Flavors

What defines who you are? What is your “true nature”/dharma?

Let’s start right there. I am sure each one of us has spent many a moment trying to answer these questions. My musings are currently at a point where I think, it’s not the question, but a strange quirk of the nature of language to allow us to even pose such a question and make it sound like a reasonable thing to ask - that’s at the nub of the answer. But I digress for our purposes here..

I think who I am is defined by two main factors – an incomprehensible sum of stories where I’ve felt that I have “lived my life” and an incomprehensible sum of personal tendencies where I’ve felt I’ve wanted to “direct my life” towards. Trying to cobble the two sums into some sense of coherence (forget comprehension!) for the present moment should take us somewhere near the “answer”.

Incomprehensible sum of stories

Stories are the things that happen to us. I read somewhere – “Fool! look into thy heart and write”. I’ve always read something somewhere - that tends to color my view about that moment in time. I’ve often wondered whether there is such a thing as an “original thought” or an “original story”..

At this present moment, all I want to seem to do is cook a hearty meal and eat it. While eating I want to reminisce about all the stories that contributed towards this particular gastronomic moment. So let’s try and zoom in on this portion of life. I hope that this is some sort of a recurring theme - where:
- I make a new post about a recipe or food I really enjoy
- It's not just the recipe! It's also the story that lead me towards that food/recipe
- And then I pose some open-ended questions that I don't understand about the recipe or story.

My hope is that I get a large enough portion of community to weigh in with their thoughts on the open ended questions - just in hopes of resolving my own flavorable problems! (and hopefully some of yours too :) )

Join me on this journey!

Real first observation via 4 inch apo

Well I actually did try to use the scope without all the beautiful eyepieces a week before. All I saw was blurry splotches of light where the moon or Jupiter were supposed to be. Even after  I fit in extension tubes onto the rack and pinion focuser, no luck. (Later days of observing a communication tower during the day with the eyepieces seemed to suggest that possibly a 3rd or 4th extension tube might have brought things into focus. But ExpSci is asking for $25 a piece. Expensive! )

Eyepieces+diagonal finally fixed the problem! Had a whale of a time observing a communication tower in the distance with the various eyepieces from explore scientific. Here's a run down on observations.

The smaller the focal length of the eyepiece, the narrower is the total field of view, but the higher is the magnification. You would think that higher magnification is awesome intuitively, but I'll have you know that higher magnification sucks (I claim that I am not color'ed by EdTing's scopereviews/eyepiece reviews). This is simply because things go blurry at higher magnifications, in the hunt for more detail. Our seeing conditions really affect whether magnification is important or not. Perhaps if I have a beautiful clear night with great seeing, then the higher magnification (such as 8.8mm, 8.8mm+2x barlow == 4.4mm, 20mm+2x barlow == 10mm lenses) might start making sense.

But on an average day or night, really fix yourself up a treat or snack (courtesy the European confectionaries star down the street :D ), fit in a 20mm, 26mm or even better - a 40mm eyepiece and soak in all the finer details that the wider fields of view that these eyepieces have to offer. Though not magnified, these allow you to realize the full power of your telescope (think of a telescope as a reservoir of light). Each low magnification power eyepiece unlocks a different new worls inside the same point of view!

For example - staring at the communication tower on the 40mm. I was able to count the number of spokes on the tower and the number of diamond shapes formed by the spokes. Or staring at some trees. I was able to see a bluejay fly around. Slyly notice that there was a window on a house peeking out from among the trees. Or even on my first night of observing, seeing random meteors!

(FYI I am using the 62 degrees series from ES. Except the 8.8 mm - which is the 82 degrees)

So I do not regret purchasing eyepieces with lower power. Thank you Ed Ting!

First nightly observation via 4 inch apo

Spent my first day staring through the right end of a 4 inch apo from explore scientific. First impressions - I might be growing old, since
(a) I am not able to see enough stars clearly with my naked eye (of course I could also blame the light pollution around Bothell and spring back to my age's rescue ;)
(b) I see too many stars through the scope! Problem of plenty! Even the finder scope shows too many stars. Really seems daunting to even see the thing I am able to see with my naked eye!
(c) that stupid alt-az mount keeps wobbling, or my eyes are. Should be the former. Also, I need to constantly keep winding the knows sideways and updown. Gosh the earth moves fast! I cannot put in my 40mm eyepiece and simply chillax and soak-in the aura of the beehive cluster. Need to keep constantly fiddling around to keep the darned cluster in field of view.
(d) Stars seem to have rays of light emitting out of it, or do not seem to focus cleanly. Is it my astigmatism? Maybe. Is the collimation of the 3 objective lenses on my refractor slightly out of whack from the shipping? Maybe, though I couldn't observe any collimation issues from the instructions. But the beehive cluster at least seemed to focus cleanly.

Saw
1) castor - supposedly a system of 6 bluish stars. I saw only 1 star(?)
2) pollux - supposedly 1 yellowish-orange star. I saw 6ish blue stars?
3) regulus - supposedly another multi-star system with blue white dwarfs. I saw maybe 1 star with a blueish tinge?
4) M44 - behive cluster. supposedly an open cluster. Definitely saw 20-30 similar points of light/stars bunched into a single point of view through the 40mm lens. Felt like the awesomest thing!

Also saw a bunch of meteors through the 40mm! These were not visible to the naked eye! Was awesome to see these again! Reminded me of the walk from jalahalli village to the main road at grannies place in Bangalore when I was 5 or so - which is when I last remember seeing random meteors just by looking up at the night sky - back when there was no light pollution and everything was observable in the heavens via the naked eye. Including all the gazillion stars I had to see last night through a 4-inch apo.

Sigh, we age, don't we? But beehive cluster == awesome!!

University Auditorium

I attended my first concert at UF. It was a typical concert like those shown on TV. With a conductor and his entire troupe clad in black suits and the formal demeanour. It was the UF Symphonic and Wind Orchestra. Conducted by a couple of guest conductors.

It was in this auditorium which had a rather elaborate and archetypal roof. There were dim chandeliers beaming down from hooked carvings from under the dome shaped wooden roof. It was made of deep brown wood, the type that is found in medieval churches. Complete with a couple of balconies on either flanks of the main body overlooking the stage.

The Orchestra consisted mostly of students from the School of Music and Arts at UF. The entire assortment of musical instruments decked the stage. Among them was also the piano, the various wind instruments, the xylophone and various gongs, the bass guitar, percussion, flutes to name a few.

Initially, there was loud clamoring and a discordant rush of notes that were extremely cacophonic on the ear. It was surprising since the concert was free for UF students and I couldn't spot a single fellow country-mate!

Suddenly, all the instruments played a single note in harmony. Then, the conductor arrived and the entire auditorium quickly froze into complete silence with a warm applause to greet him. With a courteous bow, the conductor soon took his position in front of the orchestra.

The lights dimmed and the stage shone bright. The wand was raised, and a rather wonderful assortment of notes in utter harmony flowed out.

The next couple of hours were sheer bliss! Most of the pieces were
based on truly American composers. The style of the music played
showed in the types of nuances that were on display. Most of the other pieces had a latino/South American influence. It was both amusing and surprising to hear some of the typical instruments used in the dances of South American culture blend in with more traditional instruments of the Orchestra.

After each piece was played, the audience was roused into an extended round of applause and every single musician that was part of some nuance in the piece played was conjured up individually by the conductor to be greeted by another round of applause. And so, the routine continued on until the end of the event.

And then, I had some nice cake arranged for by one of the Sorrority
houses near campus and here I am composing this email. The evening was truly refreshing! :)

Marston Science Library

Every science library should be called the Marston Science Library. I mean, how often does one run into a SCIENCE library called something that nice? It's always a serious sounding name, or a big city kinda name. I don't have many examples to put in here, but you could think up what the science library in your town is called. For a place like Gainesville, Marston sounds perfect!

It's a quaint old spot where all us jobless people (in the days we didn't have our laptop) would come to hang out at. Lots of computers arrayed in rows, and lots of interesting people. A very nice structure about the ground floor. It's a SCIENCE library! You just know it when you see it!

God, I am in love with Marston Science Library. The name, the ambience, the computers, the books, the convenient location of the rest-room, the notice board asking for suggestions to improve the library, the nice people writing stuff on a piece of paper to help me locate my java books. And I got my first print/copy card here. That's used to take xerox or printouts.

Landed in the US, and this was one of the first places I saw. Btw.. In the video, the "French Fries" or "Alachua" separates the library and the CS department. Show and tell part 1 over!

Gainesville

It's a small town. People here are very courteous. It's simple, yet it has a very American undercurrent about it. There's a Winn Dixie across the street. And I am supposed to use a public laundromat to get my laundry done. The university has pretty red buildings. The kind of red that's brick color, slightly orangish in appearance. Every single building appears to be molded from it. And the trees! They are everywhere! Looks like they've seen ages of students, gotten bored and grown long long beards.

There are dedicated walls to spray grafitti on, there's a krishna house with locals performing the kirtans and another native taking over discourse-discharging duties. The Bank of America (SBI of America) does not have a security guard at the entrance! And you got to keep your eye on the alert else you could miss it on t=your way down the street. It's a quaint and lovely little building. Haircuts start at 6$. Bananas cost around Rs. 15 each. Tomatos, onions, around $1.5 for half a kg. The bank accountant wants you to talk to her so she doesn't feel bored!

I am here, the land of dreams, and this is it! God bless America, and every one of her inhabitants. :-) After India, of course ;-)

Last day at IBM

So I enter the coffee room for that one last cup of latte. The machine reads "Bin full". Scowling, I turn around and express my angst to Karthik, Lisha and Divya, only to face a whole bunch of smiles (Karthik with the customary flash of teeth, Lisha with the usual all round dimple in the cheeks, Divya letting her eyes do the smiling of course and Aditya conspicuous by his absence). A cool greeting card, a pen-in-a-box that I know I'll preserve for as long as I can and a Reebok tee-shirt later, my mouth/tongue decides to take the luxury cruise to Florida already. I blabber something about friends in college telling me to think about higher studies, then with a silly grin say thanks all around and show them how red my ears can get.

Security wont take my ID card, insisting I keep it. Ashwin already starts casting worrisome glances at my querulous looks, extends his hand hesitantly and before more is said, quickly accepts the badge AlongWith the tag. He'll have to give it to the manager tomorrow.

I know I have friends here. Ashwin managed a little smile to seep through the corner of his face having taken my ID. Praveen fixed the latte machine to do its thing. And Divya mentioned how she'd remember whenever she yawned about excel worksheets on friday evenings..

I'll miss you guys! Hope this blog can remedy that. You have made these two years colourful. Thank you!