Blinking Checkerboard

Every dark cloud has a silver lining

vkrmsv — Mon, 01 Nov 2010 23:30:53 +0000

I spent the last weekend grading around 300 quizzes. The majority of the answer sheets were mundane i.e. had some solution which I had to check. However, there were a few exceptions

And, this was definitely encouraging:
Since a picture is worth a thousand words, I guess I have already said too much . On a related note, this was the phd-comic for weekend. Hoping that the coincidences stop there. This exercise was valuable in one other way: It clearly showed that what I taught my students was very far away from what they had learned from me!

The new country

vkrmsv — Sat, 16 Oct 2010 03:05:33 +0000

I reached the United States almost a month before today. I think I can finally say I have settled down in Davis. Davis is fairly small college town around two hours from the bay area. Seems to be a little to isolated, but kind of nice in its own way. Since I am now a graduate student, I know that I am going to be living here for the next few years. This, I guess is an attempt to document my first perceptions of this new place and to record my first few days here.

I have the good fortune of finding people who are always ready to help — I was picked up from the airport, accompanied to Davis, provided with food and accommodation. These people who helped me are obviously the first friends I knew in this alien place. They were kind enough to walk me through the ways of graduate student life and made me prepared for what was ahead. I still wonder what I would have done without the help of these individuals. Then, I got my apartment (not to mention the whole list of things that had to be done to set it up for living), a phone and an internet connection. Finally, things started falling in place. We (myself and my apartment mate) now cook on an almost regular basis, which I find is way better than hunting for food outside. As most people tell you, only the first few days are hard.

By this time, we were already a week in to our classes. The first thought that crossed my mind is that these are no different from the “good” classes I have had in the past four years — So, the only difference was that, now all courses were “good” . These courses have been keeping me quite busy, with an assignment that has to be turned in almost every week. The department as a whole seems warm and friendly — we even had a student-faculty volley ball match. And, yes, my fellow graduate students seem to be lively bunch. A rather surprising fact I discovered about myself is that I like teaching! I do find myself looking forward to days I teach. Another thing that I am happy about is that there are only three courses that one has to worry about and this means you can spend time thinking about nuances unlike the rush of getting things done in undergraduate courses. While those are the good things about the place, there are certain things I despise: Some professors choose to teach a textbook instead of the course material — for someone like me who has always managed courses with class notes, it is kind of different and gets painful when the books are expensive. I was also told that the “UC Davis library does not compete with the bookstore and hence does not acquire textbooks”! — looks like nice scheme to make profits.

Finally for those random things that I want to mention. For someone from a city like Chennai, it feels so wrong when a car stops and asks you to go ahead and cross the road — at least the first few days I was like, “Are these guys trying to get me to the middle of the road so that they can run over me?”. (For those of you who are not familiar with the traffic rules here: The pedestrian has right of way i.e. if you are trying to cross a road cars better stop and give way.) I hear people telling me that California is a hub of vegan and vegetarians but I am yet to find another person (non-indian) who happens to be a vegan. Most people in Davis own a bicycle and this is a good place to see all kinds of bicycles. The place also has a small cinema theater which I visited to catch ‘Social Network’. On the whole, I think the place is good and offers a good environment to do research, the purpose of me coming here!

Beliefs and research

vkrmsv — Fri, 29 May 2009 07:01:22 +0000

Belief according to an online dictionary is “A state or habit of mind in which trust or confidence is placed in some person or thing”. During my school days, I was fortunate to have a good physics teacher who often told us that there is no room for belief in science, science is a collection of facts that can be reasoned using logical arguments and verified by experiments. However, having a had a peek into the world of research, I find that, though beliefs have no place in science, they do play an important role in its formation i.e. they are a significant part of the feelings a scientist posses. I have now come to “believe” that beliefs play an important role in the way we tackle ‘real’ problems. Over the past year I have been trying to find a simple model for financial markets that is able to reproduce what are called stylized facts of the markets. As R. Cont puts it “Indeed, stylized facts are usually formulated in terms of qualitative properties of asset returns and may not be precise enough to distinguish among different parametric models. Nevertheless, we will see that, albeit qualitative, these stylized facts are so constraining that it is not easy to exhibit even an (ad hoc) stochastic process which possesses the same set of properties and one has to go to great lengths to reproduce them with a model.” (OK, if that does not make much sense, what Cont is trying to say is, it is not easy to create a model that captures these features). What was important through the process of this search was that I believed that there exists a model that is simpler than those that are already known (and the fact that my guide Dr. Sitabhra Sinha was very encouraging and shared this belief). I think, this feeling is what gives one the strength to keep at it even after failing the nth time. Although we do have reasons to believe in certain things, I think, it does, finally boil down to that ‘gut feeling’, which, I am referring to as belief.

Chance encounter with a little friend

vkrmsv — Fri, 22 May 2009 10:28:46 +0000

Yesterday night, rather early morning today, around 1 AM, while I was returning back to my ‘hostel’ room from the department, I heard a loud thud. When I looked around I found that the noise was caused by a tortoise tipping onto the road, from the platform that adjoins the bank of the lake. I have always loved animals and am quite concerned about their welfare. I was sure that the little fellow would wind up under the tire of some vehicle since the roads in this university are lined by neat platforms that are around half a foot high, on both sides. I was also very scared to handle the tortoise since I was not sure if they can bite. I knew I needed help but was not sure whom to contact. For a moment, I thought about Dr. Susy but ruled out the idea since the tortoise was not hurt and did not feel like calling her at that point in time. (I have bugged her quite a few times in the past, at similar times. Not once has she cribbed about being disturbed and has always been very helpful). The only person I could ask for help, at that unearthly hour, was my dad, and so I called home and explained the situation. My father was equally concerned. He also told me that it might end up in the frying pan if sighted by the wrong people. That clinched it, there was absolutely no way I was going to leave my little friend somewhere he is sure to die. I mustered up a lot of courage and disturbed the shell to find that he gently pulled himself into the shell. By this time, my father had also assured me that there would not be any harm caused by the tortoise. The next few moments are something I can never forget. I gently moved the shell, which caused him to go into the shell fully. I was then able to pick him up, with both hands. The hard shell was quite smooth, think that indicates that he is very old. Although the shell is hard and all that, the under side of it was very soft. I guess that makes them vulnerable to predators. I carried him around 20 feet into the bush, near the lake, left him close to a path which leads to the lake and went my way hoping he would find the way back to wherever he came from. While coming to the department, today, I walked along the bank of the lake just in case he needed more help but was not able to find him. Hope he is safe … I know that tortoises are vegetarians. I wonder if they make good pets.

UOH: Trips to the city

vkrmsv — Wed, 20 May 2009 17:00:36 +0000

The sheer determination to fix my laptop made me venture out of the campus. I had to take it to a shop in Santosh Nagar. The guy at the service center had given me very clear instructions on how to reach the place, which included details of the bus numbers. So a day before yesterday I made the trip to deposit my laptop at this place. What made the trip interesting is that I learned what it means to be paranoid. In order to reach Santosh Nagar one had to go through a central bus stop, namely Koti. This is one of those typical ‘Ranganathan street’ like place. I was just ‘paranoid’ while I waded through the crowd. While my eyes were trying to watch every person around me, my hands were clutching on to the laptop like a guy holding on to those blades of grasses, typically found at the edge of the cliff, before falling off it. The deed was done, both me and my laptop were safe, me at the university and the laptop at the service center. The laptop had been fixed and I was asked to collect it today. Having experienced the evening crowd (Uh!) on Monday, I planned today’s trip in the morning. There were two important things I learned today (I wonder if learnt is word…). One of them is “When you go to withdraw cash from the ATM, take the money from the machine as soon as you can”. The machine swallowed the cash I had just withdrawn! I had to make another withdrawal and proceed to the service center. At the service center I found a problem with the switch used to turn on the wireless. That was when I found out that this ‘Acer authorized service center’ was outsourcing its work. I was asked to travel along with one of their employees to the actual service center which was at Ameerpet. By the time I reached there, after having changed two buses, I had a mental image of what I would be seeing there. What was actually present was quite what I had expected. A small shop, located in a side lane, which said ‘Computer/Laptop service’. That was when I understood the entire modus operandi of this ‘service center’. They had said they would be charging Rs.500 as service charge for just giving an estimate of how much it would cost to get it fixed. The Rs. 500 is for transporting the computer/laptop and getting it fixed! Lesson 2 : “There are these cheap easy ways of making money!”. The person who accompanied me told me how to reach HCU or Central University (Very few people recognize the place when one says UOH). So my trip on the map would be:

View Larger Map
And thank god for the lovely weather, it was cloudy almost the whole day. Cannot imagine how terrible it would have been with the sun scorching, as it did for the past few days. Once back at the university it was time to go to the bank linked to the ATM and fight for my cash. I did try, but was turned down by the cash officer, who said that, I must contact the bank where I have my account and ask them to contact this branch. I have asked my parents to take it up with the bank at Chennai and I am hoping to recover the cash soon. I think, I now understand how the transport system in this city works and believe I can go to any place using the public transport. Another nice thing about Hyderabad is that a lot of people understand Hindi. Well, some of them even seem to understand my ‘Telugu’

UOH: Day 3

vkrmsv — Sun, 17 May 2009 17:07:59 +0000

The day started with some effort from my roomy, Dijo, ( I live with two other people Dijo and Prakash) to go to the city and see Charminar. Both of us got ready but by the time we had breakfast we found out that the group of people who were planning to go had dropped the idea. Although Dijo was still enthusiastic about venturing out, I was very skeptical about having to go around a city without having any plans of how and where we were going to go. The fact that the pair of rechargeable batteries, that were meant for my camera, refused to work added to the reluctance to go out. So there we were with nothing to do, left in this deserted University. Both of us decided to head to the department and meet for lunch later. I set up a wiki-dot site so that I will be able to communicate better with my guide. Most of my time today was spent on setting it up. The site is where I keep a log, with more technical details, of whats happening in the academic part of the life here. Tried the food at the student’s canteen here. If any of you reading this blog, ever happen to come to HCU, do not even think about eating at the student’s canteen. Since I had not signed up for dinner and lunch I was forced to have dinner also at the same place, the food here is worse than what we used to get at the mess in BITS, Pilani. Never again will I refrain from signing up for food at ‘mess’ while I am here. The night sky seems to have shade of red, giving me the feeling that rains are just around the corner. The sea breeze which is a great respite to the summer’s heat in Chennai is one of the things I miss. Time during which I have not been struggling with equations was spent on chatting with people via Gmail chat and looking for places where I can fix my laptop. Google maps has been of great help in this process. Have zeroed in on one shop in Madhapur, which I will try to visit sometime tomorrow.

University of Hyderabad (UOH): Day 2

vkrmsv — Sat, 16 May 2009 15:59:16 +0000

In the last 36 hours I have been here I have managed to look around the place and now know more about my where-abouts.
The place where I stay is called the participants hostel. It is close to the academic zone (Not sure if they call it by the same name here). The room is designed to accommodate two people, but since IAS is bearing the charges for accommodation, three of us have been alloted the same room. The room is otherwise spacious and even has an ethernet port. The weather here seems to have resolved to fry me alive. It has been quite some effort to make sure I drink enough water to ensure that I do not get dehydrated. I now spend most of my time in Dr. Chaturvedi’s room which is located in the school of physics in the science complex. The science complex houses the school of physics and the school of life sciences– the school of chemistry seems to be present some-where-around. As is the case with most universities the academic buildings here are found on a single road but the departments are quite a distance apart from each other. The university has two other places where one can get food, the students canteen and the shopping complex.I happen to pass by what is called a shopping ‘complex’, the thing has around 7-8 shops, the ATM and a medical clinic. At first sight the place it self appears to be a little messy. The hostel for the residents is located en-route from the participants hostel to the shopping complex. The road, which is now called by me as the academic road also leads to the shopping complex. There also seems to be a lake beside the guest-house complex, quite a murky one, but does attract a few birds. Will be looking around the place a little more as days go by. On the academic front there seems to be little progress, I have been trying to read a work by Wooters et al which discusses Wigner functions on a finite field. Part of my work here will be to try and obtain Wigner functions for the same case but from a different, purely algebraic approach. Dr. Chaturvedi left for Europe today, he has promised to stay actively in touch with me through email. To add to the trouble my laptop seems to be screwed up, does not seem to switch on. Hoping to un-pack the camera and get some pictures soon. That more or less summarizes a sort of the-not-so-eventful today.

Already missing Chennai

vkrmsv — Fri, 15 May 2009 16:34:18 +0000

The week has been quite hectic, starting with me having to pack for two months away from home, finishing things and wrapping up something I was doing at IMSc. Having taken the Charminar express yesterday, I reached the city today morning. I took the MMTS to this place called Lingampally and from there reached the University of Hyderabad around 10.00 AM. At first sight the university seemed familiar, a huge campus with buildings spread apart from each other, ofcourse much lesser vegetation when compared to IITM. To my surprise the accommodation provided is very good except for the fact that we will have to share the room with two others. After settling down in the new place the next logical thing was to go meet your guide. So I met Dr. Subhash Chaturvedi, as I was told he was a very nice person and got onto explaining what he wanted me to do during my stay here. He also told me that I could use his room. But the meeting was interrupted by someone who wanted to speak with Dr. Chaturvedi. I was asked to look around and come back after 10 mins. But then since it was time for lunch we decided to break and meet again around 3.00 PM. The lunch was nothing close to what I had expected – another sweet surprise, the food was not spicy (!) and they had curd. After lunch I went back to meet Dr. Chaturvedi. He talked for a long time trying to put things in perspective, while I tried to understand what was going on. I must confess here that I would be very happy if I have understood atleast 50% of what he said. Around 4.30 PM he left leaving the room key with me. An air-conditioned room with a refrigerator, black board, entire shelf loaded with infinitely many books (unfortunately most of which do not match my current interests) and a computer with internet connection all at your disposal! [@Akarsh, I wish I could see your face when you read that!] Wow! What followed was some productive work along with a lot of mixed emotions. While the room was pretty nice, cozy etc the place was nothing similar to the departments I have seen at IITM or at IMSc, both places are filled with people who interact with each other a lot. There I was, pretty much locked up in a room, trying to tame mathematical monsters which I could not tie to the real world. I was pretty much cursing myself for having come to Hyderabad more so because of the fact that Dr. Chaturvedi will be leaving from here on Sunday (a day from now). I hope this is just the first day effect and things start falling into place.

BSNL Broadband rocks!

vkrmsv — Fri, 01 May 2009 14:53:30 +0000

At home we use the BSNL dataone connection. For the past few weeks we have been having a lot of trouble in getting connected to the network. After a making a couple of complaints BSNL had sent someone to check the lines. However, since he was not able to find anything wrong he asked us to make sure that the settings in our computer were right and went back. There was nothing much I could do about the settings so we called them again. This time two people came over and one of them Mr. Sridharan started looking at what exactly the problem was. Apart from being extremely well versed about networks and routers to my surprise he was very comfortable with my Linux desktop. He was able to find exactly the problem was and fix it within a few minutes . Now the network connectivity is wonderful and the speed also seems to have increased.

For those of you wondering what exactly the problem was … Apparently there are many modes under which the ADSL modem operates. In order to obtain the ‘link’ fast we will have to make sure that it is set to operate in multimode. Another information I did not know about was that we could configure the bsnl authentication ( for which I used to set up pppoe using pppoeconf) can be done on the modem itself. Once this is set up we can have the computer configured to use a static IP in the range 192.168.1.x where x can take the values between 3 and 255.

24 Hours!

vkrmsv — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 05:12:24 +0000

A few days back a small ‘iron’ particle decided that my eye would make a nice cozy home and landed straight on it. Since I had the feeling that something was there on my eye for more than 2 days, I decided to go to the doctor and get it examined. It so happened that this particle was embedded in my cornea. So the doctor had to administer a local anesthesia and take the particle out using a needle. While this part of it was not painful. I was not ready for what was in store. The doctor told me that she will have to patch my eye for 24 hours! The next 24 hours I was blinded! well in a single eye. I was not able to do carry out any of my normal chores [which is ofcourse involves sitting in front of a computer ] I realised how difficult it would be for people who did not have this blessing called vision. I thank God for having kept this “suffering” to a period of 24 hours.