Coffee

This is why many people reach work on time, because they wake up and stay awake.

Coffee is very interesting.

Coffee is very famous. It is a way to get work done when you’re tired and sleepy. It is a something to offer your friends in a Café (I hope the ‘é’ is correct. It is quite obvious that I am not a student of French.). It is, also, according to many TV series, an excuse to ask for a first date!

When I first consumed coffee, it was when I and my family and the family of a friend (including him) were returning (as far as I remember) from Bhimashankar. I do not remember what the coffee tasted like – it was probably relatively strong and packed with sugar (no wonder the sugar industry is one of the most important industries in India – generally tea and coffee are packed with sugar. Once, I asked for coffee at a hotel in Madhya Pradesh (central state of India) on a tour, and I got a very light brown coloured mixture of sugar and milk.).

The return journey was through a hilly area, and your deduction should have been formed by now.

I vomited in the car, jamming window control for the back seat windows.

After that, I think, I drank coffee when I was 13 years old (after many years). Then, I liked it. It is notable that this new introduction of coffee was, though milk coffee, with no sugar, and hence considerably bitter for the sugar-lover. It came as no big surprise to me, as I can chew medicine tablets without barfing (Do not do this – the medicine is carefully packed so that it is released when it reaches the designated location.).

Slowly, the concentration of the coffee went on increasing. The advised amount is 1 tsp of coffee powder for 1 cup of milk.

But for all users of caffeinated coffee, it is unfortunate that coffee develops tolerance very fast. You get the jolt the first time, the second time, maybe even the third and the fourth, but then, your body ‘needs’ that amount of coffee to be ‘normal’. Then, you need to increase the concentration for the observable effect.

Till the SSC Board Examinations, it reached about 3 heaped tsp in a glass of milk. (Yes, I still drink a glass of milk – just with the addition of coffee). At this stage, one could say that I was addicted to coffee.

Well, they would have been not be wrong. Then, I had decided to lower the concentration to ½ tsp per glass. I did achieve it, and then something happened and to shot back up to 2 tsp per glass.

Note that I have 2 glasses of coffee each day. It was 2 tsp per glass to some days before this.

The very unfortunate time of the exams (1400 to 1700) of the previous few days caused me add an extra cup at 1325, first with 3 tsp, then with 3.5 tsp.

It does sound like a lot of coffee – and it is.

I finally discovered how much coffee (i.e. instant coffee powder) is too much for me. It is 8 tsp in a day.

How did I know? Well, I woke up at 8 am, and slept at 9:30 pm.

That is a really small day. You may achieve a lot in the small day, but feeling so sleepy as to end the day at 9:30 pm, shows that you must be damn exhausted, and that is not good for the long term.

I can only say that it is good the exam are now over.

The tolerance of coffee can be explained very effectively by how it functions:

You should have heard in your education in school about ATP (the energy currency of life). It stands for adenosine triphosphate.

The phosphate bonds are high in energy. The breaking of these bonds releases energy that cells use for various things to live. So, ATP is converted to ADP (‘d’ for ‘di’). When you have a lot of energy, you have a lot of ATP.

When you are tired, fatigued, the energy sources are largely used up. This means that adenosine (the ‘A’ in ‘ATP’) increases in concentration. Our body has receptors for adenosine. They tell the brain that the body is in need of rest.

When you drink caffeinated coffee, the caffeine blocks these receptors. So, your body doesn’t understand it is tired, and this can cause exhaustion.

This also means that the ‘jolt of energy’ is more of a ‘jolt of not being tired’

Well, that’s all for this mid-week article on coffee.

Be sure to read next week’s article.

Exams, Exams, Exams ...

This week is going to be all about exams. I just announced the start of the exams in the last post.

Weekly articles are long – much longer. You will need to invest some time to read this. After all it is 768 words.

Unlike all other English exam papers that I have written till now, I had actually read about the format of writing answers. This help me greatly with respect to time management. Where I used to write about half a page of an answer, I learnt that simply 4 to 5 lines, or rather, sentences, suffice.

Unlike all other English exam papers that I have written till now, I actually enjoyed writing the paper, which was a very big surprise even to me.

The biology paper, I knew, was going to be very tough. That is because I have spent the last two years studying physics, chemistry and mathematics. The biology that I had studied till then was in an 11^th hour fashion. This time I studied it in a 9^th hour fashion.

At the end of the paper, I knew that I had actually given my best in this paper. The few hours after the paper were blissful. It was one of the best feelings that I have ever experienced, one that could be considered as inner peace. Well, if that is true, then inner peace is really short lived.

I understood that at the end of the physics paper on the 8^th of January. Now one might think that physics should not be a difficult subject after all, but believe me in the subjective format it is so.

The German Paper made me think a bit. The situation for German was similar to that of English. I did not know how to study. That is mainly because of two reasons: I have the least amount of study material for studying German, and I attended a crash course for German for about the first two weeks of December last year. My study of German during that time duration was more thorough than ever before. That, coupled with the fact that I hate revision, certainly was one of the reasons.

The German HSC paper is also highly objective in nature. That is why German is one of the most scoring subjects out there. My paper ended in just 92 or 93 minutes of the allotted 180 minutes, which again surprised me because I usually take more than 2 hours to complete the paper.

Another thing I discovered regarding my laptop, or rather, Lenovo IdeaPad, is the speech recognition feature, which is surprisingly accurate even for my Indian English accent. As one might have guessed, this post has not been typed, but dictated till this point.

The exam schedule had a 2-day gap in it. So, the next exam – Mathematics – was on Tuesday, the 12^th.

The Mathematics paper was as usual, not difficult, but lengthy.

I also later realised due to a discussion of the paper with my friends that I forgot a factor of 2 in a question of integration when I substituted 2t=tan(m) for whatever reason.

I am posting this before the last of the exams – PT or (Physical Education (I know that the abbreviation is for physical training)) – which is a written examination.

We have been given a list of 100 MCQs and any 20 of them would be asked. We just have to write the correct options – simple, right?

One of the questions is: ‘Which of the following is not a famous cricketer?’

Some questions made my mother (who is a doctor) wonder whether this is a PT exam (written) or for some medical injury expert. Nevertheless, the wording of the questions is very funny.

Another question is: ‘A basketball player received repeated thigh contusions. They (Yes, ‘they’ instead of ‘s/he’) said they ran through the pain each time and were hit with opponent’s knees……’

If you don’t laugh on that, I predict that you have some sort of traumatic experience with basketball.

Over the weekend, I would have been bored, if it wasn’t for Stephen Hawking’s 1984 bestseller. It reignited my interest in relativity and caused me to read 2 complete articles on general relativity, and revise special relativity.

Till the 12^th, here in India, the teachings of Einstein are related to the photoelectric effect and the Brownian motion, and rarely (very rarely) special relativity. It is for the photoelectric effect that he was awarded to Nobel Prize, after all.

Well, that’s all for this week and thank you for reading this far. Be sure to read the next article.

PS: Do visit just after the middle of the week. I am planning to post a special mid-week article.

Exams, again!

A week has gone by pretty quickly.
Apparent from the title, college preliminary examinations, just before the following - KVPY interview, the HSC Board practicals, and finally the HSC Board Written Examinations and the JEE - all before April.

The college preliminary examinations have already started!

Yesterday was the chemistry paper - chemistry is my favourite subject.
But writing the paper - not so much, especially so when it's 2 pm and you have to write a 3 hour long paper of 70 marks, with the absolutely-not-soothing sounds of the dhol (search on Google if you don't know what it is - a percussion instrument).
Fortunately, the dhol stopped after some time.

Today is the English paper.The biggest question people like me possibly have around this time is - HOW to study for English?!
Similarly, that's basically what happens before the Mathematics paper.

I cannot analyse my own writing - I will always have a biased opinion, which means that I have no idea whether I have a writing flair or not.
I am quite sure that my English teacher doesn't feel I have one though, based on my English marks.
I am also sure there must be a grudge of some sort - you can't get a zero on a personal response question whose answer even your father agrees to!
This post is written on the 6th of January, '16. I observe that there is a possible discrepancy in the dates of my posts.

I also realised that I am quite prone to addictions - nothing serious, just coffee (now, that's a necessity) and quite recently 8 ball pool on Miniclip.

It is a nice game - a good passtime - and a great way to waste time. I don't remember playing that game and stopping within the hour - unless the internet connection took a break.

In the 3 days of play, I went from level 11 to 14, and had a winning streak of 7!
I beat players with much more experience than me in the game and also saw that Iam probably one of the unluckiest players of the game, potting the cue ball, the 8 ball or both almost every third shot! (for a small period).

Well, I guess that's all for this week!
Come back next week for another post!

Happy New Year!

Dear Readers,
Happy New Year!

I owe you an apology for this writing break, but well, it's exam season here.
I have mentioned in my earlier articles, that here in India, exam season is all year - in all. It just differs for each person.
For me, it's the test series in December last year (that's last month), then the college preliminary examinations this month (they start coming Tuesday), followed by the HSC Board Examinations - the most important compulsory examination here - and I started studying specifically for it on the 29th last month.

I also wish to mention that I did make a New Year's Resolution - which is famous for, well, 'dissipating' quite quickly. One might wonder if this person cannot write articles on the blog regularly, how he is going to follow a resolution.
Most people say that they will lose weight, study more, stay fitter, etcetera, et cetera.
I have, however, decided to be more firm in my decisions; basically a resolution to be more resolute.

I also wish to mention that I started the last paragraph in this exact, same way. What I wanted to say was that I promise to have 1 article a week. This also means that I should provide an article of sufficient length.

Today's two main topics are the oil incident and the rickshaw incident.

They taught me 2 things that have helped me a lot in my life (of 16 years (sarcastic remark about age (just mentioning so you know what tone one should use for the content of the parenthesis))).

I would request that you should not try to imitate the oil incident anywhere near anything that belongs to anyone - it's dangerous.

One day, I was loitering in the kitchen, when I put some water in oil. Later, it was heated, and the mixture burst in flames. No one was hurt in the incident, except the floor was convered with hot oil.
What is more important is that taught me to always have safety precautions while doing any experiment. (Yeah, it was supposed to be an experiment. I was much younger).
Fortunately or unfortunately, I like to play with fire, but never without a fire-extinguihing source more than 10 feet away.

The other incident is the rickshaw incident. My school had called us for some meet, and told us to arrange our own transport. Basically I had no ride home. My options - hail a rickshaw or walk about 3.6 km.
There were a couple of other friends too. Now, the norm is to shout 'Rickshaw!' at, well, the rickshaw. Another norm then was for the rickshaws to deny the fare as they had somewhere else to go, or were just bored, or something else.
What I did was call out 'Kaka!' (It literally means uncle - used to address any person older to you - in Marathi (It also means uncle, as in uncle). The idea originates from the idea of 'Vasudhaiva kutumbakam' (the whole world is a family) and I am going overboard on these parenthesis). The rickshaw driver parked at the side of the road and after I told him my destination, he said,"I wanted to go the other way, but I will go only because you called me 'Kaka'. Everyone just calls me 'Rickshaw'!"
I now know that this incident feels as it is just from a Bob Burg book. It's true. I can guarantee that.

I have decided to give the stair-running thing a break, especially after the last one where I broke my record (and was unable to do anything for the next few minutes). My record is 64.51 seconds. One of my friends says he did it in 51!


Well, it does feel good to write!
You shall read again next week!