Jan 6, 2011

Lecture series, a walk in the woods and my friend's birthday

IIT Madras had arranged for two back-to-back lecture sessions: first one was on yesterday with Nobel award winners in Chemistry, Prof. Venkatraman Ramakrishnan on Structural basis of decoding of mRNA by the ribosome, Prof. Thomas A Steitz on From the structure and function of the ribosome to the new antibiotics; the other one was organized today with the former President of India, A. P. J. Abdul Kalam. The first day lectures were on hardcore biochemistry field of which I have absolutely no idea. So, while the whole of IITians were assembled at the biggest auditorium in our institute, I decided to take a walk in the woods with my camera and have some fun time.

the woods in the institute at sunset

The woods in the institute is a natural beauty and is the cynosure for all Chennai travelers, for no other city in this world has a forest like environment at its heart! The walk was worthwhile for all my friends who attended the Nobel prize winner's talk told me later that they understood not even a word! Well, its not their mistake. Either the organizers must have arranged for the talk in a small auditorium with interested audience, or the speaker should have made his talk general to appeal to the non-chemistry audience as well.

The icon of IIT Madras with its glow

Since I had already listened to our former President's talk while he was President, and I have read most of his books and lectures and so can guess what he was going to talk, I decided not to attend today's talk too. Instead, I decided to go for a walk again, but this time on the road and not in the woods. I took some pictures of the icon of IIT Madras, the Gajendra Circle, which was glowing with artificial lightings and the fountain was on. However, I felt the icon was not in its real glow, which I am sure it can be seen during the oncoming Saarang days.

My friend blowing the candle and was about to cut the cake, with labmates around

Its my friend's birthday today! Well, it has become a norm than otherwise to organize a cake cutting ceremony in our research room for every of our friend's birthday. However, this time we decided to surprise him by organizing it at midnight, and it did surprise him! We had him cut the chocolate fantasy cake bought from CCD located in our campus and celebrated his birthday in a different way which all of us will remember in days to come.

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