Flights of Fancy

Well I'ts already been three weeks of school after a really long and boring summer, on my way back to Purdue I noticed that some things had changed .... and some things never do.

For example, Purdue was different not only because I'm a sophomore now but because of the incredible new Neil Armstrong Hall of Engineering. Its an awesome building with cool labs that I really cant wait to work in.

What doesn't change is my mishaps with flights. Just for the sake of posterity I've decided I want ot keep a blogospheric record of my travel related mishaps. Be warned this list updates every single time I travel.

So ..... hear goes.../*Deep breath*/

1. 16th August 2006 - My first time travelling between Home (Dubai in this case....sadly) and Purdue. I show up 4 hours early eager to get onto the aircraft that is taking me across two continents only to be told that the flight is overbooked and I was kindly offloaded by Emirates in exchange for a free ticket (that I didn't really get but read on....). So anyway I left by the next days flight, missed my Delta connection in New York (JFK) and made it to Indianapolis via Detroit through and alternative Northwest Airlines flight.

2. 16th December 2006. Whew ! One fantastic semester over and I was eager to get home for a two and a half week break. My flight plan took me from Indianapolis to Minneapolis to Amsterdam to Dubai. With minimal stops in between. So two hours after my last exam I got on the bus from Purdue which arrived at Indy airport and hour before my first flight which turned out to be two hours late thus arriving in Minneapolis 5 min after the scheduled departure of the Amsterdam flight which I was lucky enough to see reversing from the gate as I hurled through that massive airport. Result: I spent the night in a crappy inn in Minneapolis courtesy of Northwest Airlines and arrived in Dubai 40 hours later after an 11 hour gap in Amsterdam.

3. 7th January 2007. On the return leg from Dubai to Amsterdam to Detroit to Indianapolis. Everything was going smoothly until my bags just didn't arrive in Detroit. At Indianapolis as the attendant checked their databases for my bags, I feared the worst. KLM had conveniently left my bags in Amsterdam so they arrived the next day at Purdue at 3:00 AM in the dead of winter with temperatures around -10 C. Brilliant. /* I was so jet lagged that I rushed out of my dorm to receive my bags wearing shorts and sandals.....almost for frostbite that time */

4. 7th May 2007: Probably the best one so far. My ticket was booked a year in advance (return ticket for no 1.). With a flight from Indy to JFK with Delta and onwards to Dubai with Emirates. 12 hours before the flight as I was packing up all my stuff in the dorm I made a perfunctory phone call to check flight status, only to be kept on hold for 40 minutes (my cell phone plan was prepaid.....cost a bomb) and then told that " er.....sir ...you're flight does not exist.....Are you sure its with Delta Airlines ?" ......oh boy...apparently Emirates booked me on a connecting flight that did not exist ....brilliant once again. So I bought a Continental Airlines ticket and flew to JFK via Cleveland and got there just in time to get to Dubai.

5. 15th August 2007. After the most boring summer you can possibly imagine (apart from a trip to India in the middle). I was travelling to JFK by business class courtesy of me almost exploding at Emirates not honoring their promise of a free ticket due to 1. Basically I bought an economy class ticket and got upgraded to Business class. My trip started eventfully as usual....My flight was two hours late from Dubai so I missed my connection (the same Delta flight ...AGAIN !!!!). Luckily I got shifted to the 6:40 PM flight but as my luck would have it...I couldn't get off that easily. A freak thunderstorm delayed flights by 3 hours in JFK and with all the crowd there was no place to sit for 5 hours. I arrived at Indianapolis at 12:30 AM and so missed the last bus from Indy Airport to Purdue by a whopping two hours. Luckily there were three other people like me (one of them was actually a freshman...poor kid) so we hired a bus and got to Purdue at 5:30 AM. That wasn't the end of it for me though. I had to get up at 8:30 AM so that we (roomies and me) could take possession and shift into our apartments. So that totaled to 6 hours of sleep over 48 hours....which makes you feel as if you've been gulping down martinis for that amount of time. I could barely walk straight.

Funny thing is that things are so bad that I expect something to happen when I'm traveling. In case any of you were wondering when to avoid airports then look out for 15th Dec 2007 and 6th Jan 2008. And if you find your flight has been delayed, your luggage is missing, or you've been kicked out of your flight or ...and this is the killer...you're flight doesn't exist....well then just look around a bit.... I'm probably in seat 16K....

That's All Folks !!!

Return of the Semi-Engineer

So, It's been a while since JKR proved most of my predictions (see below) wrong. And after that of course this blog almost died - to the extent where I even forgot my password and had to reset it. Well it's revived now in order to commemorate the beginning of the end.

No its not armageddon...it's the beginning of my 3rd semester at Purdue. A semester full of promise and potential academic pitfalls. A semester full of endless labs and sadistic assignments. Where does that leave this pitiful blog, which has barely begun to even comprehend its raison d'etre. Well............I solemnly swear that beginning next week this blog will turn over a new leaf and begin pontificating on that incredible list of topics in the title. I wish I had got round to it earlier but " Summer in Dubai ", has been utterly uninspiring in a myriad of ways. Don't get me wrong, its nice to stay with my parents; the problem is Dubai itself.

Its ironic how the place where some of the most cutting-edge engineering projects are taking place can be so utterly uninspiring. Great engineering projects are wonderful, but NOT im 45 degrees Celsius environments. It is now (finally) the eve of my departure to Purdue and I for one cant wait to get back there.

So in short, expect much more to come from this blog once the Semi-Engineer goes back to his favorite haunt - the maze of corridor and staircases between ECE 270 and ECE 161. I cant wait to blow up more op-amps !!!!!

Ciao

Harry Potter and the Grand Finale

So unless you live in the M31 Andromeda galaxy, you've probably hear about Harry Potter. You also may have noticed that the 5th movie (Order of the Phoenix) came out ...meh.....but the big news is really about the 21st of July when the Grand finale == HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS...will be out.

For true Potter fans i.e. yours truly and many more out there, the movies are shallow attempts at re-creating the undoubtedly magical atmosphere, plot and characters of the record-breaking. (For typical views of true Potter fans see my cousin Hardik's blog entry at http://hardikkothare.blogspot.com/2007/07/movieobliviatedeletriusavada-kedavra.html )

The read deal is going to be Book 7. For me, this is not just the literary event of the year but a moment I will remember my entire life. I've grown up with Harry and like everyone else saying goodbye is going to be really hard. People argue that with two movies remaining and a plethora of merchandising the journey isn't over. But for me it well and truly is........... its always been about the books.

The incredible plots, the ludicrous yet utterly believable magic and the infectious humor have captured me and millions others in ways no books ever have. I scour the net for the latest theories and discussions on sites like mugglenet and The Leaky Cauldron. So I think with the greatest series ever coming to an end, the time is appropriate for my official predictions for HP 7:-

So......im not as good as Firenze or Trelawney ...but ----

Predictions a.k.a. stuff I really want to happen:-

1) Snape is good in a way. I still think Snivellus is an evil git but I also think he's loyal to Dumbledore when his aims and Dumbledore's aims coincide e.g. in his survival. Snape's a slytherin and so i'll be he's more concerned with self-preservation than simply blindy following Voldemort. Plus from a literary point of view Snape if purely evil can only ever be Voldemort's number 2, two centres of evil cant work. Look at all the great fantasy masterpieces - Lord of the Rings, STAR WARS. Saruman was self-preservative while Darth Vader was redemptive. Snape's definitely more complex than both these no 2s.

2) Malfoy helps Harry a bit, grudgingly.....I can't help but feel sorry for Malfoy. I believe Dumbledore when he said that Malfoy wouldn't kill him. The world isn' t divided into good people and death eaters. Malfoy is never going to become honorary member of the D.A. but he isn't going to do everything Voldemort says too. I think Malfoy crying was probably the second most emotive scene of HBP after Dumbledore's murder.

3) Fred and George use their incredible magical innovation to make gadgets like Q in James Bond that eventually help Harry, Ron, Hermione and the Order fight against the Death Eaters and their army of Dementors and Inferi.

4) Grawp squishes a Death Eater......enough said.

5) Neville gets Bellatrix Lestrange......it's personal and Neville's improved beyond recognition now. Hopefully Granny will consider that proof of how exceptional Neville is.

6) Lupin eliminates Fenrir Greyback - I hated whatever little we say of Fenrir and so did Dumbledore. Fenrir bit Lupin as a kid and well..........this one's personal too.

7) The door that Harry couldn't open in the ministry when looking for the Chamber of Prophecies is absolutely integral to the plot. I just can't shake off this gut feeling, something in that locked door that Sirius's knife couldn't open in the Department of Mysteries is intriguing me.

8) Hogwarts is subjugated by Voldemort. Half Blood Prince showed how much Voldemort desires Hogwarts and all that is connected to it. There's definitely more than meets the eye. Also Hogwarts is where Gryffindor's sword is, and unless im mistaken the sword is powerful enough to destroy anything, including Horcruxes so Harry might want to go back as well.

9) Wands arent going to be much use against Voldemort. Its not just Priori Incantatem..Harry just isn't good enough. He's not even qualified, and if its going to be a duel he certainly can't even beat Snape so forget Voldemort.

10) Phoenixes will be huge somehow. Harry's wand core, the Order, Dumbledore's patronus, The Phoenix song - there is certainly more coming there.

11) Mimbulus Mimbletonia - a password and a highly visible object in OOTP. Special powers like stinksap and possible even more potent ones there........

12) Hagrid dies and so does Molly Weasley. Hagrid doesn't have any more story responsibilities besides helping out in any final fight. I thought he would go in OOTP but that was before Grawp, I don't think he has much more left unless he's going to marry Madame Maxime. As for Mrs. Weasley - it'll be extremely sad if she dies but her collapse against the revealing Boggart at Grimmauld Place made me feel that somehow she's in danger. She's scared for everyone else including Harry just like the reader. Im loathing saying this but I think the Dark Mark could be over the Burrow after Bill and Fleur's wedding and that might be enough to coerce Percy into reconcilliating.

13) Looking at the covers it seems like a house-elf (Dobby? Kreacher?) and a sword are involved - looking at the Bloomsbury cover. The amount of gold suggests Gringotts to me. The scholastic cover probably verifies that wands ain't no good here as both Harry and Voldemort are missing their phoenix feather core wands. The USA Scholastic deluxe edition has the trio riding on a dragon...........Im excited because i'm almost certain that its Norbert the Norwegian Ridgeback. I bet the Death Eaters don't have anything close to a tame dragon !!!!!!!!!

14) And the big one.....HARRY WON' T DIE. It's too obvious and too cowardly, an inappropriate way to end the series. My guess is he goes through the Veil and joins Sirius and Co. OR he sacrifices his magical powers for the benefit of wizardkind and goes on to become a Quidditch coach for the Chudley Cannons after a successful career as a seeker where he leads them to a treble of domestic league W.A. (Wizarding Association) Cup and the E.Q.A..(European Quidditch Association) Champions League.

Phew....long post........

I know im probably going to look like an idiot as usual after JKR completely overturnes all my predictions on July the 21st. But heck, thats why I love her work. So....thanks for the incredible journey Joanne Kathleen Rowling , its been great reading your work ...... I doubt we'll ever see anything like this ever again.

P.S. Weasley is our King.

Marginal Propensity to Inform

So, this is my first foray into the world of Blog. Despite being at the forefront of modern advances for the most part; I've consciously refrained from creating my own blog..............................until NOW.

A myriad of doubts about my own ability to bring something original to the cyber-world combined with a general disdain of inexpert bloggers (see close to 3/4 of the blogs on blogspot and you'll know what I mean).

So .....why now ? Why have a blog ? Why spend precious amounts of time typing up arguments and thoughts that may or may not be read ?

..............

Take that sequence of ' why ? ' further i.e

lim why _____? = ?????
why--> infinity

and somewhere along the line you'll conclude that human beings have a certain tendency to 'inform' - behavioral economists might call it a marginal propensity to inform.

In short we have a tendency to communicate too damn much regardless of our informations veracity. So, we have a collection of individuals who produce an even bigger agglomeration of nonsense.......wow

So with that said why have I caused a unit increase in this exponentially increasing phenomenon.........I honestly have no idea. If you have a blog you probably have anywhere from 0 to a million different reasons for writing one....each of them simply being rationalizations of a primeval urge to inform. The fact is no one's really asked for your opinion on a multitude of issues, you're giving it out for free using valuable global storage space that could be used for more critical ventures.

By now each of you is positively stark raving mad with the irony of me using a blog to attack the concept of blogging......Well...the fact is there's a certain pleasure derived from seeing one's ideas on the internet. Accessible across the world, in a nice, neat font and simply a couple of keystrokes or clicks away from any major site , and it is for that simple pleasure that I present this blog to you.

A direct result of my marginal propensity to inform combined with a proclivity to see my thoughts in existence on a global network that potentially connects a massive chunk of my species.

So, after being loquacious enough to bore half of you here's the long and short of it:-

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS
=====================

1. This is my (Aditya Pradhan's ) Blog.

2. It's sole reason for existence is for me to rage and rant at things I don't like and praise other things I do like.

And before I click publish post to condemn my last 12 minutes to eternal cyber-preservation I'd like to thank you for reading my first post and I promise you that my next updates will be genuine issues of greater interest rather than this piece of crap I wrote to make the blog look like it was actually in use.