Trave(b)log

Taipei : Taoyuan Airport : 12 pm :

I was in the immigration check, Taoyuan International Airport, Taiwan. Queued up behind a beeline of small eyes, flat noses, yellow skins. I had all the relevant documents but still a feeling of doubt...whether I am carrying everything...whether I left anything behind...whether my passport would be rejected. The wait on the yellow line announcing my turn on the counter was a long one. Heck the old lady ahead of me was taking too long. Then it came...I pushed my passport and tickets..along with the form. A crowd of people had passed unhindered! I would go unstopped too...won't I?

The inspector looks at my passport a moment too long. He picks up the receiver off the cradle. My mind wandered...had he been doing this for all of them?..had he been confirming something routinely for all of them?...or was it me alone? He kept down the receiver. The crease on his forehead clearly indicating intensification of some glitch in his mind. He leaned over to the neighboring counter seeking some confirmation in Mandarin. I inquired about the hitch. He curtly asks me to wait in English words I made sense out of only about 2 minutes after he'd done speaking. He picks up the receiver again...talks...

Another inspector (his uniform indicated his higher authority) comes and checks the details I filled on the form. "Software Professional? What kind of occupation is that?"..he says authoritatively...the next moment I find myself following him through the guardband flanked by the yellow line keeping the long queues at bay and the counters. Caught in between nowhere. I could sense those small eyes prying behind me as if saying...ahh...something out of the ordinary...an illegal immigrant! I was escorted to the in-charge of airport security. He takes a deep look at my passport and the documents. Confirms my identification. The problem, it turns out, is the smeared signature on my passport made in last century. Two more signatures, an irrefutable identification proof and I see what I was longing for all this time. The seal of arrival in Taipei.

I am admitted as a legal immigrant in Taipei for 60 days. So much for the first immigration check! The walk to the airport entrance is a short one...and a quick one too! Declaration of the laptop and a quick currency conversion follows. By this time I was already hoping someone to be there to pick me up at the alien place!...I see a sign board announcing my name...finally someone hospitable...it's all quick...ride in the limo...the scent of air...the whiff of green while traveling from Taoyuan county to Taipei...the Mandarin songs on radio...the grey of clouds...new car models...freeway...

It's interesting how mind changes its focus. Just a moment ago it was thinking I'd take the next flight back to home. The desperation for opening up my mouth to speak liberal english or hindi. The longing to see the familiar surroundings and faces I'd left behind...but then wasn't there a familiarity here too? The green leaves, the distant mountains, the grey-blue sky, birds flying in patterns, sun peeping through the clouds every now and then...the sight of mother nature at once made me feel secure like a baby who's experienced a recognition pattern failure but the tender touch, the loving gaze and the warmth of the hands at once defeating the visual pattern recognition failure...a smile fleeted through my lips impulsively...

I welcome myself to the new lands...another episode begins...

"Nee Hao" Taiwan :)

makar sankranti

India celebrates Makar Sankranti today, the 14th of January. It's a festival which marks the transition of Sun from the sagittarius (dhanu i guess) to capricorn (makar) constellation and the beginning of "uttarayana" which literally translated from Hindi means the beginning of the ascent to higher domains. Rituals involve people flying kites to make obeisance to the Sun which begins a new journey through the constellations. This event happens at the winter solstice in the northern hemisphere which means the arrival of a new season and of longer days and warmth in my part of the world.

On the contrary, days are becoming smaller and warmth is what I have started to seek more and more. I was reading a blog which talked about how, a crow on the tree in front of the house signified the belief of somebody's impending visit. That reminded me of my childhood, where I used to take the word of the person telling me something on its face value. On holidays and Sundays, I used to wonder about the length of the day and how to spend it through long summer noons. I'd try to feed sparrows on the terrace in the hope that they'd some day build enough trust to come and sit on my palms and peck on the grains. I'd wait for the evening to arrive to go out and play my heart out with my pals and then the night to go to bed with my grandma curling me within her arms and reciting a bed-time story.

I see crows today. I see them pulling and feeding on the flesh of dead rats. I do not consider them as harbinger announcing a guest. I see sparrows though very rarely. I see them hungrily looking for grains/morsels on the railway tracks. I wait for evenings. I wait so that I can wrap my work and get a breather at home to find myself spending another predictable day. I hear bed-time stories...of psychopathic killings and ruthless bombings.

Every year brings with it a series of resolutions and glint of hope. I look back fleetingly and move on. I realize I haven't changed. I do not see anything precious that I am leaving behind. It's only when I read about crows, sparrows or I see kites in the sky on festivals that I wait and ask myself...have I left something behind? Have I left something precious?

I don't care to wait for an answer...I choose to remain ignorant...Ignorance is bliss...

Crests and troughs

I remember having found interesting the theory of feedback circuits. Feeding back a part of signal to the input to reduce the variations/noise in the output signal. Its like a constant review of how your device is behaving and the moment it starts behaving erratically, a corrective action is taken by keeping the noisy signal under tab. However, linear feedback circuits assume a linear dependence of the input noise to the output disturbance and simply achieve the correction by feeding back a linear slice of the output. Adaptive feedback is far better but needs a better understanding of the noise generation and the devices which are going to be used to achive the correction.

Our knowledge in all the practical areas is by far inspired by single source in nature that's the human anatomy (its a pity that people these days just dont find time to marvel at the beauty of functioning of biological creations in their entirety!). Humans have an endocrine system (hormonal balancing) whose functions have been imitated by the feedback circuits. Hormonal secretion is induced by glands located at different places in human body depending upon the need to maintain the optimal condition of fluids in the body. This, however, I presume is a superior and fantastically adaptive system resulting from all the polishing and learnings obtained through process of evolution lasting ages.

Hormonal secretions are related to emotions and are ultimately regulated by pituitary, the master gland. If such an incredible system of balancing exits, then why do we feel the dramatic shift of emotions from one extreme to the other extreme at small intervals? Isn't it against the biological homeostasis? Isn't it against the understood rules of achieving stability of a system? Doesn't it mean that the human system which we feel so impressed about it's complexity and height of evolutionary processes, so utterly incapable and drastically unprepared against the tough demands of life? And is it possible to make oneself untouched from these ups and downs? To control the emotional upheavals?

There has been a recent tumult of thoughts within myself, triggered of course from the ambience that I live in and different people's inputs (i.e those who care to talk to me). This piece of blog had been started long back, and I guess, it was as if there was someone who sort of knew about this incomplete piece and presented those series of events to me, through others or by myself, to enable its completion.

I think, that it's good to read and have more knowledge of the systems, the mechanics with which things work. Given that initiation and enough amount of curiosity, takes your mind away from the emotional impacts of the things. You sort of get more attached/involved with the way things happened and sorting out the interdependencies of the processes that led to a particular outcome than just concentrating upon the outcome. Every such piece of understanding helps you inch closer to the understanding of the inexplicable. Everybody has his/her own defined set of beliefs and theories to explain the surreal. Pondering more about it helps refine or strengthen those beliefs. It might be worthless in the long run because, as I said, its individualistic, but it certainly helps to give your mind a wander from the pre-occupied emotional state that its already in.

The only fact that precludes the above process is the domination of the emotional state over the analytical state. Passion and strong motivation leads to strong curiosity. But curiosity to unravel the factors which affect emotional states is one which we refuse to choose, because of the immense difficulties and pain involved with it.

Exercising/controling to accept the "difficult" option seems to be the only solution. But it means that one's emotions are now being attached to a new series of events ; the only solace being : this "series of events" has more variables under human control than the other set. The day we can train ourselves to adapt to the abovestated, I think our seas would see calmer weathers. Life would be less human then. Would we be seeking that life?

It seems that the refinement in the architecture of Matrix would go on forever.

MA.PE.DO

Recursion...one of the wonderful capabilities that the human brain is endowed with (may be other species also have this capability...i dunno), leads to one more step...brain thinking about itself. Just was discussing a possibility with one of the persons I know...about a surge in a part of brain activating physically nearby cells (sort of EMI(electromagentic interference) or crosstalk) and the attention being diverted to something totally unrelated to the context. Is it the fault of the individual owning the brain that he/she has so much information that this happens invariably and conversations are digressed or is it a manufacturing defect that data appropriation in the filesystem is improper? (or is it that my imagination in the function of brain's memory storage and explanation in terms of real life systems is too naive/inappropriate?) Nevertheless, digressing in the conversation is quite common and as I have perceived, it goes unnoticed to a large audience participating in the conversation intently. So the pattern is uniform.

What if the point one digresses to, is a completely newfound experience/thought train for the individual, given the poor context handling capability and deep emotional impacts of the present? The confluence of the present point of discussion and the crosstalk induced thought process (might be old/unimportant/suppressed and unrelated) might happen in case the context of the present discussion is not properly bundled and separated from the unrelated chain of thoughts. What if there's some flaw in that? And add to that one more parameter of the individual feigning his agenda in the present discussion while his stress might be on something altogether opposite? What results of this confluence?

Just a li'l clarification on the individual feigning his/her part in the present situation which invariably is bound to happen most of the times. Take a small case of where the person is trying to fit himself in the scheme of things and trying to please concerned people. I guess this is what's happening everytime to most of you who read this. Compromise, adjustment, acclimatization, call it whatever, many a times the individual is feigning a complete different identity of himself to gain certain "materialistic favors" and many a times not. At times this is a totally complimentary painting an individual poses in "certain" aspects and if that's being done at a time when ideologies are weak or in the process of formation from certain "reliable" inputs, then it's almost everytime that the "reliable" ideology forming inputs fail when pitted against the "material gain provider"'s favors. This is one of the most dangerous compromises. But this was just an example to put forth the idea of the masks that we wear most of the times and at times so much so that we lose the identity of our true selves.


Back to the dilemma. What results of that ill combination of at times conflicting, at times unrelated but never supportive thought chains? Victimization (readers who differ may choose to comment with proper justification). Someone needs to be blamed. Someone should take the burden. Someone is the scapegoat. Who's the judge? Unfortunately, the person least capable of making a judgement at this point of time. The owner of the brain with the crisscrossing thought processes. What's the verdict? I dont know the answer. Obviously, someone, the individual's brain has a definition of, gets the prized sentence as an outcome of this. The problem is whether the choice of this scapegoat is obvious and can be derived from individual's behavioral patterns or is it everytime some random selection based on the confluence of events and whether this alleged target even needs to be a part of the action going on in the person's mind?


Before deciding upon the alleged criminal, I would ponder upon the sentence being awarded. Obvious and worst possible sentence is death. Depends on a) which thoughts have convoluted and whether any of them fills the individual with so much hatred that he/she chooses death sentence, b) upon the deep-rooted moral/social incentives that are sowed within the individual, c) who sowed them and whether he/she is a part of the confluence of the events and in what light and d) availability of the ability with the individual or an instrument to carry out the sentence. Seems a lot of pre-requisities. Most of the times, individual is undecided whether death is the ultimate sentence because of the overriding powers of "b" and "c". However, one major point that factors in here is the target : the identification of the criminal from the judge's limping judgemental powers. Death sentence is most easily accorded if this is a third person whose mental picture with the individual is poor and just a sketch made up of certain patterns and traits like mass killings, group killings, terrorist attacks etc. Less so if he/she's someone whose definition is clearer and accusations and flow of events has more of his/her involvement like male domination (wife beating, eve teasing etc), beating pets etc. Suffering is obviously more to the victim for this being the case of fence eating its own grass and the gratification to the individual also more. Finally, very few times, the individual chooses himself as the target. Result : suicides.

Zeroing in on the final instance when the target is chosen as self...What if the point "bc" mentioned above are all held in high esteem by the individual? Death sentence is ruled out definitely. And though at times individual might contemplate it, they come to the "rescue" time and again. And if they're not, then let me add a point to facilitate this special case e) a hallowed and consecrated thought process kept aside by the "individual's choice" as his life source ( let me call it "passion/obsession" for simplicity's sake :)) or bonding of the individual to certain characters not participating in the confluence of the chain of events, under consideration right now. So the individual cannot choose to end his/her life for either of the two reasons. What is the way out then?


The way out is what certain individual(s) are destined to experience for the rest of the life.