The Three Year-long Journey

"The only thing we know about the future is that it will be different."

It is completion of three years in US today, a totally different place, country and culture; in ASU, an endeavor to do something more with life; and in PhD, a desire to excel and make a difference to the rest of the world. As I look back, time seems to have just drifted so fast; however, each day has been different; and I have had the opportunity to gather a wide spectrum of variegated experiences, both professional and personal, sweet and bitter, which have been a great learning, preparing for the life in the coming future.

I find this quote so apt in describing the journey of our lives; when I came here, I was so excited about this whole new experience, apart from thoughts of finally being able to do what I wanted to do, and everything else. Each dawn it was something new, and I have come a long, really long way. I don't repent anything, I don't want to go back and change any bit of it. For, at the end of the day, it has been a learning of life; things you don't imbibe in formative education. And I want to gather that learning in the same manner as it has been, had I had the chance to go back and change anything.

There have been several changes about me. How I look at life, how I look into my future, how I judge relationships and how to be responsible for myself. Precisely maturity has crept in wide and deep; which has been for the better I strongly believe! Growing up has been a wonderful journey in the past three years here.

There were so many things which I was inquisitive about three years back, which I was skeptical about. I have answers to many of them now. I know where I am going to be in the next five years, a thought which used to be a question then. And still there are some questions which spring up every now and then and sweep my entire thought process. However, life is about getting more questions and the quest for their answers in the way, isn't it? And therein lies the role of the hidden future, a future which is obliged to be different from today - a hope that is always alive, in some remote corner of our mind.

About Human Computability...

Going back to childhood, and before landing into the "land of opportunities" I always had (or probably was an inherited) pre-conceived notion that, Indians are good at computability. While in history books we used to take pride in our Aryabhattas and Bhaskaracharyas, I never got a scope to explore the notion or cull it into a practically validated fact in reality till today.
Nevertheless, today morning came as a surprise: a proof of this deep-and-old seated notion that even if agreed Indians' computation capability is better, how is it so? How is the degree of that? Or is it something else? Well, I am not a racist or an overtly patriotic individual, but beleive me I was taken aback when I got a 'parametric' view of the difference in computability between the folks from the East and the West!
Somehow, in a class of mine where there are undergraduates too, a topic cropped up: how long did you learn arithmetic tables? Basically the professor was casually asking us, what is the highest number of whose table you had memorized in primary school. He said, "Probably 12, right?" Then someone(one undergraduate) interrupted, "No! more for me! I learnt till 15!" Then there was a big "wow"! I was sitting quiet and smiling to myself. Then I thought, okay, let me give them the shock of their lives. I said, "I learnt till25!"
And then the situation in the class: don't ask me what happenned!
Well, generally, they were telling me later, that even for 13*5 they would use a calculator! I don't know if this degree of technology dependency is good or bad, but I am sure, this is destroying the natural computability of humans. I will not talk of Asia and The West separately. Because I believe, computability is not intelligence: it can be acquired by any. And when they say, they carry a scientific calculator/PDA with them all the time which they specifically use for the four basic mathematical operations: add, subtract, multiply, divide, I can only arrive at two conclusions.
One, this is a direct affect of too much technology dependence which is interfering with people's computational growth. Or the second, am I too out-dated, old-fashioned, obsolete looking at today's undergraduates, despite the fact that I myself was an undergraduate only 2 years ago? The answer is a question to me!