Modeling and Simulation, Or how I lost sleep for a night and missed classes in the morning.

 
(The following is a recipe of destroying your life in the final year of your study. Those who want to try this out please beware that you have been forewarned of the consequences and the author won’t be held liable for any losses of sleep, mental faculty or life as you know it. )

• Start towards the end of third year by getting an ambitious project as a Btech. final year project .
• Choose project guides who are enthusiastic, intelligent and hardworking, who in turn expect you to share their enthusiasm, intelligence and most important of all - the capacity to work hard.
• In the summer after the third year of your studies go on an intern to a European country- so that you won’t like the life, food or the humid and hot weather when you get back here.
• Resolve to get a good job or a PHD in some foreign university.
• Screw your CGPA over the three years of your studies so that you don’t have an alternative other than to work on the BTP if you want to get what you resolved for.
• Clear your courses and enter the ‘final year’ (otherwise everything on this list is redundant).
• Take up an additional to cover for the scratched course even after acing it, due to some obscure rule that says you cheated “academically” by taking the said course in your second year.
• Meet your BTP guide and promise him that you will share his enthusiasm and the capacity to work hard.( You can’t share the intelligence because frankly speaking it’s not in your control)
• End up getting a task too onerous for the limited mental faculty you possess. Promise him that you will complete the task in one week. 

Sometime during this register yourself for a GRE and start taking coaching classes for CAT

• Start preparing for GRE. Procrastinate. Start preparing for CAT. Procrastinate. Leave preparation for both. Start the background study of the Project assigned to you.
• Get bored.
• Download a new TV series. Promise yourself that you will watch only one episode per day.
• Finish 3 seasons in 4 days.
• One day before the meeting.
• Panic.
• Enter crash mode. Decide to skip meals, sleep, whatever it takes to complete the task given to you.
• Pull an all nighter to complete the background study. 
• Rejoice at completing the background study, before 7:00 am in the morning.
• Decide to treat yourself for an hour of sleep after breakfast. Class starts at 8:30.
• Sleep.
• Wake at 12:30. Panic. Jump up and down. Shout.
• Realize that you have only 2 and a half hours left to come up with a good and solid model. (Remember you chose intelligent guides, you can’t pull wool over their ears.)
• Calm down. Start working. Realize that model was actually easy. The concepts fit in once you understood the background, the sleep actually helped you consolidate the concepts you studied over the night.
• Get stumped again. Start jumping again. Panic again. Again calm down.
• Pull out the mass transfer book, get ideas from it.  
• Sometime during this ordeal make a promise to yourself that you will complete the assignments on that very day on which they are assigned to you. Update on facebook about this resolution of yours.
• Get an epiphany. 

(Ok, this goes here, this goes there, and Einstein says this, Newton this and voila your model is complete.)

• Check once. Find some mistake. Check again, find some more.  Finally have a sigh of relief.
• Check the time. Shit!! Its 2:50. Get dressed up in a hurry.
• Realize that you have had an acid build-up in your stomach due to not eating which has developed a stink in your mouth.
• Brush quickly.
• Find your cycle. Paddle more than one kilometer to get to the department.
• Reach the department. Good news, you are only five minutes late. Move your watch back five minutes. Now you can walk in and claim nonchalantly that your watch was running late.
• Park your cycle. Lock and bolt it. (this is not a figure of speech, I really use a bolt but then again you have to use what not to secure your cycle otherwise it’s very easy to steal it.)
• Receive a phone call from your guide informing you that due to some reasons the meeting won’t take place. It has been postponed to the next week.
• Curse Murphy and cycle back home. Sleep. Forget your resolutions. Watch another 3 seasons in another 4 days. Repeat from top.

Adios

Excerpts from Italy #2: The Florencian Guitarist

Florence is a city that assaults your senses with a barrage of stimuli as soon as you get down at the railway station of Firenze SMN. You encounter the vestiges of past interspersed with modern glamour. Churches stand together with modern shops selling everything ranging from suits, sunglasses, jewelry to designer lingerie.

Visit Duomo and you see the magnificent cathedral of Saint Marie of flower with its ancient dome designed by Brunelleschi- the evocative fresco of last judgment painted inside it, the campanile which offers a panoramic view of whole Florence once you climb it- all a beautiful relic of the past. However the outside is as modern as it can be. To give an example you have an outlet of Ben and Jerry’s icecream, where you can have a large cup of ‘gelato’ just for 4 euroes. This was just an example. The cohabitation of the ancient and modern world is visible all over Florence.    

However the ‘peaceful cohabitation’ is a cohabitation limited to the material things only- a fact that I realized when I visited Ponte Vecchio-  Florence’s  only medieval bridge that survived world war.

Its free to visit the bridge, no fee of any kind is required; you only need to exert your feet. That’s why there is a crowd of tourist taking pictures, looking at the scenic view of the undulation of the river flowing underneath or just lounging around.  This large number attracts a group of performers who showcase their skills looking to earn appreciation and some coins.

So there I was after the harrowing climb of the Giotto’s campanile and a spirited walk that lead us through the corridors of Uffizi to ponte vecchio where among other things I saw a guitarist. The guy was dressed in simple jeans and shirt with a waistcoat and a simple hat (kinda like jack sparrow but in a more sober and sensible manner). His arms were slightly tattooed which reminded me of the rockstars of the yore. The guitarist and his bass guitar both were, to say at the least old, if not ancient. However when it came to playing, he had a surgeon’s finger- decisive, unhesitant and unwavering with the guitar responding with a maturity that can only come after year of practice. It was a sight to see him- deeply immersed in the music giving no damn to people congregating around. It was as if he knew that people needed his music more than he needed their coins. 

At that time I was in a hurry for the Baboli gardens were about to close, so much so that I almost didn’t notice a group of young musicians setting up the stage for their performance. They had high power speakers, a portable generator and what not.

When I came back the already cacophonous bridge had one more sound added to it-a sound that overpowered everything else.  This was the group of young musicians belting out their tunes from the top of makeshift platform. The songs were melodious; however they didn’t possess the old man’s calming effect. Unlike him their music was the music for the sake of crowd. They didn’t care for their songs as much as they cared about the coins. And for that they were ready to do anything.

Their loud speakers drowned the weak sound produced by the old man’s guitar. The strumming of the guitar produce no discernable sound, it was as if the strings were mute. With no other alternative in sight the old man packed his guitar and left the stage with a sad smile on his face.

This raised some questions in my mind. We look at the buildings and appreciate the master of ancient craftsman but when we come across someone or something old, be it tradition religion or even a person, we dismiss them. Their point of view, their knowledge, their wisdom, is given no attention by us. And soon they fade away in the background. In my view they at least deserve some respect.

What do you think?

Adios.