PhD comics - smile some grad students :)

Every graduate student in North America especially in the Engineering stream would have heard of the PhD comics. When I first saw their website, I spent a couple of days reading back through their archives. There was this immense sense of relief when I read the comics, to know that every student goes through similar phases. I could totally relate to another reader's comment: you feel like laughing and crying at the same time when you read them.

Some of the best ones -





There is a distinct difference in the way PhD students are treated in North America and Europe. In the US and Canada, you are still pretty much under the mercy of your supervisor and you can take anywhere between 4 and 10 years to complete your PhD(probably longer, I am not sure). The pay is certainly above a set minimum, but may vary depending on the supervisor's will and whimsies. In Europe though PhD students are treated more like employees, bonus, increments and all. After the first year, there is an evaluation to check your performance after which the contract is extended for 3 more years. So after 4 years, you are out.

The creator of the comics was at TU/e last week. I din't realize, the guy in the blue shirt in the comic, who is also the creator is Chinese. A PhD from Stanford, he started drawing the comics for his University paper for pleasure. It got very popular eventually and rest as they say is history. He talked about the power of 'procrastination' and urged the students to have fun and pursue their passions. The guy had the audience literally rolling on the floor with laughter! He tried hard to get a few Dutch words out! But the audience was in such mood that we kept laughing and cheering over every word he said. Good fun! :)

Temple van Eindhoven

Eindhoven is perhaps not the most exciting place to live in the Netherlands but there certainly is a joy in finding the nooks and pockets in a foreign city to which you can associate yourself with. One such place that I recently visited was a temple, run by the Hindus from Suriname. Suriname is the smallest country in South America which was a Dutch colony until 1975. Being a plantation colony, people from parts of India in agreement with the British were taken to work as laborers. Following its independence though, several people migrated and made the Netherlands their home. So these people of Indian/South American origin have quite some presence here, one example being this temple (clik on the link below to reach the website) -

Mandir Triloki Dhaam

The temple located at Tongelresestraat 371, is open on Sunday's between 3:00pm and 5:00pm.

The entrance -


Swagatham (Welcome in Hindi) -



The temple from inside -

For the first time I heard a Hindu priest preach in Hindi and Dutch!! It felt slightly odd somehow, but I could imagine that the kids born here would understand that better. He picked out verses from the 'Ramayana' (one of the epics in the Indian mythology) and elaborated on them. The part was about Sita, lord Rama's wife being abducted by the evil Ravana. He described how hopeless Sita felt while she was in Ravana's power and then he suddenly said in Dutch - Sita thought Rama had gone on a 'vakantie' forgetting his beloved. heehee!! vacantie?? I had a silent laugh over his description. My tolerance though for such sermons are not too high! I put in all efforts to concentrate and not nod off..:D. After the sermon there were some bhajans (songs sung in praise of the lord). The temple organizers were warm and friendly and with warm 'prasad' (food offering) at the end, it over all felt pretty good.

Well, now I know what I would be doing on Sunday afternoons, I will just need to time it better! :)

Blog name change

Well, I changed the name of my blog from 'Polambings' (which is a Tamil slang for cribbing) to something more understandable and close to a description of my blog - 'The Path Untaken'.