iamneo

In my free time, I have been reading a little bit about the universe and the different theories of its origin. An interesting concept is that of multiple universes or multiverse. This is a nice concept – food for thought for scientists, philosophers, and theologians.

I find this concept interesting in the context of ‘what ifs’ in life. Consider this – what if I had decided to pursue a career in medical sciences instead of pursuing a career in engineering? I would have been a doctor and working at some hospital! But that’s not the case now – I am in an engineering career now, in this universe! But may be in another universe I am a doctor now!

So every time I am confronted with a choice to make I am in some sense splitting my existential universe into a set of universes based on the number of options I have for that particular decision. I then choose one of the universes and I lose access to all the other universes! This gives a whole new meaning to the phrase – I am living many lives! Now this gets a little out of hand when you start factoring in other people’s actions and decisions – so now we have a super crazy set of universes all existing in parallel! But some how from this set only one universe exists or at least appears that way! It is fun for me to imagine in some universe – I never came to America or I did my masters from USC or I am a doctor or I am an astronaut or I am still with my ex-girlfriend or I never left my old job or I …

I guess this is not multiverse – this is day dreaming, king of wishful thinking

Same time, same place, In another universe!

Update: As a mark of respect for Olamide Adeyooye, the university removed the happy theme picture to a more sober one. I will try to find those pumpkin pictures.

One of the many things that you do around the time of Halloween is pumpkin carving. One die-hard fan of the redbirds carved reggie (our school – Illinois State University’s mascot) on a pumpkin.

Is it important that your friends comment on your blog entry?

I think it is important because the blog entry becomes a true conversation only when your receive feedback in the form of comments. Without the feedback the blog entry is like a broadcast message and not a conversation!

What do you think?

It has been almost one year for me and my car and it has been an absolute pleasure so far. I am a lot more comfortable with car and I have fair idea about what I can do and cannot with my car. But I am always pushing that envelope. My car has been with me thru it all – good times and bad times, rain and shine, snow and ice. I feel as if my car is my silent friend. In this one year I have put some 8000 miles on my car. Now this little too much considering that I used to walk to work before I moved to the new place. I think a good amount of those miles were put on from the weekly driving to no where! Almost every week I pick a random route and just drive. During these drives, I have my favorite music playing, some coffee. I go for drives that usually last for an hour. And on these drives I just keep the speed limit and I do not race! I just concentrate on having a nice and peaceful time. It has a very calming effect on me – your are refreshed after the drive.

Putting a little spin on the famous lines of the Robert Frost’s poem –
But I have places to drive to,
and miles to go,
before I run my car into the ground!

Yesterday I drove up to Freeport, IL which about 160 miles North West of my place. The 3 hour was for a rendezvous with my school mate who had come to America for a business visit. Since she was placed in Illinois, I could not pass up the opportunity to meet her and have a great time. And great time we did have!

We met late evening and decided to drive another hour and half to Hot Wok Village to have Bombay style Chinese cuisine. It was worth the drive because apart from having a good time, my friend absolutely liked the hot and spicy food – a welcome relief from the pasta and cheese was having during her stay here.

After dinner we drove back and stayed up till 5:00 am – generally talking and catching up. We got up at around 9:00 am – still a little fatigued from the lack of sleep but I think this discomfort is worth it. Now the plan is to have breakfast and drive up the Chicago where my friend will meet up with her sister and probably lunch and then I will drive back home while my friend stays back with her sister.

During our marathon conversation session, we were wondering how we had come a long way from the time we spent sitting in our school classroom and now we are here in America having a little rendezvous. Who would have ever guessed this back then!

Every year the university celebrates the homecoming of its alumni with a weeklong festivities and events. The highlight of the homecoming week is the weekend homecoming parade and the homecoming football (American) match. I woke up late on Saturday and barely made it to the parade just in time to see the last few floats roll by! After the parade I joined my friends who were already tailgating. Tailgating is a custom very popular in America. The idea is to have a party some three hours before the football game in a parking lot usually near the football stadium. So you have your cars parked in the parking lot and then have a good time gathered near your vehicle. Usually you barbeque and have beer, play games like bean bag toss and have a great time with your friends. We were having so much fun that we decided to skip the match and continue tailgating till the officials call an end to all tailgating which happens a little before the close of the first half of the game.

So before we got thrown out of the parking lot we decided to continue partying in a nearby sports bar. Since I had brought my camera I decided to take some shots of the game. So I went to the football field and watched a little bit of the match and all of the half time show of the big red marching band (put the link here). When the game resumed after half time, the scores were tied at 17 each. Satisfied with the pictures that I clicked, I left the stadium and joined my friends at the sports bar. We had more beer, not so healthy food and played lots of darts.  Time was about 6:00 pm and we decided to call it day and the homecoming 2005 officially ended for me and my friends.

I later found out that the game was an interesting one and we gave the visitors a tough fight before losing to them by 3 points in the over time. The final score were Hill Toppers (visitors): 37, Redbirds (home): 34.

Here is a snapshot from that day:

Yesterday, I happened to be part of a fascinating conversation. We were talking about God, love, emotions etc. Then somebody made an interesting comment – the opposite of love is NOT hate. And I remember for the longest time that the opposite of love is hate. Atleast thats what I learnt at school. But this is not quite right – opposite of love could also be dislike, indifference, ‘use somebody/something’

This makes some sense because we experience this situation on many occasions where we do not love this person/thing but at the same time do not hate that person/thing!

Food for thought I guess