Durga Puja: The Bio Clock

For Bengalis round the world, Durga Pujo is a very special time. Right now, I happen to belong to the Bongs who are outside India and seek out a Pujo in their own city. A recent Google search left me disappointed - I couldn't find a single mention of Durga Puja celebration in Seoul!
Till last year, Durga Puja meant a few days of holiday where I could head out for a trek, expecting good autumn weather(which has eventually hopelessly dashed for the past 2 years) followed by a day or two of pandal hopping. And now, with all the clubs, restaurant and glitz-n-glamor of Seoul, I feel like going bakc home - to the place that where I grew up.
The last day of school before the Puja holidays - walking back with friends talking about what is likely to be there in the latest issue of 'Kakababu'. Returning home to rush to the Puja pandal to catch a glimpse of the idol which had already arrived the pervious night (yeah, I used to sleep early those days - :)). The Puja issue of 'Anadamela' (a popular children's magazine in Bengal) and the promise of some great stories, made the last day of school very special (the newspaper man delivered it precisely on that day after I left for school). The sight of the idol was symbolic of freedom - freedom from studies for those 5 days, the freedom to go anywhere I liked for pandal hopping and hanging out with friends, no scolding on returning late at night! People dressed in the best of their clothing and the pretty girls in sari. The Astami anjali and the community 'bhog', the cultural function (which I was never interested in :))
Cut to the present ... I'm currently in Seoul (with a supposedly secure future with the biggest Electronics company in the world - Samsung) and I find not a single Durga Puja ad on the net. I now realise that the Durga Puaj holidays is not really a few days of holiday to complete a trek but epitomise the very freedom that it symolize - the freedom to do what your heart desires (not to study for these days or go trekking to the Himalayas). It meant liberation from the reality for a few days - to go back to your childhood once again and leave behind the cruel world, flowing with the tide of happiness that was all around.
A few days back - the blue autumn sky, the lights on the streets on the SNU campus, the smartly dressed people (Seoulites always dress smartly) triggered some kind of a bio-clock in me and I felt an overpowering desire to go back home. It was then I realised why DP was so special for Bengalis living outside Bengal. It was a time to reunite with your past that you had left behind. I despised that crowded streets, the traffic jam, the hot and humid weather of Kolkata - but now I wouldn't trade those for anything else in the world. Staying away from India has made me more Indian and more a Bong :). We were supposedly made for bigger things - but as a price we miss out on the best things that Bengal has to offer!
There was never a Durga Puja I so wanted to be a part of but never felt so helpless to be a distant observer. Staying outside India makes you more of an Indian - a truth that I first hypotheticated last year came true this year. The glizy malls, the skyscrapers, the wild clubs, the cool pubs and the smartly dressed people cannot make up for the pristine fun of Durga Puja in Kolkata - so that even after a night out at one of the coolest discs of Seoul I feel hollow. Thats the magic of Durga Puja - it makes you complete!

Alive and kicking!

Eating out is an adventure ... you may or may not agree but when you do in Korea (especially sea-food restaurant), it is definitely so! Last Monday being Chuseok holiday, Stepan, Ivan and I instead of settling for just beer and normal pub-grub, decided to be adventurous - and some adventure it was. Certain things in Seoul have really surprised me - like the Dongdaemun market. Lonely planet describes this place as "the market that could clothe the world". For a first timer, I won't waste so many words. In short, it is intimidating! Yes, given the sheer number of shops, which can easily reach 5 figures, it can be quite intimidating even for people accustomed to crowded places. But the discoveries of the culinary world can be even more surprising. Before coming to Seoul, thanks to Anthony Bourdain, I knew what to expect on the table. With this knowledge, three of us embarked on your Monday night adventure. It was on Ivan's insistence, we decided to go to a sea-food restaurant.
We usually go to restaurants where the menu has pictures, to make up for our lack of knowledge about the Korean language. This restaurant satisfied the criterion, so we decided to give it a try. Most of the stuff were in form of platter, meant to be shared by 3/4 people. We tried to ask the waitress, about the dishes -which was a hopeless failure! She tried to explain everything very enthusiastically - the only problem was that we understood nothing. So we decided to try our luck and ordered something randomly. The waitress asked a few more questions - to all of which we confidently answered "ne" ("yes" in Korean) with smiling faces. The food took about 10 mins to arrive, before which we were given bright red aprons (the color made us cheerful). We were looking at other tables to figure out what others were having (not a particularly polite thing to do but we are foreigners trying to learn about Korean culture!) when our food arrived. And behold! The most prominent component of the platter was an alive octopus - Holy s***! Stepan and Ivan almost jumped up form their chairs (oh, yeah, this one had chairs for a change!) I was staring at it as if it was an alien. The platter also consisted of shrimps, mussels, carrot, onion, bean sprout and many other things but the most interesting was surely the octopus - which was a more than ideal example of being "alive and kicking"! And it was not over ...
The whole platter was covered up by a glass lid and put on the stove (at the center of the table) to cook. It might seem rather gruesome to cook and animal live but more gore was to follow. We were still curiously looking at the octopus (which was trying to throw off the lid) when the waitress appeared with scissors, pulled out the poor creature and started to cut it up in pieces. After the "operation", it was put back into the pan to be slow cooked while a host of other side dishes appeared on our table - rice, khimchi, pickled cucumber, seaweed, salad and figs along with a bottle of soju. The meal was rather sumptuous - especially because of the "fresh" octopus (which was caught from a tank placed at the exit of the restaurant). It was a pity that we didn't have a camera with us to record all the drama but we never expected such a thing in the first place. So from next time, any culinary experiment will be suitably and more vividly recorded!

Land of the Han ...

At first it was just one feeling ... relief ... the feeling of great satisfaction at the fact that the flight was over and we had finally landed in Incheon after what seemed to be eternity since we had taken off from Singapore! As with Changi (Singapore), Incheon was far better an airport that any European airport I have ever been to. The flight service had been excellent but I was in no mood to enjoy it - the fever, awful headache and the lack of rest for almost a month and a half (since Berlin) made the journey an ordeal. I was overjoyed to get back on land and off the flight. Things went on quite smoothly after that - 2 of my seniors were waiting for me at the arrival gate and there was a chauffeur driven sedan waiting to take me to the University accommodation. This lifted my spirits and I felt much better. The sight of the excellent highway and the car racing along it towards Seoul at more than 100kmph, wiped away the headache.
I was then taken to the University Guest house where I shared the room with Xing (the GSP student from China). The rest of the day was quite uneventful, as was the next day. Xing was from a university in Shanghai but his hometown was Chengdu (the capital of Sichuan) which was in news recently because of the devastating earthquake. The university is situated in the Southern part of Seoul, in a district was Gwanak-Gu. The name is derived from the Gwanaksan (mountains) where the actual university campus is situated. The next day I met the other GSP students, all of whom were from Russia - Alexei, Nikolai, Ivan, Stephan and Dimitry. We were taken to the apartment where we will stay for the semester (the university dormitory was being renovated) and after that went to Pizza Hut for dinner - the menu being suitably adapted for Korea and the pizza toppings were more Korean than Italian (thats the universal norm - consider full Punjabi toppings at Pizza Huts in India!)
Being unaware of the language made everything around me appear the same. But since I hardly interacted with outsiders, it was not a problem. And apart from that, Marina and Kim (from the EECS Dept office) helped us move to our new accommodation, and since they spoke very good English, communication never surfaced as a difficulty. The first 2 days passed on really fast and I was eager to get started with orientation process. I didn't know how fast the rest of the week will pass! The GSP orientation was scheduled to start from Tuesday at Samsung Electronics headquarters in Suwon (about 1 hr south of Seoul). I didn't have an alarm clock with me, so I braced myself for a night out as we were to be taken to Suwon at 8am the next morning. This was the 2nd night out in 3 days (the first one was during my flight to Seoul - I can't sleep on flights and then there was that awful headache ... how on earth can you sleep with that?) but as my seniors had told me that the Orientation was just roaming around the Suwon campus and getting to know a few details about Samsung's operations, I was not bothered about the lack of sleep - you don't need to be well rested to just walk around the campus. Well, I was not aware of the change in policy decision and the elaborate arrangements that were in store for us! Naturally, I fell asleep in the bus. But that was maybe for just a few minutes and soon we reached Suwon - Samsung Global HQ, dominated by the twin towers that were the Advanced Research Centers (came to know about them on the 2nd day). We got down from he bus and were whisked away to the building called Samsung Electronics university. The seminar room where the GSP orientation was to take place was called Oceania and our places were marked. Each of us were given a thick folder containing the orientation plan. A single look through the endless pages was enough to give me a few sleepless nights (literally!). What was described as "roaming around the campus" consisted of a plethora of lectures, assignments, presentations, team activities and a trip to Seoul with some particular mission (more of a reality show than orientation in a company).
The proceedings started at 9:30am with a team game illustrating Culture Shock and ways of dealing with it. This was followed by making posters, presentations, doing assignments and listening to lectures. During the day, I was in some kind of trance - I had no conscious control of what I did and said. The traces of the headache returned and it was just coffee (Mocha) that kept me from falling down. The only high point of the day was the prize that I got for winning a card game during the Culture Shock Illustration experiment. Our coordinator was Mr Ki-Hwahn Yang, who appeared to be younger than us but turned out to be 30 plus. Its really difficult to guess the age of Korean people! The other coordinator was Ms Mock Mi-Hye - she was on internship with SEC and that was her last week before she returned to her University. She was from Yeowha Women's University, about which we were to learn a lot more a few days later! Mr Ki-Hwahn took to lunch and dinner at one of the numerous cafeterias on the Suwon campus and taught he basics of Korean table manner and some introduction to Korean food. The day supposed to be over at 8pm but Mr Ki-Hwahn informed us that we should complete the presentations for next day within an hour and submit it to him before 9:00. Now I was really pissed off - I had barely slept for the last 3 days and this day already stretched for 12 hours and now they expect us to make a presentation. The Mocha magic was wearing thin and keeping my eyes open was a Herculean task. There was a buzz in my head and I could no longer think logically. I had no idea what I prepared for the presentation and after submitting the ppt file, I somehow dragged myself to the room that was reserved for me and collapsed on the bed.
For the next 3 days, the schedule was the same - getting up at 7 in morning, assemble at the seminar room by 8:15am (after a hurried breakfast), more presentations, assignments, tours, lectures and more Mocha to fight of the sleep. The trickiest times were the lectures - Alexei fell asleep when Mr Park, the VP of Corporate Tech was lecturing on the future strategies of SEC. Because there were just 7 of us, it was difficult to avoid attention and I wished I could staple my eye lids to my brows! It was a 14 hours day followed by preparing for presentations the next day when we came back to our rooms. We met a lot of people from Samsung and outside - but amongst them Kim and June deserved special mention. We had to make a presentation on an issue concerning Korea before them (and Mr Rod Rothwell, an Australian professor teaching at the KAIST business school). Ivan and I talked about dog meat. Kim and June ( I still don't which one is Kim and which one is June - I just remember them as a pair) were students of Yeowha Women's University, Mi-Hye's batchmates studying Politics and Chemistry (again I don't remember who is studying what!). Impeccably dressed, speaking perfect English and with perfect manners, they impressed all of us. I don't know about other Korean girls, but students of YWU seemed to be extremely fashion conscious (manifested in the frequent flashing out of mirror and make-up kits from their designer bags and in the taste of their clothing) and rather graceful in the way they carry themselves around.
The missions in Seoul were designed to get us familiarised with the people, communicating with them and the Seoul subway, and off course a nice dinner (consisting of salad, steak, beer and dessert) where we used knives and forks after a loooong time! During the missions, we had to navigate through the streets of the Myong Dong shopping district, enquire about a particular camera model at the Lotte Department store (many floors of which are dedicated to Gucci, Dior, Armani etc), take pictures with Korean people and finally take the subway to the COEX Mall in the other end of the city. It was fun and I was enjoying myself for the first time since beginning of the orientation process. The orientation was over on Friday evening and I felt a distinct sense of achievement and relief at the end of it. At least now I didn't have to wake up early in the morning and rush to Oceania for a 14 hour day. Though the orientation was rather hectic (well, lets be honest - it was horribly hectic!) but we learnt a lot from it. The most important thing was the confidence that it gave me. Though I didn't know the language, I knew that I was no longer afraid of going out to streets alone. This was a big achievement and I think all the toil of the last few days were completely worth it. We returned to Seoul on Friday evening with high hopes and the promise of unhindered sleep that night!

Chaotic mapping :)

The title sounds very geeky indeed and its meant to be so! (Bizu ... I hope you are reading this :P)
This is actually the answer to a certain day in Kgp life that perplexed me for a long time. It was the last day of end-sem exams of the 6th semester. It was late April and terribly hot ... with 40+ temperatures and 5 papers back-to-back. The last day was Data Communications and Operations Research, with each paper lasting 3 hours. As was the norm in Kgp, all the preparations were left for the last moment but this being the end sem, the volume of material to be studied was enormous. So, the evening before the last, when I came back from the 3rd paper, things looked bleak indeed. I had slept very little the previous night and the paper didn't go particularly well!
But the upside was that the ordeal will be over in 24 hours and the trip to Europe was just a fortnight away. So I prepared myself for a last stand against 2 formidable enemies. With so little time and so many things to study, the strategy was to go for pure mugga - no absorbing of concepts, just memorize everything from start to end (which was about 400 pages! for each subject). Given the volume of material, its natural to just focus on certain selected parts which are more likely to be asked in the exam .... the sorting took longer than usual and so when I actually started studying, the situation was almost desperate! It turned out that I didn't have time to sleep that night and my constant companion during the struggle was the burning fag. (I quit smoking after that day :)) I read an incredible amount of material that night (amounting to a total of about 4 months worth of class notes and 300 printed pages for 2 subjects) and I went to the exam quite confident but with a strange buzz in my head (due to lack of sleep).
First paper was Data Comm and the questions seemed familiar indeed but inspite of the familiarity, it turned out to be a disaster! It sounds strange but the questions seemed to be a continuum of familiar bits and pieces floating in an unknown ocean. I couldn't associate a particular topic to a particular chapter. In other words, I couldn't map a topic to a fixed chapter - hence the name of this article ... Chaotic mapping. But as it turned out the chaotic mapping was much more complicated than I thought.
Coming back to the present day .... now I'm at the Seoul National University, a new grad student at the EECS dept and one of the subjects that I have taken up has a rather exotic name - "Hyper networks of Learning and Memory". Put in simple terms, it tries to model human brain's learning capacities and memory functionalities using computational tools. During a particular lecture, the professor was discussion about long and short term memory and the importance of sleep in the development of long term memory. He said that during sleep, the short term memory (what we learned during the day) is mapped and organised into the long term memory which is retained for days or months and even years. And all of a sudden that day in Kgp flashed in my mind.
As it turned out, that given the amount to material I studied that night, my short term memory was overloaded. All the material was randomly placed in the short term memory and because I didn't' sleep that night, my brain had no chance of organising and transferring it to long term memory. That's the reason, I could not associate the questions to a particular chapter. Thus the chaotic mapping started actually at the neuronal level deep inside my short term memory! And the result ... - well, somehow managed to survive on my short term memory during Data Comm but my luck and the timer of the short term memory ran out during Operations Research Paper(the downside of the classic mugga effect :)). On top of that the lack of sleep found an ally in the extreme temperature and returned with a vengeance! The information that I stored previous night, was completely wiped away by the afternoon, my thinking abilities were clouded by the exhaustion and my brain circuitry went haywire. The situation was very much like that of strife torn country after the assassination of its dictator - in other words total Chaos! Luckily for me I managed to pass the paper inspite of this abysmal performance.
Later that evening, it was time for celebration ... the ordeal of the past few days were over and there was new hope in the things to come!

TRANSITIONS ...
For the last few months, I have been on the move ... a phase of life that really tested and tried me but something I enjoyed every moment. I always dreaded inactivity and from April onwards I haven't had a quite moment to think (and write) about all that happened during this period. It started with end sem and BTP in Kgp. Then it shifted to visa issues for Germany. Once in Germany, it was ACI (Auditory Continuity Illusion) ... the project that I worked on. I worked at a stretch for 24 days without a break and wrapped of the visual bias effect to ACI. Then some readjustment of return date to India and some uncertainity. This was immediately followed by Berlin. It was the morning of 10th July that I left for Stuttgart airport from the Wilhelmstrasse bus stop in Tubingen. I didn't know what the next month and a half had in store for me. It was an intense and very interesting experience. I wanted to write all that happened in Berlin and beyond but just couldn't find time to do so. My time in Germany was over in another week with the last week devoted to finishing up the manuscript. I left Tubingen on the night of 21st July with a lot of things to do and a can of Red Bull. The Red Bull kept me going for 40 hours and 5000 miles! I can't sleep while traveling (especially in flights) and the Red Bull and "I Escaped from Auswitcz" (a fabulous book on the Polish concentration camp and how the author escaped from there) didn't allow me to sleep on the flight back.
Once in India, things were like a blur. I went to Kgp to get my degree and that week I just slept for 10 hours. Then I was off to Delhi next week for internship with Samsung. It was fun except for the fact that it was extremely hot and humid, and rained like hell! Well, on top of that I had to wait for 12hrs in the train at Dhanbad station, thanks to the bandh in Bengal. I came home with fever and a bad headache. But there was no time to rest and recuperate. I was to leave India for 4 years and I just had a few hours to pack my stuff (the effects became apparent when I reached Seoul!). So on 23rd August, I bid my final farwell to India and boarded my flight. I dread long haul flights but there is nothing worse than a long haul flight with fever and a severe headache! The Singapore airport lifted my spirits to some extent (its worth spending a few hours just looking around ... it awesome) but that hit the sea bed as soon as I took off for Seoul. The headache returned with renewed vigor and my appetite vanished into thin air. Those 6 hrs seemed to be eternally long and I was overjoyed when we reached Incheon.
The GSP orientation started on Tuesday and went on for 4 days. It was more like baptism by fire - 14 hrs of orientation a day followed by making presentation at night left me disoriented! But at the same time it was fun to learn and see so many things within such a short span of time. Finally, it was over and we (GSP 2008 students) came back to our apartments in Seoul. That weekend we had some time to go around Seoul and explore the city on our own. Its an awesome city and the people are very polite and helpful. The only thing that is inconvinient is the language. I hope that frontier can be conquered with time as well.
After the short weekend we got busy once again ... this time at the Seoul National University, where we'll spend the next 2 years ... and thus the journey called LIFE goes on ... and its all about transitions ....