Dissolving Shadows

A couple of days ago, in spite of the availability of my car, I decided to walk to my lab. With only the usual fleece, I reached my lab. Four hours later, I decided to stop any more lab work and started going to my home. Two thirds into my walk, my gaze shifted to my shadow, dynamically growing and shrinking with the passing sodium lights. Through the mist of my breath I saw its shadow; the shadow of my mist dissolving and disappearing slowly into the pavement. This is the same shadow, I see everyday in winter. But today, it was quite different. It was much more dark and intense. Some rambling thoughts made me think of dragons throughout the rest of the trip. As soon as I entered my apartment, I went straight to my laptop and typed ‘www.weather.com’ The custom Lex Vegas settings, gave me a page with the words ‘Right now for Lexington. Cloudy. 14 F. Feels like 12 F’
I just opened my fleece zipper and checked if by chance I had a thermal or anything inside me and found none of that sort. One fleece jacket, not even my usual skull cap, and I didn’t even feel the negative 9 degree Celsius. In two years my body has accustomed to the extreme weathers. Guess next year, I would just walk with a T shirt.

Caffeine Alert

Two days (err, two nights actually), of database update with new research papers made me go all day yawn. Before I continue any more, let me say that, am 60% in my senses and 40% in sleep. So... (forgot why I wanted to say that). Insomnia is alwasy linked to extreme hunger and with the wallet childlocked for the weekends big trip, I had no other option but to try a parfait from the cafetaria. Sitting on my usual window chair, I chewed the pastic spoon void of any more parfait for nearly a minute (I was completely lost in sleep, but I have a seminar to attend). The alpha state was broken by the cry (not tears, but shrill sound of wtf) of this old lady (it was the medical center cafetaria), and with drooping eyes, I looked at her. Blah Blah Blah (no mood for description today)

Getting back to my journal (was pathetically reading yet another microdevice paper, still clinching to my germy spoon), my mind went magnetic and I started eavesdropping on the lady's talk with the old guy (husband/bro/any one. I don't remember). Finally the conversation came to, 'So what did they say?'

Instant adrenaline, pupils dilated, chills vanished, muscles tightened, forefinger scratched my head and my forehead frowned: 'Caffeine intoxication. What's that?' Threw the microdevice paper into my back pack (screw this microdevices into micro dust was the attitude then), shoved the two colored markers into the trash of my old sweatshirt (Wah! I have a ton of bills and check receipts in the left locker), and walked back to lab fast (the only part of the walk I remember, is that there was this mid 30s lady who walked as fast I was) and went direct to wiki.

DONT READ THE NEXT PARA - THAT'S FOR SELF ESTIMATION

Me and my chemistry with chemistry, ended up typing caffeine and there came a page longer than I expected. Before I post the link to the page, lemme see how active I am with just a parfait. From my 5 minute ago memory, I loved the structure of trimethylxanthine (forgot the methyl locations, guess its 1,3,5), french term, alkaloid, arabica and robusta, theophylline, theobromine, colored tea is not true, used in shampoo, red bull's got 80 mg per serving (damn bison), chocolate has caffeine coz of cocoa (never knew that), some emperor in China found it first, analysis by Kaldi the sheperd (guess all old legends were sheperds), called as arabian wine, something called as xocoat (has vanilla), damn the metabolism (couldn't remember any of the vital detail), mechanism is clear cut (seriously this one's for group discussion with the nerds), an awesome pic showing the spider web, A table with the per serving caffeine (guess after brewed coffee, its the expresso which has the highest serving), effect on the human body, when overused (the real reason to enter wikipedia. Seesh!), extraction methods (remember the chemical and water extraction. What was the other one?), Naked Scientists Online: why plants make caffeine (hehehehe, memory is related to language sometimes), and nothing else strikes my mind. (Now am gonna look back at the page, to see what other good things, I've forgotten)

Why did I write this post (errr. Brain to Mr. Alex in Wonderland, Brain to Mr. Alex in Wonderland. Hello). Sorry. No idea why I mentioned this post in the first place. Guess, I need caffeine to keep myself awake. Anyway today's memory collected incident;

Today my advisor, to break the icing of an intent 1:20 hrs of discussion, said, 'I know we are married to ATRP' (my reaction mechanism in research). 'But we can affairs too. Try checking with RAFT and other radical polymerization methods' (Sleep deprived, I smile with a 'huh?' look) 'And still we can't go for a divorce, unless she (ATRP) proves us wrong' Have no clue what else to say. Guess I've lost all my energy for the day. Am gonna sleep in the grad lounge. Crap! %&((%^&$&$&^*))%&&$^%^*^&*!**#$#*@*

Furtively Funny

First of all, to make things clear, remember that I am no stalker and I don’t accept stalking. Now getting on to the incident. After braining out on downloading about 50 papers and subsequently reading a couple of them I was all left hungry and tired. With the New Year scratching me out of any food money, I had no other option but to go to the medical cafeteria for cheap food. As I listened to Dave Mathews Band and turned around the robotics building corner, I saw my good friend and lab mate walking a couple of meters from me. My mind raced me to say, ‘N. Kidhar?’, but somehow my tongue pushed the words back and swallowed ‘em. I started walking just behind me just to give him the creepy moment of surprise. But I guess I’ve lost all that childhood prankness in me, and decided to walk behind him. In the next 10 minutes of walk we had to the medical center, neither he noticed my presence (though my earphones were blaring into the ambience of awesome weather and I being just 2 meter behind him all the time), nor I tried to call him. With every passing parked car, I analyzed the angle of mirror reflections and moved sideways just to avoid his glance. Even while crossing roads, he had to turn his neck on both ways to check for vehicles and he didn’t notice me. I had two statements running through my excited head. 1. I am right here. Can’t you see me? And 2. I am making sure that you don’t notice me and I shall try to get as close as possible. It was all a different kind of experience. I am waiting for his arrival in the lab so that I can say him what I did yesterday.

The return journey was all intense. I said, ‘What up dawg?’ to a ummmmm a dog near the patient transport spot, and it barked at me. Gave the dog a cruel look and threw a piece of crumpled paper (I guess it was the ATM receipt) I found from my coat pocket, at which the dog smelled for possibilities of a free meal and then grrrred back at me. Though I am a dog lover, and had good experiences with dogs all my life, I checked every now and then behind me, if the dog was furtively following me like I did it to my lab mate. (Guess I need to take the last statement. Makes me feel that I was a dog then) As Joey says in French “Pooh” “Toute et le fruit”

Swiper Viper

After all the New Year fun in Navy Pier we decided to get back on road back to Lexington. Once I reached our car parked a couple of blocks away from my roommate’s cousin’s place, I was blank when I saw our red car covered entirely in inches of white snow (duh… have I ever seen snow of different color?). I started my engine, and switched the viper on. The loose snow broke into a mini avalanche sliding off the windshield. But the condensed ice on the windshield remained resilient. Turned on the viper wash, and to my confusion, the pores were all blocked with more ice. Instead of panicking in the -18 degree C cold, I just looked inside the car for a scrapper. As I expected, being a rental car, that too from a Toyota showroom, I wasn’t provided with one.

No water to wash the windshield too (don’t give me the crap of, ‘you can’t use water on ice coated windshield.’ Remember I’m a Chemical Engg). As my eyes gazed out for a possible source of ice remover, it focused on a tetra pack of strawberry banana juice. Hehehe. The evil in me just made me use it to wash my windshield. Moments later, after removing 40% of the thick ice, I was stranded for any more cool ideas to scrape the remainder of the ice. With no sharp objects except my glasses and the car keys in sight, I was a little puzzled over the issue.

A little thought of how Dreufus used his tie as a fanning belt, made me look for options. My pupils dilated in the eyes piercing ice weather as I came up with an idea. I took my wallet out, took my over-dued maxed out visa card from Citibank and smiled at its edge. I started scraping the windshield with the credit card and it gave an immaculate finish on the glass. A few more strokes and we were all set to pick my roomies for the drive back home.

Being a researcher let me put it in journal words. To conclude, we have carried out swiping experiments using a novel plastic slab, sharp enough to slit a throat, on scraping condensed ice and from the glass water condensation crystal deposit studies, we have shown that credit cards can be used as vital tools for the potential removal of harmful and hindering condensed solid water crystals off the surface of hardened near optical wavelength filtered silicon dioxide. (Blitzkrieg – am losing it). Wow! I just googled for a credit card and look at it 'Drivers Edge'