Obscurantism

I had to look up "obscurantism" on wikipedia. That is what came to mind on reading how a new auspicious day for buying gold has become en vogue in South India. More here. Of course, I'd imagine that for some of the costumers it is just another festive occasion, with apparent discounts and such. Or they are just following an emerging tradition. But I'd also imagine that many really consider it auspicious.

Turns out, obscurantism is probably not the right word, going by wikipedia. But it comes close. What would be a word for deliberately manufacturing superstition?

Power outage

1. There is a power outage on campus. I hope nothing melts down/blows up. But on the brighter side, if you'd excuse the pun, we will save some energy, I suppose.

2. I tend to listen to the regional news broadcast by All India Radio, Thiruvananthapuram, online. In these days of power shortage (there), what with all the summer and heat and drying up rivers, load shedding is the way to go. Not surprisingly, they have an interesting public service announcement that they run half way through the news bulletin, exhorting everyone to switch off their refrigerators in the evening peak hours. (Or, maybe it is a little surprising?)

Interestingly, the only thing that forces the state to suspend the load shedding is the high school exams (SSLC), as they have done again this year. I wonder if it reflects right priorities (kids, education) or a misplaced one (exams).

3. The last power outage I experienced (enjoyed?) was when my parents were here last summer. Everything was fine, except that I had to let a large load of laundry soak overnight, and the parents had to make do with a cold breakfast.

Updates

A few small updates.

First the Germany trip (December first week).

The morning after Obama won the elections I was in Chicago, to get a German visa. It was quick and painless and got over in the morning. My return train was not until later in the afternoon. So I walked around looking for a cafe, and trying to pick up a newspaper on the way. Well, it wasn't easy. But finally I did manage to get one before heading back, at a crowded corner (and certainly looked odd in that crowd, buying less than four copies).

My first conversation in Germany (not counting the one at the railway ticket counter) was at the hotel check-in: "You are from... (looking at the computer monitor), ah, USA. So, how do you like Obama?" and later in the elevator (with another hotel staff member, on being told that I'm coming from the US, but I'm from India): "Oh, that means you can't become the president of USA."


My photo-activity (no, I don't quite mean that) seemed to be in for a revival, with the crowded Christmas markets at Frankfurt and Mainz. Until, I tried downloading all the photos on to my laptop using the USB cable and drained the battery. (Buying a charger didn't seem an exciting option.) So for the rest of my days in Germany I didn't have to continually worry that I'm under-utilizing photo opportunities.

After Christmas I was at UCLA for over a week. Nice and warm. I suppose I shouldn't be complaining that those were not the coldest days in Champaign. As always I did lug my camera along, and didn't use it much at all. Until my brother (who decided to come along, to escape a cold and lonely winter) and I visited the Getty Villa. Here's a random selection.

A few more photos are here.

And finally, today's news is that the little server in my office has been hacked into. It was a spam injection into the RSS feed of my somewhat dormant wordpress blog. Possibly sometime around Christmas (modification date on some files was Dec 28). Thanks to the folks at REN-ISAC for catching it. Not sure what all damage has been caused, but I did spend some time updating wordpress and removing an apparently new root user from my MySQL server. (I know, sounds bad!) In any case, for now, I'm not offering deals from an "online Canadian pharmacy."

Photos

Just a couple of random photos.

The first one is titled "Working from Home." (And you will be justified in wondering what I was doing with a camera: welcome to the pleasures of working from home.)


The second one is called "Noh Photography." Why? Because I went for my first ever Noh performance (I went to watch, just to be clear), and started taking a few photos before I was told, "No sir, no photography." (So sure enough the photos have no Noh in them; it shows the setting for a little tea ceremony they had first.)

Onam Flowers

Except for vague memories of having collected chemparathi flowers as a little kid, I can't really recall making a pookkalam ever. Let me put this one up here so that I won't forget again.

(From Saturday's Onam get-together on campus. Yes, UIUC does have more Malayalis.)

Bhopal

It's not new, but New York Times has a good summary of the continuing tragedy in Bhopal. Some of us were part of commemorating the 20th anniversary of the tragedy, but I don't think at that time we really realized that not much would have changed in another four years.

The demise of the blog

The death of the blog be blamed on Facebook (because it lets me make quick one sentence status updates). I'm afraid that sounds like one of those fast-food culture things: unlike the good old days when we used to sit down and read/write a long blog post.


Anyway, to keep things alive around here, here's a photo, from today morning. (Yes, parents are visiting, and brother and I took them around Chicago.)