Freewheeling On The Bench

Thanks to Mr. Amit Verma, who entertainingly calls himself "Maverick" for inviting me to the Blogging community. I am an entry-level software professional working in Pune. And these days I am freewheeling on the bench.

As the word bench comes to my mind also come very interesting things that we can do on the bench i.e. forwarding CV to our friends (though they never turn helpful), listening to favourite music, reading about people whom we deify etc. etc. etc. and etc. the last in the list comes the soul searching i.e. finding the faults that we made in our last assignments and waiting for some new work. For me, contributing to the blog is the latest entry in the list.

It’s been around 20 days of freewheeling for me. I’d been meeting all my seniors to assign some work to me. That gives an idea of the time I must have spent on the activities that have nothing to do with my work at office. I listened to some of my favourite music on the net (though it always entices me to take it up on a better scale), reading about Einstein (not about his work, Physics is long lost friend for me), Blues, Robert Johnson, repercussions of nuclear droppings in Japan, and sometimes the news and also about some new technologies that I am bound to forget.

I always idolized Einstein not only because of the theorems he proved or equivalences he discovered but because of the humility and respect for human life that he had. Some of his smallest quotations have the deepest meaning and a subtle humour that’s too original to be found somewhere else.

I am adding some of his quotes that I found interesting. Hope you all ejoy them as I do.

If my theory of relativity is proven successful, Germany will claim me as a German and France will declare that I am a citizen of the world. Should my theory prove untrue, France will say that I am a German and Germany will declare that I am a Jew.
Address at the Sorbonne, Paris.

Before God we are all equally wise - equally foolish.
Quoted in Des MacHale, Wisdom (London, 2002).

"Gravitation is not responsible for people falling in love."

"The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax."

"I am convinced that He (God) does not play dice."

"God is subtle but he is not malicious."

…common sense is nothing more than a deposit of prejudices laid down in the mind before you reach eighteen.
Quoted in E T Bell, Mathematics: Queen and Servant of Science

Many others can be found on the net, I forgot the site, as it was one among the hundreds in browsed. Google is always a friend (guides better than TLs and PMs).

The second endeavor lately was reading about Blues, my favourite music. Though I knew about the origination of it (in the Mississippi Delta), how it spread etc but this time I tried to get some technical knowledge of it i.e. the scales, the notes, the chord formations etc that are prevalent in this style of playing. The reason of behind this was my listening to Clapton’s latest release in which he has covered 14 of 28 songs of the Great Blues legend Robert Johnson.(I am hardest of die-hard fans of EC; I religiously went to Tokyo to see him live).

This music had the most profound effect of me. The lyrics are too powerful. I sometimes wonder how these people row up being so expressive. On the first listen I didn’t like the music all that much, but it has something that invites, and it plays the trick. It grows over and becomes very commanding. Sometimes I wake up singing “Her tamales are red Hot n she got them for sale” or “You better come on in my kitchen coz its gonna be raining outdoors”. This led me to read about Robert Johnson. As a little boy of early teens he was no good with the guitar and on a certain day he was kicked out of some juke joint for playing there. This hurt him so bad that he took an exile. On his re-appearance, people could not believe him having the skill. And then came an interesting legend about him, some people say that he sold his soul to devil for fame and money. The story runs like this that at the moonless midnight if somebody goes and plays his guitar on a crossroads, a huge black man would appear and take away the guitar and tune it for him. He is none but the devil. This is jokingly interesting. Cross Road Blues (a Robert Johnson original) or the Cream's rendition – Crossroads can be listened to. They both are based on this legend.

Many of the things I have in the pipeline. You might see them if I am on the bench or a few more days and do not leave the job. But right now its time to get back to learn better coding, as it’s my only source of living.