Once you see the results , it becomes an addiction !

Ha! The one thing I always wanted to add into my life and that was a healthy workout routine. Me and my roommate decided to join Gym and so we went to find one. We entered into one and since then lot many things changed.
First was that she has to move to Bangalore, which left me alone here with a challenge to go to gym alone. We would have the most fun in whole day in Gym, well the main reason of this is that it's a unisex gym. and actually it's a men's gym where women are also allowed. #Genderequality ;) So including the owner , our whole gym is filled with quirky and tattooed, gym freak people. Which is pretty much a good reason to keep going every day for any single girl  ;)

 Apart from that it's on my way to home, so I don't have to twist my road and go there rather I just need to get off from office commute and go straight into gym. As I said there are very less girls in my gym so that gives me benefit of being the smartest cow in the herd of sheep.
I go straight from office so I get to be two people at once, winged eyeliner and 4 inch high heeled chick to sports shoed working out determined chick.
I have this useless quality of turning into an extremely different person when I change something slightly.
 I love the ambiance there where everyone seems to be working on one single thing and that's to look better and fit. Some do come there for actual health problems, and some to reduce weight but I go there to gain weight and a confidence that I wish to look even better than I look now.
 I wake up early to follow my abs workout and look forward to the pain in muscles in the evening where I don't have to think about any of the bullshit in my life.
The high pitch music thumps in my ears as I move forward each day with one bit by bit. Getting high on adrenaline and excitement. So that's how it goes. One of the notable experience I am having. #workoutdays !

Game of Fake and Real

Alright folks, so three things.

Artificial Intelligence Revolution

Improved Vocal Manipulation Techniques

Improved Video Manipulation Techniques

 Few days ago the news came in as scientists shut down their Artificial Intelligence program after the Bots started to speak with one another by creating the code language which was incomprehensible by humans. Well yeah, sounds like the movie I-Robot right, where Will Smith is afraid of Robots because he thinks they are dangerous if given too much power?

Yeah, the movie goes on and on while ending with a robot taking control over human lives and telling them how they should live because they do not have the ability to take smart decisions for their life and they tend to commit mistakes.

Well how close are we to this fiction now? What if the AI Bots starts making complex languages and do their own incomprehensible work which no human can understand.

Facebook has shut down two artificial intelligences that appeared to be chatting to each other in a strange language only they understood.

Another two things which I came across where an Adobe technology can create your voice’s imitation while taking in only 20 minutes of your speech and make transcript of anything anyone wish to make a person say. Wow. Well that sounds horrifying ha.

Oh hold on. You thought its only limited to that.

Well we got Video manipulation too. Where you can take any prerecorded video and make the person in the video behave his facial expression according to another real time person imitating the words he wish to say.

So basically, you can take this video thing and combine it with the vocal thing and you’ve got yourself a reality you wish to see.

Wanna see president Trump saying “I am the worse president of the history!”? yep you have got that.

Wanna see president saying “I am sorry, We shall work on the Climate change together and make the world a better place”, got it.

Oh and also the main reason over which the creator of this technology debated was?

She wants to see her dead mother talking with her through a hologram, So?

Someone you loved passed away? Why wait, just pull out any video you have of them, feed them the things you want to hear, and press play. As easy as it can be.

No mourning required. Just get the hell out of reality and get your shit together within no time since they didn’t die right? How something doesn’t exist if it’s right there, in front of you?

I was travelling to my office in the morning when I was listening to this astonishing podcast about how the virtual reality can affect us in upcoming years featuring the interviews of the creators of this technology, and when asked about whether they understand the consequences of this, she was so freaking clue less. She couldn’t even blurt out a one full sentence defending her stand about this.

Somehow a random thought came into my mind about what Elon musk’s speculation about us living in a simulation and we do not have any idea about how to find it out.

I open my eyes, take a look around, and see other vehicles on road, and look at the rainy day’s sky and suddenly feel a shiver as what if what I see around is even a part of an experiment? What if we live in a virtual world where we comprehend everything based on our 5 senses and all of them could be manipulated?

I mean we already figured out how to imitate vision, audition and smell (up to some extent), how hard would it be to go all the way and manipulate all our 5 senses and make a new customized reality for us?

How crazy is this?

I mean, if one can think way further in future, do I have to verify each thing I see? Do I need to fix the filters to what I read and see and hear as to check whether this is real or not? And as it was mentioned at the end of podcast, of course in the end creating fake will be always easy than detecting the fake.

As per one of the characters in GOT said yesterday. Well, yesterday it was just a stupid thing Lord Baelish blurts out as part of his being a jerk process, but then today it seems so significant.

“Fight every battle, everywhere, always, in your mind. Everyone is your enemy, everyone is your friend. Every possible series of events is happening all at once. Live that way and nothing will surprise you. Everything that happens will be something that you’ve seen before.”

Interesting/Irrelevant American politics

     How come we start to enjoy things that are extremely irrelevant or not important in our life? 

i am a kind of person who was never interested in politics, it felt as if an extra branch of which i never needed to know anything about. 

i hated the campaigns they made, trying to get ahead of one another while throwing dirt on each other and then making mess of everything while being people who runs the country. 

and then I came across American politics few months ago and it suddenly changed my whole perspective of how one sees politics. Is that all it takes? a person who shocks you with the amount of idiotic things he does? 

and why should I be the one to bother even? 

when it's not even my country? 

but then as i dive into the question of why and how can a person like him lead a whole country with millions of people including different race and women and of different genders, i feel sicken to my stomach each passing day. 

I watch the random and each and every episode featuring comedians who's career been made since this election was over. scrutinising every sentence president says or does or doesn't say or doesn't do. 

It grows like an obsession with something different that you can't keep away from. 

I laugh so hard at their jokes and feel it's impact at the same time. 

feel sorry for those suffering who's health insurances are going to be snatched away in the name of reform, feel sorry for those who were banned from having a hope for their future, and also for those who served their country and now not be able to do so because of something they were born with snatches their right to do so. 

how can we begin to comprehend this all and still keep hope for upcoming days? 

i sit in my office and explain why am i interested in american politics and not aware neither interested of what goes around in my own country. Maybe i don't even give a shit about what they might be going through each day with new shocking news everyday, perhaps to me it's just a matter of shock element and to me it's just something to laugh and then leave it behind. But then it seems even more horrific. 

It's not even that difficult rather it's easy if you consider to find the golden means while making sure there is little damage done to anyone specific or group of people. but people put forth their personal views and wishes to satisfy their own agenda and then it all just goes to a shitty sewer made of hurt and suffering. and that's how we live through, taking on the extreme conditions which we can not understand neither change , while trying to make best of the situations. 

Clockwork Orange

Huh!
Finally after twisting my face to the violence and gore explained in this book, I finally finished it.

This book been tempting me since so many years to finish it, showing its weird cover in my recommendation list on goodreads. So I finally started to read and found out the weird language it was using.

The words like rot and rooker and platties and horrorshow making me cringe every time I came across them made it so difficult to continue it for a long time. Yet I persisted and finished it.

So the clockwork orange, at first you would think it is some kind of code language for something important as an order of the world or a person who runs the things in this world. But no. As it is an ultimately useless and meaning less object in our world, its context is the same in this world. As a clockwork orange is useless, criminals in this world are treated, as if being useless once they commit something that is against the previously defined norms.

The narrator calls himself as "humble" person but each time he says this, you want to slap right across his face to remind him that he is far away from calling himself humble. He does the stuff like hitting people with sticks, raping young girls in his own home(?), robbing people, doing drugs and the whole other violent activities and seem to explain them as if they are normal activities like drinking water and walking on road.

He is young and  lives with his parents after being into reform school for his previous mischievous behavior but reform school seem to be turning him into a hard core criminal.
Once he gets caught while robbing a elder lady alone in her home, his friends (whom he calls droogies, yuck! ) somehow escape but then Alex finds himself in prison after being proved of his crime.
You'd think the story would take a good end as Alex being humble in real in prison at least, but noooo. He does his shit even in prison, trying to kill and fight with other prison mates.

Then the government has come up with a brilliant plan of reforming criminals into civilized people by a psychological methods of making them sick while showing crimes on screen. It seems to be effective on Alex and soon he starts to feel sick with the thought of crime plus his favorite hobby listening to classical music like Mozart. The method effectively ruins his thinking ability making himself cringe with the violent things he would do to other people.
Alex is released and allowed to roam in the world outside as a free man but he struggles with the life as he leads on since nothing in the world makes him happy anymore.

In the meantime he starts to get thoughts like killing himself and he tries to commit suicide after not being able to stand a symphony by Beethoven which would have made him so happy before his treatment in prison.

He wakes up in hospital with his bones broken and again given a psychological treatment to reverse the previous one, he seems to be cured since  he has the thoughts of crime again, and he ends his not so "humble" story with note that he still exists and that we heard his story once.

to be honest, I did not even find any meaning in the book except some small insights.

I think the main thing explained in this plot was that we are  to be grateful for the world we live in because we have the opportunities to choose among the choices. When a higher authority limits your choices and then it leads to a absolute monotonous life.
 When reforming the criminals the method of changing their natural responses to the crime and hate cant help them. Since after certain period they can get those back as Alex does. They only seem to be interested in changing the outer shell of a man while the criminal instinct can not be fully erased from the core unless the man himself changes.

The only thing I loved about this book was that as they had so many different words for things. they had a word for Cigarettes. Can you guess what it is???





"Cancer"


Isnt its pretty amazing idea? To call something with its effect down the road. would't you think twice before having a "Cancer" if it might result into having the actual one.

So Clockwork Orange, Either has a real deep meaning or is overrated like "Catcher in the Rye", Either Alex is just a piece of shit in a shitty world or he is just a genius who seem to show his existence though being a Clockwork Orange.


   

Nostalgia of Flamboyant trees and summer days

Ever had a deja vu?
I get a lot of these when I am being nostalgic.. and it's a long summer Sunday in the month of may and as I look across my French class windows and the   Flamboyant tree is glowing as if on fire with its red and yellow flowers. And it takes me back to the time when I was 18 and preparing to give my 12th class exam. When I was kind of wondering what was going to happen with me once the results come out while watching the hundreds of Flamboyant trees flapping their red flowers in the hot air.
And seeing back at that period of my life it just doesn't make any sense so far. As if none of what we think of ourselves in moment of doubt matters. And no matter how deep you are in your deep despair it just always ends up being an unimportant issue.
I recite the vowels and repeat the French words and find myself getting happy with each moment passing that I have reached this far. And it gives me hope as if I can come up to here then I should root for my France dream more often.
Because then it will indeed be my most important wish to fulfill..
I see so many people around me, in office or on roads. Waiting patiently in the road full of traffic and waiting for parking place to get open so they can park and go into the shimmering malls to get things for which they toiled their days after days. And come back to their two digit lakhs or one digit millions homes with tv taking half the space in hall and fridge overflowing with unending supply of goods. Passing days after days in the   cycle of Monday blues and weekend hangovers and it just makes me sad. Sad to see myself doing the same thing. I hopelessly wait for the lazy weekend and then again go to spotless clean offices with feel of fake refreshing air.
Apart from that I love my work. I feel like I am doing something right to fix something by playing small part in a huge cycle. .  But it still doesn't seem enough. I guess I am just trying to get over this feeling of wasting away each moment with these 4 hours a week to recharge myself. Hopefully it will turn into something better.
Merci!
P.S :  It had been hell of a summer.. Eagerly waiting for the rain this year
:)

S-Town and John B McLemore and Time and .... Time

S-Town is a new podcast from Serial and This American Life, hosted by Brian Reed, about a man named John who despises his Alabama town and decides to do something about it. He asks Brian to investigate the son of a wealthy family who’s allegedly been bragging that he got away with murder. But then someone else ends up dead, and the search for the truth leads to a nasty feud, a hunt for hidden treasure, and an unearthing of the mysteries of one man’s life.

 

Brian, a longtime This American Life producer, started reporting this story more than three years ago, when he got an email from John with the subject line “John B McLemore lives in Shit town Alabama.”

 S-Town podcast

I was recommended to this podcast by a friend and then on a lazy day in office I hit the play button which takes me into the world of John where everything he sees is decaying and rotting and ultimately making his town "Woodstock" a shit town.

At first we are only given a short overview of what is going on as a middle aged man sends mail to a radio show about making a story on his concern regarding a murder that was maybe covered up.

Brian goes to find out about the thing once he decides to be involved in this and hence starts the story of mysterious events and a discovery that the cover up over which john was concerned was actually just a rumor and nobody actually got killed the way it was being spread.

 

Apparently Brian gets friendly with John and he keep on fascinating him and us with his extent of living his life.

 

at a certain point I was so intimated by the way story takes turn because it was so hard to believe because it wasn’t something that happens in our day life. Rather I have never heard anything so dramatic yet so real.

John shows Brian his hedge maze with 64 possible combinations of solving and one null set and Brian remains stunned with the same amount stunned we feel when we actually see john's maze.

It actually made me feel sad when I find out that the same maze and his property will be demolished by the same person on which john had suspect of a cover up. He just shrugs his shoulders and says "Well nah. I am not going to spend money on that hedge maze"

 

John talks of climate change as if its an apocalypse coming onto humans in upcoming years and he exclaims that why people shouldn’t bring any more kids in this world because they will suffer in this up sided down world which is ending slowly and that remind me of the same feeling I had at a certain point whether world is that good enough to bring my children into.

 

John talks of time as if its something we ignore and he understands. He is a horologist which is term for people who are interested in clocks and fixing old clocks and basically the time perspective of it and it reminds me how fascinating I myself find the time which just goes on. I look at the florescent lights shining in my office, watch million of dust particles spreading in the air and see so many people just moving and talking and doing stuffs that don’t really matter maybe.

 

John says that in all we only get a quarter of our life to do something worthwhile and it reminds me how many times this fact disappoints me that how less time we have left on the face of earth yet we spend doing things like procrastinating to avoid tasks that actually we should do or want to do.

 

John talks about his intimate relationships and it reminds me how much it all is universal the way we find relationships and intimacy and the whole aspect of companionship so similar. It reminds me of my own wish for being in a loving relationship despite of the fact that I know sometimes my situation actually contradicts what I want in my life. I find his cravings for someone to be around to talk of random stuff and complain about stuff that he cares about so familiar.

 

The story takes in climax turn while it digs into the hidden treasure John might be having because he was unbanked and earns loads from his clock repairing business. And we are expecting him to be a genius who had complex plans like his hedge maze to lead to his treasure so that it will not fall into wrong people. But then it disappoints us because no mention of further any treasure is made.

Ultimately I would repeat the things which surprised me the most and they were his wish to make a change in his life and ways to live it in a better way despite of his depression.

His enthusiasm towards something which is so dangerous that ultimately costs him his life but he keeps doing the fire gilding, I truly believe that John knew the level of danger he was playing with because the way his intellect is revealed slowly to us. But I think he still did it because it was something only he did without fear of its consequences.

When I was finished then I had a kind of feeling like loosing something so dearly but also there was a vague sense that even though John lived so many miles away from me and even though his house was hard to find despite of having exact location on map and even though he was nothing like someone I usually admire, I found him fascinating. I was angry on him for disrespecting women, for yelling curses on people and for ending his life so abruptly. I was also in the awe with the way he lived his life, the way he made a Sundial for his professor in the shape of sunflower. I was surprised to see the maze he built and the way he would be so interested in the issues like global warming and be genuinely disturbed about the way earth is getting exploited.

In his suicide note he wrote something addressing to the people who uses those quarter of life years to make their life worthwhile. And I could actually see the time going by us without reminding us but yet killing each last minute and killing our chance of re using it.

John said that is how the first clock he saw made him so attracted towards the clocks as even the each moment that was passing reminded him of his own life. That he will be only one homosexual, alone, intelligent, clock repairing  person living in the shit-town/ Woodstock , where he has spent his entire life taking care of his mama, and stray dogs and extraordinary hedge maze and his clock repairing shop.

I guess it’s the same with all of us. We are all different pieces like the pieces of clock which are required so it ticks on perfectly, measuring something which exists beyond our control. We are all important here and we all deserve to make our each moment worthwhile.  Its not only our duty but it should be our mission to make that one person’s life worthwhile despite of the fact that we have very less time to do so and so much to explore and take care of.

 

 

A love letter to self

Hello Rutuja.

Well it's pretty much easy thing when we write a love letter to someone else. But why not try it when that someone else is busy with someone else or does not exist yet?
So this Valentine's I am writing you a love letter. Yes. I get it. You must be already rolling your eyes with sarcasm as what kind of dumb person would write to herself a love letter while the whole point of love letters is that it has to be from another person. But who cares? I don't... and that's why. Shut the zone which keeps your sarcasm up and running and read on.

So rutuja. Well I have been with you through longer time than anybody else has ever been with you. I have watched you laugh, cry, shout, angered and what not. And despite of all the rules of world that people get annoyed when we do something they don't like, I still love you. I still love the craziness that you have in you. I love the way you deal with things. I love the way you want to help someone who is in desperate need of help. I love the way your face shines when you see someone happy because something you did. I love the fact that you adore your parents and not once your respect for them goes down.
I love the way you do not judge people based on their instant actions, and how you have got always chances for them to prove them.
I love the way you watch full moon and stars and the sun shine on a rainy day. I love the way you want to catch the leaves before they touch the ground and the way you wish it would always be rainy season.
I love the way you care for people you love and miss them despite of your differences and distances.
I love the way you immediately decide to act on something that you want to do right at that moment and do not think twice.
I love the way you adore small kids and laugh at their sweetness and innocence.
I also love to watch you sitting in glowing night light at 2-3-4 am doing or tinkering with something that has to be complete on that same night or world will fall apart. I love to watch you carefully paint your nails or draw a perfect eye liner. I love the way you cry when it's too much to take or just smile constantly when you can not believe the happiness is real.
I love it when you are in doubt of two different things at the same time. I love when you want to be the good guy and also don't want to be the bad guy either.
. I love the way you wish you had loads of money to give to whoever asks you.
I love it when you gasp at the unusual happening in a novel and then take a surrounding check whether someone saw you being cautious while reading something fictional.
I love it when your heart is full of happiness for your success and sometimes aching pain of failure.
I love the way you watch sunshine as if it's magic.
Or when you look around and think about random people and their respective lives.
I love the way you try to keep a thread connected to your future and plan your present according to it. I also love the way you get nostalgic about moments passed.
I love that you can remember tiny details about something, like the moments with Grandma or stressed out nights or one random festival when you were so happy.
I love to watch you feeling sand beneath on beaches or rains drops cold against your palm.

I love to watch the sudden shift between the night before you and the morning afters you.

Sometimes you are a real annoying person when you want to talk about something you loved and you won't shut up about it Or when you don't want to talk about anything at all.
When you can't control your anger and you have to shout at something or break someone or vice versa.
But I guess we all have it in us. Neither do I expect you to be perfect. Because your imperfections are what makes you special.

So. This Valentine's let me be your. Valentine. When I am in love with you. The whole you. Where I accept you and accept each and everything that makes you complete. Let us keep our love up and running for the rest of our lives. Despite of others being there for you, I will always be there. I will never abandon you in health or in sickness. Let us break this conception where someone else completes you. Because you are never half. You have already got me.
So smile and get on with this life and never henceforth feel alone. Because no matter how much you want to be left alone. I am not willing to quit. I never abandon people when they need me the most.

Our forever will have no boundaries, because I am eternal and so is the love between ourselves.

To this festival of love. To you and I.

- yours always,
  Rutuja. 😃