Trip to Spain and Morocco

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Chicago + Argonne

Random thoughts on National Labs:

1. There are so many Russian folk in US National Labs. It's hilarious.

2. The security people take their job seriously. A little too seriously. You need ID and a National Lab pass on your person at every waking moment or else someone WILL stop and ask you what you're doing here. The hotel checkout desk will not say your hotel room number out loud for security purposes. Last night Saloni and I drove back from Chicago after attending a friend's wedding and I did not have my Argonne badge. So the Department of Energy law enforcement officer escorted me back to the hotel, checked my badge (which was in my room and which I had to bring down to show to the police) and then I was free to go. "Code XXXX, ID verified. Entry # XXXXX" via the Codec.

3. The different parts of the campus are called "Area xxx" etc.---exactly like it is in Half-Life, which is cool. Part of the reason I ever wanted to become a physicist was because of Half-Life. Played it when I was 9. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oEgO16JaW4Y&t=162s
"Subject: Gordon Freeman, Education: PhD, MIT, Theoretical Physics, Position: Research Associate, Assignment: Anomalous Materials Laboratory, Location: Black Mesa Research Facility, Black Mesa, New Mexico". (Presumably the location is inspired by another National Lab, Los Alamos, in New Mexico. Haven't visited that place yet, unfortunately.)

Random thoughts on Chicago:

1. The city is gorgeous. I've probably talked about it before here somewhere. Architecturally, it's certainly the most impressive city in the US. All the buildings in downtown are designed to make sense and fit the impressive scale. The roads are wide so you can actually admire the buildings from where you stand on the street unlike in NYC where the roads are tiny as hell and lined with garbage. The river walk is beautiful. The lake front is wonderful. The cycling lanes are really wide. It is really a pleasure to walk around this place.

2. The South Side, I haven't explored. I haven't had the time to go driving through, and now I don't have the rental car to do it either. But from what little I did get to see of it, the poverty was stark. The roads absolutely littered with trash, houses abandoned, and you would only see primarily black people on the streets. Segregation is naked here. I did not go into the worst part: Garfield Avenue and Englewood, where you can get shot just driving around caught in gunfire exchange.

3. I've spent a large part of today figuring out from my hotel room what makes gang violence so rampant in South Chicago. There's obviously a long history to this. But what appears now is that no one wants to be a part of this yet an economy based off of drugs, lack of employment opportunities, completely broken family structure, and just the inertia of it all seems to drag everything along. These gangs are often the only kind of family these kids have ever had. "Bloody Chicago" on Youtube seems like a channel run by someone who does care about this situation and wants it to change; the comments on the channel however are full of vile hatred and absolute lack of empathy or understanding and can make you sick.

4. Someone's gotta change this. Don't know how.

India Trip thoughts. 13th Dec. 2017 - 3rd Jan, 2018

This was a very eventful trip and I cannot be happier that both Saloni and I got to see all our surviving grandparents during this trip. We visited, in order: Jaipur, Indore, Mumbai, Kanpur, and finally Delhi in this trip. There was lots of time for chai and conversations on politics, lots of time to meet family and catch up with friends, and the general process of giving and receiving love. I don't think I've felt so fulfilled and sated by love and family in an India trip since I left for the US, and for this I'm so thankful.

But as I get more settled in US life and culture, an India trip becomes also becomes a bit about learning how things have been progressing from the last time I visited India. So here are some thoughts on that.

Positives.

1. There is continued development of roads and airports in the country. The airports in Mumbai, Delhi, and Indore are well designed and extremely functional. The outer ring road in Delhi has been developed into a mega 7 lane per side highway. Despite the number of cars at least doubling in the last decade, it took us ~ 45 minutes to get from our home to the international airport or the railways station, and this is less than it used to before.
<1 30="" airport="" and="" are="" at="" better.="" better="" both="" college="" days.="" delhi="" discovered="" even="" from="" go="" hasn="" have="" home="" hour="" i="" in="" international="" lane="" lanes="" markings="" mid-afternoon="" minutes="" most="" mumbai="" my="" nbsp="" night="" now.="" our="" p="" people="" roads="" rohini="" slightly="" station="" t="" that="" the="" these="" though="" times="" to="" traffic="" train="" used="" was="">
2. Trash collection in some places is markedly improved. Indore was shockingly clean. We visited a night food market and a day-time street food market. Every seller had a trash can, and there was no trash on the street to be seen. People in Indore seemed to be extremely proud of this and there were loads of posters in the city requesting all locals to keep the city clean so that it can retain its #1 position in the cleanliness charts for 2018. I was informed this has been a very recent change, as well. Track collection vehicles arrived every morning at a fixed time with a dopey "Swachch Bhaarat ka Vaada" song sung by Shaan. The PM's cleanliness campaign has at the very least raised some awareness for the issue. Unfortunately, such a change in mentality does not seem to have permeated all over India, and this is particularly evident in Uttar Pradesh.

3. Power. We did not experience a single power outage in all the places we went to, besides a short 5 minute power loss in Kanpur. Credit here goes to the BJP government and its work on making the running of old coal-based power-plants more streamlined, which has transformed India into a power-surplus state for the first time in its history. The price of solar power production has also come down massively and there seems to be a push into solar power generation to add to the existing power infrastructure. This is excellent news.

4. Mumbai is beginning to develop a cool skyline.

Negatives.

1. The air quality in Delhi, and UP generally has become shockingly bad. I was happy to not be in Delhi for any longer than I was there. The coastal cities fare better only because the ocean sweeps all that smog into itself. Whether the air quality is due to burning crops, fuel-inefficient cars, small coal-based factories, or people just burning wood to keep themselves warm, this just cannot continue.

2. The air quality also impacts fog development. After 5 PM and before 11 AM, it was hard to see past a meter in Delhi/Kanpur. The thick fog has made train travel very unpredictable and frustrating. In my times as a college student, traveling between Delhi and Kanpur was a routine affair and the train was never late by more than an hour or two. This time, our train was late by over 7 hours. Of course, we were able to bide this time by making new friends who told us about their horror stories and life in tech startups.

3. I had built UP to be a total shithole so that when we actually arrived my wife would be decently surprised at (hopefully) my rather unfair and harsh evaluation of the state. Unfortunately, I ended up raising my own hopes and I was left disappointed after landing in Lucknow. The highway over the railway crossing in Kanpur continues to be under construction for the past 18 years. Trash is everywhere. Pigs, stray dogs, cows, donkeys, and all sorts of other living beings still roam free in the trash. Nothing has changed here, except for the power situation. Whether the BJP Yogi government (which I have massive reservations with generally anyway) does anything for the development of infrastructure anywhere other than Gorakhpur is to be seen.

4. Isolated incidents of sectarian violence seem to have increased. In my 3 weeks there, two incidents targeting Christians appeared on the news. The first one occurred in Madhya Pradesh, where a bunch of thugs beat up a Christian priest outside a police station. The priest and a bunch of seminarians were out singing carols in a village when some Hindutva activists alleged that the priests were trying to forcefully convert the villagers to Christianity and called the police. Things then turned violent at the police station. In Aligarh, UP, a right-wing Hindu group threatened schools against celebrating Christmas---nothing eventually came of this threat because of a clear statement from the UP police against the group, and widespread public disapproval. It is indeed a big country, but there's enough reason here to feel extremely disheartened about the future of the social fabric of the country. Meanwhile, I realized that the right-wing has become strong enough to disenfranchise shorts-wearing folk (like me) from many temple complexes in Mumbai.

5. On a personal note, I felt even more so in this trip that everyone is out to take advantage of you in India. You step aside for a second and your place in line is lost. People are ruthlessly competitive. I think I've been only able to appreciate this properly since I've been away from India.  On another occasion, my parents are out to buy their retirement home. A realtor who was supposed to show us one apartment tagged along for all other properties. What's in it for them? They would always make their way into the marketing office of the apartment complex to secretly seal a cut for themselves before ushering my parents to have a conversation with the sales rep. Why can't these guys be transparent and say what they'd like their realtor fees to be? A porter at the Delhi railway station charged us obscene prices to take 3 mid-sized suitcases up and down just two flights of steps, presumably seeing that the traveling party consists of two women and one man. Taxi drivers, porters, everyone needs to be negotiated with, and it gets absolutely tiring once you're out of touch with this.

6. Industry continues to be impeded by extremely unionization-friendly Congress-era labor laws. The metal-working factory my dad is in charge of is an illustrative example. Profits are heavily dependent on reducing human errors in production, and workers are least bothered. They have been in the job for 20+ years; labor laws make it nearly impossible to fire "worker" class of people in India. There is therefore no motivation to perform. The union these workers form is additionally able to regularly increase their compensation. In fact, the workers are so complacent that performance-based salary increases are also not enough to motivate them to work more efficiently. So the factory tries to hire additional "contract" workers on lower wages that are not protected by these laws. That creates a vicious atmosphere since some workers are payed disproportionately less for the same work. Rightly these workers are knocking on the door of the courts for equal pay. Here the painfully slow Indian legal system works in the factory's favor. I do not see how this situation can be addressed. It is a bit like the introduction of reservation in education and jobs for certain castes. At 15% of job seats, it makes good sense, but at 90% in some places, it ceases to be meaningful. Similarly, the extreme protection of labor is doing no good to anyone in the country---worker salaries aren't rising fast enough and new industries are not investing in the country. The Congress has, in each iteration since their existence, introduced policies that are so politically expedient that all parties unanimously agree to them to save face. Once the policy is in paper, revoking them is simply unimaginable from a political point of view.

7. Eating out, shopping clothes, and many other things are tending towards American prices, especially if you shop in malls. Which tells me that even though salaries have risen, the standards of living have not risen by much if at all, especially for the middle class. Things are likely better for the lower classes but life is still very hard for the average worker in the Indian system.

Now time for some simpler moments:

1. It was fun to enjoy a shot of brandy with my grandma. She was her usual self. A street dog has decided that he will protect my grandma every time she's out to enjoy some sun in the afternoon time.  It is unclear why this dog provides this service free of charge but I appreciate it.

2. My favorite new phrase, which was relayed to me in different Hindi dialects in both Jaipur and Kanpur is that there's no point in collecting money in life for posterity. If your child is a kaput, they'll blow through all that money in no time; if your child is a saput, they won't need your inheritance anyway. I like the idea of burning through my money by myself, personally speaking :)

3. People in my wife's family have huge social networks, especially those in Jaipur. They have seen so many deaths of other, older people that they do not feel the pain of bereavement. Life comes. Life goes. People continue smiling. It's an eerie tranquility.


<1 30="" airport="" and="" are="" at="" better.="" better="" both="" college="" days.="" delhi="" discovered="" even="" from="" go="" hasn="" have="" home="" hour="" i="" in="" international="" lane="" lanes="" markings="" mid-afternoon="" minutes="" most="" mumbai="" my="" nbsp="" night="" now.="" our="" p="" people="" roads="" rohini="" slightly="" station="" t="" that="" the="" these="" though="" times="" to="" traffic="" train="" used="" was="">PS: I need to write on these trips before I forget about them ASAP: Hawaii, Costa Rica, Spain/Morocco, and Acadia National Park travelogues. This is why from now on I will date my trips.

NOLA Montage / March Meeting 2017

Eating by the Mississippi. What a big ass river. Apparently the longest in the world after the Nile! 

French style homes? (Near hotel.)

The French Quarter. Sufficiently smelly to remind oneself of home. 

Weirdos throwing plastic beaded necklaces on the unsuspecting and/or participating crowds. 

The Preservation Hall. It's listed highly on TripAdvisor for Jazz performances in NOLA. Lines are 50 minutes long, and I can't say I was really bothered by the performance. There's gotta be something wrong if a supposedly good jazz band plays "Saints Go Marching In"! That said, the rendition of Louis Armstrong's "It's a wonderful world" was awesome. Some part of me still somehow remembered all the lyrics and I really enjoyed the romantic tone of the saxophone in the cosy atmosphere of the hall. 

Now this was fantastic. (At the 21st Amendment, on Ibervile street in the French quarter) I haven't heard the blues in a long long time since Saloni got me listening to Bollywood music again. Well this was just good. The guy played some Robert Cray, a version of Bob Marley's "No Woman No Cry", and many other awesome songs. I've always loved my blues/jazz with the guitar, primarily, so this band with a guitar lead was just great for me. Especially when you have a good blues player who loves to tease you with solos. I feel like the blues, and especially good jazz are like Quantum Mechanics in action: there's a final destination, a final train you know you have to get on to, but you can do that via multiple paths and they all interfere, hopefully constructively to make harmony. And it's all about the tease. You almost reach the final destination, and you pull out. Play some more solo on your favorite scale, maybe go into an associated lydian mode just for additional tease, and then when you finally return to the basic riff, it's like an eruption of joy. And this guy was just amazing. Fuck me what I just wrote sounds like a porno. 

Python on Tree in Swamp. 

The tour of the swamp is such a nice experience here. Many of these houses got destroyed in the Katrina storm. Also, lots of Confederate flags, lol. Paraj and I could definitely sense a bit of coldness? from the tour guides as well. I guess this is as old-fashioned as the country can get! I think I get along with Trump supporters better. I had a great time joking with some on the flight back about how the North American Dog should be set as the most privileged birth in the Hindu cycle of re-birth/reincarnation. They just fucking melted and started telling me all their dog stories. 

The swamps are definitely beautiful/cool. 

More Swamps.

Hoods. It was fun going around town seeing these neighborhoods. 

Some of my friends also stayed longer and went to the plantations. I think this is an opportunity missed to see a really important/sad part of US history. The guys who went were totally shell-shocked by the violence and cruelty of the plantation owners. 

Princeton, NJ and office.

I must admit I was not very comfortable initially with the suburban-ness of the campus and my housing situation. The Princeton campus feels at times like an exclusivist haven that is surrounded by golf courses, and a lake named after one of the richest industrialists in the history of America, while a few dozen miles away lies the filth and mirk of Newark and Jersey city and worse Trenton, which has one of the highest crime-rates of any city in America. 

It's all very different from Harvard, with its seamless integration into the city of Boston. I know its a strange thing to say esp. concerning Harvard, but there's an egalitarian quality to this. It always felt to me as if the university and its intellectualism spread outwards into the city, that the average Bostonian benefited from this resource, and it reflected in the way you could talk with them about so many things in science and the arts, and I grew extremely fond of this in my time there. I will miss Boston. Boston is a rich, rich place.

Nevertheless, Princeton is growing on me. There's undeniably a serene magnificence in doing research in the quiet of a secluded forestal area. I like it. It reminds me a little of my undergraduate days. I can walk around the campus and not have my thoughts be disturbed by hordes of tourists. I don't have to worry about the morning bus and finding a seat somewhere amidst the crowd of early travelers. I can again admire nature. I don't have to rush or be rushed anywhere. And I can again ask those kinds of questions that drew me into physics in the first place---questions that are `basal'. And that is a beautiful feeling. Hopefully it comes to good things.

The campus is certainly beautiful. It's a strange mix of both old stone buildings and ultra-modern buildings that somehow work well together. Here are some random pics I took today. 

An undergraduate dorm.

Whitman College

No idea.

Engineering and Science Building area.

Woodrow Wilson building for Public Policy

Strange chromatic purple building.

There's a lot of wooded area, lots of trees. It's almost like you're working in the middle of a forest. 

I spotted a black squirrel! Not for the first time though. I did see one in the Harvard Athletics center once.

Jewish Center

I like my office space. A personal room with a window and a nice blackboard cannot be beat.

View from office

View from office window. A squirrel raises its hand to make way for its hind leg to tickle its ear 

View from office window. Another time, same place. This strange bird appears to be responsible for chipping away the outer skin of the tree in that whole area.

Lots of ideas. Lots to do. 

And I'm finally settling into our home. Although Alone :/

View from home porch.