Fear the "Wallas": The menace of Indian Rickshawallas and Japanese Taxiwallas

You thought that Japan was a safe country when it comes to transportation ? Think again! This, being my second visit to Kyoto, has made me certain that "It ain't what it looks like".

For an Indian, especially one who lives in Mumbai, Rickshawallas are a huge menace. Most of them are bloody reckless and just outright break all traffic rules. And if they end up causing damage they will fight it out as if it were no fault of theirs. There are many things I can complain about the the main point is the first: "Impatient and Reckless Driving".

Guess what ? Many taxi drivers in Japan are dangerous drivers as well. The usually cut signals which is supposed to be a big NO-NO. They drive out of lanes without honking. I was about to be hit by one of these taxis last week. In summary, I am terrified of these drivers. They might not be as rude as the rickshawallas but they can surely give them a run for their money when it comes to rule bending and breaking.

DanDan Shinka (Gradual Evolution) or something like that

Hola!
I guess it has been 4 days since I last posted. It was a boring weekend since it was overcast and I could not have the pleasure of going sightseeing. I more or less wasted 70% of my weekend which is something I enjoyed but also adds to my list of regrets. (Why the damn hell can I not control my desire to procrastinate on weekends ?? .... I could have read a full book of 600 pages in 2 days). In any case, it is my demon; one which I have to conquer one of these days.

A simple realization I had was that I have worked much harder and passionately in Kyodai than I have (probably) worked for the last 3 years in IITB. I had a long discussion with my dad last night about this and he agreed that it was better late than never. He also said that he wasted even more opportunities when he was my age. Like father like son... eh ? But he did mention that I am relatively much more ahead of him and that is quite understandable cause I have had a bit of guidance and the Interwebs... something which he did not have the luxury of. Ofcourse he did pull himself together at the age of 26-27 and never looked back. No wonder he is the top (if not one of the top) lawyer in Vasai (and probably India; I don't know if I am qualified to make a world level comparison). I guess we both know how enticing and equally lethal the world of procrastination is. It is something I fear.

That brings me to 2 further realizations:

1. Propensity for certain indulgences being genetically affected seems more likely than ever. There might be research which supports as well as refutes this.... but atleast in my case it seems to be true. I mean.... my upbringing (wrt my friend circles and technology exposure etc.) has been significantly different from my dad's (and mom's for that matter). However, the behavioural transitions I am going through have striking similarities to my parents' (my dad's more specifically). I have spent most of my life being raised by my mom, since dad would be at work, earning money for our daily bread and he took a greater role in my upbringing after I was 15 or so; yet, my mindset has been influenced to a greater degree by my dad. It has to be genetics..... unless the other party is also right and it might have to also do with the human desire to emulate the king of the ring... something which my dad has been all this time. This is not to say that my mom is not dominant; she is for sure. I have a number of behavioural traits which are the same as my mom's but I still do feel that I am more similar to my dad than to my mom (In a number of cases I do feel that the situation is opposite though). In any case I am my parents son for sure.

2. I want to work. I do not care for the outcome.... for example.... I do not care if I get my PhD or not. I just want to use sound approaches for generating and implementing ideas and keep working. I want to read papers and be at the fringe. I want to grow up. I am valuing my desire to be a professor in IITB more and more  and my gradual seriousness is helping me move towards my goal. But even if I do not achieve it I do not care. As much as I love procrastinating, I am certain that I am going to enjoy working harder than I ever have.


For my closing comments, I just want to mention that I think I am going on the right path for now.

PS: I had my med check yesterday and will have my welcome party in 2 weeks time. I am becoming a bit more responsible about keeping my room organized and clean which is good in the long run.

PPS: I cooked chicken liver for the first time in my life. Cooking is hard.... period... but fun. God knows how my mom even endures it every day. All hail the mother. The preparation was pretty good and my Norwegian friend (Kristoffer) even complimented me on the quality. Not bad for an upstart. I will definitely try again. Perhaps this weekend.


EDIT:


Stay tuned for more.... I'll be back! [Terminator theme sound plays in the background]

Research Papers, Scholarship Money, Research Leads and My Addiction to Drugs

3 days since my last post and much has happened.

1. I got a message on the 28th that 3 research papers I co-authored (2 of them were my own and 1 had my contribution) were accepted in the ICON conference. ICON is short for International Conference On NLP (Natural Language Processing). Although named International this conference is famous for Indian Languages NLP. It does accept works on Indian Languages but the theme of the conference is "how to make do when resources are scarce". There is a decent emphasis on linguistics. That being said this is a rather medium level conference and I was more or less certain of my papers getting accepted since I had already had experiences in submitting to the top level (Rank 1 and 2) conferences in the past. I won't act all smug and to be honest I am sort of proud (after many people told me that I should be) that I managed to get 3 papers accepted in one go.

2. The very next day I received my scholarship money from the Japanese Government Scholarship Programme called MEXT or Monbukagakusho (see here for more details: MEXT Scholarship. It might be totally useful if you want to study in Japan's top Universities..... I am in Kyodai, by the way). Can you believe that they are giving me 146000 yen (or 83000 INR or 1460 $) per month? If you ask me, that's a buttload (Yes, I will use profanities) of money. In India IIT Bombay used to give me like 11000 INR per month this is roughly 7-8 times that. I will manage to save up to 20% of this scholarship and the resultant will be used for some awesome times. I sure am pleased with this development.

3. Having been on a Research Paper reading spree (one per day atleast) ideas (good and bad both) have been spewing out from my mind like crazy. I have been working on intermediate languages for machine translation but the main problem is the removal of useless phrases. So I got to know that my senior in the lab has made use of cognates equivalence between languages which will fit well in my problems framework. For now it is as good a start as any.

4. I realized that I am a drug addict. In fact most of us have been addicted to drugs which our parents have been giving us for all our lives since we were children. It is not their fault since they have been doing the same. And recently I had to give up regular consumption of this drug which lead to lethargic episodes followed by slight depression. It was then that I realized that I have an addiction problem. This drug is even more powerful than cocaine and LSD and crystal meth but it does not known physical harm. So before your brain starts thinking odd things the drug I am talking about is tannin (caffeine for many others and sometimes for myself). I have been consuming tea for all my life. It is not that I have to but I need to consume tea to be optimal. Else I get sluggish and sort of depressive. I think I am slowly being weaned but it is going to be tough to get rid of 25 years of ritual addiction. It was not the cloudy and rainy days that used to make me feel low but the lack of tea (and effectively tannin) that did so. Anyways that's all for now.

More stuff coming up.... stay tuned.

The first month in Kyoto (Once again)

Almost a month done in Kyoto... AGAIN!

I was living in Kyoto last year when I got a chance to work as an internship student in Kyoto University (henceforth Kyodai ~ Kyoto Daigaku). I used to live in a different location called as Kitashirakawa (North+White+River). The new dormitory I am in is a bit farther away than the one last year but is much better equipped leading to my life being the most comfortable compared to the time I spent in IIT Bombay. By the way the new dormitory is named Satsuki and is located in Kamigyo ward of Kyoto city. The pin code is 602-8047.

So far I've been able to get a decent head start into my work which by the way is machine translation ( using computers to translate from one language to another ). My professor seems to be happy with my current progress and has suggested new directions. My professor's name is Sadao Kurohashi and he is one of the coolest people I have had the honour of meeting and knowing. It was all thanks to him that I have managed to return back to Japan. I shall write more on him at a later point of time. I've been reading a ton of research papers and the amount of knowledge that I'm exposed to at this moment is quite unbelievable but quite astounding and awesome as well. New ideas just keep popping into my head. All in all I think that I'm going to be able to handle whatever comes along my way.

I have also been attending Japanese classes which is a mixture of a revision of the Japanese that I have already learned along with newer vocabulary, Japanese Kanji characters and  sentence patterns. There are still so many things that I need to learn which I shall and one day contribute to the big picture.

I have managed to reconnect with my old friends in the lab who had interacted with last year as well as made some new friends. One of them in particular is Eugene (or Yevgeiny) a Belarusian who is both a gentleman and a scholar. One other fellow whose name is Yuichiro Machida has been most kind and helpful since the past one month, assisting me in purchasing my bicycle and Sim card for my mobile phone. I've also managed to reconnect with Yumiko (the daughter of Kimiko the daughter of Sumiko) who is for all intents and purposes my sister in Japan. I will not neglect to mention Fabien was most kind to me last year when I had come to Japan for the first time.

Since coming here I have had the opportunity to try out many new different kinds of foods as well as some of the foods that I enjoyed last year. I also managed to do a bit of sightseeing the most notable instance being the time when I visited Ise shrine. It's getting quite cold here but for now I'm able to manage and I believe I shall continue to do so. I also will have opportunities to do more sightseeing and even if it gets colder but I shall not hold back.

I should've started noting all my daily activities since a month before but I think from this day on I shall try to make a note of my daily activities as much as possible.

On that note today was rather uneventful but I managed to get in a decent amount of paper reading along with managing in easy Japanese test followed by an interesting research paper reading session conducted by one of my Ph.D. seniors. I was also suggested a couple of ideas which I intend to try without fail.

That's all for now.
This is me signing off.
Stay tuned for more.