Ramblings on reflections

And here it is again....the dreadful snow storm. To make matters worse I had to drive all the way to the City (NY, in case you are wondering) and back to my office while the storm was going on. What I really wanted to do was head home and make some MOMO and eat them steaming hot for lunch !! My sweetheart would love it too - and my job doesn't actually demand my presence at office (so, why am I here then?). Any way, like you might have guessed by now - I write a lot when it snows !! Here is the product of the lousy, grey weather and ample of time at hand. (A fair warning - a lot of reflection and ramblings..not much of a thoughtfuld entry....)

The storm got worse once I hit the road, and so did the traffic. We, my sweetheart & I, love The City - it has got it's own energy and vibe about it; but I hate driving here. I live in Connecticut and it takes about an hour (give or take 20 mins) to get to JFK from my place. Today, my destination was not JFK and even with the terrible weather, the traffic was the same - horrible. Behind the wheel, there I was in the leftmost lane on I-95, south bound. On my right was a trailer and on left was the safety barrier. I feel "boxed-in" in this type of condition, but there was nothing I could do about it. The trailer that I mentioned was just one among the many others - as far as I could see ahead and in my rear view mirror. So, I decided to stick to my lane and wait for better space to jump lanes or speed well ahead the mile or so of the string of trailers. If I looked to my left and across the north bound traffic lanes of the I-95, I could see the City's infamous skyline through the hazy and grey snow shower. The weather condition did give me an opportunity to see the night-lights in the daytime !! I started to wander off in my thoughts...as I usually do when I am bored behind wheels. It usually starts with one of my favorite songs in my head - "Keep your eyes on the road and your hands upon the wheel..." by Jim Morrison. And then I drift off....I started thinking - how on earth did I get here ? A लुरे boy from a dusty town in eastern Neapl whom everyone called नसे .... It's hard to understand what roles everyone and everything had in shaping my fate in a way that I am where I am today doing what I am doing - good or bad ! What did my parents do? What did I do? Who did more? Or less? What happens now onwards? If I am not certain of the causality of my current being, who/what do I refere to for future? I am not exagerrating - it is just a sample of my thought. Don't get me wrong - I ponder on good things too and sometimes really useful stuff. Like, I have thought of several neat algorithms to solve my problems at work. Or like, I think about how far I have come from the school in Phidim where we had to paint our black board with wasted batterie's carbon dusts to working in a high tech field in a huge organization.

I feel I have done well and even look forward to doing even more. I feel good about the decisions that I made in shaping my life - some of which got my parents really scared - like walking out of office in well paying job in the middle of a day and never going back to work there. My parents were not only shocked, but thought I had either screwed up really bad or had fought with my boss. Neither was true - my boss would kill to keep me there and I was about half a day away from completing a really important project. I had reasons for leaving but I was sure no one would understand it if I explained it to them, esp. not my parents - in fact nor would any parent. For your reading pleasure, here it is - I just got bored !! Really, it was that simple. I was working 7am-6pm normally and 6:00am-midnight when required. I loved it when there were challenges and critical decisions were to be made - I simply loathed the mundane routine part of the job. Day in and day out, I would sit there writing code, test and deploy. A fix here and a patch there and the process repeated itself again. More than writing code, I enjoyed teaching my colleagues when they needed some help, which was most of my working hours - To think that I was made to work as a "volunteer" for 2 months so as to bring my skills up to par with my colleagues still surprises me. I think I was too naiive then - I accepted it ! As much as liked programming, I hated the lack of creativity in producing the similar looking codes for each projects. I simply couldn't see myself doing that for another day - period. So, I took a hike and never returned.

I have made decisions like that many times in my life and they may look to be very irrational and done at a whim. However, I don't think they were hasty decisions. If you know about Myers-Briggs test, my personality type is INTJ (Introvert, Intuitive, Thiking and Judging). When the "world" sees me making a decision, it is actually a result of a culmination of at least few weeks of silent contemplation, calculation, reflection and analysis. If the decision happens to be a big one, others only see the act of my making a decision and term it as a light-handedness. No wonder everyone, including my sweetheart, were astounded, to say the least, when I declared that I was getting out of school - just a dissertaion away from getting my PhD. No, I'm not blaming anyone for it. I still want to get that degree, but not without purpose or without meaning. I learned about conducting scientific research, presenting academic papers, publishing in IEEE, teaching classes and digested volumes upon volumes of conference proceedings. I learnt to live like a sage and sometimes live in the lab for the entire week - no shave, no shower, only mouthwash !! But, by the time I quit I realized that I was wasting my time. I wanted to teach but certainly not straight out of school. I wanted to go work in the "industry" before I started teaching and a PhD would in fact be an obstacle in most circumstances than an aid. I wanted to learn about the "science" part in computer science and I believed I had gathered enough understanding of it to conduct a decent conversation with likes of Bjarne Stroustrup, Andrey Markov, Donald Knuth and the other GODs of the science. I simply saw no reason for me to stick around in school and waste any more time - I was not getting any younger !! As much as I wanted that degree, I didn't want it just for the sake of it. No "Dactar saa'b" for me if it has no meaning. Boy, my advisor was confused ! He even asked me to break for some time and come back to school without loosing a semester or credits ! He thought I was simply overworked ! It couldn't be farther from the truth - I was not doing anything for few weeks but thiking. I had few chapters of dissertation going on and was preparing to gather my result sets. Otherwise, I was just keeing a cool head and thinking about it all. Why do I want the degree? Is it not foolish to let go of something that you have worked for so long and so hard? What am I going to do once I leave school? Do I want to really quit school? For few weeks, that was my "song in the head". I think I have a gift of being very focused on my thought, or may be I am very selfish. Whenever I have to make such decisions, I never think of the effects my decision would have on others. Like, what will my parents think? What will my wife think? What will others think of me? I believe, it is because I don't worry about others in my decision making process that I can analyze what is best for me. I am certain I would not be happier now if I were teaching and not working in the market. I am certain I would never know how the real-world actually works had I started teaching - after all, IT field in Nepal is not a real-world per se. I understand that I let go of something that I was very close to getting but the only thing I probably missed is lengthening my name by few letters. I don't hate my name, so I don't really intend to complain about that "missed" opportunity !!

No regrets, dear friends - life is good. I had a joy ride all the way from primary school to school here in the US. Never stopped learning and never stopped making friends. Speaking of friends, I dont' make many but tend to stick to the ones I make. My best friend is still the one that I made in my eighth grade - and we never studied together after 10th !! How things turn out in life ! Can you believe it - we used to write letters to each other, the old fashioned way! In fact, when I was in Idia for my bachelor degree, I was among the ones who got the most letters ! The postman loved me for the tips he got delivering the letters and the maganizes that I used to subscribe to. I also wrote letters to my other friends, my parents and also my brothers who studied somewhere else in India. How fast the world changes ! Right after I returned from India (1998), Email got HUGE in KTM! Well, it took me one more year to getting around buying a computer and another 2 years to getting an Email account at home. How different it is now and we all take it for granted. With so much going around in Nepal, each day seemingly hopeless than the earlier, I try to find solace in the good things of life, good people we meet and the good things we do. We are simple human beings but we do act in very COMPLEX ways - but this is a different post altogether. Regardless, good things happen to us and we make good things happen to someone else - what a warm feeling this is, isn't it?

Dear me !! what did I write? Pardon me, my dears ! I do get carried away. What can I say - I am one heck of a talkative introvert - an oxymoron? or just an ox and and a moron? Take your pick !!

PS: I won't be reading much for some time. Trying to enjoy being a dad. I'm not one yet - but, I intend to enjoy each moment of the preparation and thereafter. So, more time and energy required on something else. However, I'm still open for your suggestions for good books that you have read (not the ones you've heard) !!