Serendipity

Serendipity is a wonderful word. I came across this in my school days and have been in love with the word since then. Dictionary.com defines the word as - "an aptitude for making desirable discoveries by accident" and "The faculty of making fortunate discoveries by accident".

Infact the history of the word itself is even more interesting. Again going back to dictionary.com, this is what it says "We are indebted to the English author Horace Walpole for the word serendipity, which he coined in one of the 3,000 or more letters on which his literary reputation primarily rests. In a letter of January 28, 1754, Walpole says that “this discovery, indeed, is almost of that kind which I call Serendipity, a very expressive word.” Walpole formed the word on an old name for Sri Lanka, Serendip. He explained that this name was part of the title of “a silly fairy tale, called The Three Princes of Serendip: as their highnesses traveled, they were always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things which they were not in quest of....”

In life all of us have our moments of serendipity. And how I wish that a serendipity would embrace me every day of my life. Those moments of delight, exult and happiness are pure bliss. But life is definitely not so much a bed of roses. Sorrows and grief are a part of life. Or shall I say more than a part of your life. And in those moments of pain and tears I wish that I stumble upon a serendipity.

Over the past few days there have been quite a few unsettling moments that I've been through. And along came grief and melancholy. And so I continue to wait for my moment of joy. A joy which I've defined for myself. And when that moment of euphoria arrives, I will remember serendipity again.

Orkut Rocks

I started orkutting very late but once I did, I realised what a powerful networking tool it is. Actually got connected to a few old school friends after 13 years. Felt so nostalgic! And have actually come across people from a vast cross section of the society and industry. Feels so good to know them.

But for all its advantages I still feel it needs some moderation. The number of communities that exist in orkut, solely dedicated to hate(religion, country, individuals etc.) are phenomenal. And then of late we did have the Bombay High Court order questioning orkut as to how it could promote a hate India community. Wish orkut gets moderated a bit. Because something so good cannot be allowed to get restrained because of some stupid people.

Whats more difficult than doing a PhD in Metaphysics

Now this one posted by my junior Abhishek Rai and this was one thing which I found hilarious.Well, yes, a few days back I carried two live bombs in my packets.And, to make it more deadly, they were biological rather than chemical.All of you know, that biological weapons are supposed to be more deadly than the chemical ones, and here I was carrying not one but two of them, and in a crowded city like Mumbai!!Well, I had to undergo the medical check up, as listed in the offer letter of a company which I am going to join, which is the pre-condition before you join. You fail and your offer stands null and void.The check-up was supposed to be a exhaustive ones with all kind of tests, including the urine and stool.The company which I am going to join, the HR is really professional, they handed me over two empty lab containers along with the offer letter, to can my precious belongings!It cant get more professional than that, they saved me from the wild goose hunt of finding the right size containers!!!First of all, the liquid part, its easy to can the stuff. But what about the solid part???I thought and thought, what to do? Never had the experience, and cant ask anybody else also.....Since the container is not in your sight, and neither the stuff, which is going to fall into that, you have to go by sheer instincts.......And more often, the instincts do go wrong with all of us, sometimes you can take the risk of your instincts going wrong, but I could not have taken with this thing!!!!I guess, so many people go for stool tests, everyday in this world, its a good business proposition to device a camera based, robotic automatic can positioning system!!!Being an engineer, I estimated the Vf of the semi-solid(That with the help of the bowel movements in my stomach), estimated the approximate co-ordinates of the can(That was very crucial, since having a dia of 4 cms, the margin of error was huge, once placed in the shadow area), I decided to keep my hand on red-alert, if it happens that the calculation of the co-ordinates go wrong at the last moment and you need to move the vessel, again with precision!!!Whoof!!!! What a difficult task!! Who said doing a Phd in Meta-physics from Caltech is difficult, Guys ask me, canning your potty is more difficult!!!It doesnot stop here, now comes the biological part of the problem after the mathematical part(We Engineers are not very capable of handling that because of the obvious reasons), First you need to control the bowel movement of your stomach(Which I guess, even God cant do) because you dont want to have a overflowing pot and then to have the ugly task of emptying that!!!The second one is controlling your own body movement, you have to sit as still as a sniper, one movement and you miss the golden chance(Luckily, in this case, its only limited for the day, in a sniper's case thats a life).Well, there are days, when things do go right as planned, with precision, and thankfully, that was my day.... The operation went beautifully as planned(The planning stuff I learnt in my current job, or the last job, the way you want to put it).But in the end man, I was sweating niagras.....Anybody wants to team up with me for the "Robotic controlled potty can positioning system"????