Viral Fever

I spent the last week battling some unknown forces that had laid siege on my computer. Everytime I tried to run any program even remotely related to the internet (doesn't leave much, barring perhaps MSDOS which I still remember our computer science teacher going through great pains to get into our heads in 7th grade) I got a whole series of windows which popped up (hence their being called "pop-ups"-ingenious I say) and tried to sell me cars, college degrees, antivirus softwares (a conspiracy or just ironic-who can tell?) and also promised to introduce me to some very lovely ladies in my neighborhood. Since I cant afford a car, already have one degree and can't really purchase the next one I'm vying for, would never pay for antivirus softwares (or for that matter for the lovely ladies- my conscience doesnt allow either-its company policy) I found those pop-ups quite trying as you may well imagine.

After trying everything I could I decided to call in the big guns as reinforcements and SOS'd(I think we can redefine SOS from "save our souls" to "save our softwares" in todays age considering we already sold our souls to the devil when we bought pirated software at palika bazar) 2-3 of my IT related friends for help. The first thing all of them said when I told them I might have a virus was "dude, you gotta quit surfing porn!". I could not quite fathom the reason for these allegations which i found utterly baseless(not to mention offensive!) especially because I hadnt been surfing porn(not lately at least!). I wasn't really able to make the correlation between beautiful women in cyberspace and malicious programs on my hard disk. Its seemingly like the layman who knows about HIV and Syphilis never thinks that he's going to get infected till he gets naughty and careless.

Fortunately though my computer seems to be well on the road to recovery and I apparently need to bolster its defenses and be a little more..ahem, discreet about what I do online. As my cousin put it, "No more unprotected internet surfing". He tried his best to give me my lessons about adware, spyware, trojans, worms, viruses and the like(I still cant tell one from the other, but i know they exist) but I will have to leave it as one of those things which I perhaps am not meant to fathom. And at the risk of repeating myself for the zillionth time, I shrug my shoulders, sigh and say that Computers and women are two things i will probably never understand! (Yes, I know women are not "things", and I do not intend to imply that either-I simply allude to their thought processes which I am perhaps not destined to comprehend-so I request the women's libbers out there to please refrain from igniting their lingerie over this.)

Are you Johnnie re?

"Who is John Galt?" - The cry goes round the world once again. Well, not quite the world, but in some people's universes at least. Could this allusion be to the Scottish novelist of the 19th century? I think not. Its the "mystery worker", the "destroyer", the man who changed the world. For the fortunately uninitiated he was a character in Atlas Shrugged(you can check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Characters_in_Atlas_Shrugged#John_Galt). I read that book about 5 years back and found it to be a terribly tedious ordeal. Took me close to three months to finish, and a 90 page speech by Mr Galt himself was nothing short of torture. Yet the book had a fascinating concept. In short, it was good but it just wasnt worth the effort involved (what else do you expect from a guy who's read The Hitchikers Guide 5 times in the last two years?!).

Sure, we need John Galt today. The world is such a screwed up place, that we could actually do with several hundreds of 'em, but the point is do we keep going on with our lives and hope John Galt turns up, do we just sit around and wait or do we look for the John Galt within each one of us and the people we know?

There are those who wait for Mr Galt. According to lore, he's not a superhero. Superman, Spiderman, Batman, Phantom, Kriisisshshsh(I'm sure I misspelt it-but i'm sorry hrithik, i dont really care) are superheroes. John Galt is one of us. Could be you, your best friend or your worst enemy.(I've been informed by someone very reliable that its not me, so thats not an option).I firmly believe that Mr Galt doesnt exist but there is a little bit of him in all of us. For those who wait for him, for whatever reason- whether for him to bring them salvation, to be their saviour or to bloody marry them - I wish them all the best. I can only quote lines from Chad Kroegers 'Hero' to tell them how I feel about it..

"And they say that a hero can save us.
I'm not gonna stand here and wait.
I'll hold on to the wings of the eagles.
Watch as we all fly away.
Now that the world isn't ending, it's love that I'm sending to you.
It isn't the love of a hero, that's why I fear it won't do."

Statement of....Purpose??

I sincerely apologize for my last post (its not there anymore, so this apology is only there for those who were (un)fortunate enough to have read it). It was very uncharacteristic of me and was due to a momentary lapse of reason - as i told the person responsible for the whole post - my immense intellect has been clouded by emotion the last few days-not sure if she got the sarcasm. Despite my requests, I still received a few sympathetic messages and am grateful for the concern expressed by everyone. I'm doing fine now (wasnt doing too badly then, but tostitos, coke and ice cream are never good for health) and very much back on my feet.

I spent a month in Boston doing an observership at a hospital where I was pleasantly surprised by how friendly everyone was. I had expected I would stick out like a sore thumb(which i might have done, but i didnt really feel it). There were residents from all over the world and the time i spent there was as much a geography lesson as a medicine experience. It actually looks kind of like an advert for UCB. I guess something thats only possible in the US.

After a flurry of recommendations, personal statements, common application forms and endless lists of residency programs suddenly all is quiet. D-day, 1st September (yeah, Happy Birthday SPS) has come and gone. I survived it, as did I guess just about everyone else in the race for a residency spot in the US of A. Now begins a long and painful wait for programs to invite us for interview calls. Everyday that goes by without any word from them - neither rejecting, nor inviting, is full of an eerie sort of silence - emptiness, a void. It is this factor which over the next month or so will decide whether a day was good or bad. Or ugly (hope I don’t have any of those).

I seem to have become somewhat of an authority on personal statements. Having nearly lost my mind writing my own(which by the way I myself didnt think was too great), I subsequently had to write/edit/repair (for want of a better word-because I have seen some really bad ones too!) close to ten others (5 of them being variants of the same one as a friend of mine was applying to 5 branches- i hear there's a 6th one in the mix as well now! I could participate in the recitation tests I used to dread as a kid with one of her PS’s.). My spectrum expanded a couple of days back as I actually wrote out a PS for a friend applying for a fellowship in Cardiology and have already been warned by another who will be applying to B schools that I'll have to write his too!

"Statement Of Purpose" - These words have been echoing in my head for the last few weeks as I needed to sum up all the ambitions, desires, achievements of a lifetime(thus far, at least) in a solitary page to apply for a residency program. The problem is not one of plenty and of squeezing in stuff into those few hundred words, but rather how to write a statement of purpose when i believe I have the most purposeless existence known to mankind. I like to eat, sleep, play, read, write. All very fine pursuits, but somewhat lacking purpose. I figured all this wouldnt look too good on my application, so I had to be a little creative and mention something or the other about "helping humanity", "intellectual pursuits", and "career goals". Made me feel not unlike a Miss India contestant( "My idol is Mother Teresa..." - when actually its Rakhi Sawant or Isha Koppikar.)

It's virtually impossible to avoid these cliches when writing a Personal Statement, and that is precisely the problem I was facing. How do I make myself look different yet make it seem like I'm every PD's dream, while just about everyone else is doing the same, barring those who hired one website or another to do their dirty work for them. (I can do a better job than most-at half the price-anyone interested?)Its a mystery to me as to what they want in a Personal statement. They want some emotion, some passion in it, but don’t want it to be over the top. They also need you to be politically very correct, which of course poses a huge problem for someone like me.

So kids, if any of you ever need any help writing a personal statement, please dont hesitate to go elsewhere because i have had more than my fair share of them. If you're willing to pay, however, that is a different matter altogether.