Touring the DDR Musuem

World history is "bubbling"(a word that has special significance in my life these days) with all sorts of events. Prosperity followed by a period of war hunger famine and divide. and there is so much of it and so omnipresent(please excuse me God for using this word other than to describe you) that we find it everywhere and IN every persons mind.

So I visited this museum yesterday that depicts life in the former DDR(East Germany). My visit became even better because I went there with someone who had been born and grew up in east Germany.

This is what the entrance looks like( as can be learnt from the quality of the picture, I didn't take this one). My travel companion was quick to remark on the authenticity of everything that we read and came across which made the trip more entertaining. There was talk about how the media the news the newspapers were all censored. How people could only read and hear and even express their opinion if it conformed with the tenants of socialism. 

Interestingly my travel companion, for reasons I can only conjecture, was somewhat aggrieved to see what they had made out of the life of the DDR. The person remembered things differently than what had been portrayed. We both agreed that this museum was from the side of the victor and didnt therefore depict reality in any way. 

This however was a picture I took inside. It depicts the role of the Army in the DDR. Important point to note here is the army there did what the army does everywhere.and lest I create a political furore I will not write what that is here(The DDR has effected me maybe)

I have always thought that history is to people as stamps are to a stamp collector. A memorabilia, priceless for the collector but useless for everyone else. I don't think the unfolding of events can be any different even if we learn from history. 

Albert Einstein; Things he said & did

Einstein made little distinction between astrophysics, philosophy, relationship advice or other disciplines and was prolific in his advice to young lovers. His quotations are cited by virtually everyone on facebook. The guy who works at the local grocery store, to the guy who is always madly in love and to the guy who well, strangely enough, is training to become a physicist. These are some of the things that can be seen associated to Einstein and I particularly difficult to grasp that its by him.

"Dont make someone your priority who makes you only an option"-Albert Einstein
 This one is my favourite. I never thought he was such a romantic. Its quite touching. 

"Only a life lived for others is a life worthwhile"- Albert Einstein
Same guy who had a big role to play in the creation of the atomic bomb. He did make a few lives well ahh worth while/less

"The school kid who is asked by the teacher to explain god but cant but then finally does manage to do that grows up be who?" well- Einstein
This is a classic, being quite religiously disinclined myself , I have heard this claim so many times. This story is hard evidence for the existence of God now.

Try not to become a man of success, rather a man of value- Einstein
He may have said it I dont know, but this doesn't seem like the words of someone who simultaneously develops and propagates successfully the idea that space and time are essentially intertwined and that gravity is a dent in that web of spacetime. 

and finally this

If Einstein was alive, I would ask him what he meant by that? On the picture on the left, a bunch of young people are busy with their cell phones while they sit near each other( the implication is that they should be interacting, talking, playing instead). Why would I ask him that? well because from what I hear about him, Einstein wasn't the coolest kids on the block. its not like he was always chilling hanging out and having fun and socialising with every(if I can be excused the phrase) Tom Dick and Harry.

I think if Einstein had a cell phone with high speed internet , he would be pretty pleased with that. and would probably be seen using it all the time to watch YouTube videos of Hawking(excuse the chronological inappropriateness).

and lastly there is this E=MC^2 equation which is almost synonymous with his name. You ask people do you know about Einstein? and the answer is always a very self confident "yeah sure. E=Mc^2 dude. I know that shit"

----Sudden Drop Dead Ending to Blog---

On a Saturday Afternoon

"Sherry my boy! The only thing worse than people who drink on weekdays" My friend R tells me with a beer bottle in his hand on a Saturday afternoon" are people who do not drink on weekends" and sips the beer.
I nod. The nod that means that partly I agree and the other part I don't care.
"Well some people just don't drink for religious reasons while others drink religiously for secular reasons. and I happen to disagree to both" He continues with his monologue
"hmm". I concur

R is a half Hungarian half Polish German friend of mine. He has lived in Berlin all his life. and though he does not remember the time before the wall came down. He is happy it did. He says its important for a country to have many public holidays, even if you have to break down concrete walls for it. We walk on towards the center of Berlin. Enroute I hear things that I do not understand but see gestures that I do.

"You really should start drinking sherry. If only out of respect for peer pressure. Let go of the shakles of tradition, break free from the clutches of culture, free yourself................" But I cut his never ending sentence short

"Don't you ever think of anything other than that?. I am sure there must be other pressing issues in your life which I agree is devoid of any hope and comfort?"

"There isnt. That's why I am stuck here studying on a Saturday afternoon with YOU. Lets go, the study group is there waiting for us. We got a lot of work to do tonight"

On things that are the same.

So I have come a long way since being the guy who just moved into a new place a new country and the culture. I cant say I feel at home right now but things are gradually been getting better. Berlin is still being explored. In my defence, its a large city, it takes a while to visit stuff.

There are many things which are culturally different but I dont want to talk about differences . What I do want to talk about are similarities. Not the big ones, the obvious ones but the little ones, the subtle ones. The ones that rarely matter.

I feel three things are very similar everywhere. Because all three are in the most raw forms that they can be, Unfettered by training indoctrination and teaching. They exist in the rawest of forms imaginable. and those three things are dogs , trees and babies. Dogs and babies are pretty cool creatures. The don t care how you look or talk or what you wear or whether you have a nice haircut or have an extra linb dangling by your side. because they have not learnt to not like it. No one has told them anything "yet". Well babies will grow up to be fully conscious of these differences I suppose. But dogs will always be dogs. They love you no matter what. What a pure form of form they show.

The thing about trees is that they are the same. the look the same, feel the same, have the same colour and texture. The feel about them and around them is the same. Its difficult to tell where you are when you are around trees. and dogs and babies ofcourse

The Language of the World

I feel a tinge in my spine when I talk to people from non English speaking countries with absolute ease and comfort because it is not the language I speak and not the language they speak and yet we can have meaningful conversations about everything. But that's just a natural reaction to the growing globalisation that we find ourselves a part of. Its fascinating that I can talk to someone from a place where my country might never have been mentioned but still there is something that links us.

I think it is inevitable that humanity will one day have only one language, that all the others will fade away, die out and just become redundant. Frankly speaking, we are too smart to have a language which is flawad with imperfections, logical inconsistencies(silent letters?) and too primitive. A feat that every language has managed to perform so far. It may not be the most popular of views ever expressed but I think one day it will happen.

Honestly I mean can you imagine how emabarrasing it would be if an alien from another star system visits us and we have to tell him( I wonder how) that we dont understand another earthmen because he lives in another country a few thousand miles away? Would impression would it leave?

So I think in a another 500 years or so, we will need a language for the world and no its cant be English because it is native to some people. and therefore would be unfair to others. I think we will have to, this time consciously come up with a language for ourselves. Top linguists from all the languages will sit down(The Language conference of 2454?) brain storm and come up with a language. Following are the features I think should be a part of such a language.

1. There should be no silent letters whatsoever. What you see is what you read and pronounce.
2. The number of vowel sounds should be fixed arbitrarily. I propose that a varied number of vowel sounds should be taken from different languages to make sure a variety of words can be made.
3. There should be no exception to rules. Subject verb agreements, sentences, verb conjugations, conjunctions spellings should follow a pattern and never break it.
4. An attempt should be made to have around at least 5 synonyms for each word differing in severity of meaning from low to high.
5. Verbs should be separable and new words can be made without the need for them to be in the dictionary(Strict rules to be followed here). This should encourage creativity
6. Words should have a limited, but a great many number of, fixed endings(so as to encourage rhyming)
7. All basic words should have hand gestures fixed to them, performed every time, so as to be able to communicate to special people without having to learn sign language.
8. Once developed, an earth wide initiative should be taken to get literature written in the new language.

I realise some important literature from all the languages would have to be done away with and I am not too happy about it either but this is a price we have to pay. On the plus side it will give rise to a new kind of hobbyists; called the archaic language learners. How cool would that be.

What we are exposed to is what we end up becoming

There are only a very specific type of people who will understand the following joke

" zara zuruck bleiben hojao"

I think that every person that I have ever met in my life has affected me in some way or the other. I have learnt things from people who weren't teaching me anything . I picked their words their language, their emotions, how they betray their emotions, how they react to words to situations and others reactions. I picked everything. Then I got a lot from watching television, movies, following social media, and from places I visited or sights I saw.

Point is that I am in essence the "result" and the "output" of whatever was put into me by all these different means that I have mentioned. I dont know what part of me is actually me or whether there is any part of me that is me. and this brings me to the following thought

If what I have said above is true, and I most certainly think it is, then wouldn't it be nice to expose young people(children adolescents young adults) to only the right sort of information and people ? Couldn't we cherry-pick and actually choose very wisely and acutely what they see hear touch and consequently feel and react ? Would that be wise? would that be ethical?

And then I think don't we already do it? We want our children to go the best schools, read the best books, and we censor their viewer ship of certain types of electronic entertainment and encourage certain others? If we do it , is THAT ethical to do ?

I will end it by just stating that I wish I had never met those people,watched those TV sitcoms, been to those places ,or read those books that taught me, to be afraid of change, to feel envious, to fear and let my decisions be affected by it. I wish I had never but I have. and I have to live with that.

This ones on what makes us

"Life is the best thing that ever happened to the atoms that make me"-Shaharyar Ahsan Sheikh

I realise this quote may never make it big but I would like it nonetheless. The beauty lies in the fact that it can take any direction I want it to take. 

I could start talking about how the atoms that make me were created, talk about stars or their evolutionary cycles or how when "OH Be A Fine Girl Kiss Me" just appears out of nowhere in an otherwise astronomy lesson cracks me up every time. 

OR 

I could just think how wonderfully incredible all this is. Birth growth experiences knowledge love affection middle age old age and death(alright I agree death isn't that cool). If you just take a moment and imagine how unique our place is, how our minds are tuned, how the cycle of life endlessly recklessly ruthlessly goes on, you cant help but be enthralled. 

Phrases that humanity can live without.

Following is a list of phrases that I have something( mostly negative) to say about.

1. It isn't even funny
Okay. I may pay more attention to what words people use, and how they use it, but this one really gets to me. This particular phrase makes some underlying assumptions which I don't support or approve of or respect. Firstly it somehow assumes that everything has to be funny. Literally everything in the world which sadly(or funnily?) isn't. Saying "its not even funny" is like saying "since we have already established that everything has to be funny and since this particular thing isn't ,therefore this isn't good enough". Sometimes "its not even funny" makes you think that well up until a certain point it was funny and then almost as if by accident it ceased to be funny. Like on a number line it was funny from 1 to 6 but as soon as we reached 7 it ceased to be funny. I hope I have conveyed my feelings in somewhat intelligible words

 2. Think of the devil and the devil is here.
I feel the devil has a very unique place in our pop culture and language. The role of the devil is the central theme in most films TV shows and "religions". Almost always when the devil comes(antagonist in movies) the plot develops, thickens and becomes more interesting. The same can be said about the phrase. Because superficially we are expected and trained to dislike the devil yet we end up thinking about him/her/it and then he/she/it appears. and we are happy. This phrase accurately depicts our true relationship with the devil.


and last and MOST CERTAINLY the least.


3. Last but not the least.
I mean really whats up with this phrase anyway. Is it like an obligation now that every time a list is being talked about one has to say it? I don't get that. To say that this is clichéd is the most monumentally colossal understatement since the big bang itself. I am sure the Neanderthals used to blog about how old this phrase is and how meaningless. and well lets just be honest. Sometimes the last IS the least. We really dont have to be so deceptively euphemistic about everything.