Another Mortal Life

I don't know how much I'd have to read before even starting to read it but I'll do it and yes I'll do it very soon yes so that nobody tells me I didn't read anything if I didn't read it and yes even if somebody tells me I can yes tell the person it's not like that because yes I've read it and yes I started reading it after completing yes all the prereqs of reading it which yes are no less yes in pages than the book itself yes but infact much much yes more than it and they yes didn't make me give up the idea yes but infact they yes strengthened my resolve yes I will yes read it yes soon yes.

Dec 4, 08. "I'm DONE!"

Dec 1, 08. "The Namesake."

Nov 26, 08. "Good bye, Ex-hall."

Nov 15, 08. "Okay, dear doc."

Oct 3, 08. "For whom the bell tolls."

Sept 5, 08. "Shush, Sakshi schroff!"

Aug 15, 08. "To.. Freedom, of some of us!"

July 22, 08. ":)"

July 9, 08. "Apna bhi kaam badhaaya, mera bhi :)"

June 10, 08. "A Farewell to arms."

May 1, 08. "Dude, balcony mat tod. :)"

Apr 24, 08. "You still can, if you want!"

Apr 20, 08. "You were a friend. One of the few."

Apr 3, 08. "Frames of reference."

Mar 22, 08. "Tere nain jyun hon peeti bhang kude."

Mar 15, 08. "Hmmm"

Mar 11, 08. "Poetry. Pozzolana."

Mar 10, 08. "Those leaves. And that bus stop."

Mar 5, 08. "Impulses! *sigh*"

Feb 28, 08. "Vikram Baital. Ha!"

Jan 21, 08. "I love this shirt!"

Jan 10, 08. "How do I react?!"

"Life is a structural beam, with the body as concrete and the mind as the steel reinforcement"
"But there would be top reinforcement, and bottom reinforcement.... "
"So let's bring in the soul too"
"Soul- top, mind- bottom ?"
"Obviously, the soul must be higher."
"That fits for you perfectly!"
"??"
"Your mind, you would agree, is in your knees!"
"haha :D"
"But some people say they decide with their hearts. How about that?!"
"God was no perfect engineer!"
"Can't we say it's the transverse reinforcement for shear?"
"I would think of the heart as some destabilizing factor than a 'reinforcement'!"
"The destabilization, we should attribute to excess transverse reinforcement.."
"hehe. the Cardiac Crunch?"
"Yes! :D"
...........................



Hello everybody! Sorry for keeping you guys waiting for.. 20 mins. Nothing new about that, right? Anyway, I'm sure you used this time for some pretty enlightening discussions amongst yourselves. Today we'll discuss the design considerations for Life. Let's list them:
1. For any Life in 'Loaded' condition, it's the mind (the bottom Rf) that takes care of all the tension.
2. The body (concrete), is weak in tension. The mnemonic for remembering this is "The tough men are always referred to as 'men of steel', not as 'men of concrete'!"
3. The Architect (Yeah, yeah, That Fucker!), couldn't care less how the structure would perform under load. He was only too happy marveling at the external beauty of his creation. It's the job of us Ingenio-errers to provide proper reinforcements, considering a Design Life of 50 years.
4. A safety factor of 1.4 may be taken for calamities such as Communal Riots, Food Shortage etc, though it would depend heavily on the powers that be in the years to come.
5. An under-reinforced Life would fail in tension. An over-reinforced one, apart from being a waste of intellectual capital, is also likely to fail in shear.
6. Unnecessary application of the heart (the stirrups) is discouraged. The concrete tends to fall apart when excess stirrups are provided.
7. The grade of concrete, and the grade of steel, are chosen according to the conditions the structure has to perform in. Some industries need a very good quality of concrete, while others, of steel.
8. The types of concrete (male and female) were earlier supposed to differ a lot in their performance. There also were notions regarding their suitability in different working conditions. But later on it was found that both can be used equally efficiently in all types of conditions. The design process for the two, of course, is a little different. For example, type-F concrete needs 1.8 times more shear-stirrups than type-M. So, the heart is a very important parameter in type-F Life design.

Well, that's about it, guys. Tomorrow we'll discuss the role of the top Rf, and the detailing. In the coming classes we'll also discuss the concepts of renovation and euthanisia.

Good day!

..............................

"Ok, now let's discuss the detailing."
"You're such a maggu."

I couldn't have captured
in all its beauty
a thought this wonderful
with these imperfect words.

So I decide to set it free.

Another thought now captures me
that thoughts were ever free.
Through minds they wander,
Through poems they express.

And I say- 'let it be.'

May a better man some day pen
in all its beauty
that thought that wonderful
in words near-perfect.

1. "Ah come on, Adrian, it's true. I was nobody. But that don't matter either, you know? 'Cause I was thinkin', it really don't matter if I lose this fight. It really don't matter if this guy opens my head, either. 'Cause all I wanna do is go the distance. Nobody's ever gone the distance with Creed, and if I can go that distance, you see, and that bell rings and I'm still standin', I'm gonna know for the first time in my life, see, that I weren't just another bum from the neighborhood." -Rocky

2. "My Mama always said, 'Life was like a box of chocolates; you never know what you're gonna get.'"- Forrest Gump

3. "If you had to do it all over again, would you make the same choices?"
"What choice? The last thing I took away from the yeshiva is this.. 'We can't run from who we are. Our destiny chooses us.'" -Rounders

4. "It's like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger, they were. And sometimes you didn't want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it's only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something, even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn't. They kept going. Because they were holding on to something."
"What are we holding onto, Sam?"
"That there's some good in this world, Mr. Frodo... and it's worth fighting for."
-The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers

5. "I guess I could be pretty pissed off about what happened to me... but it's hard to stay mad, when there's so much beauty in the world. Sometimes I feel like I'm seeing it all at once, and it's too much, my heart fills up like a balloon that's about to burst... And then I remember to relax, and stop trying to hold on to it, and then it flows through me like rain and I can't feel anything but gratitude for every single moment of my stupid little life... You have no idea what I'm talking about, I'm sure. But don't worry... you will someday." -American Beauty

6. "I have a very pessimistic view of life. You should know this about me if we're gonna go out. You know, I - I feel that life is - is divided up into the horrible and the miserable. Those are the two categories, you know. The - the horrible would be like, um, I don't know, terminal cases, you know, and blind people, crippled. I don't know how they get through life. It's amazing to me. You know, and the miserable is everyone else. That's - that's - so - so - when you go through life - you should be thankful that you're miserable because you're very lucky to be miserable." -Annie Hall

7. "Remember Red, hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies." -The Shawshank Redemption

8. "So in the end, was it worth it? Jesus Christ. How irreparably changed my life has become. It's always the last day of summer and I've been left out in the cold with no door to get back in. I'll grant you I've had more than my share of poignant moments. Life passes most people by while they're making grand plans for it. Throughout my lifetime, I've left pieces of my heart here and there. And now, there's almost not enough to stay alive. But I force a smile, knowing that my ambition far exceeded my talent. There are no more white horses or pretty ladies at my door."- Blow

9. "I'm not asking you to forgive me. I'll never understand or forgive myself. And if a bullet gets me, so help me, I'll laugh at myself for being an idiot. There's one thing I do know... and that is that I love you, Scarlett. In spite of you and me and the whole silly world going to pieces around us, I love you. Because we're alike. Bad lots, both of us. Selfish and shrewd. But able to look things in the eyes as we call them by their right names." -Gone with the Wind

10. "I'm 32, Mr. Dunn, and I'm here celebrating the fact that I spent another year scraping dishes and waitressing which is what I've been doing since 13, and according to you, I'll be 37 before I can even throw a decent punch, which I have to admit, after working on this speed bag for a month, may be the God's simple truth. Other truth is, my brother's in prison, my sister cheats on welfare by pretending one of her babies is still alive, my daddy's dead, and my momma weighs 312lbs. If I was thinking straight, I'd go back home, find a used trailer, buy a deep fryer and some oreos. Problem is, this the only thing I ever felt good doing. If I'm too old for this, then I got nothing. That enough truth to suit you? " -Million Dollar Baby.

***

Yesterday I undertook the biggest ever cleaning up of my room...

1) Found some 3 handkerchiefs, 2 undershirts, 3 pairs of socks, 3 pens, and much more. It saves me quite a few bucks you see!

2) Whoever told me the spider's web around the tube-light was shit is an ass. It was a real good mosquito trap. I was doing good without any all-out and blah for months, and today I had to buy a refill!

3) Dumped dozens of old notebooks glancing through the last few pages of each of them.
Here is what I was scribbling on the last page of a notebook after a prof lost his temper on the class and walked out..

Chaos prevails
Tragedy unravels
For the proxies unowned
Professor hails
everybody present as guilty.
Knowing none I
as a silent spectator see
the contest between
fear of fifty
and pride of one.

It's no poetry, I know, but reading it brought a certain time of college life alive. So it's good in some way.

4) Found this thing written on an old, little piece of paper..
"Why you, Arthur (Ashe), why you?"
"When I won Wimbledon, I didn't say "God, why me?".. so I shouldn't ask that about the bad things too."

And this song.. it made my day when I first heard it. It did the same again.."Kii poochde ho haal fakiraa.n da.... Asi nadiya vichhde neera.n da".

5) And there was this she'r I once wrote while traveling..
"Tere bas mein bhi yahaan kuchh nazar nahii aata
E khuda, tu to bas meri bebasi ka bahaana bhar hai"

And here is another addition to classroom compositions..
"On my silly jokes you laugh aloud
On the sillier ones too you smile
And your disgust on the silliest ones
You've always tried to hide.
Putting my ego aside now when I see
Must say, girl, you' been good to me."

Take my word- fuck computers, and make your notes with pen and paper. And don't go back to them too often.
***

And, HAPPY DIWALI!! :)

Jiya huun main kaise, poochh, tere bin in dino
-Tanhaai se jo mera rishta hai, hai zindagii.
Khuli zulfo.n pe teri fida kyun main ho baitha
-Hawaaon se jo mera shikwa hai, hai zindagii.