In the pursuit of a Solar Eclipse

Everyone must be knowing something about the recent partial solar eclipse that chennai experienced. Well , i have my own experiences with it. As an astronomical enthusiast myself, well it does not sound like how i wanted it to, its more like an Astronomy enthusiast, I was very eager to watch the solar eclipse that morning. I heard that the solar eclipse was shown through special telescopes in the Birla Planetarium from about 6:30 in the morning. This was not a chance that I was going to miss. So I got up early, so early that I felt like as if I woke up even before I got to bed. I set out immediately to the Planetarium without even having coffee. It was cold outside and riding the bike quite fast only made it worse, to top it all I was wearing a 3/4ths which left 1/4th of my leg exposed. I make it sound like as if I went to Antarctica but its more or less the same. In about 7 or 8 minutes I reached the place only to be welcomed by a long queue.

There was a hell a lot of crowd, everyone dressed like as if they were going to some opera or something. I looked odd amongst those heavily dressed people. To top it all I was also wearing this cap that rappers wear. People did look at me more than they had to, like as if I had just landed from Mars or something. No, thats not possible. Not two wonders of astronomy on the same day. Most of them had come with their family, particularly with their kids. The lady standing right before me had come with her grandchildren. She kept saying that the planetarium in Mumbai was much bigger than this one in Chennai, for about a 100 times. no, 107 to be accurate. I had to accept her statement with a 'yes' for like 107 times. Now, she is an astronomical enthusiast.

The 'show' started exactly at about 6:40. The queue started moving slowly and steadily. The moon had taken a part of the sun. The lady standing before me got all excited. She started seeing the solar eclipse without the safety glasses through the naked eye. She literally started jumping like as if the sun was performing some private dance routine just for her. Her excitement started to touch dangerous realms when she suggested to her grand children that they also see the solar eclipse through naked eye. Not listening to the officers warnings or my advise, she actually forced the kids to see it. But luckily nothing happened, I mean the solar eclipse did happen but not the fatal eye accident that could have happened. The solar-eclipse-showing-officers (pardon my eloquent planetarium jargon) there showed us the solar eclipse through these glasses that welders use to protect their eyes from sparks. They actually didn't show it through telescopes even though there were various telescopes kept on display. They also had some kind of a reflection thing that reflected the sun which was getting taken over by the moon and it was just reflected on a white chart............ OK I just don't know how to describe that reflection thing, so, forget it.

The show was over within minutes. I saw the eclipse and just left. I came home in about 10 minutes. My sister was calling me to the terrace. She was having fasttrack glasses and was watching the solar eclipse. She offered me the glasses and asked me to watch it. It was much clearer than seeing it through a heavy dirty welding glass. Whatever................

Empty Vessel

This might be the worst blog in the history of blogging ever but just put up with it anyway. Since I have given the name Empty Vessel to my blogsite, I thought I ought to write something about an empty vessel. You might all know from where this particular adjective-noun pair 'empty vessel' comes from. For those of you who dont, its come from the adage 'Empty vessels make more noise'. It means that people who are empty (not physically but mentally) make more noise than those who area "not empty". But its a stupid comparisson anyway, that of an empty vessel and an empty human being. Instead of making the whole thing easier by just saying 'empty man makes more noise', why should it even be with an empty vessel. I just dont get what fun people get by phrasing such meaningless phrases. No use in using metaphors at wrong places while you can convey something directly which would make more sense. Its like saying 'Opportunity knocks the door only once', like as if opportunity could actually knock the door or even ring the bell for that matter. Its not a poem or something in which everything beautiful must be compared with mountains and valleys and everything evil must be compared with the 'thundering thunderstorms' or something.
Ok, I was just rambling in the above paragraph. Now coming back to our main topic empty vessel. Thinking physicscally (thats not a spelling mistake, I dont mean physically but physicscally), can an empty vessel ever be empty at all? That is so not possible because even if the vessel does not contain anything solid or liquid, it will definitely conatin some gases like oxygen, nitrogen, etc. Even if it does not have any gas in it, it will be filled with vacuum. Here we assume vacuum as an existential entity. When there are so many complications and controversies surrounding this 'empty vessel', how can we just use it casually. I am going to demand a retraction and a public apology from the the person who coined it.
Lets look at the whole thing Psychologically . Who is supposed to be an empty vessel, someone who is empty? if so, what are the standards or benchmarks that assist in judging if a person is empty or not? The whole thing depends on an individuals perspective. Someone who might seem empty to me might seem like the most knowledgeable person to another person (probably to himself). What makes someone decide that one particular person is empty? probably because the very person who decides is as empty as the person who he thinks is empty. No one is empty. Every single person has something in him which makes him 'not empty'. Whether he publicizes that 'something' or not is a totally different question all together.
Having read all the above 3 paragraphs, I hope you roughly get an idea of how we go about with our written exams. We can go on and on for pages about any trivial a topic like this. We are qualified to do that but if you try to make some sense out of it, its at your own risk. if you end up thinking if you are an empty person, yes you are. If you end up thinking if I am an empty person, yes I am. If you dont end up having any questions, please read the whole thing again until you find one.

To Vijayawada - From Vijayawadalu

Recently 7 of us went to vijayawada to attend our friend's thread ceremony. We took a train at 7 in the morning. Unbelievably the train was quite empty. What was even more unbelievable was that the train was really neat. No red colored spit marks. Not a speck of dirt. There were some offensive graffiti done over the wash area walls but lets not get into that. Since the train left really early in the morning (come on, 7 in the morning, have a heart) we had to make our piece with the 'lip msacking' breakfast sold by the pantry car. I had something which was claimed to be Pongal by the seller, but tasted more like hard clay than pongal (not that I have tasted hard clay). We spent time playing cards, listening to music, just plain talking and watching a man sell a wierd kind of a magnet pair that clung to each other (all magnet pairs do, but this was really wierd, i just dont know how to describe). The train reached Vijayawada at 3. My friends dad was there to recieve us. We took two autos to his place. The Vijayawada's autos are ridiculously cheap, charging just half of what our chennai counterparts would.
That evening we went out, sightseeing the Vijayawada city. Krishna Dam was our first stop. It was a huge long dam with so much of water on one side and no water on the other side. I have this very bad phobia for water (is it hydrophobia?) and so it was so tough for me to look at such a huge expanse of water. Something kept threatening me that if i were going to get near the water, the water would rise like a dragon and just eat me up. After taking a few snaps with the krishna as the backdrop we moved towards the Durga temple which is situated atop a hill. Eventhough there were buses to take us up and get us down, we thought it would be fun to just climb the hill (there were steps ofcourse, we didnt rock climb or anything). That night we returned quite early back home. The dinner was weel and done. Four of us sat up to play cards till about 2 in the night.
The next morning we had to attend the function quite early. The function went on well and we had a good time. At 2 in the noon we had our train back to Chennai. We had an early lunch at the function and left for the railway station. Our train was ridiculously small, just 7 or 8 coaches. One less coach and i could have pulled the train myself. The train was a little crowded this time but that didnt stop us from having fun. We were the most noisiest passengers of the train. I spent some nice time standing near the door and letting cool breeze just hit my head. It was wonderful. There was one woman who acted like a eunuch to get us give her some money. She was unneccesarily trying to behave indescently with us. I was disgusted by the way she was dancing (and doing a lot more) and i immediately gave in. She was not even content with 10 bugs. Like as if someone would actually give her more for that dance. One of my friends was quite good at restraining himself from giving money but the minute she said "you would go to hell", he just gave in too. We reached chennai at about 10 in the night. We just had time to grab burgers from Marybrown for dinner. That was one hell of a trip (not that 'you would go to hell' hell).

For those jobless

Let me tell you something, if you have anything important, or lets just say if you have anything even trivial to do at all, then dont waste your time with me. Iam Karthik Ramachandran doing my final year engineering. Since there are a lot of Karthiks in my class, I was rechristined Raama, a part of my lastname. I am not going to blog anything about new technologies, current affairs or world peace. This is just going to be an abode for the joblesss.