I can't decide if the Washington Post's idea of letting its Sudoku players type down all the possibilities for a box is a good idea or not. Because now my grid resembles some strange outer-space creature with thousands of numbers (thousands? or would it be closer to hundreds? if i were not to solve ANY of the boxes in a given grid, but were to ( Read more... )

a) A Case of Exploding Mangoes by Mohammed Hanif. Terribly good. Is it only me, or does anybody else get a secret sense of glee, a smirk almost, after reading this book ( Read more... )

It feels wonderfully liberating to finally have something novel and substantial and interesting to write about. These past few months have been a whirlwind of lab work, house work and more of the same. Some people can make a great write-up out of such stuff. Not me (as has been evidenced clearly by past reports ( Read more... )

Have you heard of Lysistrata? She's a creation of Aristophanes and her claim to fame is that she, being absolutely sick of war, inspires the rest of the women in Athens and Sparta to withhold sex from their husbands if they do not stop warring immediately ( Read more... )

Stephanie Laurens writes romances and this post is about her books. So if you can't stand them, go away now ( Read more... )

I'm feeling awfully wise all of a sudden. Let me quickly get my thoughts down before the feeling passes. I'll put them in bulleted form, the way Buddha's "Eight steps to Nirvana" were taught in school ( Read more... )

Friday: Trainee from Puerto Rico cut her hand with the same scalpel that she used to chop up pieces of cervical tissue. Yikes! Was the tissue infected with HIV or Hepatitis? Or some awful bacteria maybe? How to check? It was Friday evening and everything was closed ( Read more... )

After every period of intense working at lab, I get depressed. All the things that fell apart at home during my period of intense work start clamoring for attention- the dishes, the laundry, my relationship with my husband ( Read more... )

Ever since coming to the US, just because of the people I hang out with, the only language I find myself speaking is English. Every year, when a fresh batch of Indian students lands up in Pittsburgh, the natural thing is, of course, to switch to Hindi for conversations. My Hindi is slow and faltering. I could probably speak it okay, given enough ( Read more... )

Y'llo world ( Read more... )