Princess Fiona’s Weblog

We’ll hopefully be submitting the first mainly-our-lab paper soon. A post-doc in our lab has done a lot of work for this. But a big chunk of work has been done in collaborations with many other labs.. there are at least 3 other labs which have done something of significance for the paper, besides one company. All these are important contributions which have played important roles in shaping the final story.
But the issue now is authorship… rather, the order of names. Boss explained to me why the decision is not simple and why it cannot be fair. It’s a political issue and lots of things – present and future – have to be kept in mind while deciding who goes where.
And he said something very interesting – “the best decision in some cases is the one which makes everybody a little unhappy.”

Its true, if u think abt it.. u cant make everybody happy. so rather than making some ppl very happy and some very unhappy, is better to make everybody a little unhappy.
He was talking abt science and collaborations, but this statement can fit in a much wider context.

So very often we find ourselves at the crossroads of life. Not sure abt which way to go. Anything that we do is bound to make somebody or the other unhappy. All those ’somebodies’ and their (un)happiness means a lot to us. Standing there forever or retracting ur steps is not an option. a decision has to be taken and some move has to be made – very soon.
Higher degrees of connectivity also mean fewer degrees of freedom, and a bigger disturbance in the network if one string is pulled a little harder than the others.
So peace is clearly the last thing to expect. The questions then, r –
1. how much struggle are u ready to put up?
2. is the reason to put up the struggle strong enough?
3. r u prepared for the general unhappiness which comes with the struggle?
4. r u sure u actually disagree with whatever u r going to fight against?

Or, the available options can make different ppl happy and different ppl unhappy. The thing to decide in that case is..
-whose happiness means more to u?
-is making the other ppl unhappy the right thing to do?

Sometimes there are just no right answers.. hope we manage to find the best ones in such situtations..

Same occasion, (almost) same people, one year later..

Funny how weeks and months zip across in the blink of an eye, while minutes and hours linger on for ages..

Just listened to J.K. Rowling’s Commencement Address, “The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination,” delivered at the Annual Meeting of the Harvard Alumni Association.. Here

Truely worth the 20 mins..

Some excerpts..

“Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena I believed I truly belonged. I was set free, because my greatest fear had already been realised, and I was still alive..”

“Failure gave me an inner security that I had never attained by passing examinations. Failure taught me things about myself that I could have learned no other way. I discovered that I had a strong will, and more discipline than I had suspected; I also found out that I had friends whose value was truly above rubies.”

“The knowledge that you have emerged wiser and stronger from setbacks means that you are, ever after, secure in your ability to survive. You will never truly know yourself, or the strength of your relationships, until both have been tested by adversity. Such knowledge is a true gift, for all that it is painfully won, and it has been worth more to me than any qualification I ever earned.”

“Every day of my working week in my early 20s I was reminded how incredibly fortunate I was, to live in a country with a democratically elected government, where legal representation and a public trial were the rights of everyone.”

“Every day, I saw more evidence about the evils humankind will inflict on their fellow humans, to gain or maintain power. I began to have nightmares, literal nightmares, about some of the things I saw, heard and read.

And yet I also learned more about human goodness at Amnesty International than I had ever known before.”

“But how much more are you, Harvard graduates of 2008, likely to touch other people’s lives? Your intelligence, your capacity for hard work, the education you have earned and received, give you unique status, and unique responsibilities.”
“The way you vote, the way you live, the way you protest, the pressure you bring to bear on your government, has an impact way beyond your borders. That is your privilege, and your burden.”

“We do not need magic to change the world, we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: we have the power to imagine better.”

“I hope that even if you remember not a single word of mine, you remember those of Seneca, another of those old Romans I met when I fled down the Classics corridor, in retreat from career ladders, in search of ancient wisdom:
As is a tale, so is life: not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters.”

Thanks for link, DKS.

A couple of days back it rained in Delhi, it rained in Mumbai, and it rained in New York. Same phenomenon, yet such different sentiments associated with each one.

I’ve always loved rains. Being an Indian, the eager wait for ‘The Monsoons’ is in my blood, i suppose. I didnt have any crop waiting for irrigation, neither did my job involve waiting in the sun for hrs. Still, every year it felt as if all problems would be solved once monsoon arrives.. the first monsoon showers would bring general cheer and happiness everywhere.. a reason to celebrate. a reason big enough for the entire family to take time out to sit together in the balcony and have chai and pakode… looking at the falling drops with the fondness of a parent looking at a child taking his/her first steps… Or going out with friends and getting wet in the rain.. singing one of the many many ‘rain songs’…

I miss that. It rains here also. And i still like standing in the window and looking at the rain. But the thing that i loved the most abt rains in India – the fragrance of rain – is missing. It feels like most of the other stuff available here.. well preserved, good looking, healthier, with lesser probabilty of pathogens, but without the flavour. Without the fragrance. Like my legendary frozen chopped onions.
Feeling very nostalgic today for some reason. Wish i could go back and smell the earth right now… wish i could get that smell back with me.. somehow packaged in a magic vial!

But we have to pay a price for everything. I know the price i m paying for being in the land of opportunities. And i know the price i would be paying for being in my motherland. my career and my country are both equally dear to me. All i can do right now is divide myself temporally between the two. Hopefully by the time i go back to where my heart is, i’ll have enough patience to accept what i cannot change. And enough strength to change what i cannot accept.
Till then, its YouTube zindabaad. here, here, here, here and here.
*sigh*

Thankfully we live in this age.. cant even imagine how things would’ve been some yrs back! one weekend IPL final live and the next weekend sarkar raj might not have been possible then…