Tunkis

Fractals

2010-10-19T21:10:00.010-05:00

The ghosts are back.

All the same obsessions domino their way back to occupy my mind again: Dreams, memories, humor, patterns and death. About a week ago my world was shaken. My cousin sister got into a terrible accident and is still unconscious. And while she lies there dreaming, carefully treading away from death, the rest of us hold on tight to memories, hope and humor.

Today I was going through old emails and found a mail my cousin sent me two years ago. She was excited because she had just found her diary from when she was in Holland. She was very very young – seven or eight. In her mail to me she transcribed one of the diary entries that caught her eye. The mail said:

Shonu monu! i was cleaning out some of the shelves at home today and I found this diary type of thing our teachers made us keep in class 3 when I was in Holland. Look what I wrote!

"On Sunday I remembered when we were in India on that night when we were going to Maastricht. I was very very scared because I didn't wanted to go to Maastricht, but I wanted to stay with Shonu. Afterwards I opened my colouring book and why do you think I cried, because I saw Shonu's colouring and, I did forget about Shonu, but then I remembered who Shonu was, and, I cried and cried, and then I lay in bed crying louder and louder. Afterwards I sent a letter to her on a piece of paper which had a cat on it because she loves cats she also has one her name is Shadow. Her name is Shadow because our shadow's always stay with us and Shonu wants her cat always to stay with her."
(oh and the funny thing is that the title of this so called story is- 'a happy happy weekend' hahaha)

What is strange is that on reading this I realized that I too had forgotten T and this mail brought back a flood of memories. Then I remembered who T was, and I cried and cried, and then I lay in bed crying louder and louder.

Funny how these things work. The first time I had read T’s mail two years ago, I had laughed at how cutely silly it was that she had ‘forgotten’ me so quickly as a kid.
But memories have a way of working in strange ways where often people, places and time get exchanged – and we get moments like this which is a memory within a memory within a memory.

the hour-glass of day-dreaming

2010-03-18T18:33:00.007-05:00

I have come to LOVE bus rides. Looking back I realize they are my ONLY uninterrupted time in the whole day. No phone calls - too noisy for that, no internet, I feel a strange sense of privacy in that noisy overcrowded vehicle! Its become my reading time, my daydream time, my crazy ideas time, everything.

Coincidentally I had a time management training at work in which the we discussed 'interruptions' for a long time. We discussed multi-tasking, collaborating, and all the buzz words of the new healthy flexy work culture. Our trainer was convinced that multi tasking was a myth, and that people can only do one thing at a time. It was just that some people might be good at masking the transition time as they switch from task to task - but it was still ONE task at a time. And that multitasking was actually reducing their efficiency at every individual task. While this could be debated endlessly... it got me thinking.

Working with no interruption (the black box) being on one end of the scale, and embracing interruptions as a means to step out of the black box being on the other end of the scale, is difference between my bachelor's degree in design and my masters degree in design. Let me explain this. I began studying design in the year 2000 in India. The style of working was intensive and immersive. Only ONE course was taught over two weeks/four weeks, the assignments were individual, and towards the end of the course all students would be thinking and dreaming and spending every second on only ONE problem/solution. There was no major use of the internet, and very few students had cell phones. The periods of time spent working were clear cut capsules of uninterrupted flow. The final results/design solutions were often fantastic and equally often just plain old ridiculous.

When i came to the US to study design research for my masters, things had changed. The model of design education was completely different. It seemed to be based on interruption(in a good way). We were taught four or five courses at a time and these courses stretched over a quarter, everything was team work. So now at any given time, I had five things to think about and the opinions of 20 people to consider. And I immediately saw the difference: it was SAFER. No result was ever too ridiculous. The law of averages was mitigating the one thing that scared businesses away from designers: craziness. But at the same time, The number of spikes in absolute brilliance/freshness also reduced. It didn't vanish, don't get me wrong, - we sometimes saw projects that were clear examples of multidisciplinary thinking gone right :) where the answers far exceeded the capacity of one individual.

The stark difference between the two approaches makes me wonder. We now are so busy trying to make design appear risk-free and methodical and almost predictable so that we get green signals that at times i can't help but think - are we loosing that black-box, missing that 'bus' where we meet our own ideas?

Time will tell...

The disease of forgetting...

2010-03-15T18:37:00.006-05:00

I realized this week that its just too easy to forget how to write: how to ramble endlessly to a faceless square window, its also possible to forget how to draw, and well, who knows, I've not swam in a long time and its possible that swimming too can be added to this crazy list!

All my ideas seem to swarm around only in long bus rides and vanish into thin air when I finally can write them down. So here's the last strain of an idea before it too sinks into the quicksand of my routine.

Its been 8 months now that I'm working in a Public Health organisation. Public Health is way more interesting that you would think... It feels to me like a system designer's DREAM problem space. Public health has all the ingredients that designers love to get their hands dirty with:

1. Its system level. Nothing caters to a person - its always about a community/state/country

2. The approach is often preventive which means understanding the source of the problem

3. It is deeply embedded in understanding and influencing human behavior

The combination of these three things makes it a fertile ground for design thinking and design methods. Its not surprising that Design for Social Impact is gaining so much momentum. However, when i sit to think about how do I as a designer try to train a team of public health professionals about design methods i realize its a challenging task. Even with the vast amounts of vigor and method embedded in design research and strategy techniques, they still seem a bit fuzzy and flaky to people never exposed to design. This is not to say that these professionals do not like the RESULTS of design techniques - they usually love it.

This led me to think that as a design community two things are needed:

1. How should we start presenting design projects at non-design conferences. I usually get bored stiff in design conferences where each speaker earnestly explains how useful and indispensable design is... I feel bad that we keep preaching to the converted

2. Alternately we must make a conscious effort to discuss failures in design conferences. Recently I was amazed to find out that there is a FailCon conference every year for failed/early entrepreneurs to discuss their stories since 95 % of entrepreneurs fail. Whats our failure rate? Surely our business of innovation is not nearly as watertight as we project it to be... where do we go wrong? how could we do it better...

But to not deviate completely from Public health, the reason i brought up these two ideas was that i think it is unacceptable for us to venture into spaces like Design for Social Change without fully understanding the risk, and responsibility, and ethics of designing in this sphere. We need to start conversations with public health organisations, gauge where we can really add value, interface with other disciplines not only in tiny teams but by organizing events and debates that are truly multidisciplinary.

Or we run into the risk of forgetting that we aren't the only ones solving problems. And forgetting, as i mentioned in the very beginning is a bit too easy.

Stars, black holes and white dwarfs...

2010-01-14T19:34:00.001-06:00

On waiting...

2009-08-03T11:20:00.005-05:00

...coming up soon...

...wait almost over...

And the week of waiting is now over.

Waiting is a fuel for creativity. Really. Never does my imagination go as wild as when I am impatiently waiting for something I really really want. The longer I wait, the more reasons I conjure up to explain the delay.

Excitement... anticipation... irritation... annoyance... anger... fury... concern... anxiety... worry... ImaginationRunsWild... tired... boredom... hope... optimism... ... ... exhaustion.

So much research has actually gone into this strange thing called waiting:

1.The study of lines ( i mean queues) http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/science/11/20/queuing.psychology/index.html

2. count-downs on traffic intersections http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/03/14/taiwans-solution-to-traffic-jams/

3. mirrors in elevators http://37signals.com/svn/posts/1244-defining-the-problem-of-elevator-waiting-times

I could go on, with this list but i will then be deviating from my point( if there is one!). Like everything else, waiting has a strange balance to it. In an interesting lecture on Emotional Products, the speaker talked about the enjoyment in the roller coaster of emotions that the film industry has mastered. We love stories that build an interesting plot, and we WAIT till the end to see the resolution...

The problem really is unanticipated BLANK time. Unaccounted time that we see as a clog in the hourglass.

Learning by teaching

2009-07-23T17:48:00.004-05:00

I was trying to think of the next model for design education.

The only model that I know of is 'learning by doing'. This model is 'friendly' to understanding materials, working on problems and seeming what really works and what doesn't. The only problem with this is that it survives on the a very strong feedback channel. What i mean is that the teacher waits for questions and moments of confusion and ideally points you back in a moreoless 'right' direction. So what happens when you want to expand numbers in design schools? Will the old model of learning by doing still work? and if not, do we not expand numbers/ rely on technology as the solution... or....

Think about 'learning by teaching'.

Strangely, I had only partially written this post when Thalia commented on it, and it built my argument in a new and interesting way ... Lets see where this goes.

Interesting lives

2009-06-25T12:31:00.007-05:00

Every now and then one encounters a person who's had an interesting life and more often than not, that translates to a difficult life. Yesterday I met such a person.

Lets call this lady Sethe. She was a woman in her late sixties, a large African American woman. She grew up in the south, in cotton fields. Finished high school and came to Illinois for college. She got married and had 7 children. The kids grew up, got married. Hard times hit late.

One of her daughters developed an ailment that slowly killed her. Her daughter's son had tried really hard to take care of his mother, and had convinced himself that if he did a sincere job of looking after her, she would get better. He'd sleep at the foot of her bed , and if at any time the mother felt pain or needed something, the boy would run and get it for her. When she finally did die, the boy went into shock, and never came out of it. Its been five years. Counseling and the passage of time have not seemed to have done their trick. After the mothers' death, Sethe took custody of all her grandchildren - seven children. The following year her husband died, and the year following that, she was diagnosed with cancer.

She said that she was sitting in the doctors office when she was told she had cancer. She said she was scared, very scared. More scared because she knew she had to be strong, there was too much depending on her LIVING. She said she walked out of the doctor's office feeling weak... and decided to sit for some time. as soon as she sat down she saw a very young boy around four years old, coming out of an open heart surgery... and she saw his mother crying, and she thought - this kid is so young and he is already seeing a darker shade of life, I'm sixty how could i possibly feel sorry for myself. She said she felt no fear after that. Slowly but sure she recovered.

So Sethe is a survivor in many ways. By survivor I don't mean just someone who came through alive. I mean a person who's spirit has survived. Sethe was one of the most energetic, funny and loving people I have met in a long time.

I began by talking about interesting lives. No, I don't believe that interesting lives have to be tinted with tragedy, some interesting lives are full of surprising and unpredictable upswings. The interesting-ness lies in the spontaneity and surprise in the trajectory... and the voice of the storyteller.

On Lingering

2009-05-27T20:40:00.002-05:00

So while i begin most posts after a long time on a declaration of ending a 'chapter', this won't be one of them. This chapter doesn't seem to want to get over so easy. I feel like the author of a book in which the characters have become so strong that i can't keep to the story i had planned... the fictional characters themselves are suddenly planning the trajectory of the plot... and that i myself will be surprised when i write that last chapter.

So right now is about lingering. Its about a lot of looking back, a lot if reflecting. I'm in a place i didn't expect to be in after my 'time was done'. I also such a have foggy picture of whats ahead that the only way to navigate is by looking behind me. The good thing is that there IS so much behind, so much that i can pick up the loose ends of and start a whole new tapestry.

The last few months were fun. And here i mean fun in the best meaning of the word. It was SO much play with thoughts and fights with time. Mock fights - the fun kind. So i DID manage to take my work on understanding humor to a new level. something so far from my comfort zone. I read my paper again today after 2 weeks of not thinking about it, and was thrilled to see that it still seemed to have the possibility of a touch of magic... and strangely and most importantly it was so not complete. So much still to come. Just like the format of humor. Humor is fun cause its format is in its incompleteness. Ones mind has to work to complete the riddle. Different minds tie the ends in different ways, some don't and don't laugh... but the important piece is that interestingly jokes like abstract art hold no meaning if you don't make sense of it in your own context.

Here's to the next few months being the 'set up' for something that will truly make me smile at the point of resolution.

Like humor.

Snails...

2009-03-05T22:43:00.003-06:00

Its time that i took my own idea of "Snails at Heart" seriously.

This has been an exceptionally slow semester so far. A lot of idle time, a lot of sleeping, a lot of 'yak-shaving', movie watching, wiki-surfing. I feel sinful, but I'm hopeful that this will BE the goofing off quota for the year and I'll get a crazy job that know the tricks of keeping me on my toes.

Writing is difficult business. I chose to write a paper this semester and even though a few good ideas have struck me, its all still in note form. Some people find it hard to write things in a concise manner... i find it hard to elaborate... i keep wondering if I'm entering into the realm of redundancy. Ideas seem wonderful in my head, but when i write them down, it feels exactly the same as when one wakes up thinking one had an AMAZING dream, and the more you try to remember it, the more you forget it, or worse - CAN remember, but can't figure out how it made me SO happy...

OK, coming back to snails at heart - my original idea with this was to create a space where it was OK to 'slow down'.

and not feel sinful.

health

2008-09-15T22:06:00.004-05:00

I am wondering if I’m turning into a cry baby.

One of my courses has me studying and reading an online blog - a new method of user research in which participants maintain an online daily journal and share their life, their views. This particular study was on understanding notions surrounding health and food choice.

While this may sound very dry, and I must confess I felt pretty weighed down after being handed 500 pages of research data to read, but this stuff has me crying every few pages.

People can be so candid and honest in faceless environments... perhaps in the past year I’ve had so few "real conversations" (as in I don't remember the last time I had a lump in my throat after a conversation with a friend). Suddenly this influx of truth and unadulterated emotion and confession has me choked!

People were so forthright and honest with all the details of their life - the crazy little problems that bugged them everyday, dilemmas surrounding BIG challenges in their lives, very sad moments, moments to remember... stories about having to care for their little child who is suddenly very ill, caring a family member with a mental disability, the death of a close friend, cancer, pregnancy, eating when upset, eating to celebrate... etc.

The lives of these people seemed 'closer to the ground'. And I definitely do not mean this in a bad way. I mean I realized that since I have not had to deeply care for another person/creature and take care of anybody on a daily basis, my daily/life goals are mostly oblique. Nothing seems too scary or too urgent. Time is always on my side, and I rarely feel that I actually have something to loose. Motives and reasons for my daily actions are luke-warm.

And so I cried.

Not out of sadness but a strange relief.

We really aren’t as selfish as we are taught to believe we are... we actually perhaps function much better when we need to take care of someone (anyone, even a pet)

And then I cried again, because I missed Shadow.

Which brings me back to the beginning...

washing the mud off my stripes

2008-07-07T09:53:00.004-05:00

When I was 12 I sat in front of the mirror and slowly painted my whole face brown. I wanted to see what I would have looked like if I wasn't a 'zebra' as my mother called us. After finishing, my heart sank cause everything looked wrong. My eyes, my lips, my hair… nothing went with the brown.

And many times I just lied brown. I told people that my mother was an INDIAN from Trinidad, and that I was in fact completely Indian. I learnt the rules – that I could never correct people's English, but everybody could correct my hindi. I learnt that people who 'hated' fair skin, were good people, and people who hated dark skin were bad.

But its been some time now …

I now introduce myself as part Trinidadian. I talk about my grandmother who was from Canada. My accents not changed a notch… and I want to go back to India, after seeing a bit more of this side of the world.

Cause i do owe 'this side of the world'. This one year here HAS changed something very deeply. this was the first time when i introduced myself as Indian, i didn't have to explain my color, or make excuses for it, i WAS what i said i was. It even struck me that if i said i was American, if ANYBODY said they were American, it would be accepted without a blink of an eyelid, without the need for any explanation of color of skin. there might be undercurrents that i don't see, but there is a difference, - prejudice is not a subject of pride. and once i didn't have to fight to be seen as an indian, another door opened in my mind... my real roots. I didn't feel the need to lie anymore. No more excuses, no more fudged history.

Caste: CAR

2008-05-05T21:40:00.010-05:00

The Caste System of India has been replaced by the Car System in New Delhi.

Stay with me, this makes sense.

At the top are the Cars:

This is a powerful class, and believe that all resources are meant for them or should be given to them as Dakshina.

2^nd tier are the Motorized Two Wheelers:

This is the warrior class. They charge bold and brave past most obstacles. They take chances, and often are prey to it. However, as they aspire to the Car class, they too tend to believe that resources are MEANT for cars.

3^rd tier are the buses

This is the trader class, the vast majority of people. They suffer many hardships but are resigned to their fate. They believe that the only way they can escape from the cycle of daily acrobatics of jumping off moving buses, transversing through moving traffic after being dropped in the middle of the road; is by moving up the chain… they aspire to buy a bike some day.

4^th are the bicyclists:

This is the service class. They have no power, no right to space. They occupy the leftover space on the road. Each turn/change of lane is a life threatening event, and in the actual event of death, it is presumed that it WAS in fact the bicyclists fault, for BEING on the road that is meant for cars to begin with!

Recently a new system was introduced in Delhi’s roads: the Rapid Bus Transit.

A system introduced because everybody undoubtedly ASPIRES to rise to the Car Class, and our roads can not hold that many cars, if we build more and more roads so that all cars could be in the various levels of road, the air would not be worth breathing.

The reaction of the car owners to the BRT was very similar if not IDENTICAL to the upper caste reaction to the ‘reservation system' introduced also not very long ago. While it IS the rise in the number of CARS, not buses causing the increased traffic congestion, car owners find it impossible to accept that they need to sit in a traffic jam consisting of cars, while buses move relatively freely. This reaction is almost amusing seeing that even if the BRT was NEVER introduced, these cars would be sitting in a traffic jam of similar duration in a matter on years ANYWAY owing to the rise of car ownership. So if the BRT has pre-empted the traffic conditions 2 years hence while still providing a way to get from place to place, one would expect a welcoming reaction…. But car owners would rather NOBODY get to their destination if they can’t.

So, back to my earlier comparison, the Upper caste/ Upper class seem to believe that all resources are primarily THIERS for the taking and everybody else must be grateful to receive the leftovers. Any attempt to equalize distribution goes against the very nature of the caste system ingrained as FAIR!

18 to 63

2008-04-15T16:22:00.002-05:00

I heard this from an old woman as she was leaving Chicago.

Girl you gotta make things happen
or things will just keep happenin to you….

She said:
You come here young at 18, and
Blink, you’re 63
All those things you collected
You just give them out for free

I couldn’t sleep when I got here
The sirens drove me nuts
Do people really manage with
No Ifs and buts?

But then I slept so soundly
That I woke up just right now
45 years are over
And I still can’t figure how

Girl you gotta make things happen
or things will just keep happenin to you….

Well, I had just moved to Chicago,
and I wanted her rocking chair,
the sirens weren’t my problem ,
but my apartment was pretty bare…

Ma'am

2008-04-01T16:10:00.000-05:00

There are moments in your life you know you will remember forever
There are books you put down knowing you’ve changed
There are people that you meet, people you know that MAKE you. You would not be the same you if you hadn’t met them.

Today is a sad day. My school history teacher passed away. And I am so far away from anybody who will understand how sad this is.

Its strange. There is comfort is knowing that that somebody is there SOMEWHERE in this world, even if you never meet them again. And to know they are gone is comfort removed from a strange place…
A close friend who wrote to me telling me about this is about to go to Japan for 5 years to do a PHD in Japanese, another close friend who I wrote about this to is doing her PHD in history, all my closest friends are from my school are out there somewhere still studying… I am here, so far away from the world I know and love, to study. And I KNOW that Chitra Ma’am probably changed the course of all our lives.

no

2008-03-26T20:35:00.000-05:00

NO ideas, no discussion, no thoughts, no quirks, no reflections, no contemplation, no questions, no answers, no anything.

Very very blank.

turtles all the way down...

2008-03-07T15:53:00.006-06:00

This morning i woke up early feeling very hungry. I sleepily wandered into the kitchen and poured myself a glass of milk, mixed in sugar and coffee, sat and stirred it until it was nice and frothy.

i was hungry but very very sleepy... so i decided to put my glass of cold coffee next to my night lamp, and lie down, intending to sip it every now and then...

Soon i fell asleep.

I my dream i was still hungry, and still in my bed, i reached over to the night lamp and was surprised to see that my glass was not there! i got up and looked all around my apartment... then the dream took over. there are spaces that i visit often in my dreams. I have never really seen them, but from dream to dream i seem to revisit them. Its almost like a Yoshifumi Kondō film. There are long sequences in my dreams of the path i take to reach the place... secret shortcuts, little hiding places, clearings, alleys...

I visited ALL those places looking for the glass of cold coffee.

Finally i gave up... in my dream i thought that maybe, i just dreamt that i made cold coffee, and actually i never made it...

i was just thinking of making another glass for myself when i woke up... and saw the cold coffee right next to the night lamp...

I had to laugh!

But thats got me pretty worried about whether i am really AWAKE this time!

(if the title does not make sense, then read this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turtles_all_the_way_down )

confession

2008-02-29T16:19:00.000-06:00

This thought hit me last night.

I am intrigued by my growing need for blogging every now and then… its like a form of confessional behavior that I never imagined I would subscribe to.

Why I call it confessional is cause of the way I treat this space... no big secrets being let out, - no. By confessional I mean that I treat this space as a mood and meaning tracker. Unlike a personal diary this space gives me the feeling of something ‘bigger’, and a feeling of a degree of anonymity. Probably most of the people that read this blog are people that do know me, but every once in a while there comes the unknown reader.

This got me thinking about this whole need for ‘confession’ and something ‘bigger’… it sounded too much like the way people feel about god. Its probably an outrageous parallel… I know.

But I sat and thought about this for a while. Confession is a crazy strand of communication. Its with ‘nobody’, and with no expectation for a reply. I don’t blog to create an open source solution finding attempt at my life’s problems… many of my blogs end with questions, but I don’t expect answers.

So what is it about externalizing thoughts that is an end in itself?

My cow

2008-02-20T21:48:00.003-06:00

I actually thought i could build the whole cow out of cans... but a dozen cans down the line i realized that the 'face' made me happy enough!
Now she gives me company next to my seat.

Candid? :)

2008-02-14T13:31:00.004-06:00

About Trees and Weight-gain

2008-02-04T13:50:00.000-06:00

i was thinking a crazy thought...

The fact of the matter is that as a 'system' humans are pretty warped.. if we eat too much , ideally our body should use what it must and throw out the rest. but no, our body uses all the extra stuff, and slowly we become fat!

And that's when trees come in.

The other day i was eating and looking out the window at a sunny day. the trees along the raod looked beautiful in the sunlight.
And it hit me... Trees don't get fat! its not like a couple of sunny days can ruin the look of a tree... a good monsoon and and the trees become gross... NOPE that NEVER happens.
they become greener... leafier, and if ANYTHING just more beautiful...
However, starved trees DO look horrible, the leaves fall off, and they just look SAD.

hmmm... Humans ARE pretty warped.

Dreamy Debate

2008-01-17T15:59:00.000-06:00

Perhaps it’s the month of idle time to blame
Perhaps it’s all the extra sleep
And then again, maybe it’s just how things are… I seem to obsess over the same things over and over again in almost a cyclic manner.

Dreams, humor, death, religion, time, patterns and design… definitely the strangest combination of interest areas.

This time its back to dreams. And in particular I’m obsessing over the ‘brim’. The crazy time between sleep and wake. The transition time when one is ‘half asleep’. It’s like between two worlds. A world of collective reality (awake) and the world of personal reality ( asleep).

While going to sleep its interesting how one tries to let go and just sleep… the funny feeling of KNOWING that one is drifting into sleep…

And then while waking up, the funny feeling of trying to remember a good dream, and the harder one tries, every last memory of it escapes leaving only a good feeling, but no trace of the reason…

I have often wondered using Darwin’s theory of evolution, what could be the evolutionary reason for dreams… and bad dreams? Is it just an error?... maybe not… dreams are perhaps a means of remaining in a semi-conscious state, keeping the mind alive, so that it is easier to spring to action if needed… the opposite of dreaming is the ‘dead sleep’ which is so much more difficult to snap out of…
The dead sleep. Now, away from the world of wild predators out to get us, a good sleep is meant to be a dead sleep. A complete write off of that time… and amusingly it’s always the people who don’t like ‘wasting time’ that prefer the ‘dead sleep’. Perhaps being completely in control ( after all its ALL your creation) and even so, not in control is a terrible feeling for the busy ‘doers’ of the world!

So are dreams a defense mechanism? A way to rest in way that still allows for an alert mind? If so, then the plot thickens!
So we derive that dreams are a means to attempt at a longer life.
And yet I’ve died so often in my dream, except the amazing bit is that death in a dream ENTAILS waking up. No dream allows for the experience of death… Death is ALWAYS about waking up…
And there again I’m back to religion! So does religion too take cues from dreams? Is this experience of ‘waking up’ upon death in a dream the origin of the concept of ‘afterlife’ or the concept of a ‘nirwana’ ?

SO not only have dreams given us longer lives, they have unwittingly instilled in us a concept of death as an awakening, stretching our existence into eternity!

Being 8

2008-01-01T18:12:00.000-06:00

Quickly quickly before i forget this moment.

Its new years, and even though i have all the space i could ask for i am just not able to wrap up last year in my head.
maybe a post could do it for me...

high points?

a water fight

standing on a table and singing the birthday song

standing in Namsang tower watching the roads turn red as the night set in along with its traffic bottlenecks

taking pictures of myself holding wine after finding out that i got into ID, and then realising that i couldn't open it!

riding a bicycle on the coast of Korea

giving the Tata scholarship interview sitting next to an Alsatian dog

my best friend feeding me cake in Barrista after i put mehendi on both hands

seeing a train pass by from so so close

reading Jahajn

spending the night in JFK, surrounded by the happiest people in the world

the moment it was announced that i was about to land in Chicago

cooking an omelet in a pressure cooker on my first day in my own apartment

seeing snow...

dancing salsa in my apartment at 3 in the mornin cause me and roommate couldn't sleep

lows...

saying bye to dadaji

sitting in a car outside Big Chill with my Best friend after she didn't get something she should have got

walking on the streets on Christmas day

its been such a long year.
i was discussing years with somebody, and they explained that years seem shorter now because when we are young, a year is a bigger proportion of ones life - an age 8, one year is one eighth of ones life, at 25 one year is one twenty-fifth... so perhaps at 25, three years equate the one year when we were eight...

but this year broke that rule! this year felt like i was eight again.

closure.
goodbye2007.

and here's hoping i can keep being 8 for as long as i can.

little projects...

2007-12-09T19:18:00.000-06:00

Yesterday i made something.
I picked up the single use coffee cups, cut them up, and made a bicycle out of them!!

Its rare for my impulses to DO something to override my inertia. I often get ideas to make things, often silly little things, but long before I can gear up to build it, my mood deflates, and thats the end of the story. But the few times that i hold on to the excitement, and just do the little things that i want to, it becomes a day to remember...

So here to all my forgotten discarded little ideas:
1. I wanted to go out during the rainy season and pick a part of a strange weed. That part of the weed behaves like Velcro, it tends to stick to cloths, and also to each other. I really wanted to collect them and then play with form.. make cubes, pyramids etc out of them... i never did... So many rainy seasons have gone by...
2. I wanted to make a Christmas tree out of old bottles... i lost patience and finally threw all the bottles away... they were taking too much space, and i wasn't convinced that i would ever finally use them.
3. I wanted to take pictures of the first night i saw snow fall...
4. I wanted to make a little shelf/rack to put next to my bed so after reading a book, there was a good place to put it.

Thats all i can remember now.
And there will be many more to come.
I just hope that i find the patience to see these little things through... it really makes my day!

If weather can effect moods...

2007-10-30T17:02:00.001-05:00

then chicago doesn't need drugs... !

why do stars twinkle?

2007-10-17T17:12:00.000-05:00

Somebody once told me that stars twinkle because of things like pollution and dust particles, and that if one went out into space, then stars don't twinkle anymore..

More recently someone told me that some stars are so so far away that the twinkle is actually because we are catching only one photon at a time, and the delay between the photons is what causes twinkling.

I had a very interesting class the other day. We were trying to understand perception. We noticed that people's understanding of the world around them happens in waves, and not in a straight line. We tend to compare by forming ratios. Everything is measured as relative information and not in absolutes...This got me pretty excited... we noticed that we could immediately detect the difference between NO light and a Very small amount of light, but if we already had a lot of light in the room, and somebody let in just a small bit more, nobody could tell the difference.

So this means that extremes define the scope of perception... light and dark ... weightless to heavy ... black and white to color saturation ... and the inbetweens are ratios and relatives within that.

This got me thinking about beauty/art/poetry. An old experimental idea of mine.
That beauty lies approaching extremes... pushing the limit, but perhaps not crossing it.
Playing with the limits of perception.

I probably need to think this through a bit more...

Ghar Ghar

2007-10-10T16:50:00.000-05:00

I've been thinking about this for so long.

Suspension of disbelief excites me. what amazes me really is that it seems to be an innate need in us. Nobody actually needs to teach us about it. My earliest memories revolve around playing ghar ghar. Me and my cousins would assume roles and enact the roles for hours. We would unknowingly stretch the situations we enjoyed, and compress the time of the actions we thought didn't added to the 'story' .. like sleep. A whole night was enacted in 2 minutes. ( perhaps an elementary translation of sleep-time: the time taken to sleep + the time taken to wake up!! - the in between time was non-time!) In just 2 hours we would easily create the routine of 3 or 4 days! We would willingly take anything lying around and imagine it was something that looked similar enough...

Years and years later I'm studying design methods. And it feels like I'm relearning all THAT. we need to re-learn storytelling, re-creating scenarios, and do prototype testing using 'similar objects'.

Its a game of adult Ghar Ghar!

more time?

2007-10-03T18:08:00.000-05:00

Its already the end of session A.

Only a few days ago we were defining upward mobility in terms of the notion of time. It seems that the higher one climbs the ladder the longer one can plan into the future. People who only had means to plan for one day were at the base, the people who had the means to plan a week, a month were a little higher. People who had the means to look years ahead were far far higher.

I chewed on this for some time.

In another conversation i concluded that music shrinks time. Movie without sound is longer than one with sound. Journeys are faster with music.

Dreams dislocate time. Dreams are oblivious to time.

Misery expands time. aways.

And 'Virtual life' subtracts time from 'real life'.

So, i suppose i can cure my fear of time flying by being miserable. Not being glued to headphones and and staying away from the internet!

about faces...

2007-09-03T22:00:00.000-05:00

its again been long since i wrote.

The past month has been full of ideas... in fact i found myself composing so many posts in my idle time... but since i wasn't near a comp most of the time... the post might never come here!

anyway. i visited Frank Lloyd Wright's house in Chicago this Sunday. It was a beautiful neighbourhood, an interesting house, and some some lovely little insights into his life. something completely off track got me thinking though!

On one of the walls was framed Frank Lloyd Wright's passport. I t was nothing like the passports today. It was one plain sheet, with NO picture, and just a physical description. It went some thing like ( the picture on top is of another such 'passport'):

Name: Frank Lloyd Wright

Age: *whatever*

Height: 5'8"

Forehead: receding

Nose: large

Chin: average

Color: brown

and somehow i was just intrigued!! i was intrigued because i found it Hillarious that a person be described that way, and yet, when i really got down to thinking about it... if there were an image there of his face, my mind would subconsciously note those attributes... after all there must be some unsaid way in which we recognise faces, but to see it written in 'black and white' terms was strange.

Ok, - here's Strange twist to this train of thought.... i met someone the other day that discussed a peculiar ailment with me : Prosopagnosia
Prosopagnosia is also known as 'Face Blindness'. Here people are unable to tell faces apart ( like some people can not tell different brands of cars/sedans apart... or tell fonts apart). People with this disorder cannot make any sense of faces and can't make same-different judgements when they are presented with pictures of different faces. They may also might not be able to tell differences such as age or gender from a face. However, they may be able to recognise people using non-face clues such as their clothing, hairstyle or voice!!

So what this person explained to me was that face recognition is a kind of 'developed expertise'. As in the in actuality face recognition is a complex process as it involves analysing complex surfaces, and sometimes very subtle differences.... Thus most of us over the years develop expertise in this... so slowly we all become 'face experts' which is why sometimes we can recognise a person, and still not remember his/her name!

So all this began with surprise at an image being broken down into just a few words- basically objectivity in a complex subjective subject... and then came through to the fact that it probably That crude break down of attributes which is what actually happens in our head without us sometimes even realising it!!

ok... i promise the next post will not be this crazy!

Chapters and more chapters

2007-07-10T06:25:00.000-05:00

A chapter is nearing its close. And another is about to begin.

Unfinished stories have totally different charm. Perhaps that’s the secret of sad stories too…. Impact is about a lingering feeling, something that stays with you. Happy ending don’t leave lingering thoughts, incomplete stories do, and the final proof that we are all intrinsically optimistic is that sad stories linger in us for long. Cause perhaps we all try to find think and restructure the story to see all the ‘could be’ endings

Unfinished stories… may be this chapter will be an incomplete chapter.

Incompleteness is perhaps a formula for creativity.
I learnt the rules in design school, gestaults laws: give a person an incomplete visual, and the mind attempts to complete it
I saw the same in my research on humor in products where just a part of a product is all that’s needed to convey the form.
Questions… are incomplete by themselves, they need answers, and thus questions too, remain the base of creativity.

In life does incompleteness spin the same magic?

2007-04-18T07:51:00.000-05:00

Needed to write this down.

After a particularly bad presentation the other day, my mentor came upto me and said:

" You had many sketches, perhaps too many. you see, if you imagine that there is a target in front of you, what you have done is shoot many many arrows in the periphery, i want you to shoot fewer arrows, but as close to the target as possible"

I felt bad, but it got me thinking.

In design, can/ do we ever 'aim and fire'? i mean, unlike the board exams, or a sales number, a new design is not a perceivable target, so one has to shoot blind. We shoot many arrows hoping one may accidentaly hit the right target. The target sometimes, if we are lucky, appears before us in the form of a mirage or 'inspiration' and we can only hope to catch that glipse of the mirage for long enough to be able to aim and fire!

...

2007-04-16T05:36:00.000-05:00

There are two kinds of people in this world:

Those who sketch

And those who can't.

and this time it CARS!

2007-04-15T05:26:00.000-05:00

Yesterday was a day dedicated to cars!

I had dropped over at a friends place for breakfast... though this time it was breakfast with sketching classes! So while my friend busily sketched car after car explaining the importance of contrast, variation in line pressure, and using perspetive rather than isometry... i was completely distrated by the TV in front of us cause 'Too Fast Too Furious' was playing...and though its not really MY type of movie, my dratted cousin has managed to condition me to like it!... so between looking at a car being sketched, and seeing some mad car chases on TV, we both realized that we were getting late for the 'Seoul Motor Show' !

So now we set off for the one hour long journey to 'Kintex' where the motor show was being held.
Reached Kintex, and after a long walk though the parking area ( which incientally was also like a motor show for me - except without the crowd and model!) ... soon ... we reached inside. It was ONE big hall as opposed to our Indian multiple hall Expo.

Well to be honest, going to a motor show ( for me) is a bit like visiting a zoo. Only that perhaps in a zoo i'm more familair with the creatures on displaywhile in an auto expo, i am a little more at sea! But on the whole, people behave pretty similarly in both these places!! so as we moved from cage to cage ( read 'brand to brand') i was really trying to get a fix on the design identity of the various brands and how they differenciated themselves from each other. I heard a lot about 'wheel arches', super-cars, hydrogen fule cell cars missing 'b' pillars from my friend, and also managed to notice a lot of whacky rear view mirrors and LED experiments with headlights... quite a mind swim!

All in all, it turned out to be a far better experiance than i had expected. Some cars actually caught my attention and amazement,like:

'Altica' Renault-Samsung concept car
http://aving.net/usa/Exhibition/default.asp?mode=read&c_num=41606&SP_Num=73&mn_name=exhi&BTB_Num=136

the hyundai QarmaQ - a full plastic body concept car in association with GE plastics
http://news.windingroad.com/concept-cars/geneva-motor-show-hyundai-qarmaq-concept-goes-for-whalebones-safety/

and of course... the mini cooper ( one of the few cars with a MALE model!)

Came back home feeling good and tired. So maybe cars arn't that boring after all!

Patterns

2007-04-05T04:29:00.001-05:00

One of the scariest feelings is realizing how similar you are to your parents!

And whats even scarier is that one can never see this similarity until its too late! Similar mistakes, similar triumphs, and lives led almost on that invisible line of fate.

Fate? i NEVER believed in it. And who am i kidding, i still don't. But i think we are all programmed to see patterns,we love it when we detect a pattern in anything... differnt people do differnt things with the patterns they see... 'scientififc people' notice patterns in an accurate manner and turn their onservations into scientific theories, artists tweek and exaggerate the patterns they see in life so that they communicate better... and some of us see patterns and start forseeing the future... we take the pattern to its next predictable level, and know exactly
whats about to happen... or at least we would like to think so!

'markers' of time!

2007-04-01T08:01:00.000-05:00

Been some time again since i wrote...
I did something yesterday which i had spared myself from doing for a long time... ironing clothes... i had left the jeans for the end bit... and while ironing then i noticed how much thier color had changed since i had bought the pair.. i could see around the seams how much darker they used to be... and how with all the fading i liked the pair more and more...
nostalgia...
perhaps 'markers' of time...are more valuable than we admit..
There are so many little things we look at, that are just affirmations that 'yes time has past'... like sandal tans.... faded scars... length of hair... white hairs...
This reminds me that while doing research on bicycle customisation... it suprised me how much a flaw like a dent or a scratch made people know thier bike more than any other means of personalisation! slowely i noticed that Many people actually know thier products by the product's flaw, a flaw that occuered by a mistake, or through some funny incident... anyhow, that flaw becomes a 'marker' of time.. and something 'of your own'... in a world of mass production, and identical pieces... perhaps the few things that we still have control over are flaws, and those flaws make things our own!

Season of Lurve !

2007-03-04T22:08:00.000-06:00

Everything intertwined…

2007-02-22T21:58:00.000-06:00

Ever noticed that while talking to someone with music playing in the background, at a moment of pause in the conversation, the song playing mysteriously says a line that seems to be in continuation with the conversation you were just having? well, when it happens one tends to just laugh it off.

This happens to me more often with books. Sometimes when I read it feels like the book is telling my own story in an allegorical manner!.. When I had just entered Design School, I had also just begun reading Harry Potter. And the similarities were eerie! While Harry Potter had the strangest course material buying list, I too had to go out, and buy A3 sunlit bond paper, French curves, half imperial ivory sheets….things I had not even heard of! The whole struggle between the ‘muggles’ and the witches, and the children of muggles Vs the children of witches…. I too was noticing that some people were from artist/ creative families while some were from families who still could not understand WHAT their child was paying good money to ‘study’! So, by crazy association, I fashioned all of us to be witches and wizards of sorts!

And now its happening again… I’m reading a book with three stories intertwined. One a fairy tale, one of the past, and one in the present ( the past of the auther now!) and I can’t help but feel that there is a fourth ! My present, my Right Now! I read every chapter with baited breath, read the three stories and almost and feel my own building itself alongside!
Scared to reach the end of this book!

Flowers for a change!

2007-02-19T23:05:00.000-06:00

Really liked these images.

they are actually Xrays! Never thought a rose could look so good!

You can see more images at www.bmyersphoto.com

Scrappy sketching

2007-01-13T03:58:00.000-06:00

Needed to sketch a dragon.

And this is the first ridiculous sketch i made. I made many more dragons after this sketch, but this scruffy guy remained the favourite!

Its strange, most often things that happen without intent turn out better than when the things that happen with huge effort and intent!

color sound and light

2007-01-10T05:16:00.000-06:00

I decided NOT to listen to music today..

So it was a strangly silent day..... Except, I heard some sounds that i had never heard before! Like after I got myself a cup of coffee, Ii was holding against my cheek to warm my face, and I could hear a sound like shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! I realized that it was the sound of the little froth bubbles bursting!

Color, Sound and Light define ones mood. Primerily.
Around 20 minutes after midnight this new year i felt close to magic. The colors then were deep blue, warm orange.. no maybe glowing yellow, and brown.... there was the distant sound of waves, the creaking of weak floorboards, faraway music and sparse conversation. I was at a beach, and a friend had found a creaky old wodden plank bridge over a small riverett. The bridge was lined with star-shaped lanterns that were glowing deep yellow. I had just stepped out of the water after a crazy midnight swim... slightly cold, but the light was so warm.
That half an hour was pure magic.

And all these little moments when one sees a brilliant color, hears a soft sound, feel a little cold, and then warm again.... make up for all the rest of the loud keyboard sounds, high heel clatter, cell phone brauls, 2 degrees delhi winter, a grey and off-white office, a blue tinted glass that kills all golden light.

and then magic happens again.

Years

2006-12-21T04:38:00.000-06:00

Maybe its just my mood...
but in choosing an appropriate font for 'years' for some work.... first i just went on reading 'years' as 'tears'... and then after looking at many many font options, the word itself looked alien! all judgement went out the window... How do graphic designers deal with this... or do they never face this problem!

Well then i thought its the year end .. and maybe my last post this year, so i could leave the image here and see if ANYbody else sees 'years' as 'tears' and if they after a point are convinced that the spelling's all wrong!

My mood...
Why are these years just bliping by? years used to be so much longer before!And now like my company, even i have begun thinking in 2-3 year blocks... a year is too short!Maybe my new year resolutions/ and goals too can span out over a couple of years.... that would be good seeing that none of this years goals came through really!.... so i can start this 'carryover' of dreams... like in a multiplication sum!

But if i can have my way... i'd like my next year to be like the '7th year in the 2nd row' its normal... but in a dyslexic way!

Happy New Year!

brr

2006-11-15T06:31:00.000-06:00

yup, and now i'm back into my sweaters and cold hands and cold feet and pink nose...

Many ghosts

2006-10-28T06:58:00.000-05:00

I have finally begun to believe in ghosts.

Memories are ghosts.
And they really are like what fantasy and myth say they are like - they fade in and fade out, they are transluscent, they sometimes haunt us when we are awake, and even more when we are asleep.

dreams ARE a really crazy place... its perhaps the only place where we arn't bound by time!

Memory of a previous life

2006-10-26T02:40:00.000-05:00

Its amazing how TIME plays a central role in humor. Humor presupposes the knowledge of a past, or the knowledge of the expected consequence. Since humor is derived out of something unexpected it is obvious that there IS something expected to begin with!

In this context, i find that Re-Use products add an entirely new category to humor in products.
This is because we relate to certain forms in a set context. When that same product is used in a COMPLETELY different context, the memory of it's ..shall we say 'previous life' adds a smile!

Humor in Products

2006-10-20T05:19:00.000-05:00

Back to my pet topic - product-humor.

The plan is categorize and understand different ways in which products create humor, and how product-humor plays a role ( if any) in today’s world.

Been thinking-thinking about how to go about my research for some time... been collecting images too, and with every new product-humor' image that I find, I am able to find more basis for categorization.Studying and understanding humor is a lot like studying and understanding art... there's limitless categorization, a lot of subjective judgment, and a lot of personal bias, - and lastly a lot of that scary question " so what?"

I realize what I am doing is a lot of 'translation' is I may call it that. I’m looking at techniques of humor in other mediums such as language, and film, (such as puns, paradox, parody etc) and seeing how that technique is used in products to result in humor.

Like a paradox in a product is perhaps when the product presents an impossible situation…. (Courtesy 100% design)

A pun… a Time-Table (courtesy Juanico)

And like wise… The search is getting more exciting.
So anyone out there, if you ever come across a product that makes you smile/ laugh/ or just tilt your head…. Please do pass it on!

traffic jam

2006-10-19T01:57:00.000-05:00

its pretty strange how weather can effect EVERYTHING!

i was stuck in a traffic jam today for the first time on my way to work.
Background:
i travel by a rickety bus for around one hour to reach office. The usual scenario is like this...
70% of the people are catching up on their last bits of sleep before another dreary day at work
20% are trying to read the newspaper
8% just listen to the radio
2% think about various things, like what they should have said when so-snd-so said that, how the dinner was yesterday, what work is lined up today, methods of poisoning the whole RnD dept etc...
but by and large 100% of the people are in a semi crabby state of mind.

So today when we settled into what looked like a never ending traffic jam, i was curious to see what would everybody do....
but the weather was more than perfect, - it was a little clowdy, a slight cool late october breeze, and the whole world looked light blue....

and the bus transformed!
people jumped out of the bus to go for a walk, smoke a bit, a few started making plans for the bus to take a detour and never reach office, a few bumped up the volume of the radio... jokes about delhi traffic etiquette

Everybody was almost disappointed when the traffic cleared, and the day was back to normal again!

Nightmares

2006-10-10T03:50:00.000-05:00

Time and again one realizes that 'abstract associations' are the crux of design. In design one is constantly searching for abstract associations/ metaphors that are very close to being universal so that the product's semantics are communicative.

Now, why I've named this blog 'nighmares' is because I have been having too many of them for the past five nights. And I usually tend to remember my dreams... So, what's skriking me, now that I am forced to think about it, is the amount of abstract association that plays in dreams. When one sits to analyze a dream... It actually often makes sense, and it astounds ME that it was MY mind that conjured up THAT mix of metaphors and story... and it actually HAS meaning!

Since fear has been central in my dreams lately... I've been trying to read the metaphors like:
losing teeth - fear of aging?
losing clothes - vulnerability?
losing hair - fear of loss of beauty?
snakes...

well there's more... But the point here being that perhaps dreams HAVE a higher connect with 'reality'. Ones OWN reality. Storyteller have understood this connect between 'dream' and 'reality' since time... What I was wondering was that can this have any value while 'storytelling through products'?

creativity and honesty - a link

2006-10-04T04:55:00.000-05:00

Also i wonder why i can't keep my blogs clear of personal angst.
I almost feel jealose of the very interesting and purely 'idea oriented' blogs that i see.

but then a thought stuck me... a strange thought...

... that 'creativity' is the highest form of 'honesty'... ok, iknow that sounds outrageous.. but let me see if i can put my thoughts across... that creative people use their freedom with honesty or lack of inhibitions as their fuel... and thats whats different about them,.... musicians write about love, heartbreak, protest etc... its very bare emotion centric... artists make paintings about normal people and snippets of their life.. or pour their love for god, onto the canvas... film makers..( some) rely on telling 'honest' stories... either illustrating crazily real and quirky people, or about honest magical dreams... but whats the common person about creative thought is that it reveals a nakedness of emotion, and truth, that even they don't show to themselves......

makes any sense?

another chapter

2006-10-04T04:23:00.000-05:00

my fear actually is that i have forgotten how to write.

its been too long. in fact the fear is that everything will sound the way it is sounding... very vague, too self consious... and utterly boring.

but there is so much to say... a whole new chapter ( if i can call it that) has written itself..., life had become so incredebly dull ... that i think i dove into a ready plot of tragidy!

Its strange how hungry people can sense each other... by hungry here i mean nothing explicit.... i mean people with intricate fault.. people who need people.. people who mess things up, people who can help each other, people who end up just doing again, what they were trying to run away from.... patterns do repeat. And everytime they do, i wonder if it was cause i was running away from it, or was it cause i was running towards it...

One thing i like about now, is that this is perhaps the first time i am walking away with no albatros of guilt.

planning

2006-05-17T23:07:00.000-05:00

Need to clear cobwebs...

what all do i want to do in the next few months?
NOT what i have been doing for the past few months...

write the paper on humor in taboo form language products
read Something interesting to keep my brain alive
Sniff around and figure out what to study next
Play more music
Swim
travel

hmmm ...

TIME

2006-03-30T23:18:00.000-06:00

been a month now in this place..

So many jumbled thoughts...so much to say... and of course...Confusion.
my days are so full suddenly, - but the strange thing is that i look back at a week, - and really can't figure, what I filled it with.... work is strange, - with very little space for original creative ideas...Actually there is time... but it'll involve a lot of self innitiative.... and i don't have the energy for that....

Keep getting a good idea here and there, - but taking that idea, and turning it into a proposal, - or making a presentation seems like a mammoth effort...

while thinking out my plan, - this script that i am following, - it seems good, - but that same scary thing is happening again... time is again flying and everytime a month goes by, - and i honestly don't know what i did in it , - i get scared.... i don't want to feel that way after 10 years.....

drifting is hell of a scary thing, - cause its aimless, control-less, lacks speed.... So what happens is that after a longish while you land up at a place do did not intend on landing up into, you're even more lost than before, - back tracking is rarely an option, perhaps the only decision left is WHEN you want to stop drifting... and then things truly begin...

My point being that i'm afraid i'm drifting.

Hmm - this song seems to say it all:

Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day
You fritter and waste the hours in an off hand way
Kicking around on a piece of ground in your home town
Waiting for someone or something to show you the way
Tired of lying in the sunshine staying home to watch the rain
You are young and life is long and there is time to kill today
And then one day you find ten years have got behind you
No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun
And you run and you run to catch up with the sun, but it’s sinking
And racing around to come up behind you again
The sun is the same in the relative way, but you’re older
Shorter of breath and one day closer to death
Every year is getting shorter, never seem to find the time
Plans that either come to naught or half a page of scribbled lines
Hanging on in quiet desperation is the english way
The time is gone, the song is over, thought I’d something more to say

Home, home againI like to be here when I can
And when I come home cold and tired
It’s good to warm my bones beside the fire
Far away across the field
The tolling of the iron bell
Calls the faithful to their knees
To hear the softly spoken magic spells.

2006-02-24T07:28:00.000-06:00

hmmmm, and this is the last week before i again jump into a new chapter.

this week was packed, almost like i know i need to sleep all i want, dance all i want, read all i want... cause after this it will be long time of just getting used to a whole new way of being in delhi...

deicided to work where i will be working after sooooo much debate, so much reason, and the funny thing is that i don't even know if it will actually be something i will Remotely enjoy! strange how i managed to make up mind without even once asking whether i will Enjoy this.... all the reasons are so ... well.. academic, and if someone were to point blank ask me, - will you enjoy doing this.... i'd have to say .... No.... but still, it makes so much sense...

perhaps i will do a job i love..... but not now...

beginings

2005-12-17T02:53:00.000-06:00

time to start planning again. its been about 1 month of blank space now. well i did want some free time, but perhaps it should not spin out of control.

its time to start something new. what i really want is to work on project basis, where i only need to work on ONE exciting project. a project that needs me to do some extensive research, research that really means something.. research that brings some new insights to forefront. and then some eally exciting design work. don't know if i want to be in delhi for this or not.

need to start looking.

music

2005-12-09T07:56:00.000-06:00

a few days ago i went for a small music concert...
they did all kinds of music, the singers were very obviously enjoying themselves. the beat was fun, and i strangely could not keep the tears out of my eyes. Instead of simpy enjoying a good concert, i felt left out. Something i had not let myself think about for so long, just lunged at me from the stage...

where has all the music in my life gone? if i dared to be honest, wouldn't i still love to sing... wouldn't i love to part of this group that was creating all of that...

ever since i lost my voice i just locked the whole world of music and stayed away from it... but what should i do? i miss it so much..

and since i have opened this crazy pandora's box.... out come the same old questions...there are so many things i want to do, so many things that i could become briliant at, if i gave it its due time... but why do i just never stick to ANY one of my fancies for long enough? its almost as if while i begin to become good at one thing, a crazy fear siezes me that i'm loosing out on everything else... i move on, and pick something else... and the cycle repeats...

is this the way it is always going to be?

and back from kashmir...

2005-11-22T11:43:00.000-06:00

got back from srinagar a few days ago. feels strange to have so little to do! And i wasn't such a small cog in the whole task after all.... did manage to make some use of my skills in the end! Now all those forms are back, and as simple as they were, there are still scores of mistakes, can't even imagine what would have happened if they had not been simplified...

But i'm not happy about the way things are moving... or rather that they are not moving... time is slowly spilling into winter, and we still are not spelling out stratigies to be there at a time when the most help will be required. In all actuality our team has done exactly what we said other organisations would do..... pack up and leave in a few months. the whole point was to stay through the winter, and build up stratigies, and training amterial till feb end.... don't seem to get even a whiff of that....

and then there is the pessimism that is this a fight worth fighting.... at the end what are we really asking for? it is a natural disaster... it is a time people need to to build themselves back... is it really worth it to fight on small points?

wish i had more time.... wish i did not have to choose... wish i did not have to leave....

in Srinagar!!

2005-10-22T04:13:00.000-05:00

Been a loooong time since i wrote here.

lots has happened, like i finished my project in chennai.... came to delhi to have a good long month of relaxation... in the meanwhile an earthquake stuck Kashmir.... an now here i am in Kashmir trying to help in setting up a relief and rehabilitation coordination centre!!

its been only 3 to 4 days here, but its been terribly interesting. meeting young activists on a daily basis, trying to figure out how to simplify complex survey forms so that it will be possible to fill them at some point!! seeking an office getting set up from scratch.... seeing people taking HUGE resonsibilities.... mobolising people..... quite a task.

And even though i'm a terribly small cog in this whole business, it feels good to be a part of it anyway... wish i could figure out a slightly better way to make use of my own skills for this cause..

perhaps i will get a few ideas in time to come.... hope that won' be too late...!

metaphors...

2005-08-23T11:07:00.000-05:00

just just got a nice idea...

again relating to humor in product design.
its about metaphors.
understanding and creating metaphors is perhaps one of the most creative prosess of creative thinking... metaphors are abstract associations... here one completely different situation/ object/ animal, is related to another absurd situation.... and somehow very astute conclusions are made.

very often in most languages... ( in this i might be wrong...) metaphors are seemingly funny when one first hears them.. perhaps because of the absurd connection they strive towards... but some crazy truth in them hits very hard... that perhaps could even be called high quality wit...

a lot of design is about finding the right metophors... sometimes for functional reasons, - so that people can make connections even when the object / graphic image is new to them..... a lot of form abstraction too is heavily dependant on metaphors....

And finally coming to humor....( again!) ...This perhaps could be the 'highest' form of humor in product design.... abstact associations, which are metaphorical in nature, which add new meaning and a unique functionality to a product....!!

just the seed of the idea... will need to flesh it out too!!

Phases

2005-08-03T03:28:00.000-05:00

Its strange how one picks up pace and suddenly loses it... As the deadline approaches, one has to hold on to the tension and work... but then suddenly something strange has happened... the deadline is closer than ever before... but I seem to want to do everything besides work... the closer the its comes the calmer I'm becoming... or is it cause I'm giving up?

2005-06-29T06:11:00.000-05:00

just quickly quickly jotting down some interesting ideas amma came up with... So while trying to find that seed, a starting point into my argument about indian asthetics in product design, she pointed out some interesting associations...
1. about design for timelessless - like a sari is flexible, and meant to passed down from generation to gernation, kitchen utensiles are meant to be passed down from generation to generation
2. about dance, and the inherant feeling of balanced poses, ballet versus, bharatnatyam
3. about about indian ideas and crafts tending to try to understnad the language of the material and obey, rather than the western concept of conquest, and make the material do something would rather not do!
4. indian classical music is introspective, while western is almost like a conquest..
5. Notions of cleanliness, and how they differ form the individual and the surroundings..

So some words like 'introspective' 'flexible' 'durable' ..

Makes sense?

frazzelling weekend!

2005-06-27T06:04:00.000-05:00

Not used to dealing with sick people... it makes me nervous, don't know how to be stern, and responsible... so when peri ma fell really sick, and was delirious, refused to eat and take the medicine, i simply went besserk...

learning from saturday:
1. taking people to the hospital is not something that one only does when someone is dying, its something you can do for smaller reasons too!
2. when old people say, "don't tell my family how sick i am" don't always honour the wish... cause the family would never forgive you if something went seriously wrong, and you had simply wasted time honouring a wish... also when the family finds out from you and come to look after the person... they hardly hold it against you... always lovely to know how loved you are !!

yup thats it!

musty weather

2005-06-22T04:27:00.000-05:00

lovely start to the day...

walked to my bus stop in what can be called perfect weather... in that shadowless lovely light.. and a little wiff of a drizzle...

finding fuel for the papers.... just that i wish there was some better way of finding interesting product images than going through google image searches, and other image search engines.... really whetre can i find images of products that experiment with either a 'sexual' form language... or products that suggest taboo humor? even finiding articles on the net seems to be a bleak option...

just the first day

2005-06-21T07:48:00.000-05:00

hmmmm..
its the end of the day, and no idea as such to jot down.. but there will be many to come! hope my idea for the paper get some fuel through this..