Wednesday, October 18, 2006

Tagged

I have been tagged.
It has been quite a while, but I have been busy with this and that and as you see, I haven't been posting since three weeks. Which is a pity, as there is certainly a lot to blog about.

I am not a very social blogger, i.e., although I do browse other people's blogs and follow quite a few of these... I'm not big into leaving comments and developing friendships with bloggers. I do leave comments once in a while, and if fact I had been having a great discussion with Sebastien (the French guy I met in Paris)... but he doesn't know my blog and I comment anonymously (he knows it is me) because I wouldn't want him to see my blog because of my post on him! But anyways, since I don't comment a lot, and prefer to "lurk" on people's blogs, I have escaped being tagged... until recently.
The Visitor came across my blog via a comment I had left on Prash's, mentioned mine on his blog about blogs, has been visiting my blog with reasonable regularity, and has been commenting off and on too. And now has tagged me too. I am happy to oblige, albeit a couple of weeks late :-)
The direction is:
State nine things (weird or otherwise) about yourself. Then tag 6 others, and also let them know that you've tagged them by leaving a comment on their blog.
I will skip the second part, i.e., tagging others... simply because of the asocial reasons mentioned above, I don't know enough of others. So if there are visitors to my blog who'd like to pick up the tag, please write me a comment and feel free to accept it.
Ok, so here goes.
1. Despite all my endeavours, the Second Law of Thermodynamics plays a very important role in my life. Hey, don't run away, I'm not going to teach you Physics (after all I am a biologist, not a physicist!). Simply put, the said law posits that everything tends to chaos.
My desk. My flat. My lab bench. Doing the laundry. Cooking on weekends. Going to the gym. Correspondence/email. You name it, and if it is a part of my life, it tends to go towards chaos.
I do try to deal with it. I used to invite people over for lunch dinner quite regularly on weekends as that'd force me to clean up and cook. Couchsurfing was useful too, as having guests staying at my place means I have to clean up! I pay a whole year's membership for the gym so that I'd have more reason to go. And so on.
The silly thing is that when one thing starts to degenerate to chaos, everything else does so to. And I function terribly, at work at home, everywhere.
2. Procrastination is another thing that governs my life and is of course related to, and is in many ways the cause of, the above too. This is one thing I really wish I could change in my life. Things would be soooo much better without it.
3. My interests are just too diverse. In a way I am proud of this. My interests really range from almost everything to almost everything, and I'd look forward to newer ones. There are exceptions-- football, cricket et al. But these exceptions have exceptions too... I do enjoy watching important matches with friends or colleagues especially when there are supporters from both sides around. Anyways, but because of my interest in so many things, I don't get to stick to any of these properly. I shuttle from one to the other and leave the previous one unfinished. For example, I should really take some time out to go to the woods and photograph the autumn. Haven't been out on a proper photography tour (not tourist or social photography) for quite a long while. I should go hiking before it starts to get colder. I should write another article. I should read up on poetry. I participated in a few writing workshops last weekend (to be blogged), I am rehersing for a play that'll be performed next month. There are movies to be seen, a performance of The Glass Menagerie to be gone to. Music I have bought to be listened to. I have already bought (rather expensive) tickets for a performance of The Swan Lake for next weekend. The classical music appreciation cassettes to be listened to. Indian, French, Hungarian, German, Austrian, British, American, Iranian, Israeli, Turkish, EU expansion, immigration politics to be discussed. So many books to be read on so many things. And oh, I have to remind Fabien to explain the basics of String Theory to me.
4. I have blogged about this before: I don't like and consequently rarely drink tea, coffee or alcohol. Never smoke or take drugs. Nevertheless, I have an addictive personality. I am addicted to reading (previously it used to be books, now it is more what I get on the internet-- news, blogs etc. Books are quite under control). And I sometimes (though very occasionally) get addicted to some people.
5. I used to be very religious when I was a kid. First it was Hinduism, then it was religions and God in general. But gradually I became a full fledged atheist. The change took a couple of years but was imperceptible. I certainly was deeply religious when I was 13 as I remember discussing it (Hinduism) with a close friend. But I was a complete atheist by the time I was 17 and I remember writing to the same friend arguing against the existence of God and decrying religion.
I am a staunch believer in the importance of the concept of God for human psychology and society. And I think religion play a very important (constructive-- as well as the obvious destructive) role in the evolution of human society. Hence it is my firm policy never to try to convince a believer that God does not exist. Discussion/arguement for the sake of academic debate are fine.
I still retain an extreme interest in mythology, especially Hindu mythology.
I also love to tease very religious (Hindu) people with "inconsistencies" within the Gita. I also love Sanskrit, and can still quote quite a few shlokas.
6. I love to study people, their psychology and behaviour. It used to be so bad that I would mentally make predictions about how certain people would react under certain conditions, and would occasionally provoke those situations to test my predictions. I was really terrible. I rarely do that now. But I still like to study people. It has happened that friends have telephone me to ask for possible explanations of behaviours of friends/acquaintences/love interests of their friends.
I could not escape my own analyses as well, and that was actually good for me (see below).
7. Growing up as a gay kid, rather introverted, I used to get depressed quite often. However studying myself (this happened in Pune, Bangalore and to an extent in Tübingen), I could figure out exactly why I was depressed and why that was silly, why and how I should rectify it. It was as if I was looking at myself as a character in a novel or movie. Gradually my analyses/therapy on myself worked. And nowadays I rarely get depressed, rarely get angry. Disappointed yes, sad yes, scared yes, irritated yes, but not depressed nor angry [exceptions of the former include when I am in love, and of the latter when I am trying to buy a ticket from the Südbahnhof ticket counter... again both rare events].
A few years ago I was chatting with a gay psychiatrist on a gay website, and we happened to talk about this. He told me that they use a similar method in therapy called Cognitive Therapy. I had apparently used it on myself.
Whatever it was, I am quite happy about this.
8. I continue with the above theme. Every time I move, I change a bit of my personality. Initially it used to be subconscious, now I do it consciously. That is one of the reasons I actually look forward to moving.
9. At school we used to be taught social sciences in three sections-- Geography, History and Civics (Politics, government, society etc). I used to hate all of them, but soon after I didn't have to study them I started getting interested in them, and now I love them. I also used to dislike Biology. Now of course it is my career!
10. I'll add another bonus one to round off. I often describe myself as an incorrigible optimist with my feet firmly on the ground.
Interestingly, each of these points could form whole topics for future blogging!

4 comments:

Prash said...

I ain't a great fan of tags....

shall get back here and read the post later..it is quite long !!!

btw, you are linked in my blog

A.S. said...

Thanks for the link, Prash.

Yeah, the post is long... most of my posts are, and that's the reason for the title of the blog: Unrestrained Verbosity . ;-)

The Visitor said...

And thanks for doing the tag. I did want to discuss some things on your tag, but never got down to it.

A.S. said...

@The Visitor
Sure you're welcome to discuss whatever you like... I'm always happy to have a good discussion!