BrainSurged

I have a bookshelf. And books on shelves. And everywhere else. I also have eBooks on three laptops, at least three phones, e-tablets and an external hard disk. In just one of my devices, I realized I have about 531 GB of books. This realization gave me such profound joy. Of all my maladies, Tsundoku is the only one I have no intention of addressing or ameliorating. I will, for now and ever, happily collect all the books I like and go to my grave with at least a half of them unread- and be happy with that part of my legacy. The reason this came up today was because I saw something unappetizing. Loving books and having a voracious appetite for reading and collecting books makes me economize by getting free books however possible. I am pretty sure I am not averse to stealing them when tempted enough. Luckily, I am so far honest, for want of opportunity! Thanks to almost free eBook websites like leanpub.com! So, imagine a book like this, at a place one goes to download free boo...

The Germ magnets we cultivate at home, aka our children, both together gave me the flu. Quite the listless two weeks past. Or may be it was three weeks and I lost count! Add on the Corona Virus hysteria online, flu and sick kids = I was a complete hermit. As usual! As my head heals everyday, I find reasons to be more and more optimistic. And this was yesterday's silver-lining - to all those people asking me to socialize! A few years ago, on a particularly miserable fourteen hour flight to San Diego from Frankfurt, en route every miserable, unnecessary stop to cut costs, I sneezed, may be three times, in quick succession. Three times, which, given my dust allergy and the number of smokers aboard my different flights, was laughably few. However, those three sneezes made my neighbor to harangue me with questions about where I am coming from- Africa, Asia, eastern Europe? Have I some kind of illness that can be transmitted? I should have said I have A...

I have decided to alternate between taking myself seriously and laughing at myself. It is not in my nature to do it all at the same time. One bad thing is all it takes for a day of great happenings to change complexion in  my memory. Which needs to change, yes, but while it does, I can think whatever I feel like that day. And today is about the girl next door having greater expectations! Or about being a girl next door to anyone with greater expectations! In a Coursera Course about Success, Wharton Professor G. Richard Shell asks his students to rate four people in order of most success. One does the ranking after reading about the summary of the lives of the four individuals. Then the Professor talks some more about his own life and how he failed to meet his own definitions of success. Now, we are asked to rate the same individuals on success if they were our children. My ranking methods changed significantly. I want all that is flashy and loud and rich for myself, and I am ve...

  I have been highly productive at normal living this week, compared to previous weeks. However, I needed to laugh about something and writing was making me seriously morose. Since reading is about all I do besides that, I read "Me Talk Pretty One Day" by David Sedaris . Self-deprecating and not mean, exactly my kind of humor. One prevalent reason to stop the cycle of endless observations about how damaged my brain is, how awesome I am to do that and this, how difficult this or that is, blah, blah, blah! - I always go back to this observation- "Stephen Hawking never wrote about ALS"! So get over it already! There are worse things in life, and if I keep insisting I had it tough, let me just wait until it gets worse. So, let me not!  I try to be a tolerably good parent. In spite of me, I have two wonderful children. No thanks to me, but they are perfect - even though she'd say "Mama, the Universe doesn't allow Perfection". It is a problem ke...

A big glaring example of the ways in which my brain has suffered is in the way I speak. And think! All absolutes and no degree of separation between the extremes. Which usually means, swearing - and a lot of it! Natural Language Processing is my area of expertise in AI. I love the way we can express ourselves any which way and end up making sense to others. My dad was my first example for observing language in life. He was a fuzzy speaker. His instructions usually went like this:"Get me that thing I kept somewhere in that room a few days ago!". I never stopped being bewildered, then irritated with his communication style. But my mom, who lived very happily with him, always got whatever it was he was trying to convey. My stated goal, as in my statement of purpose to Cornell's NLP Team, was to tackle statements like his and make a HMI understand and react correctly. NLP is mainstream now but like all AI, we have strategies that deal with a specific problem, but not re...

About six years ago, I read something prosaic on CNN.com. I was so delighted that something, anything held my attention for a little while that I turned to reading news, CNN specifically, all the time. That led me into thinking I have some kind of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder which was not consistent. My Compulsions were different every day. Reading CNN every time I took out the phone, reading a hundred novels by one author in a week because I could read one novel of hers one day, watching seven seasons of Game of Thrones in three days because I could watch one episode with interest,  drinking vanilla lattes each time i visited any coffee shop, just because I could taste and like it one time... One compulsion to the road to discovering my next obsession. Back then, my condition was at it's best self, and I didn't have a clue. I was sick and didn't know it and kept getting worse. My toddler was extremely active and so curious. I had not interacted exclusively with any...

Two months ago today, I had brain surgery. I always imagined Brain Surgery to be the scariest thing for a functioning human. Yet, mine was so simple. A small hole drilled on my skull, tap the cerebrospinal fluid and redirect it down to my stomach or intestines or down there somewhere. The down-there portion didn't interest me enough to make a note to where. I have an incision in my stomach. It doesn't scare me like the stitches on my head did. Now, it feels like the best surgery to have, if one must have something or the other. Our mind associates emotional context and personal association to every word the brain stores. The Brain is an organ. The Mind is what makes us ourselves. I studied Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning in grad school because of that persistent fascination with the brain. Tremendous respect, ergo deep fear of a surgery to my brain was the worst I could imagine happening to myself. Which, of course did! We get what we think what we cannot handl...