If I were to list down the things which engaged my interest and attention majorly during the time I spent a few days back in Madras , it would pretty much have to be :
1. ‘S’ambhar : I saw it everywhere . I smelled it everywhere and hell yeah ! I hogged on it everywhere . Starting from the minute I landed at Chennai Central and had a plate of the ‘ most authentic ‘ sambhar vada of Saravana Bhavan to the numerous sambhars concomitant with the dosas I had at breakfast and dinner time and to top it all the ubiquitous lunch item of sambhar rice . ‘Sambhar Slurpfest ‘ rules my gastronomic priorities hands-down :) here in Madras .
2. ‘S’ilica-Based Nanocomposites : Synthesis of nanosized particles of this material by high energy ball milling was the purported reason I was in Madras in the first place . Research work miles away from the insti. bang in the middle of a semester otherwise marked by an incredibly boring diurnal schedule of alternating between Gtalk ,Heavy Metal , hours of unproductive lectures / labs and the occasional sleep was a really welcome change .
3. ‘S’.. Hadn’t met this good friend of mine for four long months ! And when the opportunity finally came , busy schedules of ‘Work ’ forced both parties to limit the meeting to a fleeting time of 6-7 hrs .However , whoever said 6 hours wasn’t enough time to experience the vibrance of a major city was wrong !! Stopovers at S’s place ( where the sambhar slurpfest continued unabated :D in the disguise of homemade Southie food ) , Coffee Central ( an awesomeMAXX coffee bar in T.Nagar) , Gangotree Chat and offcourse watching the Sun set over the Bay of Bengal at Marina Beach to top it all . Thanks S , for making those 6 hrs the only truly ‘Happy Hours’ I had in an otherwise maddening work-dominated stay in Madras .
4. 'S'leep : Good ole sleep eluded me for 3 nights in a row . After just 7.5 hrs of sleep in over 3 days, on Sunday night , I felt like a walking and talking zombie and thought to myself , “ One more night like this and I am officially ‘DEAD’ “ .
5. 'S'un N 'S'and : The Sweltering Sun and the and the relentlessly humid weather in Madras left me wondering whether I would make it out safely from the city without dehydrating to death . I mean I know what humidity can do to you ( coming from Bombay i.e. ) but it’s a different story altogether here .
I managed to sneak in some time for Marina Beach ( with 'S' ) and Eliiot’s Beach ( with Shawshank ) and mind you for a guy who comes from Nagpur (which is right in the centre of the country far far away from any large water body :) ) the sight of the sea can bring an inexplicable amount of joy .
78 hours in Madras was hence basically a choice between spending time for one of the above S’s which thankfully at times was substituted for time with another S . And in this battle of the S’s , the combination of No.3 and No.5 win hands down :) .
I shall go now and get some of No.4 before I end up writing more mindless blah !
Cheerio ,
Count Grishnackh
Showing posts with label Research. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Research. Show all posts
Madras Musings II - Sabbath Bloody Sabbath
Location : Still in Nanotech Lab , MSB 201 , IIT-Madras
Time : 4.30 AM
One more day of hard work gone by and I am beginning to feel dizzy both because I haven’t had much sleep the last 2 nights and also coming to terms with realising the amount of work I have done in the same period . It is indeed true that you never realise your potential till you stretch yourself to the limits . So , I sit here waiting for Saturday to give way to a much-awaited Sunday !
In general , I am always psyched up on Sundays but also have the infamous habit of having never ONCE in the last 3 yrs of my happy undergraduate life do anything constructive on Sundays . If history were to repeat itself today , I fear some serious repercussions on my project . But a Sunday is a Sunday ( and this one particularly promises to be ‘LEGENDARY ‘ ) . So , I’m gonna have my share of fun today !! Time to SUIT UP & BUZZ OFF !
Cheerio !
Count Grishnackh
Time : 4.30 AM
One more day of hard work gone by and I am beginning to feel dizzy both because I haven’t had much sleep the last 2 nights and also coming to terms with realising the amount of work I have done in the same period . It is indeed true that you never realise your potential till you stretch yourself to the limits . So , I sit here waiting for Saturday to give way to a much-awaited Sunday !
In general , I am always psyched up on Sundays but also have the infamous habit of having never ONCE in the last 3 yrs of my happy undergraduate life do anything constructive on Sundays . If history were to repeat itself today , I fear some serious repercussions on my project . But a Sunday is a Sunday ( and this one particularly promises to be ‘LEGENDARY ‘ ) . So , I’m gonna have my share of fun today !! Time to SUIT UP & BUZZ OFF !
Cheerio !
Count Grishnackh
Madras Musings I - MSB 201
Location : Nanotech. Lab , 201 , Mechanical Sciences Block , IIT Madras
Time : 4.30 AM
Waiting impatiently for the last run of the High energy ball mill .Its been 10 hrs of nonstop work here and I can hear the Ball Mill begging me to stop it and urging me to give us both a break !
So it all starts here ; we ( two enthu punters : Shawshank & me :) ) left Nagpur this Thursday for Tam-Land with the mission ( actually Final Yr. BTP work ) of synthesising Al-Mg-SiO2 nanocomposite powders using the High energy Ball Milling facility at IITM ( excuse the technical blah here :) ) . In short , the experiment requires both of us to be awake for most of a 48 hr-marathon operation period of the machine followed by 10 hrs of analysis on the aforementioned results . Needless to say the project experience sounds demanding enough but the real challenge came up when we were told that our accommodation arrangements ( made in advance ) had mysteriously been cancelled and we had two options : to share a really cramped hostel room with 2 other M.Tech students or else sleep in the lab itself . We chose the latter and hence MSB 201 was to be our home for the next 3.5 days and 3 nights . We would work , eat , sleep , drink , surf the net and offcourse even blog from the lab . Initially , sleeping on newspapers or a thin bedsheet surrounded by huge N2 cylinders and multi-crore worth instruments was a wee bit uncomfortable but we were so goddamn weary to fret over all this and decided to instead enjoy the very few hrs of sleep we were getting .
Both of us were overwhelmed by the trust of the IITM lab guys and the freedom they gave us ( two total strangers whose work benefitted none at IITM :) ) within 10 mins of our stay in the Lab . They gave us the full responsibility of the Lab with an individual set of keys too which helped us work throughout the night too . Sadly , our own Meta. Dept. @ VNIT has never allowed us to use certain so-called ‘ expensive ‘ lab instruments by ourselves or ever stay in the Lab beyond 5 P.M. Otherwise , the weather is a bit too hot to be comfortable and the food is too good to miss !
One day gone ...SO FAR SO GOOD !
Cheerio !
Count Grishnackh
