To thine own cell...

Paimane Bitte

2008-12-25T09:29:00.003+05:30

I find this song to be very haunting and must I add that I love the lyrics. They have this air of mystique and non-understanding that I find hard to resist. Really.

Hattip or if you are the plain vanilla types you can go here to see five white guys take their kurtas off.

In which I berate techonological progress

2008-12-13T06:47:00.009+05:30

Dont get me wrong I am a slave to technology - laptops, mice, Youtube, Joost, Hulu, GPS, iPods, Guitar Hero. Chances are if i can afford them I will have them. It was in this spirit of being technology's slave-girl that I got an Orkut and Facebook account and signed up for Gmail chat. The honeymoon was great, I loved the way I could keep in touch with my friends on Gmail chat or with scraps (micromail for the attention span challenged) just to remind friends that I am around. I loved the potential for getting back in touch with childhood friends.

This followed a period where I aggressively searched for long lost neighbours from my childhood home and in the process met random people from school who were 8 when I was 14. Once I even made this very heart rending post, where I asked to know of my school friends whom I had lost touch with. The upside to that was thanks to a combination of that post, Facebook and Orkut, I am now very definitely in touch with them.

In fact, I now know whats on the mind of as much as 6 people before breakfast (via status messages on Gmail chat, facebook and orkut) impossible as it may seem.Some of them even have blogs to further subject me to their thoughts and actions during the course of the day, week, year. (Oh wait...!) Not that I am close to any of them. Most of them I have met once maybe twice, few have something stimulating to say and almost all of them have sent friendship requests when I was in a benevolent mood.

Subject to this much barrage of information of who is getting married, who had kids, who moved to Australia, who is going to a certain hemisphere, who got a job and where, who crashed a car while learning to drive, who is making pasta for dinner, who hated sky diving and who is bored, I am losing my sangfroid. Schadenfreude anyone?

Earlier it was all hail-fellow-well-met and then a vacuum which you really only bothered to fill if you had a crush on that person in question but now even the Facebook updates from my highschool crush are a chore to read as he hops from one debauched Dubai party to another. Sometimes I just wants to disappear into a technological rabbit hole of obscurity and emerge in a few decades and then seek out Nisha, Vikas, Ann, V., A., B., W., and the other endearing letters of the alphabet.

Several times I have come this close to deleting my accounts but the addiction persists! I am cursed to live out my life in this Kalyug where friendships after the actual physical proximity criteria is eliminated go from email exchanges, to Facebook wall messages to Orkut scraps to Gchat status messages and finally hang on with the claws of Facebook updates. Welcome to eternal damnation where friendships don't gracefully melt into obscurity but are well and truly forever.

Dido

2008-11-19T07:10:00.002+05:30

This has been pretty much on a loop in my head for the past 24 hours. I love her voice, the video, the lyrics, the actress in the video and the Mumbai landmarks as they fly by her cab window.

Here is a part of the lyrics.

Lets forget that we're here and make some plans
We'll go for walks
Sit on the bench we always sat
I'll tell you every little detail of my day and so will you
Don't try to stay awake
I'm feeling tired too
This is just another day
Let’s do the things we normally do
Don't hold my hand for longer than you need to

First saw the video here (Yes, I am turning into a fashion junkie and this is my first acknowledgment of the fact) and the lyrics are from here.

When dreams die

2008-10-08T12:02:00.001+05:30

....do they make a noise?
Like the splash when a frog jumps into a pond or
Like the continuous patter of rain on a rooftop or
Like the roaring incessancy of a waterfall?

Most people would say
They don’t make any noise at all
Like a glacier melting.

Evolution

2008-10-04T03:31:00.003+05:30

....is put in perspective by a Youtube video. Have fun!

Thanks to The Other 95% for the link!

Look out for the monkeys on a typewriter(get it?? :) ) bit somewhere in the middle.

On Muses

2008-09-17T07:25:00.002+05:30

"O Muses, O high genius, aid me now!
O memory that engraved the things I saw,
Here shall your worth be manifest to all!"

- Dante Alighieri, in Canto II of The Inferno

Is it me

2008-09-15T10:44:00.002+05:30

.... or is Prateik Babbar emanating some very subtle gay vibes in Jaane tu ya jaane na?

Shogun

2008-09-12T23:34:00.002+05:30

I first read James Clavell's Shogun when I was 16 in the summer of '96 before the Std. XII exams, sneaking time between the chemical reactions we were supposed to memorize and the integrations I was supposed to practice.

I was hooked from the first page with his descriptions of Japanese life and customs (boiling of tea leaves during peacetime and boiling of prisoners otherwise). The complex plots and the in depth characterization of even minor players left me reeling. Its descriptions of Japanese concepts of wa and absolute obedience were the closest I could get to escaping the dreary desert sands of the Middle East. All this mind you in the Dark Ages before the days of the Great WWW.

Times changed and here I am in the US of A with a Netflix account.

I find that "Shogun" had been made into a TV series in the mid-eighties! I had it ordered promptly and now the disc is sitting there next the DVD player. I am wondering whether I should watch it at all. Would the watching of this DVD completely ruin my imaginings of Blackthorne, Lord Toranaga and Lady Mariko? Would these be lost to be forever to be replaced by the budget restricted panderings of three executive producers who may not have read the novel at all?

Hmmmm....

How long

2008-09-11T10:39:00.002+05:30

...does it take for the wounds of dove to heal?

oh it does not take long.

at first they keep stabbing at you frequently and without reason
but later on
slower
triggered by snatches of conversation overheard from strangers
or by
a box of cereal that you see in a store
or when
you are all alone and least expect it
till finally
you are numb to the pain
and only the memory remains
and that
can never go away, will it?

A Sexee Witch

2008-09-09T10:35:00.003+05:30

....is my new LG Chocolate3 - a 3G 1GB CDMA with iPod like sound quality and a 2 megapixel camera with two screens all for 40 bucks. Me is in love!

Micro-blogging

2008-08-31T02:35:00.002+05:30

.....is a just a passing fad or is it here to stay?

The Moral High Ground

2008-08-28T02:32:00.003+05:30

.....is such a lovely set of words but when you get there it is a pretty lonely place except for the occasional whining derelict.

Recycle bin therapy

2008-05-21T11:18:00.003+05:30

I cleaned out my office desk today in preparation for the Voyage to the Great Beyond.**

Aside from that, I threw away a lot of stuff. I mean lots.

- Old Cd covers (why did i ever keep them in the first place?),
- Old paper reprints (God when did i ever read this?)
- Xeroxes of my certificates (i was OCD case once and to apply to any place i would carry three xerozes or more of all my certificates all the way back to my tenth),
- Non-working mosquito repellants (mosquitoes in the lab?)
- Hand santisers (wtf?)
- Binoculars (wtff?)
- A photograph of a person reading a girlie magazine (this was used to blackmail him by his friends and then left in my possesion. yes i have/had weird friends)
- a blank greeting card that was never sent.
- a new york momento got by Certain someone which i had forgotten. it shows the World trade Centre towers still standing.

All the bins in my lab and adjacent labs are overflowing with my discarded stuff.

I feel as if I am suddenly free of cares and don't have attachments anymore. Its a wonderful feeling. Perhaps this is how ascetics feel when they renouce the world.

** - the Pacific Ocean not the River Styx.

Hello world!

2008-05-20T13:32:00.002+05:30

Hello there!

Just to let you know faithful reader that I exist and have not abandoned you. Forgotten a little maybe in the great hurry burry of things but not given up on you completely. Not yet.

I still have hope that you will make me famous someday. Heh.

My blogging skills seem to have evaporated in the meantime. But hopefully I will have something substantial here pretty soon.

Meanwhile,
Be good!
Samu.

P.S. pretty soon = 1-2 days

A Shloka

2008-02-20T12:58:00.002+05:30

अश्वं नैव गजं नैव व्याघ्रं नैव च नैव च अजापुत्रं बलिं दद्यात् देवो दुर्बलघातकः

Not a horse, not an elephant, and never a tiger. It is the son of a goat that is sacrificed. Even the Gods are against the weak.

A Shloka I came across on my wanderings. Of course the interpretation of these things is always a subjective issue but I like to look at it as a subtle agnostic snub.

Right now I have no idea which text it is from. Help would be appreciated and acknowledged.

The Unwaba Revelations - A Review

2008-02-12T21:43:00.000+05:30

I rarely review books or movies because I am sure that there are other people who do. But in my wanderings on the great www I did not come across a decent review of the "The Unwaba Revelations" therefore this post is born.

Before I start this I must confess that I have not read the first two novels. But I did not think that it mattered because novels even if they are part of trilogy must be enjoyable on their own without resorting to what happened before. I wonder if this was a factor is my actually enjoying the book only half way through it when I had managed to get ravains, vamans, asurs, humans and other myriad life forms that inhabit the book sorted out in my head.

I started reading it with a lot of expectations, considering reviews on the net and all that though I must confess that Samit Basu’s state-mate’s brushes with science fiction one of which produced the Calcutta Chromosome should have made me wary but nevertheless in the quest for fiction that is based in my reality and not Central Park, contemporary London or post WWII Jewish Boston, hope springs eternal from the human breast.

I was hooked from the first page when not only was Aishwarya(Rai?) was compared to a duck but she was also given a species name. (Viduci olwwasysac – Why does she always ask?) My favorite is the Kaos butterflies used by Kol(get it?) to defend itself against enemies, which can create thunderstorms by flapping their wings. (Get it? Get it?) Some other allusions that I came across. - Regal Eagles(?), Streakers in Central Kol Park. (Quite obvious), Free States (USA!) ,Xi’en (China?) [Oook tells me that the Kaos butterflies bit is borrowed from Terry Pratchett.]

Yes "The Umwaba Revelations" is chock full of these weird references. Some of which I am sure I did not get. Though two friends tried to convince me that forest Ekyavan whose leader pretends to sleep but is actually meditating is a reference to Vaijpayee. But in retrospect it might be referring to Area 51 as later in the novel some fancy alien ships are found there.

An interesting new literary device the single paragraphed conversation between two people was original. Sly references to Mumbai in the form of Bolvudis(Get it?), which I applauded. The hero(Kirin) who prefers sex to saving the world and outwits the gods by mere argument I liked.

At some places his language seems strained and sometimes too much of a college cliché especially the conversations between Maya and Kirin. A little cutting and snipping would have made it perfect. Towards the end the complex battle scenes had my head reeling and wondering when it would all end. There are a lot of names common between the people he acknowledges and some characters in the book. I wonder if they are in-jokes. That would be poor taste.

I went in looking for a book that would represent our cultures our inflences in a sartorial way like Terry Pratchett. (the Gods here so speak like Death from Terry Pratchett - ALL IN CAPS.) I was slightly dissapointed but still it is a great effort overall - perhaps I enjoyed it a little bit more because reading of said book was punctuated by the reviewer meeting with the author at a book lauch where he most graciously returned her pen after signing her book (the high moral standards thus displayed had impartial reviewer swooning.) Now if only he wrote a novel about a great city named Mum with meandering roads by the sea where great rains come once a year and a cold wave paralyses the city’s denizens, then I shall deify him.

A cold wind this way blows

2008-01-27T18:20:00.000+05:30

Now a days I dread the setting of the sun when the darkness takes over.

It is unusually cold in Mumbai right now. I am told the temperature was 10C yesterday. It is fine if you are well equipped to deal with the cold but Mumbaikars are not. I mean cold weather in Mumbai lasts for two days in a year. And my hostel room has been carefully chosen to be shielded from the sun so that it is the coolest in summer. Problem is it is also the coldest room in winter!!

I have resorted to ad hoc techniques which involve not opening my windows of my room at all and sleeping with three sheets, one sweater and a pair of socks. This has been happening for the past two weeks with hopes that it will get better soon. I hope this goes away, or pretty soon I will have to actually *buy* a blanket.

To add to this some bright peeps (read people from the North who were in their element) came up with the idea of going to Marine Drive yesterday. I acquiesced. There we were hanging out on windy windy Marine Drive in the coldest day in the year for an hour almost. It was when ice-cream at Natural’s was suggested that I drew the line. A cold Mumbaikar is a disgruntled Mumbaikar and that is one thing you would not want to mess with.

On the plus side, after a long time, I have come across Hindi music which I have listed to in a loop (you know when you play the song/song track again and again and again and again and again.......) Ladies and gentlemen, I present Jodha Akbar. Listen to the magic of Rahman!

Coat Uncoat

2007-12-02T16:21:00.000+05:30

A quote that deserves more visibility.

"The Universe is run by the complex interweaving of three elements: energy, matter and enlightened self-interest."
- G'Kar, Babylon-5

MEI dinners

2007-11-30T14:46:00.000+05:30

Assume two people A and B, both of whom are standard MEI students.

A is in the last stages of having his dinner in the famed East Canteen with live entertainment (in the form of scuttling rats) and candle light ambience (on all days but in certain corners only). B joins A. Now A’s dining ritual is tending towards completion yet B in his ignorance, feigned or otherwise, has still joined A.

How long should A, whose dinner is almost done, wait for B in such a situation?

Keen observation and several MEI dinners later, scientists have deciphered the factors that determine the time that A will wait for B.

The time is directly proportional to

The size of the intersection of their social circles. i.e. the number of mutual friends that they have.
The days that A has not met B.
The number of favors that B can do for A. (e.g. exchange of library duty, giving competent cells, helping with assignments etc.)
The number of favors that B has done for A.
The number of treks that they have been together on.
The number of technical terms that B uses frequently and which A understands. E.g. cytokinesis, Euler buckling, Sandpile model, Euclidean space, etc. (Putting it another way whether or not they are from similar fields)
The number of social causes B espouses.
The number of books, movies, etc that B owns that A is interested in.
The number of mood altering substances they have had together.

On the other hand, the time is inversely proportional to

The time that A had been sitting at the table before B joined.
The number of people at the table other than A and B.
The difference in the years of their joining. (e.g. 2002 – 2007=5)
The number of days B has not taken a shower.
The number of favors that A could theoretically do for B
The distance between their respective home towns. (See Addendum below)

A special case is if A and B are of the opposite sex. In such a case, the time thus obtained after these computations is to be doubled. (The time may be quadrupled if B and A are single). The time is also doubled if A and B share the same mother tongue.

Admittedly the actual relationships of all the factors are complex and involve other emotional factors which cannot be quantitated but this is major step in deciphering the complex social dynamics at MEI and will help in understanding that greatest of enigmas - the MEI student.

(*** - Addendum - Consider a line drawn between the two respective hometowns and an imaginary mid point at the exact center of this line. It can now be said that the effect of “distance between hometowns” factor is more complex as its effect in turn increases exponentially as increase in the distance of said imaginary midpoint from Mumbai, location of MEI. A very subtle jibe there if you can get it!)

[Some creative inputs from S.J., P. S. and S.S. MEI here standing for My Esteemed Institute - a place of some repute I am told.]

Eleven things

2007-11-23T13:55:00.000+05:30

Eleven things I want to do before I die

1) Read "The Lord of the Rings". All three parts.

2) Visit Paris/Vienna.

3) Bungee jump.

4) Become a size 0.

5) Drink absinthe.

6) Own a Joni Mitchell CD. This one to be precise.

7) Write a short story- in Marathi. Just to prove a point.

8) Direct a film – horror preferably set in my institute. Its long corridors with multiple doors and desolate areas are a perfect setting.

9) Listen to the Berlin Philharmonic perform Carmen live.

10) Meet my high school crush.

11) Put up this poster on the wall on my room.

Someday. Someway.

MEI stories Part Deux (From Satyajit)

2007-11-07T01:33:00.000+05:30

Samudrika has taken a break. Some thing about a hangover or thesis writing one of those things. I can never make out the difference. So this week I write 'her little column' as she calls it.

I am Satyajit. A long suffering guy in the biological sciences. Oh you scoff and think that I am the luckiest person in the world to work in a field where the sex ratio is so pleasantly skewed in my favor. Oh you are walking away! But pray, wait a while. Listen to my side of the story too.

I am the average guy. Not too skinny, not too fat. Not too fair not too dark. My teeth are a little irregular but if I keep my mouth shut no one notices. Everyone says that I am a nice person. On that my reputation precedes me and of that I am proud. I play hard, work harder. Yeah, I am the average grad student.

Coming back to sex ratios, there are a lot of Pretty Young Things (PYT’s) in my lab. You think I am lucky. Think of my boss! Yes, my boss has a field day/month/year all right. Imagine having all these nymphets throwing themselves at you with “ I would really like to work with you, sir" for M.Sc/Ph.D./summers/whatever.

And to add oil to the ego massage, they think he is God and will do anything that asks them to do. By anything I mean scientifically - the stupidest experiments, and the silliest things. Stands to reason, that when such PYT’s do come along they all work under his express guidance - reporting to him directly. If a bespectacled acne laden guy comes along he is pushed off to work with me and I have to field his questions, which start from the mundane ("Do you believe in god?") to the profound ("Why is the fly testes bigger than the fly brain?").

I swear my eyes would have popped out of my head when a PYT (Pretty Young Thing) used the word "sexxeeee" to describe data from her experiment that had not worked! And boss smiled and said "Excellent, you are doing a great job.” I was tearing my hair out of my head wondering how to clean up the huge mess she had left behind.

If she makes a mistake, she replies in a sweet simper, “But sir I have just been doing what you told me…..” That melts him completely. He asks her, "Let’s discuss this over a cup of tea. Shall we?” And the discussion is continued in the canteen, until the canteen closes or the sun sets – whichever is later.

On the other hand, my discussions with boss conclude in minutes with “I am sorry but I have to pick up my kid from soccer practice, just do the experiments and then we will sit down again.”

I mean I have no problem with someone else's sensuality. I love a little sensuality especially if it is simmering just below the surface or smoldering in smoky eyes but it is the blatant in your face, chest bursting out of shirt type of sensuality that I have issues with. Especially when the face in question is that of my boss.

He is not used to sensuality. It puts him off balance. As it is, getting intelligible ideas out of him is difficult but after he has had a session with one of these nubile nymphets he goes completely ballistic. His ego reaches for the sky and he actually starts thinking, which is not a good thing. (Under ideal circumstances they have to be carefully conditioned to think that they have thinking and you should actually make them think out "your" ideas. Umm get it?) And when HE starts thinking then I have to do the craziest experiments. One of them involved me going to local abattoir at 5 a.m. to get brains of freshly butchered goats.

All a PYT has to do is go on stage dance a bit during the annual variety show and there she is the most popular person in the institute. I have been here longer than her but with one swish of her sheer dupatta, every one in the institute knows her. While if I want to know how to use ImageJ I have to run to ten people to get answers and here she gets tax advice for free. Who cares if I am the star striker of the volleyball team that wins the hostel tournament every year. Every fracking year damnit.

The icing on the cake comes when they get hitched finally. Not with someone like me. But someone from the First Department. (Which is like First Citizen but only in plural and I don’t belong to it.) Oh yes I am screwed personally. Professionally. Both ways.

I am sure I have managed to convince you that all is not what it seems. Now you must excuse me. I have do a trainee's experiment for her. She had to go out to dinner and she asked me so sweetly I could not refuse.

Unofficial Department Mottoes in MEI

2007-11-06T13:58:00.000+05:30

First Department – What we do is great and what others do is junk.

Second Department – What we do may not be great but what they do is definitely junk.

Third Department – We should get noticed. Somehow.

Fourth Department – We don’t know and we don’t care. We are going to Bangalore anyways.

Fifth Department - We know but we don’t care. Pune is great at this time of the year.

Sixth Department – We know and we care very much but we don’t know what to do about it.

Seventh Department – We earn so much more than the rest that we don’t need to care. So we play badminton.

(S.S. to be credited with the first two. MEI stands for My Esteemed Institute.)

On being cynical

2007-10-18T15:19:00.000+05:30

When I joined the insti, the fifth/sixth years were this hallowed tribe you could make out from the others. They were always worried, always serious, never smiled. They did talk to you occasionally to give you advice like “go home more often” or “time flies like an arrow” or something more practical “if your flies don’t mate, sing to them.” (huh??). Some lost their temper on the silliest of things – like when I overshot my time and then invaded into theirs on the confocal microscope or when a lizard entered the culture room. ("Get it out! Get it out! It will eat my flies. I have to finish in two months!")

Something about the hard phd life that makes them like that I used to think. Now I am beginning to wonder whether I am like that too.

Lets see. In the past ten days I have..

Intensely worried - check
Never smiled or laughed - no.
Screamed at junior - check
Screamed at junior for no reason - check
Given unsolicited advice - check (this was about fly mating, for the record.)
Been in a bad mood - check (but that was because of a hangover. That does not count, does it?)

Not bad. 4 and a half out of 6. I pass!

MEI stories

2007-10-11T14:48:00.000+05:30

Things you must do to be grep ('geekily hep') in MEI

1) Music - Must profess a love for Pink Floyd, Bob Marley or Leonard Cohen. Denver is too pedestrian and Billy Joel is too 'whatever'. Britney Spears and her ilk is definitely a no-no. Though Eminem will do if you can say something suitably clever about his lyrics. To be truly eclectic you can say jazz. But pure classical rules as always.

2) Books - non-fiction - Must have read all of the following books - selfish gene, blindwatchmaker, nobel dreams, tao of physics. Reading them means being able to discuss them or trash them with sentences that begin with "looking at it like a scientist........"

3) Movies - Must have watched (and enjoyed in an explainable, virtue extolling kind of way) a movie in a foreign language - Russian sci-fi, French romance, Irani social commentary, Japanese anime, or Spanish fantasy.

4) TV- Must watch one or more of the following series and profess and undying love for them - Star Trek, Heroes, Lost, Battlestar Galactica, IT crowd or something more geeky. On the animation side, South park or Simpsons but then you will have discuss their social relevance.

6) Books - science fiction - Terry Patchett, Isaac Asimov or you might want to say Ray Bradbury just to show your predeliction for the dark side of things. Non-science fiction - late 19th century fiction if you want to be differently different, or something dense like Nietzsche, Chekhov or Chaucer. Say "I like Rowling" and you will be wandering in the dreary desert sands of MEI social wilderness for years.

5) Graphic novels. They are the IN thing these days. Persepolis is a good start though Sarnath Banerjee is a close second due to his bong connection.

7) OS - "Never judge a book by its cover, a man by his shoes or a geek by his operating system.", so said a wise man. but who listens to wise men anyways? Be warned, you WILL be judged by your OS. You must know UNIX/LINUX or at least pretend to use it even if you cannot use the command terminal and prefer a mouse. OSX is a close second. Mention Windows XP you will be summarily eliminated from the conversation. Vista and you might as well jump into the sea.

8) Dress - dress is everything. This has to be carefully casual. A hopelessly crinkled kurta or shorts. Just to show the world that you are so fracking devoted to your science that you dont have the time to dress properly. Maroon is currently very much in style, replacing black as the t-shirt colour of choice. However, at any given time in MEI there will be at least one maroon or black shirt in a gathering of 5 or more people.

9) Must espouse some social cause, which is a good thing.

10) Must be a blogger or a blogger to be. The latter mainly means reading blogs.

11) Should be able to discuss the pros and cons of the iPhone versus the Blackberry versus any other PDA, even if you have never seen them. All this within hours of their release. Time is critical. If you discuss it before release you will be labelled jobless, if you discuss it the next day it will be yesterdays news. Literally.

This combined with a healthy dose of the relevant recent research in your field of interest and there........you are all set to tackled the behe'mouths' of MEI.

The very idea of 'grepness' involves refusing to be defined. So these very things might just be non-grep tomorrow. You have been warned.

I am what I am

2007-10-05T13:29:00.000+05:30

(This is written along the lines of the weekly article that appears on the last page of the Brunch magazine brought out by Hindustan Times. They interview a celebrity with a standard setof questions. So here I interviewed myself.)

Who is your idol?

Satyajit Mayor, NCBS for obvious reasons.

What are you reading currently?

The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins.

If you were reborn as a man, what would be your first thought?

God! Now i cant lust after Johnny Depp legally (at least in this country anyways)

What is deepest most darkest desire?

I wish I had a cat of my own, rather than sharing one with the entire building where I live.

What is your poison?

Vodka, Dark Chocolate, Icecream.

What is the last thing that you do before you sleep?

I wonder if I died in my sleep when would my dead body be discovered and by whom.

What do you do first after you wake up?

Thank God that I did not die during the night. (Yes, I am morbid that ways)

Who is the most sexiest person on earth?

Rahul Bose.

What makes your angry?

When people call homosexuals perverts.

What makes you happy?

A day when I dont make any social faux paus.

What makes you sad?

Misunderstandings.

One incident that you are embarrassed about.

There are several actually and most of them involve a certain amount of ethanol.

What is the first place you would visit if had a time machine?

The Monterey Pop Festival to see Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin play live in their full psychedelic glory.

A secret never before disclosed?

I am scared of pigeons. Do they have a term for this like Arachnophobia for spiders?

(Feel free to tag yourselves!)