Tag Archive: Adventure

Taos, Santa Fe, NM

Posted by Ankit On June 4th, 2011

I have been in Santa Fe, New Mexico for the whole last week to attend the 'Phononics and Metamaterials 2011' conference. Professor Nemat-Nasser was giving the principal lecture of the conference and he asked Ali and me to attend it in order to learn what the other groups have been up to. It has been a fascinating experience to listen to some of the mostÂ ingeniousÂ minds in the field and to see how much they have been able to achieve on the experimental fronts of the field of acoustic metamaterials. I realized, for the first time here, that interesting physics like negative refraction can be achieved by at least two independent paths. While our group has been working on achieving that by the use of doubly negative materials (negative density and compliance tensors), several other groups have made substantial progress by following the route of Bragg diffraction. It remains to be seen if there are advantages to following one over the other and I'm excited about the possibilities which seem to be in the offing in the next few months. Since we have the essential theoretical understanding, I expect experimental demonstrations of the doubly negative materials soon by our group.

It's not that I have been spending all my time here just going to technical talks, although doing that and thinking about the talks has occupied a much larger percentage of my time than it ever used to be the case. During the last week, I also had wide ranging discussions with Ali and came to the conclusion that he knows more about everything under the Sun than I'll ever be able to know and that he has the extremely rare talent of combining his encyclopedic knowledge with an acutely analytical mind.

I also came across a lot of interesting characters who seem to inhabit this world, which I have come to associate with a certain logic, with a rationale completely at odds with mine. But I like to listen to them with genuine curiosity, trying to find in the scales and notes of their lives, the missing song which is my own world view. I try to find in the colors of their palette, the antithesis of my own colorless (largely logical) existence. I am absolutely fascinated by the stories and experiences of such people and the cities of Santa Fe and Taos seem to throw them up with more regularity than any other place that I have visited. It's not that I necessarily want their lives for my own, but I appreciate that they have interesting stories to recount and that they lack the skepticism to believe in a fantastic, beautiful, and imaginative reality. I can listen to such people in rapt attention for hours whereas I almost instantly shut down whenever someone starts teaching me how to invest my money and hedge my bets so that I can have a comfortable retirement. Therefore, I am thankful for all those individuals who made this little trip interesting. While I don't necessarily agree with them, I am very appreciative of the fact that they exist and make life more colorful and more non-utilitarian. There was Ryan, the barista of the Santa Fe cafe 'Father sky and Mother Earth' who narrated to me his journey across the US, his experiences with meditation and the mystical traditions of the native Indian people of New Mexico, and his belief in the apocalypse of 2012. Then there was Bobby, the guitarist of the band HN88 who gifted me a CD consisting of a collection of his songs. Marianne was the barista of the great 'World Cup' cafe in Taos and told me about her transition from DC to SF to Taos and I ended up adding to the cafe's collection of foreign currencies by donating a 100 rupee note. There was a German (I forget the name) who has spent the last 20 years of his life in the little town of Taos and described himself as a starving artist. He was trying to convey to me his vision of the world as a conceptual artist but I guess my brain has ossified under the influence of logic to an extent where it's not flexible enough to appreciate orthogonal logic. Annamelia was the singer and Matt was the forest officer and finally Johnny was the ex-physicist from Los Alamos who has been collecting obscure memorabilia relating to the automobile and the transportation industry for the last 20 years.

Close Shave

Posted by Ankit On May 15th, 2009

Khatri Bhaiyya asked me if I could drop him at the airport today for his flight to SFO and I said yes. I took the car from K2 and after dropping him off at the airport at about 6:10, started back towards home. SD airport is south of the place I live, about 15 miles away and I-5 connects the two places. At the point at which I entered I-5 North, it is a 4 lane freeway with average speeds generally in the high 70s (mph). I started speeding up and merging in the traffic, changing lanes so that by the time I was in the left most lane I was doing about 80 mph. This was also probably the first time that I had my earphones on and was listening to songs from my phone while driving. As I prepared to settle in for the next 10-12 miles of coasting at the present speed, BANG, and it wasn't difficult to tell that things had taken a turn for the worse.

The windscreen was shattered and there seemed to be glass all around but that was hardly the major concern. What was really concerning was the fact that my complete field of vision was blocked, I couldn't see what lay in front of me and when you are going that fast on a crowded freeway, it's not something that you can brush off easily. The repercussions are almost immediately palpable. The hood, it seemed to me, had broken off the latch which holds it fastened, and driven by the fast winds, had lifted up and smashed into the windscreen. As I said, I was in the left most lane and there is narrow shoulder beside it upon which drivers can stop in case of an emergency. There is a concrete wall about 2 feet high that runs parallel to the shoulder and serves to separate the oncoming traffic on I-5 South. I remember noticing, just before the hood came crashing, that the freeway was turning right not very far in the distance, which meant that I would have crashed into the wall, if I had kept driving straight. It is often amusing to remember your first thoughts and preferences when such things happen. As soon as I heard the bang, my first reaction was to take off my earphones and actually press a series of buttons on my phone to pause the freaking song. Don't know why I did it-was probably saving the battery. But very soon sense prevailed and I realized that doing 80, blindfolded, with traffic all around and an oncoming turn is indeed serious. I pressed the danger lights on, took my foot off the accelerator but didn't want to break hard for the fear of getting rear-ended. In the absence of any frontal visual inputs, my only frame of reference was the wall that was visible on the left. Funnily enough, I didn't want to crash into it not just because it would have hurt, but also because I seriously didn't want the car to get any more scratches. What followed was a delicate maneuver where guided by how fast that wall was moving towards me, I managed to traverse the turn as best as I could and slowly brake to a halt on the shoulder.

I jumped out of the car to see the damage. The hood was badly dented, the windscreen shattered, even part of the roof caved in from the impact. For a while I stood there, unable to make sense of things while cars whizzed past me at breakneck speeds. I noticed that the shoulder was too narrow for the car and the right tires were actually uncomfortably close to the traffic. I probably shouldn't have done that, but I decided that I needed to take the car to a safer place-on the wider right shoulder. The hood won't attach but I, perhaps foolishly, took the risk. I distinctly remember my heart racing crazily, time running painfully slowly. The hood came back on the windscreen again and luck gets all the credit for my being safe after 4 lanes of probabilistic driving.

It's a dangerous situation for anyone to be in. Not just because of the possibility of the worst happening to you but also because if you do manage to survive with not even a single scratch, there is a temptation to see more into it than chance and a bit of skill. I guess it's human to seek reason in survival and the strings of a higher power when the odds seem to be so loaded against it. I would still thank probabilities. But more importantly I would thank the car company which made such a shitty system that even the air-bag didn't inflate (it's a known problem for which Huyndai has recalled the cars). I would be dead meat if it did.

K2, I'm sorry that the car is wrecked. I could only save the scratches on the left. Roli, if you read this, no one who can be unnecessarily worried needs to know.

Swimming induced swimming

Posted by Ankit On April 20th, 2009

Khatri bhai, Rasia, and I swam in the ocean today and covered a distance of .8 miles between La Jolla cove and La Jolla shores. The former two have done it before but it was the first time for me. And IÂ don't now swimming. Needless to say, it was a very educational and thrilling experience. Not a very wise decision, but very enjoyable nonetheless (as so many unwise decisions are).

There have been a few experiences which have taught me things about myself that I would never have learnt in the daily course of existence. And I am sure that this should be true for anyone. These specific instances bring out unsuspected qualities, sometimes unforeseen shortcomings by virtue of the fact that they demand a little more than normal and put the individual under more stress than he generally faces. Today was one such experience. I'm quietly proud of my performance. Not because I did something extraordinary (in fact it's quite a mundane achievement) but because I didn't think I had it in me to swim the distance. Having never done a standard lap and equipped withÂ only a very basic swimming competence, I was quite afraid to take the plunge. The wet suit was said to provide some floatation and the flippers, some efficiency. But as soon as I entered deep waters, I realized why people drown in the first place. Panic is the cause but what set panic in my case was the fear that I didn't have the stamina to sustain the effort that I was spending just to stay afloat. I saw that the coast was just 20 meters away but wasn't even sure if I could make that. I called Khatri bhai for help and he asked me to relax and paddle slowly and I would not drown. Seemed to work. Once it became clear that this small effort would keep me afloat, .8 miles seemed to be separated only by the will to do it. Several times along the course I took in salty water and realized that panic sets in easily if water gets in your lungs, but by then I had enough confidence. After swimming for an hour and a half we finally made it to the end. Khatri bhai and rasia could have done it much faster but my thanks and apologies for bearing with me :). The last thing that I realized was that to do a .8 miles swim you only need to have will power for .4 miles. The rest is just a compulsion.