservation deal maybe even succumbing to peer pressure and going on hunger strike, all the time thinking, "But this is good for me..."

And answered the call that came from Satan right after that reaffirming the soul-selling deal.

There's a sneaky suspicion that many a belligerent comment might come my way inspired by Shantanu's outburst. For his sake they had better not be. As a wise friend said a closed mouth gathers no foot.

BE(e)P

Went googling for the Black Eyed Peas and this is what I found. Love the internet. It turns out that for the mildly technologically challenged people like yours truly, the site meter homepage is a treasure trove of totally useless information. Like where in the world is Carmen Sandiego accessing your blog from. Or which site is she visiting that has a link to the blog. Now since, even my superinflated ego will not concede that I'm famous (I can be both deluded and insightful) it turns out that I have been accessed most randomly from google. when people searched for CBSE, Vodka Watermelons, and Maslow's. Which makes google in my humble opinion the best search engine ever. A friend claims that all his hits are off google when people search for him, but I figure everyone's deluded.

Of course the question that should be burning in the back of your minds should be why are the black eyed peas being googled. No, it's not because Fergie is the hottest creature of God I've seen in a long time (that search has been done...). I was intrigued by the fact that Beep by the Pussycat Dolls (yes the Pussycat Dolls) was playing in my head for about a week. And that's only after listening to the song and not watching it. Then some little research revealed that it had Will.i.am from the BEP doing about 80% of the musical work and contributing to about 2.3% to the appeal of the video. Turns out that the hook that keeps repeating after the 'I'm a do my thing while you're playing with your ... ha ha haa" is from the Electric Light Orchestra's Evil Woman. So started the hunt for the sources of samples that Will.i.am uses...

It's amazing where they hunt out those bits of music and the way he puts them together. The elephunk theme, which unfortunately isn't on the album of the same name is almost entirely from an ilayaraja song from Raghavendra... loosely translated the song runs thus "joy for you and me (yenaku unaku anandam)... Don't phunk with my heart begins the same way a song from BigB's Don. And most recently Pump it is all Pulp Fiction. I'm not hip-hop's biggest fan and don't think it's the future of music but the band has something that keeps it in my head and not in an irritating Govinda-song (I was doin' Teri Naani mari to mai kya karoon for months) or Himmesh (or Himmesh-bhai as the choms do it). And where's the love is a song that can be used in the best of situations at the risk of grave physical damage from the people fighting.

In other happenings, the sudden showers are throwing a wet blanket (very literally since I left a window open) on all possible plans. The paterfamilias got pelted by hail too. I just got pelted at work for saying that I was hungry in the middle of surgery when we pulled a gall bladder out. It really wasn't a cannibalistic or a degenerate thought, it was simply a temporal mismatch.

Trivia for the day is the BEP song Let's get it started (that star world stole, I actually liked Absolutely Everybody better) was initially titled Let's get retarded... Political Correctness raises it's ugly head after it changed Star Trek's "where no man has gone" to "no one has gone before"

PS why did Cap'n Kirk pee on the ceiling?

He wanted to boldly go where no man...

Unreserved comments

I'm not sure yet where this post will go but I think the title stems from shantanu's rather verbose comment on my previous post. But like he said I've known him long enough to not need to prove to him or myself how much of a nut he can be. And I'm still not sure if the comment following his is for the post or for the comment. All that aside, here I am with about four hours of sleep that resulted from reaffirming why TGIF in happy hours can be one of the happiest places to be in, nursing a complaining head with a cup of coffee. The phone's been buzzing most of the night with calls for a nationwide strike of all medical services emergency or otherwise and an appeal to not treat a policeman if the such a situation arises (a little antithesis there but still). Have tried to stay out of the whole reservation discussion but at some point of time images of the brethren (and sistren) being beaten up by the servers and protectors are, to say the least, disconcerting.

On an aside recently learnt that the cops are taught how to lathi the occasional socially disruptive element - they have to turn him/her around and hit on the back/butt firmly but not with the strength or intent to cripple/maim. So if the lathi charge on the medicos comes up for enquiry it will be bad for the cops who've been caught on camera whacking the poor sods wherever they could.

But why are only the docs screaming... Interestingly Thorsten Wiesel (1981 Nobel Prize winner for medicine for some incredible work on the visual pathway) was/is in town and apparently was wondering why the hue and cry on 'affirmative action' was restricted to medicine. The numbers here are far more frightening than they are in engineering. There are too many engineering colleges around, that we have to agree and despite the numbers of graduates coming out, there are enough jobs in the industry to absorb them. It is also relatively inexpensive to increase the number of seats to cushion any reservation policy that the short-sighted, vote-bank politicking government might come up with.

Post graduation in medicine is close to one of the most difficult things to achieve nowadays. It's not half as difficult as getting into an iit or an iim but the ratios involved make it next to impossible, at least in a government college. Of course if you have about 30 lakhs to shell out as down payment or building fees and about 5-6 lakhs a year after that, there are private colleges but that kind of money is hard to come by... So what have we in terms of seats - approximately 30-40 in AIIMS, PGI, JIPMER, 2000 in the All-India entrance and by some extrapolation about another 4000 seats in state medical colleges. a grand total of 6500, give or take. number of medical graduates coming out every year? easily around 30,000. do the math - excluding the ones that go abroad (they can't get to the UK anymore, that's a different story), get married, do MBAs or medical transcription and the ones that get post grad, there's a pool of about 15,000 doctors ADDED to the ones that write the entrance exams.

And the government wants to halve the number of seats available on the general merit list.

And it wants the section of society most affected by it to sit around quietly on their lathi-charged behinds.

This of course Dr. Weisel digested with some good wine, shook his intelligent head and left for the US.

But this policy is one that if implemented could lead to civil war. Some bunch of guys inspired by the recent well-criticised movie might just take a gun to the government. Then there'll be hell to pay. Or better yet the HRD ministry should interact with the BCCI and insist on reservation in the cricket team, so the country's current pride and joy represents the demographics better.

But as of now... what else is to be done outside of getting to the hospital, treating the dying, the sick, the less sick and the malingerers... cops included and hoping that the 10 or 12 seats for superspecialisation (which is incidentally called subspecialisation in the west) that have been spared by the supreme court from Mandal's far-sighted directives, stay that way.

Concerts and Caves

Ok the Gods who look down on our fair city and have been either drinking and waking up with some sort of mid afternoon hangover or they've been gambling over which part of it will flood if they decide to send down some kind of tropical rain at 4pm. There's a term for those 4 o'clock showers I think it's convection rains but I shall confirm that in sometime.

More importantly Amjad Ali Khan and sons played at the Fort High School Grounds last evening. And the Gods were gambling over something else so unlike saturday's Lalgudi Jayaraman felicitaition that was washed out, yesterday wasn't.

The sarod is a stringed instrument which in the tradition of most other indian classical stringed instruments has a set of main strings on which the melody is played and resonating strings that add (well...) resonance to whatever is being played. It's a clean instrument but again not as sharp as the santoor and not as jarring as the sitar can occasionally be. The concert started at 7pm (after a half hour wait for some dignitary who I'm not sure turned up). He started solo with 3 compositions one in Ganesh Kalyan (haven't heard of it), the next in Sham Gowri(ditto) and the third in Durga(this one I know). Of course he started by saying how it was possible in hindustani to elaborate on a raag for as long (he's done it all night in Calcutta sometime) as one wishes but he was going to do short compositions (15 min) in each. Interestingly the time signatures for each track were (in order) 12, 14 and 16. 12 and 16 aren't hard to follow but 14 is, very politely put, a bitch. It's near impossible for the mind to think in 7s... so the man actually spends a few minutes getting the tabla and ghatam used to the taal. And consistently gives them hints on the time through out. And considering he's been there and done that for just about as long as anybody can remember his sense of both tune and time are beyond compare. Of notable mention was the rehearsal-less ghatam player who joined in. Had many issues getting used to how time works in hindustani (if time can work differently, it does...) but ultimately managed to pull it off without too many glitches.

The second half of the concert had Ustad playing with his sons. Cynical as I am about star kids, I have to admit that these two are extremely good. Technically brilliant but the maturity that shows in music as a performer ages is something that only time can lend. They did a tigalbandi on Kirwani. And shifted in the middle to a couple of other raags, I think darbari was one of them but I cannot really be too sure. This section went on for close to an hour and after many rises and falls in tempo and energy, ended with a dazzling crescendo of sheer speed.

Album Picks :

1. Recincarnation - Aman & Ayaan Ali Bangash

2. Moksha - Amjad Ali Khan

3. South meets North - Amjad Ali Khan and Lalgudi Jayaraman

4. A Box set of Amjad Ali Khan with 4CDs spanning his entire career.

sublime.

Had dinner at this pretty nice restaurant called Ghufa. Interiors are as the name suggests - grotto-esque. Except that it's on the fifth floor. Now the hotel that has this place also has this swanky deal in the ground floor called Isys. Do believe they should have switched positions but mine is not to reason. The food was good, the beer bottled the bill (for five) a little on the higher side but the place is worth a visit.

Also now am in possession of the new Sabiston including free cd and pocket companion. Adios.

Maslow and the Cheesecake Factory

Dinner last evening involved a nice medium rare chateaubriand followed by a slice of cheesecake. Now the person I was having dinner with had had steaks in Texas and cheesecake from the cheesecake factory. Now this person was nice enough to not say anything but along the course of conversation it was established that nothing need be said since we both were astute readers of insinuation. Bottom line? I don't care this is the third world, there are no japanese hand massaged kobe steaks and no cheesecake factory, will live in the delusion that these are the best steaks I've had (it's not a delusion, it's actually true I haven't had better steaks).

Now on Maslow and his thoughts about life etc ...

It turns out that Maslow was the eldest of seven in a russian-jewish immigrant family in new york. Not just NYC but Brooklyn in the early 1900s. If Sigmund had met him he would go, "Hmmm, I zink I vould like you to lie down on zis couch, ja?" Then he went on to study, marry someone his parents didn't approve of, have a couple of kids and choose psychology and create an interesting theory and die of a heart attack.

It turns out that human beings (like you and me a few others I know) have needs. These needs are stratified and proceed from (obviously) a basal to a higher lever in the form of a triangle.

Right at the bottom are physiological needs, roughly translated to water, food and sex (in that order of requirement). Next are needs of security (financial, environmental). Then come social or emotional (the need to love and be loved, friendships, relationships). Just a step short of the apex are needs of esteem (including job satisfaction, the ability to respect others, and the need to be respected and appreciated). Finally right on top is self-actualization - a state where the only pursuit is perfection and the drive is to be the true "I".

Obviously this state can only be reached if the bottom rungs are more or less taken care of. If somebody's hungry, about to be killed, luckless in love, or the scapegoat at work it is rather unlikely he (or she) is going to get anywhere near self-actualization and thus actually life life utilizing his (or her) maximal potential.

This is of course assuming self-actualization is a drive to work towards a level of perfection and not sit under a tree or stand till covered by an anthill (a la Amar Chitra Katha). Strangely enough I've read enough to say that it is only when these needs no longer exist that one can attain nirvana but we aren't discussing that...

Maslow also noted that people could regress to a lower need state when the higher one was threatened... the need to be loved when work is bad, the need to hoard wealth if perhaps unloved, or simply the need to eat or sleep around if someone's stalking you to kill you...

And if there's an unmet need in childhood/development that persists in adulthood and can occasionally show up as a neurosis. Which is sort of consistent with the childhood deprivation theory of mental illness.

Though most psychiatrists no longer hold psychological theories in any regard this particular one can explain a lot about society and occasionally individual behaviour without having to go into why depression or obsessive compulsive disorders happen.

Why is most of the population explosion in a lower socio-economic class... is it perhaps because their needs of security are not met and are resorting to water/food/sex?

Why is productivity so low.. maybe deficiencies in every step below self-actualization are preventing the predicted 2% of population from getting there... Amartya Sen did get the nobel prize for simply stating that taking care of food health and education would be the most important first step in the achievement of a welfare state...

Just thoughts bouncing around in my head but it is something that needs a little more attention that what it's got till now.

Car Songs

Sitting in front of the comp after a couple days sorting mail, chatting with long lost and not so long lost friends on google talk and thus, am doing smiley's the way they were mean to be and not some yellow animated thing that I want to stab. Also in attendance are a glass of whiskey (15 year old Glenfiddich), strains of Dave Matthew (Lie in Graves, Live at the Red Rocks - 1995) and another window that has wikipedia up and running on something that I shall wax eloquent about sometime.
I like that concept of eloquent waxing... it's not a phrase I see used as often I'd like but I think therein lies the beauty of it.
Earlier today while driving through bangalore's famous traffic realised that between my inherent pre-morbid subclinical anal nature and my love of High-Fidelity (book and movie) I had to make a list of the top songs to drive to. Why this? It's what stopped me, even at the threat of grievous and expensive damage to my car, from running into and over everybody else. So here goes (this is of course is not exhaustive and ye gentle readers are free to add your own choices at a later date)

In no specific order of preference

- Long Train Running - The Doobie Brothers
- Stay - Dave Matthew Band
- Pump it - Black Eyed Peas
- Flood - Jars of Clay
- Jessica - The Allman Brothers Band
- One Wild Night/Keep the Faith - Bon Jovi
- New millennium/ Take Away my Pain - Dream Theater
- Free Bird - Lynyrd Skynyrd
- Fever - Michael Buble
- House of Tom Bombadil - Nickel Creek (for more reasons than one)
- Gallow's Pole - Led Zeppelin
- Man of Constant Sorrow - Soggy Bottom Boys - OST O Brother Where art thou
- PSP 12 - Zero
- Sunset Man- TAAQ
- Dheem - OST Takshak
- Yu Hi Chala - OST Swades (spelling not included)
- Mind Ecology - Shakti - Natural Elements
- Kandisa - Indian Ocean

This essentially is about an hour of music... eminently sing-along-able to. Of course one runs the risk of getting stared at by passers-by especially when the voice breaks on the highs at a red light... but then again when the one in question is used to being stared at since the one was listening to chris rock doing stand up (have a full length video, played it in winamp, directed output to the Lame Mp3 encoder, got the entire thing in a little mp3 file, put it on the creative and voila!... I'm a genius ["you will now refer to me as lord of the flames!""hey, Lord of the flames, your tail's on fire"] I digress) and was laughing every five minutes on the way to work and every ten at work... I guess it doesn't matter...

Have been reading about Maslow's triangle/hierarchy of needs. It deserves a commentary and will get one sooner or later as will the intellectually challenged waiters who haunt my life.

Adios

Lines in the sand

Due to some cruel twist of fate the duty room in the junk yard where I work now has a TV (or has had for a while now) and worse a cable connection. What little reading, academic or otherwise that may have been possible is now drowned in (believe it or not) Himesh Reshamiya's rather monotonous voice. This of course is also the hell hole that's currently in possession of shoe covers to cover patient's feet and has ordered an ambulance with a cardiac cath lab attached. Of course there is little infrastructure to resuscitate patients in Emergency, no functional ICU or personnel who could make it function, no investigations post lunch, and the list goes on... I'm inclined to believe the only thing that works there is the OT. And that too if the powers that be don't rear their ugly heads into it.

But all this aside got the funniest message 2 days ago... "May the 4th be with you." Sent it to all I thought would get it, and now 5 people want to kill me. Tragic the state of my phone book. Keep thinking I need to meet more people who'll understand but no, that is not to be.

In our regular Dr. Sunshine column, today's thought for the day is "don't be happy. Worry." Think it over, thank you.

Post duty with 2 hours of sleep. This is all I can offer.

Ambient Me

Made 120 on the counter today. Excluding the ten or so which resulted when I wanted to check if the thing was working, it still means over a hundred people (friends, family, poisonous reptiles included) have seen, maybe read and perhaps thought of commenting on this blog. Also nice to note that math boy reimann is alive and kicking albeit on the internet, same with zen and hypolink. The torps are back with innovative ways of ending the mosquito menace with little loss of human life. It's raining in bangalore and finally people are beginning to wake up to the hell-hole that this place will soon be unless the mad influx of money hungry choms stops soon.

All that apart between work and a treasure trove of indian classical that I unearthed both off the net and on it I'm still at peace with it all. The incessant buzzing of the bloodsuckers does jar with the music but I think I now know the solution to that.

There's Bhimsen Joshi doing brindavan sarang in the background now. He's been at it for the past half an hour and if winamp is to be believed (professional version, mind you) there's another twenty minutes left. Sublime. Somehow believe Hindustani (vocal or instrumental) is more ear friendly, especially if the ear is as untrained as yours truly's is. It also helps to understand what the person is singing. In stark contrast carnatic has reached a level of attention to detail that is, beyond a point, irritating. The technical competence of the artist(e) overshadows any chance at perhaps even a nice voice. When I say this out loud in the presence of say, my grandmother, she does a nose-in-the-air-you're-a-philistine routine. And it's not just her. Realised that to sit down and listen to carnatic and appreciate it one needs to know what is happening... An easy analogy is to Dream Theater. Unless one has a little idea of what it takes to play what DT does, it is hard to really listen to the music over and above what may initially sound like a bunch of discordant notes. Bottom line? Need to learn carnatic before I'm banished from gramps for asking for a change in what's playing there... and Hindustani is a nicer form to start with if (like me) you're a philistine.

Did some pronunciation checks on the net and discovered ennui is pronounced \on=WEE\ so I thought we'd simplify things by saying "it's pronounced on-"ewe" " then I found that ewe was pronounced 'yu'. Gave up and handed the torch of language to an acquaintance who once said, and I quote, "I liked the aam-be-aan-s of the place... sorry the am-be-en-s." Haven't stopped laughing.

Will stop the flight of thoughts, steal some of dad's whiskey and get back to work.

Just a Random thing...

Incredible how little is known in medicine. And how much... but mostly how little. Why the sudden realisation? Started reading for exams with the required fervour. The shock that there are at least 10 randomised controlled trials that say current medical and surgical practices are wrong or at least of little benefit and the little respite that an equal number of studies prove that what I do everyday might just be helping. Another long night induced train of thought...
Watched Grey's Anatomy last week. Now being the arrogant s.o.b. that I can often be, I don't appreciate most shows/movies that center around what I do. With the exception of ER. Couldn't stand Chicago Hope, think Scrubs is often flippant and whoever thought of Munnabhai is going to get a taste of a scalpel minus the knock-out gas. This show, though I felt was decent. Had a little bit of everything and of course the line I'm going to use more often now - "I'm a surgeon. I save lives."

Ok gloating for the day done. As is apparent I haven't quite gotten over the thyroid and the 50% pass rate of the senior batch hasn't really dulled the enthusiasm.

Was thinking of music again. Listened to the Shiv Kumar Sharma and Zakir Hussain CD. It's called flow of time and has pieces in Marwa, Kedar, Khamod, Hameer and Kaushik Dhwani. Actually picked it up on the recommendation of a rather eccentric uncle of mine who claimed there were parts in kaushik dhwani that it was almost impossible to distinguish the instruments. At least that was what he said. I think he meant that at some point of time it seems as if the santoor is playing percussion and the tabla the raag itself... The santoor, though an amazing instrument and when played by the man himself can be a treat to the ears, sometime hits a jarring note. Not one out of scale or time but just a jar in the timbre of the instrument itself. A little partial to the violin and the sarod both of which are smoother so to speak. Amjad Ali Khan and sons play live in Bangalore at the Fort High School (opposite BMC) on KR Road on the 13th at 6.30 pm.

Have some thoughts on classical music but too brain dead to write them out.

PS notice the blog links are up and running. feel free to peruse the others.