poem in NYC Subway...

I was on the 6 train yesterday and started looking at all the ads on the top of the subway car, one of the ads had a poem, which I found interesting:

If there is something to desire,
there will be something to regret.
If there is something to regret,
there will be something to recall.
If there is something to recall,
there was nothing to regret.
If there was nothing to regret,
there was nothing to desire.
-Vera Pavlova

I'm still trying to figure out what the poem is trying to get across because it seems that there are contradictory statements between the 2 parts of the poem which talks about the future based on the present and one which talks about the past based on the present, yet they seem to contradict each other, am I missing something here or am I just not able to figure out the logic in this poem?

Shyamalan's new film, The Happening

Well it seems like M. Night Shyamalan has written another "thriller" titled, "The Happening", I hope he has changed his writing since the last few of his films, it seems that after The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable, many of his movies tend to give away too much at the ending and reveal more then should be revealed rather then leaving things to our imagination making the monster or force that is the fear in the movie even more scary when glimples of the monster are shown but not the whole. The first movie of his that I saw was "The Sixth Sense" and I admit it was very well written the use of color to highlight specific items in the movie in addition to the use of suspense with things to make things even more discreet was very well done, after that movie I watched Unbreakable, overall it was well written, a good plot with all elements of a superhero movie, the hero and the villian. But then he released 'Signs', that movie wasn't up to par with his past films, the same goes for his later releases of 'The Village' and 'Lady in The Water'. I hope that this new movie of his reclaims his reputation that he had when he wrote 'The Sixth Sense'.

Harold and Kumar 2 looks pretty funny...

It seems like they've released the trailer and a nice teaser for the new Harold and Kumar movie, titled, Harold and Kumar 2: Escape from Guantanamo Bay, the censored as well as the restricted trailers are available at the movie website, the trailer containing restricted scenes looks hilarious, but be warned the restricted trailer does have quite some graphic scenes. As of right now I don't know if this movie is going live up the reputation of the first one and I'm sure it's going to offend quite a few people, but lets see how it fares once it is officially released. Enjoy.

Sant Mat...

So I came across the biography of Shania Twain and as I was reading it it mentioned that herself and her husband practice a religion known as Sant Mat, now I personally have never heard of this religion, and so I curiously decided to surf over to my good friend wikipedia and google and started to look up more information about it. Well the premise of the religion or atleast what I sort of came across after surfing through a few pages was it's focus on the few principles of the Hindu faith mainly that of dietary practices as well as meditation, to help develop a sense of self or an understanding of your existence in this world, ok so that last statement is probably the basis for all religions that are currently practiced in the world today; all religions are there to help one find meaning for existence other then fulfilling routine or common duties but from a metaphysical aspect of what our existence means for you and the relation of our existence in the harmony of the world around you. And the idea of Sant Mat is to practice a way of life where you find a path to realize yourself and eventually find God. So Sant Mat's current spiritual master is Sant Baljit Singh, which I guess he would be the equivalent of the Dalai Lama in Tibetan Buddhism, but the way in which the current Dalai Lama was selected is probably different then how Baljit Singh came to be the spiritual master, since there is no mention of reincarnation amongst the belief of the Sant Mat faith, however more contemporary movements of Sant Mat, do believe in the idea of karma and reincarnation. Well I should say that on the Sant Mat site they mention Karma but not reincarnation... Regardless, the selection of the spiritual leader in the Sant Mat faith is not through principles of selection for some of the other Dharmic faiths (correct me if I'm wrong here). The Sant Mat movement has a very egalitarianistic belief. Which is nice in that they view everyone as equal no matter their social status of religious affiliations, regardless of their belief or their way of life. Which is the one thing that I do find a bit disconcerting in many religions, I feel that equality should be the core of all religions and placing distinctions on groups of individuals, because of their upbringings or their way of life, devoids the idea of religion as a way to discover ones place in their metaphysical existence and understanding of God. But we don't live in a perfect world, but perhaps one day we will find equality amongst all living creatures. I end this post with a quote by Mohandas Gandhi, "All the religions of the world, while they may differ in other respects, unitedly proclaim that nothing lives in this world but Truth."

The elusive mystery surrounding 'Cloverfield'

I've been awaiting the release of 'Cloverfield' which was originally titled '1-18-08', as that is the date it is scheduled to be released by producer J.J Abrams, and the anticipation is getting to me, not just because the whole release has been surrounded in mystery but also because the trailers and teasers don't really reveal too much about what the dark force in the movie is, in addition when the movie was first announced their web page was a puzzle which contained a bunch of photographs that contained some hidden images, and even now the monster that supposedly is the dark force in the movie is still shrouded in mystery, is it "slusho" or "Cthulhu", whatever it is J.J Abrams seems to have a nack for arousing our curiosity in a lot of his shows, from Alias, to Lost, I remember in Lost they had managed to create a fake corporation called the Dharma Initiative, that was involved in scientific research. And his mysterious writing style continues in the marketing of this upcoming film, whatever the monster is I'm looking forward to watching this film once it's released.

who names the elements on the periodic table?

Well in the past newly discovered elements were named by the scientist that discovered them, such as polonium named by Marie Curie who first discovered and named it in honor of her homeland in Poland. But these days the elements names are decided by an International committee of chemists, and they are usually named after Greek gods, places, or scientists. Go figure, I guess if I ever find that elusive new elements or happen to suddenly come upon a new element out of just pure luck I guess jaynium is out of the question. Well at least we can still name stars at the International Star Registry, even though most starts are probably so distant that they will rarely be observed by any amateur astronomer observing the night sky, eh who cares, when that gigantic book with the names of stars and their RA and Dec my name will be in there. Of course this is not public since the star registry is a private company so most astronomers don't really care what the star is called it will just exist as a couple of letters and numbers depending on what galaxy the star is located in, or however else any of the many books published containing the coordinates of discovered stars happens to assign names to them. sigh.

Incase of fire what would I run out with?

So a few months back I was taking a shower one evening and began to hear some sort of a ringing bell, I thought it was nothing and just someone's loud smoke alarm going off because they probably left the stove on and their pot of spaghetti ran out of water and which eventually evaporated and burned the spaghetti, anyway, so as I finish my shower and still hear the ringing bell I start to wonder what that strange sound it, it sounded like a school bell going off indicating the end of class like we had in high school. So I get dressed and open up my front door and it's definitely not a school bell but rather the fire alarm, so I nonchalantly get my wallet keys, and cellphone and walk out of the building to find the rest of the tenants also waiting outside for a firetruck to come and turn off that annoying bell. Supposedly someone had pulled the fire alarm switch setting the bells ringing, I'm happy it just wasn't in the middle of the night. So it got me thinking if this was a real alarm what would I run out of the house with? Would I run out with my computer, but that would take time unplugging all the cables... should I run out with at least some form of id, I don't know... if all you people in the blog world had to run out with one thing what would it be? I think that at the least I should run out with some soap, toothpaste /brush and deodorant so that at least if I have to spend time in a shelter I won't stink :), or maybe I should take a fire extinguisher with me so that if there is a path that I need to walk through to get to safety but on fire, I can at least reduce the flames a little bit. I bet I would probably be too frantic and not even remember to take anything if the time came when I needed to run out.

interesting disclamer notice from rental car receipt

So I was sitting around waiting to be dropped off after returning my rental car at enterprise today and which I was waiting I decided to take a look at the back of the receipt where they print terms and conditions of your rental, something I guess most people don't do and usually just sign the line where you state that you agree with all the terms, well that's what I do anyways, who has time to go through pages of terms, unless you can take the receipt home to read for a day or 2. Well anyway so under the Damages to. Loss or Theft of. Vehicle and Related costs clause it reads: "Renter accepts responsibility for damage to, loss or theft of vehicle or any part of accessory regardless of fault or negligence of Renter or any other person or act of God". That last item which I bolded brought a smirk to my face, so if some act of god, maybe a swarm of locusts happens to hit the car scratching it more then the 5" damage limit or if a deluge of frogs happen to fall from the sky and dent the car, or if Zeus decides to to throw a lightning bolt, I guess I'm responsible :) (hope I haven't offended anyone, just trying to be a little sarcastic here). Anyway I guess you can find interesting things in the Terms and Conditions if one were to read them thoroughly.

amazon.com's new e-book device, Kindle

I'm sure many of you out there have heard about this new device that's being sold by Amazon.com called the Kindle, it's a neat little device and I was watching the Charlie Rose show where he was interviewing Jeff Bezos, and discussing this little device. It's interesting what the iPod and iTunes did for music, this device and amazon.com will be doing for books. It costs 300 bucks but give you the ability to look up words in a built-in dictionary by highlighting a word from an e-book that you are reading, it can store 200 books and books are quite cheap and can be downloaded wirelessly I believe they use sprint as their wireless service provider. I think it's important that when you release a device that it be tied to a service, just as how iPod seems to be tied to iTunes thus expanding the available content that you can place on the device as the Kindle is doing with amazon.com, which has 1,000's of e-books and newspapers and magazines available, even though I'm sure there will be issues with DRM as there are with the iPod but this is a good start, even though it looks a little bulky and will take away from the analog feel of turning pages and reading a book it's a nice way to move forward in being able to carry around 100's of books without weighing you down.

Eye-Fi, The First Wireless memory card

I was perusing yahoo today and ran across a story in their tech news pages about a new memory stick that has everything you need to transfer photos from it's storage cache to either your computer or to any of the social networking or online photo sharing sites. The company is called Eye-Fi. So the premise behind the technology is that the card connects to your local wi-fi connection, I'm assuming it can be setup and burned into the ROM of the card when you set it up, additionally it support most of the popular encryption standards for protecting the wireless data that will be being transferred. I think this is pretty great, there is no need now to plug your camera into the USB port to transfer photos, or have any sort of external hubs that accept the SD card from which you can then transfer the pictures. However, how safe is this? I mean most people these days even with the proliferation of Wi-Fi access don't really protect their router or their wi-fi connection with a strong enough encryption, or they tend to take the default. So how long before there is a evil cracker out there that figures out how to reprogram the flash of the card remotely and set up an ad-hod network to then download all the pictures to their own machine when someone with the digital camera with one of these cards inside it walks by. Perhaps I'm just being pessimistic here but hopefully people will keep things secure and we won't have this battle of people discovering that pictures they took on their digital camera suddenly appear somewhere on the web where they didn't intend them to.

Backing up your brain

So today I ran across a story on gizmodo about Microsoft developing technology that will allow you to backup or store all your memories and experiences onto a hard disk for quick recollection or search in the future, they call it MyLifeBits. From the story they say that 1TB would be more then enough to store all the text documents, audio files and photos to document our entire life, with video only limited to 4 hours a day for 1 year. The system has special sensing software that determines when a moment seems to be important and should be documented. I would be curious to know what sort of algorithm they will use to determine when a moment is important, I mean there are probably a lot of factors involved in determining whether a moment in our life strikes us as something that maybe be useful to know about in the future, but then how do you differentiate moments that may not be something you would want to remember but the system may think they are with the moments that you truly do want to remember. I think it's cool that you can carry something like this along with you but I don't know how useful it will be, I can already see people no longer needing to memorize anything, and every time they need to recall just pull up a virtual keyboard type in what you are looking for and have it retrieved. I guess it will free us from having to remember everything and just living life but we may take remembering things like special occasions for granted, and what happens if we happen to loose this information, and what if this hard disk was stolen. Well anyway it's pretty cool to see them developing something like this but it will definitely have implications in our already information hungry society :).

how truly globally connected we are...

Ok, so I have to share this story with you, which I first heard on NPR one morning, and also found in Wired. The discussion on the radio station was about how connected the world is now a days with the proliferation of online content and it's availability through an internet connection. I know there has been lots of contreversy lately with some well known search engines and some nations that like to censor information for their country, but I want to keep politics out of this and just talk about this interesting news story and article, so it comes from France and has to do with Nazi items that were being auctioned on Yahoo!'s auction site. Now in France there is a law that prohibits and display of Nazi items or pictures related to it which sparks indignation, well actually it's more like prohibiting items "that incite racial hatred" (source: Wired) and having memorabilia items on the auction which could be accessed by people from all over the world including France seemed to stir the courts and a judge said that the auction offended "the collective memory of the country" (source: bbc news). But anyway I'm not talking politics or offering my opinion I just wanted to have a lead into what happens, well so the French government asked several security experts whether there was a way to block the auctioned items and what a viable solution could be. So they asked Yahoo to filter items from users from the country or be fined certain amount of francs everyday that the filter wasn't up and running past the given deadline. However since the yahoo auction site is hosted in the US on a .com removing those items would mean violating the US Constitutional rights to Freedom of Speech. And after much review yahoo also determined that it would be hard to solely filter based on IP address matches from the country and would only really work for 90% of the users that came from the location they would be filtering for. And I think in the end from what I heard from the radio broadcast Yahoo! decided to just remove the items instead of pay fines and legal fees. Now this really goes to show you how connected our world really is, and information you put on the web is truly global, makes you feel even smaller when you imagine yourself existing as only an IP address in cyberspace amongst millions of other users, just as small as my own existence on this planet. But an interesting story.

The Aphrodisiac (Oysters) song

So I was listening to All things considered on NPR today and they were talking about oysters particularly about their ability to act as Aphrodisiac's. But outside of that at the end of the broadcast they played a song which I started searching for and finally found the artist and lyrics so I leave them here for your enjoyment, I got a real kick out of it :):

APHRODISIAC (OYSTERS)
(Shel Silverstein / Pat Dailey)


Now, listen to me, folks...
Hear what I say.
You got to eat oysters everyday
They'll put your love life back on track
They're nature's own aphrodisiac.

Ohh, ohhh... yes it's true
What a little oyster can do for you.
Ohh, ohhh... ain't it fun
Here's some things them oysters done...

They made Jim Beam
They made Allen Thick
They made Jonathan Swift
And they made Gracie Slick
They made Victor Mature
And they made Tom Petty
They started Willie Waylon
And they got Helen Reddy.
They made Tom Cruise
They made Oscar Wilde
They gave Gary Hart
But they gave Gomer Piles
They made William Hurt
They made Lucille Ball
They made Wilson Picket
And that ain't all.

Ohh, ohhh... yes it's true
What a little oyster can do for you.
Ohh, ohhh... ain't it fun
Here's some more them oysters done.

They made Stevie Wonder
And they made old John Wayne
They made Saul Bellow
And caused Thomas Paine
Turned Clint Black
And turned Barry White
Made Doris' Day
And Gladys' Knight.
They gave Bob Hope
They gave Percy Faith
They made Marvin Gaye
But they made George Straight
They made Bobby's Short
And Lester's Flatt
And hey... they even did more than that.

Ohh, ohhh... yes it's true
What a little oyster can do for you.
Ohh, ohhh... ain't it fun
Here's some more them oysters done.

They got George Bush
They made Bozo a Clown
They got Bobby Bare
And made Ezra Pound
They made Gallo Wine
They made Merle Haggard
They Made Andy Devine
They made Jimmy Swagger
They made Rich Little
And made Hughie Long
They made BB King
And they made Neil's Armstrong
And if you ask my wife,
She'll tell you quite gaily
Best of all they made old Pat Daily.

Ohh, ohhh... yes it's true
What a little oyster can do for you.
Ohh, ohhh... ain't it fun
That's all about oysters
Now we're done.

The lyrics were taken from lyricplayground.

So I want to write more about the show and oysters but that will be another post later..

pandemic?

So what exactly is this word pandemic, I've heard of epidemic, which is the introduction of the proliferation of a disease that spreads through a species, human (from wikipedia... for animals it's an epizootic), beyond what scientists expected or beyond what can be controlled or contained at the time that it spreads. But an epidemic is usually confined to a certain locality perhaps to a nation or a city or a building or a group of people. But nowadays you hear about a pandemic, in particular the Avian Flu (H5N1) which is now a disease that has spread worldwide outside the scope of a locality or a small group, it spreads between species through mutation. So pandemic essentially means that there is widespread continental or global infestation outside the scope of a locality or region.

love on a NYC subway train?

Well I guess you find love in the most unexpected places, and recently on Good Morning America Diane Sawyer invited onto the show a guy who created a website nygirlofmydreams.com, where he posted up a detailed picture of a girl that he spotted sitting across from him on the number 5 train, unfortunately he did not have the courage to go up to her and speak to her, but according to him by the time he did muster up the courage she was getting off at her stop. So he decided to create the site where he posted up what she looked like, what she was doing, wearing and eventually one of the girls friends ran across the site, recognized the girl as being his friend and contacted this hopeless romantic, and they went on their first date. Quite amazing what people will do when they see a woman of their dreams. And how amazing it is that a website can spread so quickly and be seen by so many people. I'm happy for the guy.

So?

Have you ever felt embarrassed about something when put into a social situation where you feel like all eyes are on you and whatever you say or do will be the talk of the night and many nights onward? Like for example, dancing, I admit I have 2 left feet and usually feel quite reserved when in a club or bar to shake what my mama gave me, at the fear of other looking at me strangely and pointing and laughing or at least thinking, wow this guy is a total loser. However when you are at home or alone and you hear something on your radio or your music player that is catchy you find the need to dance, so you do without any inhibitions. Well then my friend I think we suffer from the "spotlight effect", which is very well describe in this article on CNN. And at the end of the article the author gives the readers one thought to keep in mind, or rather one question to keep in mind, a question that was once told to the author by a friend when talking on a cellphone in a taxi cab and wondering if the taxi driver was listening. That one question is "So?". And it's quite a powerful question to think about in any situation if you feel embarrassed... So?, if you think people will laugh at you, So?... Because it seems that we tend to over estimate how great the effect of letting go of our inhibitions may actually be, most things you do will only be remembered 50% less then what you feel others will remember. And for the most part letting go of inhibition, is probably a better way to put yourself forward and who knows others may follow suit. So the next time you feel hesitant at trying something at the fear of being ridiculed by everyone, just think to yourself, So?....

change: You either adapt to it, or you get left behind....

Why is it that we are scared of change, why is it that we hesitate at the thought of something different that we are not used to, why is it that we feel skeptical at taking a step into something that we believe will change how we live, how we think, how we feel... But change is something that we just can't avoid, it's one of those things that we need to find a way to accept, as a human species we have evolved and become smarter, become more articulate, but with all that change we are still afraid of taking a step that can change our lives, we hesitate at making a big purchase, we hesitate at the thought of knowing that someone that you deeply care about expresses the same feelings and wants to form a lifelong bond. Why is it that we feel that way? Would we be more accepting if the change happened and we had no say in the change, but unfortunately being human means we have the ability to choose, we have the power to choose our choices, that is what makes us human and it's the transition towards accepting change that makes us even stronger. We change as we grow up and growing up is painful, we undergo lots of emotions, we feel overwhelmed with the thought of what's to come as we continue to grow. And we find change which comes with growing to be something that we are afraid of stepping into and sometimes accepting change can be the greatest thing you do because it just changes you to a better person and to experience new things, so I say accept change, I say grow and love change and not take things too seriously or you may just get left behind, in a sea of uncertainty of what could have been if you had decided to accept the change.

Just can't resist looking at beautiful people...

So I was reading the livescience site and came across and article titled, "Eyes Can't Resist Beautiful People", which gives a synopsis of a study done by Jon Maner from Florida State University in which he discovers that as humans we are instinctly prone to looking at beautiful people, whether we are looking for a potential partner or if we are in a relationship. What's interesting is if we are in a relationship the study stated that we will usually draw our attention to attractive individuals of the same sex, according to the article the reason is because we feel insecure and we want to check out our competition, and deep down we have feeling of infidelity that has been wired in us through evolution. We have instinctly learned to check out our competition, well ok so this is mostly for people who are prone to jealousy because if some individuals who feel insecure and get jealous very quickly then they tend to be on the lookout for just as or even more attractive people then themselves because they know that their partner will do the same, or feel that way atleast. Of course their attention doesn't seem to focus on average people, or perhaps average people aren't really that jealous :). Well I guess I might have to talk about the lek paradox if we are talking about average people, but perhaps that should be another post...

Bottled Oxygen

So I was watching "The Big Idea" with Donnie Deutsch, and at the end of tonights segment they showed a product that made me think wow, and that's a wow with a tone of sarcasm, not a wow of amazement, the product was Bottled Oxygen, yes that's right Bottled Air, even though the idea might sound a bit absurd... during the showcase for this ad they said if they can bottle water then they can bottle oxygen, and I guess it's true, we live in a free market economy and if I wanted to bottle air, by god I will bottle air!, and if I wanted to bottle the scent of fresh spring air, then I will do that too, oh wait, they've already done it, shoot... there goes my big idea. Anyway, just thought I'd say a thing or two about this, I think I've tired myself out writing this entry, I need oxygen, darn I wish I had a bottle of oxygen to re-energize me right now.

stardust & Immortality

So I just watched the movie "Stardust", and it's a fantastic grownup fairy tale that has all the elements of a cliched love story with a mix of fantasy and adventure. But as I was watching the movie I began to think about what it would be like to have immortality... many people search for it and it's the makes for tales of legends and epics, Ponce De Leon of Spain went on a search for the fountain of youth and led him to Florida, and kind of ironic that it's the top state for many people to retire, perhaps the mystery of the fountain of youth is what draws people towards that state, the idea that by being closer to the myth they can discover their youth in the last few years of their life, whatever it is, I think it's meaningless without having someone to share it with and it's the same view that was expressed in the movie. I'm also hesitant at bringing up a movie called, "The Fountain", because it was a very strange visual drama that just had me confused and in a trance for the couple of hours I spent trying to figure out what was happening... regardless, in that movie, the female lead, Izzi tells her husband the story of the golden nebula describing it as Xibalba, or the Mayan underworld. And it is this nebula that they must reach to find their immortality in death. But in this movie Tommy also searches for the fountain of youth, but without Izzi immortality is meaningless. Ok, so enough of my horrible description or tragic interpretation of the movie, I think immortality is meaningless unless you find something that you can love and enjoy and cherish when you live forever, for people who seek immortality for power so that they can destroy others I think it's a waste, why take other lives and be selfish because your cannot be taken. Immortality should be about life, it means eternal life, and death is something that should not be known whether it's your own or another's. So I would think immortality is wonderful if you can find something that you can love during your eternal life.

Non-Linear evolution?

So I'm sure many of you out there have probably read the news story being written about in almost any well known science journal regarding the newly discovered set of fossils that were unearthed in northern Kenya. Well if you haven't here is a short description of what the whole story is about, so recently scientists from the Leakey team, which I haven't just started to read about and from wikipedia, Richard Leakey is a well known paleontologist/archaeologist/conservationist born and currently residing in Kenya. Ok back to the article, so the 2 new fossils that have been discovered seem to be that of a Homo Habilis and of Homo Erectus, 2 species that according to evolutionary theory are supposed to be descendent's, Homo Erectus, the direct ancestors of Homo Sapiens, being the descendant of Homo Habilis. According to the article, when some dating was done on the 2 fossils it turns out that both seemed to have inhabited earth at the same time, during the same time period, which would contradict the claim that H. Erectus is a descendant of H. Habilis, and according to the article, puts a spur in the linear graph of evolution that we known of today, and makes the graph look much more branched. On yahoo, the article says that if the 2 species did live during the same time period then there must have been very little interaction between the 2, going further to state that H. Habilis and H. Erectus may have had different nutritional lifestyles, H. Habilis of course being vegetarians and H. Erectus being meat eaters, so now that is a point I found interesting, does that mean that vegetarians such as myself are part of a completely different species, I didn't need a set of fossils to tell me this, but still an interesting conjecture :). Also all you creationists out there, you know who you are... you are probably all reeling in joy at this news because it's another bit of arsenal to add to your attack on evolution, but there was a nice quote from the article that I thought I'd share: "This is not questioning the idea at all of evolution; it is refining some of the specific points," Anton said. "This is a great example of what science does and religion doesn't do. It's a continuous self-testing process."... Another revision of course I'm sure you're all aware of that was made much earlier was that the original theory that H. Sapiens descended from Neanderthals was proven false because they lived during the same time period and of course there is the question of whether the 2 species mated, cause I know a few people who may be classified as Neanderthals :).

First things...

So why did I finally start a blog after many many years of being not very outspoken about thoughts and ideas and just interesting tidbits that I may have picked up along my path of knowledge and daily life. Well I guess I was just a very introspective person, which may seem hypocritical, being introspective perhaps conveys the idea that you can express thoughts on anything you think about, but it's one thing to be introspective and another to be able to express what you've learned about from introspecting, ok I think I've used the word introspective to the point of no return. So anyway, well to start off with, I was born in India, raised by very loving parents who wanted the best life for their kids, and because of that, we decided to pack up and come to the US many many years go, it's hard looking back at what it was like making the transition from a culture that was still quite conservative and not as westernized as it is today to a society where people are much more liberal and far more outspoken.
I remember being very shy my first day of class. But perhaps that shyness came from not knowing what to expect when you talked to someone and you had a different accent or perhaps the shyness came from my fear of being in a new place with many many new faces unbeknownst to me. But I think I eventually assimilated into the class and began making friends and began my path towards becoming an IBCD (Indian Born Confused Desi).