a TED talk and some introspection

Recently I saw a TED talk by Sheryl Sandberg (It's amazing how everything else other than studies become so interesting just before an exam. You have time to watch TED videos, write a blog and what not. No, I am not the smart guy who aces exams without studying. No, I don't have any backlogs either. It's just that tomorrow's exam is open book & open notes :P. Also, it helps that I am in my 8th semester now). 

If you don't know who Sheryl Sandberg is, well, she is the chief operating officer of facebook. Use your own judgement before you decide to watch the video at the end. For example, find out if your exam tomorrow is open book or not. I guess I don't need to tell you to understand the significance of what sem you're in.

In any case, she talks about women in leadership positions and the stereotypes associated with them. While listening to her I realized, I have seen a woman in leadership up close in Techniche 2013 itself. She was our Events' Management head (name withheld for not so obvious reasons). It has been more than a year since we were inducted as Techniche heads. Some of us held apprehensions (names withheld for obvious reasons) and argued at some point (very briefly - I'll add) that wouldn't be it far more convenient to have another head for events' management who would be a "man". Why ? Because, there was no precedence. Luckily, we decided against it. 

When I look back, it was the very first decision that we made as a team of heads and I am glad that we did so. I am glad not because she turned out to be an excellent leader(her competence was never in doubt) but what she came to symbolize. Everyone nowadays talks of "women empowerment" (even Rahul Gandhi does ), but get this, the year following our tenure i.e this year, TWO out of SEVEN heads are women (a staggering increase of 100 % :-) ). And it is a testament to the diligence and dexterity of our (former) events head that this time around no one was apprehensive. I wish the new team members success. I also wish that you learn the most out of your leadership tenure. It is very unlikely that you'll go onto change the world in a year, but bring a change in every small way you can.

P.S: Views expressed are the author's own and will be retracted(or edited) at the first hint of criticism. Just kidding ! .. free speech is my birthright.

A magic wand

One of our professors from the Department of Design asked us one simple question - "What do you want to do in the next 5 years?" To make it more intriguing he added - "I give you a magic wand and so that you can be whoever and whatever you want to be."

A few of us told our views about what we would like to achieve in the future. Someone wanted to do something for his village, someone wanted to do something for children, etc.

There are times in one's life when one is hit by epiphanies (the plural of epiphany). That moment, during the design class, was one in my life. Even if I didn't have a wand, I was not sure what I wanted from my life. Do I get a job? What kind of job? Start something on my own? Or a MS/PhD?

The magic wand was supposed to make answering the question more easy. But I realized if I did have a magic wand I wouldn't want any of those. A job, a company, a PhD - all seem so insignificant. These are all the things that I can achieve without a wand (probably). Am I not then limiting my goals to what I can achieve instead of what I truly want. Reminds me of Kalam's quote "Having a small aim is crime."

So, what do I want in the next 5 years? It took me sometime to figure it out. I want to experience something new everyday. I want to see the auroras in the Artic, climb Everest, wade across the Amazon, listen to the Niagra, taste all cuisines of potato, drive a ferrari and meet new people. I wish I had a magic wand.

My Internship at NCL

I know, I know - It's been a while since I last blogged but I was helpless. You must understand how awfully  busy I have been working on my internship project. I slog from morning 9am to midnight, writing hundreds of lines of codes, debugging, reading journals, etc, etc....Phew! I get some respite on Sundays which incidentally is the only time I get to sleep.

Okay! That was a lie(a big fat one). The truth is - "I get up at 9am, reach lab by 10am, eat breakfast by 10:30 and then get to work. My job is computational in nature and working in close proximity with computers has its share of unique occupational hazards, namely, www.facebook.com. Unlike my colleagues in wet labs who get safety gears there's none available for me."

But seriously, awesome friends and riveting roomies here have made my stay at NCL joyful. Will post more stuff about my internship and its stories as soon as I am done with my work...until then, you know where to reach me: facebook ;-)

Sherlock Holmes once met a Bengali writer Hurrie Chunder Mukherjee

Just back from an exciting lecture by Suneet Singh Tuli(CEO, Datawind), organized as a part of IIT Guwahati Entreprenerial Summit. F.Y.I - Datawind is the company manufacturing the Aakash tablet. So, he talked about the 'Indian Pride' and how he used it to his advantage against all adversities. I don't want to write anything about his lecture here because I wouldn't be able to do justice to his  narration(more likely reason is that yours truly is feeling too lazy) but you may try to get a copy of the video recording from the organisers.

Anyway, the above things got little to do with Sherlock Homes. I am not a big fan of Sherlock Holmes stories but I had watched the BBC series - like any true IITian - within a span of two days. And I must admit it did catch up my imagination though not as much as what I am about to tell you. So, I was reading the book 'The Fang of Summoning' by Giti Chandra when it struck me to check how many Indian writers wrote fantasy which I will make it very clear excludes the crappy and disgusting love novels from stupid engineers. It was then that I came across Vodafone Crossword Book award winner 'Mandala of Sherlock Holmes' by author Jamyang Norbu. I will simply quote the abstract found on the internet(what can I do? laziness is my vice) ............

In 1891, a horrified British public learnt that Sherlock Homes - in a last deadly struggle with arch criminal Professor Moriarty - had perished at the Reichenbach Falls in Switzerland . Two years later, popular demand made Conan Doyle resurrect the great detective. Holmes informs a stunned Dr. Watson: 'I traveled for two years in Tibet , therefore, and amused myself by visiting Lhasa .'
This is all that the world has known of Sherlock Holmes' journey to the East. Jamyang Norbu - an avid reader of Kipling and Doyle - decides to take the matter in his hands; to investigate Holmes' stay in Lhasa , Tibet . What he unearths is the Mandala , written by a wily Bengali scholar, Hurrie Chunder Mookherjee, Holmes' traveling companion. The Mandala holds the key to the mystery and revelas that it is difficult to resist.
An exciting, often richly humorous detective story The Mandala of Sherlock Holmes also evokes the romance of Kipling's India .

Truly proud of being an Indian today...... 

Entrepreneurship in Chemical Engineering

We all idolise Bill Gates, Zuckerburg, Steve Jobs, Page & Brin; founders of multi-billion dollar enterprises Microsoft, Facebook, Apple, etcetera. Sometimes I wonder - all these giants built their empires on technology that involved computer sciences. Is there any hope for a chemical engineer to achieve similar success in entrepreneurship? Or for that matter let’s take someone from Physics/Mathematics background. Even though most physicists are more absorbed in tearing the mask off nature and staring at the face of God than creating jobs not unlike mathematicians who dwell in some deep problem of their own making. Common sense suggests - it is possible. People have made money from all kinds of non-sense (fart app, pet rock), why can't it be made from the knowledge of Physics and Mathematics?
But has any Chemical Engineer made money recently? In 2009, Becton Dickinson Diagnostic Systems acquired Handy Labs, a molecular diagnostic start-up company, in a landmark deal valued at more than $275 million. One of its founders is Dr. Kalyan Handique, a former student of IIT-B and Kendriya Vidyalaya, Khanapara; this son of Assam co-founded the company while he was doing his PhD work in the University of Michigan. Shown below is an old youtube video of Handy Lab....

Currently, he is the CEO of another company DeNovo Sciences, which incidentally also won North America's largest business plan competition, the 'Accelerate MichiganInnovation Competition Award' this year. One of his interviews with details of DeNovo Sciences. Kudos to this gentleman and his team for transforming medical technology, and in the way improving the lives of many.
I think it's time for my batch mates to start looking beyond the traditional domains of chemical engineering like petroleum(I know it pays a lot). And also to move ahead and think bigger than campus startups Foodbeez, Hunger Connections, etc. (I am, in no way belittling the achievements of students involved. However, I shall put forth to you the same famous question that was once asked “Do you want to sell sugared water for the rest of your life? Or do you want to ….. change the world?”)

My New Year Resolutions

2011 is about to end and the much hyped 2012 is knocking at my doorstep. It's time to flow with the flow. But, to ensure that next year is as fruitful and prosperous as it can be, the universe demands a little preparation. Ladies and gentleman, with great pleasure I present to you - My New Year Resolutions

All resolutions invariably mean leaving privileges and comforts. What privilege and comfort should I forgo this time? It doesn't make sense to promise something I cannot fulfill nor does it make sense to undertake something with no positive returns.

So, my carefully chosen new year resolutions for 2012:

#1. I promise to be more productive. May be I'll try my hand in art history, humanities & the social sciences, cooking, etc.
#2. A little less hypocriticism. 

#3. Will try to get into some kind of a relationship.

#4. And decrease my waist to a less humiliating size. 

Only time will tell whether I shall be able to accomplish these or not. Number-3 definitely looks insurmountable and so does number-4. Lets see. I'll let you know on this same occasion next year.

What's your new year resolution?

HAPPY NEW YEAR

Cooking - the ChemE way

As I have told you before, I was learning to cook from my mother these days. Today, I went a little further ahead in my education and cooked dinner independently, i.e., without any help from my guru. It was a simple affair – rice and some cabbage; the end effect was witnessed by my sister, mother and me. From the perspective of a first time cook, I would say it exceeded expectation (EE).

The utensils remain to be scrubbed but as I had to tell you folks this little exuberant news, I excused myself of the duty and let mother handle it (after all, I had apprenticed to become a cook and not a dish-washer :).

As is the case with any initial venture, I made a few mistakes and I learned quite a lot about the nitty-gritty of cooking. The engineer in me could not help but make a few observations that popped up in my head during the enterprise.

Cooking is an art. However, I think it will bloom fantastically if the rigours of engineering laws are applied to it. For instance, a knowledge of chemistry behind the addition of various ingredients should be drawn up. It is really frustrating when you have to rely on someone else’s recipe which are, most of the time, a result of the primitive approach of trial and error method. How can you be sure an X amount of this substance and Y amount of that substance will give the most optimum result? I apologize, Sir, I cannot take your word for this when I know that your conclusion is the outcome of a very poor and inefficient scientific endeavour, namely, the trial and error method.

Also, if I want to substitute one ingredient with the other when the former is unavailable, how will I calculate the deviation of my new dish from the original? What about substitution brought about by necessities like allergies(such as peanut allergy), diseases like diabetes, etc.?

The molecular level of chemistry might be too mind-boggling for non-chemists and at the reaction level, it might be too humungous. If that is the case, some simpler empirical relations can be developed to guide the composition of everyday dishes.

Notwithstanding, we must refrain from creating equations that are computationally extensive to solve, as resources of the homemaker are somewhat limited. A more prudent solution would be to develop pictorial graphs on the lines of Mollier diagram and Moody’s chart.

I believe that it is only a matter of time before somebody achieves the points I have elucidated above. Only then will the homemaker be worthy of the name –‘the domestic engineer’.