Back from home

Came back from home today. Indian infrastructure sucks big time. Random power outages plague my city (> 2 outages a day) and Internet is bloody costly. Unlimited connections are slower than Singapore ISPs and limited connections are costlier than the Singapore ISPs. Water billing is arbitrary because most water meters don’t work.

The only thing that gets done properly are tiny enclaves of luxury which don’t let in crumbling scenes from the outside sneak in through the windows.

Good alcoholic beverages are super costly or never heard of. Young people brag about their superhuman-like resistance to alcoholic intoxication and deny the role the weight of an individual has to play in the degree of intoxication he/she experiences per unit alcohol consumed.

People also brag about superhuman-like immunity to diseases while simultaneously denying germ-theory of disease (Flu is because of weather they say). But such braggers were all proved wrong when flu season (coincides with the start of monsoons in May) showed up.

Fortunately for me I had got my flu vaccines from Singapore so I showed superhuman-like immunity while facing people who were rendered subhuman by the virus they did not believe in.

I met a sister of a friend crippled by menangities because her parents used homeopathy until things got out of hand. Superstitions and pseudo-scientific magical thinking everywhere..

My cousin thinks atheists worship the satan of christian mythology. My dad thinks skeptics deny the existence of UFOs, crop-circles, bible code.. (when in fact skeptics deny the existence of evidence supporting those). Mom believes satan and virgin mary existed in the begnning along with god. I love her polytheistic hankerings. My mom brought in her cult’s brainwasher in my weakest moments but I successfully sowed seeds of dissonance into his mind.

Meanwhile my exploration into lambda calculus continues. Also reading Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged”.