I am what I am because I am a believer ( or am I ?)....

My friend extreme hiker made an important comment on my previous blog(whew, am glad someone actually read it :) )! But the comment was kind of interesting, not because, he refuted my claims of "sometimes opinions dont matter" view but more because he allured examples of science and connected it to the way scientific breakthroughs are achived!

Having an opinion is nice, making it your belief is taking it one step further, totally believing what you believe is probably what we call passion but believing only what we believe with total disregard to other contradicting beliefs is fanaticism! And so in, which of these four buckets would we place those who have consciously attained martyrdom in the hope of standing up for their beliefs! Fanaticsim? Passionate and Principled? Two words, different connotations, same context!
So then , is it okay to compromise your beliefs for your life? If someone asked to change my opinion or its elder sibling, of deeply rooted belief in something, in return for my life,should I do it? Not do it? If I do it, do I become a fledgling, a weekend sybmol of everything that stands for cowardism? If I dont, am I loosing something more precious and spiritual for something as worldly as a belief, which is all said and done, is still nothing- more than a thought at the emotional corner of mind! For all that I know it may not even be true!

This is where I would like to quote my favorite "Remedy for all " book "The Gita" . One of the points Krishna emphasises to Arjun is that , this world is the way it is because of attachment, attachment to your relations, attachment to your material things, your ipods, your laptops, your cars, your coffeee(:D),and of course(if you have been reading the blog without doziing off..!) how can this be far behind- attachment to your beliefs!
And the purpose of our life , would be to stay away from this attachment, or slowly start to get detached, so that you end having an unbiased,impartial and perfect understanding of "The Truth" or what spirutalists would call "The Ultimate Reality".
Wow, that was more philosphical than I expected, so I stop, to salvage my repute of being termed as a total geek!!! :)

Well, thats what I thought, on reading the comment, and I thought I should elaborate, especially when I have 40 mintues of nothing to do, but a laptop and a "absolute no mood to study" state of mind! :)

"In my Opinion....!!"

Whew!! Back again, within a week! Thats consistency for me :D

Anyway , a friend of mine happened to send me this link http://www.theadvocates.org/quiz.html
Supposedly it tells you where you stand in the political spectrum!(ya.. like i care how political i am but anyways..!) Its quick and fast and interesting, for sure. Especially when you get the results :)
That got me thinking( here I go yet again, and there goes my another wasted day on mandatory course project...).. Is it really necessary to have an opinion in every issue, or would it be okay just to click on the bunch of "Maybe's" and get away leading a "no controversies please" kind of life?
Well, it sure makes an interesting read, if you swing to either end of the spectrum, and away from the "centrists" (so called by the link for all the people with most "maybe"'s) - but how committed are we to the view that we take? Do we really mean it, or is it just an "ideal me" that I would like to visualize , if I were to put myself in some one else's shoes!! Would I still stick to my opinion if I were asked to change it with a gun in my head... hmm.. no way( not unless am like the famed "Captain" of tamil filmdom who can dodge them faster than the blink of an eye)!!
So does it really matter what opinion we may have if, we are not sure how we would react- given a different situation, away from a cozy sofa, with a freshly brewed coffee(by the way did i say that i wud probably take a bullet then give up coffeee............!!)and staring at the computer and clicking away a bunch of checkboxes that pose as estimators of your mental predisopositions..!
hmm worth thinking about??? not now... my project is still waiting for a start..!!! i have no second doubts on that for sure.............:D

Life is beautiful!

I stared at the blank screen and the screen stared back at me - at a face even blanker than the monitor! Less than an hour was the deadline and I still had not been able to finish the pager I was supposed to have done two weeks back!! For the thousandth time I asked myself why the hell couldnt have I done this last weekend , instead of browsing away to glory or even when I was typing away my first blog! For the upteenth time I swore to do things better next time, to be organized, plan and execute everything in advance and have no last minute sweats or memory losses! But wasnt that Newton who said, that every object would like to resist its change in motion and would continue its motion unless subjected to a very heavy force thus defining inertia!? Then how am I a poor , tiny creature conspire against nature and get out of my natural self, in its inability to grasp gravity of things until there is no more time left to do it! I looked at the watch, damn, another 20 mintues of unnecessary pondering and meandering took me even closer to the deadline with still the same blank page staring at me , without any respite! I cursed it, as if it were supposed to fill up with words magically looking atthe Master's self brought on woe! I inhaled deeply , brought my fingers to the keyboard and started typing the title! I had to start somewhere and moreover I was getting bored of the stupid unspotted sheet! Within minutes I started typing furiously with my fingers flying all over the keyboard and red and green marks filling all over the screen apparantly mocking my poor spelling and grammatical abilities. I had a page to complete and less than an hour to go!Spelling errors?? Who cared? What were spell checks for !!! Another day gone , another lesson unlearnt!!!

Me, Myself and Harini

I am Harini Gopalakrishnan doing my second year Masters in Bioinformatics from Indiana University at Bloomington.
I am one of the quintessintial example of a "last minute" and work "only on a deadline basis" person. I have been planning on putting a few words here for a loooong time and I just about managed to find my will to sit down and make my first step towards creating my own blog-space active!!!!!

So, to a successfull blogging endeavor that hopefully gets more frequent than this... :)