US Diaries

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Abortion in the ears

My wife is an ENT Surgeon while I am a Gynaecologist. This can lead to some complications, as I recently learned to my anguish. A General Practitioner called me up and told me that she is sending a patient of hers for an abortion. Unknown to me, she had also referred a female with earwax for removal of the wax to my wife.

I duly informed the receptionist to send the patient right in as she was expected (and expecting!) As Murphy lays down the laws of our hospital, it was but natural that the patient who wanted the wax removed from her ear, landed up with me. This is the conversation that I had with the patient.
"Please come in. Be seated." I said with a big smile. I always have a big smile, when I am going to earn some money. The patient gave a feeble smile and sat hesitantly on the edge of the chair. "Relax."

"Doctor, will this hurt a lot?"

"Not at all."

The patient relaxed visibly. "You know something, Doctor, we tried removing it at home, but failed."

I was shocked. "Thank God. Trying this at home can cause serious complications."

"I first tried to remove it by jumping up and down, but it just wouldn't budge."

I smiled and said, "If it were that easy, who would need doctors?"

She gave a cute smile and said, "Yeah! My neighbour tried to remove it with his finger, but the hole is so small that he used a hair pin."

"Oh my God!"

"Yes! My mother even tried a matchstick."

My blood pressure was shooting skywards. I just sputtered without uttering a word.

"Tell me, doctor, how do I avoid getting this dirt inside me?"

I knew that it was an unwanted pregnancy, but calling it dirt was too much. I replied a bit angrily, "There are tablets which can prevent this happening. Or you could use protection at night."

Now it was the patient's turn to be confused, "You mean to say that it happens only at night?"

I saw her point. "No! No! I meant anytime of the day, whenever you are in the mood, you should use protection."

She was even more confused, "It depends on my moods?"

Again I saw her point.. "My mistake. You need not be in any sort of mood. It just happens."

"My neighbour advised me to go to one of those chaps who sit by the roadside."

"You mean that pin man?"

"Yeah!"

This neighbour of hers seemed to be a very dangerous man. Besides using pins, he was sending her to such quacks. The only safety he knew was among the pins. "You were wise not to heed his advice."

"But I tried his other advice. He told me to put warm oil inside and wait. However, that also did not work."

This was getting more and more bizarre. Her neighbour deserved to be locked up either in a padded cell or a barred one.

"But have you taken your husband's permission?"

Now the patient looked confused. "Do I have to take my husband's permission? Because if you need his sign, he is working in Dubai . We were not able to meet for the last one year."

It was my turn to be shocked. I gave a sly smirk. It was one of 'those' cases. The pin-wielding neighbour seemed to me the usual suspect. I reassured her. "No! No! The husband's sign is not at all needed."

"However, I did inform him on phone."

Her husband seemed to me a very broad-minded fellow. I didn't know whether to congratulate her or to commiserate with her. So I hastily turned to other aspects. "Its good that you came a bit early."

"Actually I wanted to come early in the morning, but I had some other work."

"Oh! I did not mean early today. I meant that if you had delayed this removal, it would have started moving. Then it would have developed a heartbeat."

The patient was staring at me wide eyed as if watching a horror movie. Looking at her face, I decided that she was not fit to listen to the grotesque details. I decided to relieve her a bit. I said, "You will bleed a bit, but only for a few days."

By now, the poor patient was trembling, "how-H-How much bleeding?"

"Oh, only slightly more than your menstrual period, and it will continue only for a week or so."

By now the patient was clutching her hair in her fingers and staring at me wide-eyed. I asked her soothingly, "Why don't you lie down on the examination table? Remove your clothes and relax."

This was the final straw. She didn't even wish me goodbye. I saw just a blur of motion leaving my consulting room at top speed.

How to make up after a fight with her?

If you made the mistake of engaging in the fight with your loved one, your girl friend, your wife or your secretary, this is the best advise to make up for it. Remember you can always send this as an email.

I am sorry , my ! I love you so much but I keep hurting you. Last night I looked up into the stars and matched each one with a reason why I love you. I was doing great until I ran out of stars. You know what? If you held up 11 roses into a mirror, you’d be looking at 12 of the most beautiful things in the world. Since you are so beautiful, I sent an angel to look over you at night. The angel came back a minute later and I asked it why. It told me "Angels don't watch other angels." I wanted to tell you that you are my best friend, my shoulder to lean on, the one person I know I can count on, you're the love of my life, you're my one and only, you're my everything. If I had to choose between breathing and loving you, I would use my last breath to say, I love you. Before I run out of words to express my feelings, I want to say that, I could conquer the world with just one hand as long as you were holding the other. Never leave me. Please always be there not for me but with me.

Love you.
Yours,


Don't be a jackass sending this in email without replacing those placeholders, otherwise another fight will ensue.

I will fight for my right

How would you like your day to start? Fine, let us say it started well. How would you like it to end? You would wish like I do. How many times does that really happen? If you are very lucky often, but never always. I dare to say no one in the world ever had all days that were good. I am no exception. I had kind of a bad day today and more to come tomorrow. That too when I had almost a bad day - the day before yesterday.

The story goes like this. I reached Bangalore on 10th of May, 2010. Addicted to technology, I missed two things - phone and internet. Therefore, I bought a USB internet connect card and an Airtel Sim that very evening. It is 28th May today - 18 days since I've been here. On 26th May my internet suddenly died on me without any email or SMS notification. Why would they ask for these details if they do not want to use them? Huh. I enquired and found out that apparently my subscription to Internet ended that day, surprisingly at 9:00PM. I had to call it a day helplessly, when I was all charged to work on a project.

Coming to the recent incident - I am not a texting (SMSing) person but for some odd reason yesterday I paid a sum of Rs. 52 to get unlimited SMS service for a month. I texted everyone, even JD. This afternoon, suddenly my outbox was full of messages that were not sent. I was ok, as none of them were sent to my boss Dr. Narayanan. In the evening, I tried to call Deutsche Bank customer service to request them not cancel my account as they mentioned in their email today. To my dismay, I found out that outgoing calls from my number were blocked. I was not sure what was happening. I called Airtel customer care and, added insult to injury, they told me that not only my outgoing calls were blocked, my sim has also been recycled. When, out of curiosity, I asked what that meant I was told that I could no longer use this sim and will lose my balance of Rs. 100 + Rs. 52 spent on that stupid texting scheme. I felt like kicking my ass for sending SMS to JD. The representative also told me that the reason for this was that my documents were not submitted. How the hell is this possible? I did submit them, like twice. It wasn't ok the first time but then I submitted again and all went through quite well. I went (could not call right?) to the person who sold me that sim and was responsible to send my documents to concerned people. He sympathized for the balance. He said it doesn't work that way. You go to their (Airtel) office tomorrow and tell them your story. They will give you a duplicate sim which you will be able to use. I hope they do. I do not want to lose this number at any cost. Well, may be I can but "I will fight for my right". Hell yeah. If I was a big shot that line would have been printed in tomorrow's times paper somewhere. lol. A blog after a bad day is a great way to end it. Isn't it?

Can you reach anywhere?

Today I was reading something and Zeno of Elea's paradox drew my attention. It is quite interesting, hold your breath and read on. Wikipedia says "Zeno's paradoxes have puzzled, challenged, influenced, inspired, infuriated, and amused philosophers, mathematicians, physicists and school children for over two millennia. The most famous are the so-called "arguments against motion" described by Aristotle in his Physics."

This arguments against motion can be descibed as:

"That which is in motion must arrive at the half-way stage before it arrives at the goal. "
-Aristotle, Physics VI:9, 239b10

What does it mean? Suppose my friend JD wants to catch a stationary bus. Before he can get there, he must get halfway there. Before he can get halfway there, he must get a quarter of the way there. Before traveling a fourth, he must travel one-eighth; before an eighth, one-sixteenth; and so on. As he must travel an infinite number of distances, he can never catch the bus. This argument is called the Dichotomy because it involves repeatedly splitting a distance into two parts. If this is not true than infinity is something that can practically yield "finitism". If this is true there is no point moving.

What do you think?

Yes this is PhD

Since when I was a kid, thought of becoming a PhD fascinated me. I looked up to people who talked about PhD, I rarely met anyone though. When I was in XII standard one of our teachers was a PhD, in fact the first person with a PhD I met in person. He was impressive, he was even good to me and I respected him as a teacher. Nitin Shah was his name and he had the eccentricity of a genius. I wanted to be like him, then I moved to DA-IICT and there were professors who were PhDs. It looked like PhD was a common thing there. Yet, I admired them for being called Dr. So and So.

When I look back and try to connect the dots, I look down at me as if I am a loser. I gradually, eventually developed myself into a freak; at least I had a clear conscience. I made a big move one year after graduating, leaving my easier life as a software engineer and now here I am, In USA doing PhD and having nightmares..or probably daymares, for I seldom can sleep at nights. I do not know what am I doing, I have no idea where am I going, and I have no idea if PhD is gonna end some day.

Most of my friends are married except Prk and Kunal. Well, Kunal is half married, engaged that is. My sisters remind me of my age during skype calls. They lure me to this institution of marriage by telling me what a stunning mermaid is waiting there for me to get married to. However, being a loser I have no idea what do I want. I get scared thinking of anything and I often try not to. I also have (had probably) B12 deficiency which affects the behavior of my brain and which made me feel good about myself being a crazy freak.

I taught last semester and I would say things in class that I did not intend to. While teaching XML, for example, I would suddenly start using the word Python Compiler to mean XML interpreter and only when students started smirking I would know I goofed up. I am getting crazy or I don't know probably I am already half crazy. I had to write a paper which I did start, but couldn't finish the project in time to close the paper and submit it. I have the project almost ready now and perhaps I will submit it next month. It is 6:47AM and I did not sleep a wink last night. I just couldn't, even though I tried.

Not all is bad, I still don't get suicidal thoughts. I still haven't lost all hope. I am slow but I am moving and as the famous Japanese adage goes "Never be afraid of moving slowly but of standing still".

I feel better after vomiting out this senseless post and I think I can sleep in a while, after finishing Chetan Bhagat's yet another book. For I am a nerd, let me tell you an old news. Google has been banned in China. Because of political issues Google doesn't say Chinese Govt tried to hack Gmail accounts of human-rights activists. Instead, they just said that someone did. Yeah, a hacker has so much to know about a human-rights activist's emails.

Well, now I am feeling much better. Thanks blogger...or thanks to Google indirectly.