Cats again

Being back in Mumbai is strange. I'm really only here for a short time, in another week I'll be headed up to Ladakh to explore the mountains and valleys of "little Tibet" and this seems to be a lull time in general for TIFR. I get the impression tha not so many people come to visit during monsoon season and people often go abroad or back to their home city during this time, so unless one has a project that is really engaging, there's a lot of down time. I seem to be suffering from not so much a lack of engaging projects as a disengagement from my projects, but the result is the same. The sails are somewhat slack this week.

I decided to hop on a bus because I was walking past as it was leaving, and ended up getting off in Colaba and walking back towards TIFR. On the way back, I met Narayan, the old man who feeds the cats. Narayan is 79 years old, and moved to Mumbai from Bangalore. He retired from work as a telephone operator with the government telecom, and relocated from Bangalore to Mumbai when he was young because the football (soccer) was better here. I guess you can get cricket anywhere in India, but somehow football is only slightly more popular than in the US.




On a tangent, I was wearing my Brazil t-shirt today, the one with "Order and Progress" replaced by "Q.E.D." and Nirtin commented on how he held the standard Indian view of Brazil, that it was the anti-India. I wasn't quite able to figure out what he meant by that. I've never been to Brazil, but my impression is that Brazilians on average know how to party a lot better than Indians, and while both coutries have a macho complex, Brazil's tough guys are a lot tougher, and their women are somewhat more empowered. And that they play football a lot better than Indians play cricket. But for various reasons, when given the choice between IMPA and TIFR, I picked TIFR. I guess India has its favorable points as well. The Himalayas and all...

Yesterday I gave a reprise of my talk from Lun-Yi's show, somewhat expanded to include a bit more math. The occasion was a VSRP colloquium, VSRP being TIFR's version of an REU (research experiences for undergraduates) - too many damn acronyms. Anyway, it wasn't as interesting as the first time, largely because I wasn't able to establish much of a rapport with the audience. I sometimes get the feeling that some of the people here are just waiting for me to explode into some sort of monster or suchlike. I don't really know how to describe it. Its like I'm a dancing bear who can also talk about algebraic geometery.

And, since I'll be leaving TIFR before long, I caved in and signed up at Flikr to host my photos.

Also, there are some videos (about 7mb each, so only download if you have a rather fast connection) of the rain as viewed from my apartment here and here. When I went over to campus later in the evening it was raining a good bit harder, but even these movies are rather impressive.