The Next Big Things at NASA

Ok, a quick break from studies and an update to my blog.

First, thanks to ALL the people who have commented. I never expected seven comments for my first blog entry :D, so thanks!

I'll try to keep writing as much as possible, but truly regular blogging will only happen from April 5.

I was thinking this morning about SSP. For those of you who don't know, SSP is a really amazing summer camp I went to in the summer of 2007, and which - as the much-clichéd saying goes - changed my life. Well, it really did, so I don't know how else to put it. You can read about SSP here.

Anyway, I went and stayed in the summer camp in California with 33 of the brightest minds from around the world, and guess what we did there. That's right, we had fun! We played around all day, formed a Cult inspired by the Duck (more on that in the coming weeks), played foosball, soccer and poker, hung around with friends till 4 in the morning, went on great field trips, had awesome food, you know, the works. Oh, and occasionally we also studied astronomy (spherical trigonometry and cylindrical coordinates - don't even think about asking) and tracked down an asteroid which appeared to have an attitude problem.

When I came back to India, people were all over me, saying "WOW man, you're the next big thing at NASA, aren't you? You must have studied your [censored] off at SSP and done research beyond our wildest dreams! Did you eat or sleep at all?"

I tried in vain to explain to them that SSP wasn't about studying our whatsits off. We did research, true, but it wasn't exactly earth-shattering. It was all about fun. Well, when people showed an irritating tendency of continuing to disbelieve me, I showed them this video from SSP. The guy in the dinner jacket with the weird sunglasses and the headband a la Jimi Hendrix is me. My valiant opponent is a Greek guy called Alex. Brilliant guy, learned Texas Holdem in no time, and spouted probabilities along the way. The coward who tried to strangle me midway into the fight is a Californian called Liam (more about him later - trust me, this guy has a LOT of stories about him). Other minor background characters are Udbhav (from India), Daksha (from Singapore), and Sydney (from Las Vegas!). If any of you are reading this, miss you loads!






If that kind of activity befits the "next big things at NASA", I'm afraid the future of astronomy in the world looks very, very bleak.

By the way, as you can see from my amazingly athletic moves, I love The Matrix trilogy. Me and several million other people. The funny thing is, EVERYONE at SSP liked it. Now would you call that weird?

Z