Hobbies: Wasting time

My boss has asked me to write short summaries of the papers that I read based on my understanding of them. But what do you do when you don't understand them? 

Ans: You press Alt+Tab and switch to Google Chrome and update your blog instead. So, here I am.. 

As you would understand, I am trying to make some efforts to learn/understand Dutch, but haven't been very successful.. I have reached a point where I can read it and get the gist of it, but spoken Dutch sounds, well, Dutch to me.. Though I have found some similarities between Hindi and Dutch.. like "name" is "naam" both in Dutch as well as in Hindi.. "room" is "kamer" in Dutch and "kamraa" in Hindi.. ok, maybe this one wasn't that close, but wasn't that far either.. this maybe a mere coincidence but I think it has its roots in the fact that Latin and Samskrit seem to share some history.. for example, "maatar" and "pitar" are the roots of the words "maata" (mother) and "pita" (father) in samskrit, while "madre" and "padre" mean the same in spanish... and while, most people would think that Dutch is a mix of German and English (which to a huge extent is true, even as Dutch ppl have tried to curb their desire to form very very long words unlike Germans), it does have a strong influence of French as well, for they along with English helped "design" the language.

Quickly, some new Dutch words that I learnt: "dicht" which means close.. "weg" means way.. "straat" means street.. "laan" means lane.. i'll keep updating the list, in case you ever plan to visit Holland. Btw, even as I learn these words, I have no illusions whatsoever of my knowledge in Dutch; it's scarce to say the least.. and I realized that today when a Dutch friend of mine who I had lunch with in "campus restaurant" simply smiled in "derision" when I tried to say "Spuistraat" and completely made a mess of it. ("ui" is a diphthong and is not pronounced the way you would think it should be, it has no equivalent sounds in Hindi or English).. 

As she suggested to me, that maybe I can teach someone Hindi in exchange of learning Dutch, I realized that I am rather ill-equipped to teach anyone Hindi.. I can probably teach you English, maybe even a litte bit Samskrit, but Hindi? I wonder if even I speak Hindi correctly ever! But I think that I speak Hindi better than most Indians do (not all ofcourse), yet I know it's not proper Hindi. So, does it mean we are the "rednecks" of India? Indians (and maybe almost everyone) in USA always try to make fun of people from "South" (American South) having rather bad English.. that they speak some rural trash American, and not English.. but do we ever try to find out as to what percentage of Indians ever speak proper Hindi? 

Anyway, that was a fairly long discussion on languages, maybe next time I'll discuss accents.. but for now, let me talk about my days in Amsterdam.. After the last entry on Monday, this is my 1st write-up.. So, maybe I should talk about how I have started on my formal proceedings at the university and city, having applied for residence permit and undergone Tuberculosis checkup (Yes, barring some nationalities, every immigrant has to undergo TBC checkup). It didn't take too long nor was it painful, but I was definitely disappointed when I found out that India has some of the highest occurence rates of TB.. followed by China and Russia.. including Venezuela and a few more (besides ofcourse a lot of countries in Africa).. If you notice a pattern, you can probably see that the self-acclaimed socialist/communist economies (formerly, India as well) happen to have the worst cases of TB.. does it mean that socialism means that nobody is taken care of, let alone everybody? or in the communist form of socialism, governments try to bite more than they can chew and end up failing at all fronts?

Maybe, I can also let you in on how I ran around for 2 days to get a bank account before being finally told that I can't have it before I get a Social Security number, which would take another 2 weeks.. which means, I can't get a health insurance or phone or internet connection until then.. well, it's fine as far as I am concerned now, but it did make me go as long as 6-8 hrs without food.. and I DON'T like that.. however, this follows my pattern of not eating properly for the 1st few months whenever I go to a new country/place.. I remember how I had lost 9 kgs in 3 months in Edinburgh, and had told Piyush Ranjan that I have a female supermodel figure now, all I need is a pair of boobs.. :D (I don't care if it's not funny, I am not feeling very funny right now).. Anyway, I think I will soon pick up some sports activity (I am thinking about wall/rock climbing) and, hopefully, will start eating properly.. 

First of all, I have to stop drinking too much tea/coffee with the group though.. that always screws up my appetite.. people in my group (especially an Indian guy named Nakul) are nice and quite helpful, even as most people try to keep themselves concerned with their own work and business.. I like the environment, but I don't understand the general/accepted protocol in timings of work.. For example, on Tuesday, I left my office at 6.30 pm and almost everyone in the group including boss was still working, and I felt like an asshole leaving that early.. so next day, I left at 6.45 pm and saw that I was the only one left on the floor (besides my boss).. I had seen everyone arrive before 8.45 am (I had arrived at 8.10 am).. so I figured maybe people come in early and leave early.. so today, I reached office at 8 in the morning and for 1 hr, noone showed up!! I guess, I'll have to form my own schedule.. which means, almost never showing up for work - that's my favorite schedule! :D

Well, I walk everyday to the office and back.. I plan to buy a bike soon, but they are too damn expensive and I have almost run out of the cash in Euros.. all I have left is in Dollars.. I did try to buy a bike though, from a very very white American guy from Tulsa (major coincidence).. he seemed like an honest guy and I may be wrog, but I had a suspicion that the bikes were stolen and risky.. besides they were all ladies bikes, and even though people in Amsterdam ride ladies bikes all the time, I am not too big on doing that..

The good thing is that the work/training in lab has started.. and even though my first attempt at growing E. Coli with AppA protein stain failed (the PhD student gave me the culture/plasmid with the wrong stain), I am enjoying it.. it's new, it's exciting, and for a mechanical emgineer with not much background in Microbiology lab, it's definitely challenging.. I think I have adapted very quickly to the lab and am learning pretty fast, and made my 1st batch of medium (for growing E. Coli) today, all by myself.. and it looks good, i.e. it looks like urine but it's supposed to look like that - looks are subjective ofcourse.. :).. tomorrow, I'll prepare more solutions, and try innoculation of E. Coli again starting Monday - it's a 3-4 day experiment.. basically, a big week ahead as I try not to break/spill anything or let loose some dangerous species of bacteria in the lab.. :D