James Michener's The Drifters is an exhilarating and timeless novel that describes the lives of a group of young men and women who set out to discover the world for themselves. More than just a story, it is a presentation of the lives of the young and the old, and the relationship between the generations. Although it was written in the 1970s, the narrative maintains its relevance even today. In part, this is because the problems and prejudices that are gradually revealed by the author can be easily seen all around us today.

The narration begins with the background stories of a variety of characters, each extraordinary in his or her own way. Chance brings them together and they set out on a journey through Europe and Africa, in the search of meaning to their lives. Eventually, their journey is seen to be a spiritual transformation, rather than a mere exploration of places and people.

The appeal of this novel may be different for each kind of audience. The passage of time gives the current reader the benefit of hindsight; there are problems and problems, but will there ever be solutions in sight? The diverse group portrayed in this novel also raises the interesting question of allegiance - when it comes to the 'crunch', who will side with whom? If we can take away an important lesson from this novel, it is that the world as we know it today is the result of the choices made long ago: will we make the right choices today?

This theme of society and choice always lingers somewhere in the background, never quite raising its head until the very end. Until then, the author treats us to a world of excitement, rituals, sex and drugs, a world always in motion.

When I chanced to look at the map of the world today, I noticed that Seattle (where I am currently located) is almost level with many European nations in terms of geographic latitude, even though it is one of the Northern-most cities in the United States.

One of the striking differences in day-to-day life when someone moves from India to the US is the length of the day. Back in Mumbai, a long summer day meant thirteen hours of daylight, but up here it would mean something like sixteen hours of bright daylight. Winter nights are just as long, and certainly as dreary as you would expect.

This made me wonder if there was some kind of human disposition to flourish in a certain kind of climate. Is the routine of the tropics better for the biological clock? Certainly, summers and winters are far more conspicuous in the temperate zones, providing a clock of sorts to keep track of the years. ("Another winter has finally passed....").

I always loved the ever-so-moderate climate of Mumbai, but now I think the variety offered by an extreme climate is almost as likeable.

Guess this one. When I woke up in the morning today, what do you think was this first thing I did? That's right, I tried wearing a necktie.

If that sounded strange to you, try having a dream in which you attempted to wear a necktie for an hour, but couldn't get it on right. The fact that the necktie was a part of my old secondary school uniform might have made things worse. And if that wasn't enough, the darned thing, inexplicably, had four possible 'front parts' - one design for each school 'house' - and the wrong one kept turning up at the fore every time.

I've heard that dreams are the brain's way of preparing for possibilities. I am fairly certain I won't be wearing something like that any time soon.

And in case you are wondering, I succeeded in tying the perfect knot (in reality) on my very first attempt.

Web pages try to make life easier for website visitors. There are, however, instances where this is Bad Thing.

Take for example, login pages. Many sites use Javascript to automatically focus the cursor in the 'Username' text box as soon as the page loads. But sometimes, the page loads slowly, and the user may have started typing a username and password even as the rest of the page is loading. The result is that the cursor jumps to the 'Username' text box when the password is being typed - which means that if the user didn't notice, the password (or at least part of it) gets typed in the 'Username' box, in plain view of the nasty folks looking over his shoulder.

Winter forced me to hibernate for a while. There I was, enjoying heavy snowfall and mildly subzero temperatures, and all of a sudden the seasons have changed and those pesky insects are buzzing around my windows again. And boy, is it hot in here - eight degrees Celsius!

I'm forcing myself to write something. There are three reasons for this - first, I'm tired of seeing the same old page on my blog, second, I'm too lazy to change the homepage of my browser so that I don't, and third, I need to write a long project report and this seemed way more interesting. I think of this as an appetizer.

There was an interesting piece of news that I read about today: Hans Reiser, the guy behind the popular ReiserFS filesystem that you probably haven't heard of, has been convicted of murdering his wife. Interesting piece of cross-domain gossip.

(Aside: In "ReiserFS filesystem," the word filesystem is redundant. Isn't there a technical term describing such usage?)

Anyway, I hoped you noticed the pointless sarcasm at the beginning of this post. Now that the weather is pleasant enough for the average human to cautiously wander out of the house, I've done the exact opposite and stayed home to watch episodes of House, M.D. If you don't know what that is, then you definitely should. And by the way, that was a pun. Laugh.

One of the labs in Phillips Hall, Cornell University

Spring break is here, Mattin's Cafe is closed, Duffield Hall is deserted, and it is six degrees Celsius outside. I would have gone to Starbucks, but just fifteen minutes of free Internet is not exactly appealing.

If you think those little books filled with magic beans and flying chairs, complete with happy endings, were merely tools to keep us from noticing the mundane routine of life, then think again, and stop being so cynical all the time.

I have a magic bag.

For a bag to be magical, it must satisfy several properties. First, it must possess a will of its own, or at least co-operate with a Higher Being to perfect His Cosmic Plan. If that didn't make sense to you, then congratulations, you can call yourself a normal and sane individual.

Second, it must do things that most other bags cannot. This one is better than all others. This one can hide stuff whenever it feels like it. All you have to do is put something in it, and voila! it is...still there, but don't worry, it will disappear when you actually look for it. I almost turned my bag inside-out the other day, looking for a small hard-bound notepad of mine. I looked for it in my bag about six times, and didn't find it. A few days later, I was looking for something else, and there it was. Today, I was hunting for my earphones, knowing that it had to be in there somewhere. I found it several hours later - exactly where I had been searching for it.

Third, it must accept responsibility for its own actions. Thanks to this clause, you cannot blame me for any of the above incidents. My bag has owned responsibility for its actons, and I am sure it is all a part of a Larger Plan.

Don't worry, I'm rambling on like this only because it is two o'clock in the morning. At other times, I would have rambled on differently.

Many many years ago, there was a television series I kinda liked. They called it Knight Rider. I called it a guy in a cool car. I don't remember much about those ancient days, but I still remember that I liked the series.

Over the last week, I watched the latest avatar of Knight Rider: the movie that aired on NBC. Now, it may have struck you as strange that I said 'over the last week', because people generally don't watch movies over a week. Give them two hours, and they're done with it. But this one was different. This one was so bad you could have mistaken it for a soap opera. They might as well have sung me a lullaby.

Occasionally, the actors tried to act. Oh well, I'm sure they tried their best. See, this woman is chased by bad guys, who have probably killed her father. I suppose she believes in living "in the moment" though, because she only seems interested in that car of hers. She's also very interested in knowing why her old boyfriend left her.

Like all movies, there's this guy who claims to be the hero. He doesn't do much, but I suppose they needed someone to fill the spot. He's the son of the original Knight Rider, which is deemed an appropriate excuse for pretty much everything he does. He's also our heroine's former boyfriend, who blew her off years ago for no reason at all.

There is no chemistry between them. She might just as well have eloped with the car.

And speaking of the car, this car has one of the most advanced artificial intelligence systems ever built. It can do a lot of things - access information that couldn't possibly be obtained, talk to people to make them feel better, and show pretty pictures related to everything it says. Unfortunately, its brilliant creator forgot to install a decent intrusion detection system, so the average bad-guy-geek can hack into its computer in what, twenty minutes?

Let's skip ahead to the end. Actually, I still haven't watched the ending, but let me guess how it would turn out. Obviously, our hero would claim some deep and dark reason for having abandoned his girl despite having loved her, and we would all be asked to feel sorry for him. Then the reunited couple would exchange the customary hugs and kisses, and would live happily ever after.

Maybe I'll find out how it really ended, someday, but frankly, not knowing is turning out to be a far more exciting prospect.

I was walking home last night, minding my own business, humming a little tune in my head, thinking about what I would do when I got home; dinner had been prepared and ready to be eaten - potatoes, yum! I always buy potatoes when I go to the mall, but recently some of them had started rotting before they could be used up; I don't know why they sell such stuff...but then again maybe some water got into it, in which case it wouldn't have been their fault. It wasn't too cold last night, so it was quite a pleasant walk; it was late of course - I mean, I would have have caught a bus even on a pleasant day, if the option existed. The buses are good, pretty good...but there are never enough buses. Maybe that's just human nature or something acting up in me; or maybe not - I think sometimes we blame our problems on things that cannot deny it or put up a fight. Imagine what would happen if human nature got up one day and said, "I'm sick and tired of you folks blaming me for everything!" It would be scary of course, but what would human nature look like anyway? So it was all dark and silent, and all of a sudden, my right shoe-lace got stuck in my left-shoe. I guess that sounds a little silly now, the way I put it? I don't know, but at that time it was nothing short of amazing...I mean, think about it, the odds of something like that happening are almost astronomical. Odds, what a strange word! I find it hard to remember if having large odds means it's likely to happen or if it's the other way around. Oh, and shoe-laces! Imagine waving two pieces of rope in next to each other, and forming a knot, with thanks to the laws of probability. One in a million, I would say. Or a zillion. Pick a high enough number; when you're not sure, you might as well pick a high number that gives you some satisfaction. It took me a good five minutes to untie it too - I couldn't walk home with shackled feet!

And then I was home.