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...Paul (Olum) had worked with me for a while at Princeton before coming out to Los Alamos, and he was always cleverer than I was. For instance, one day I was absent-mindedly playing with one of those measuring tapes that snap back into your hand when you push a button. The tape would always snap over and hit my hand, and it hurt a little bit. "Geez!" I exclaimed. "What a dope I am. I keep playing with this thing, and it hurts me every time."
It is light, its blade reasonably hid, and it is self-lubricating. For my hint of a stubble, one such piece (@ Rs 40) goes on and on for a month and more mostly out of laziness to "throw after use". But notice that It comes with a weird hard plastic cover enclosing its blade and, like Feynman, I could never peel it off without cutting my fingers with its hidden blade. So, I had to regularly ask my wife (Heaven Bless Her!) for help and nowadays I request my D-i-L to please tease it out for me.
And then I graduated in my school to the cheap locally made fountain pens. Each such pen had several parts that could be dismantled and remantled: body, feeder, tongue, nib, cap, and holder. The ordeal of refilling the ink from its pot without pouring it all over the place was more of a nuisance than taking baths daily. And after a couple of weeks, the damn thing leaked. The ink spread over to the fingers, thumb, pocket and head (when we swiped our fingers over it). Then the feeder had to be unscrewed and replaced by a different tight-fitting one. And then the nib cracks and splits and the writing became noisy and tore the papers. Replacing the nib is an art I never mastered.
Much later when I went to IIT KGP, I made friends with BKM (of the Ukridge fame) who was a hobby-artist. And whenever he bought a new book, he used to inscribe his name on the flyleaf or inside cover beautifully so that the lettering appeared double-lined. And I asked him how he did the spacing of the two lines so perfectly evenly. And he showed me how. He had a fountain pen with a nib whose slit he used to widen with a blade...that's it...whenever he wrote any letter the ink made two adjacent lines instead of one...his nib was like a double-barrel gun.
After 50 years of buying and trying pens, fountain and ball, I found my favorite a couple of years back...and I have half a dozen of them which I share with Ishani. That brand is called "Cello Benz":
It is cheap (@Rs 40)...so cheap that adjusting for inflation, I could have bought a dozen Benz pens for the cost of one Tip-Top pencil in my school days. Its ball is so sturdy that it is practically indestructible, and it has a lovely cap with a holder that can be snapped into my pocket tight...I never go out without my pen in my pocket...mostly for the benefit of the borrowing public.
I have tried all footwear from slippers to chappals to boots but have yet to find one that doesn't bite like a serpent and wear out like a lie...
Finally, during my long teaching years at IIT KGP, I tried to be userfriendly than just friendly to my students, colleagues, and public....with memorable spinoffs.
...Posted by Ishani
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...Paul (Olum) had worked with me for a while at Princeton before coming out to Los Alamos, and he was always cleverer than I was. For instance, one day I was absent-mindedly playing with one of those measuring tapes that snap back into your hand when you push a button. The tape would always snap over and hit my hand, and it hurt a little bit. "Geez!" I exclaimed. "What a dope I am. I keep playing with this thing, and it hurts me every time."
He said, "You don't hold it right," and took the damn thing, pulled out the tape, pushed the button, and it came right back. No hurt.
"Wow! How do you do that?" I exclaimed.
"Figure it out!"
For the next two weeks I'm walking all around Princeton, snapping this tape back until my hand is absolutely raw. Finally I can't take it any longer. "Paul! I give up! How the hell do you hold it so it doesn't hurt?"
"Who says it doesn't hurt? It hurts me too!"
I felt so stupid. He had gotten me to go around and hurt my hand for two weeks!
...Feynman Joking
For once I can say:
"Not been there but done that!"
I recall playing with that 'damn thing' for hours and bleeding my thumb when I was a kid.
I am thin-skinned both literally and figuratively (as you might have noticed). I hurt my fingers and bleed even when I tear out my Limcee tablets out of their aluminum foils. And when I bleed, I bleeeed...my bleeding time and clotting time are way too long.
And I was brought up in a world that had known no plastics and polymers.
My first miserable experience with cuts was when I graduated from soft slate pencils to hard wooden pencils (with imbedded graphite leads) that had to be shaved every ten minutes since the leads were as easily broke as I have ever been. And my Father would give me one-half of his used and rusted 7 O'Clock razor blade and ask me to "try and do it yourself".
Talking of razors and blades I don't have much of a beard or mooch but I got into the habit of shaving every morning come what may (much to the amusement of Ishani nowadays). Sort of psychological compulsion. So I had bleeding cuts every morning and I tried everything from alum rounds and aftershaves and plain and simple surgical spirit to no avail till a few years back.
For the past three years, technology came up with a solution to my shaving cuts in the form of Gillettes' Satin Care Razor (for women):
And then I graduated in my school to the cheap locally made fountain pens. Each such pen had several parts that could be dismantled and remantled: body, feeder, tongue, nib, cap, and holder. The ordeal of refilling the ink from its pot without pouring it all over the place was more of a nuisance than taking baths daily. And after a couple of weeks, the damn thing leaked. The ink spread over to the fingers, thumb, pocket and head (when we swiped our fingers over it). Then the feeder had to be unscrewed and replaced by a different tight-fitting one. And then the nib cracks and splits and the writing became noisy and tore the papers. Replacing the nib is an art I never mastered.
Much later when I went to IIT KGP, I made friends with BKM (of the Ukridge fame) who was a hobby-artist. And whenever he bought a new book, he used to inscribe his name on the flyleaf or inside cover beautifully so that the lettering appeared double-lined. And I asked him how he did the spacing of the two lines so perfectly evenly. And he showed me how. He had a fountain pen with a nib whose slit he used to widen with a blade...that's it...whenever he wrote any letter the ink made two adjacent lines instead of one...his nib was like a double-barrel gun.
After 50 years of buying and trying pens, fountain and ball, I found my favorite a couple of years back...and I have half a dozen of them which I share with Ishani. That brand is called "Cello Benz":
It is cheap (@Rs 40)...so cheap that adjusting for inflation, I could have bought a dozen Benz pens for the cost of one Tip-Top pencil in my school days. Its ball is so sturdy that it is practically indestructible, and it has a lovely cap with a holder that can be snapped into my pocket tight...I never go out without my pen in my pocket...mostly for the benefit of the borrowing public.
I have tried all footwear from slippers to chappals to boots but have yet to find one that doesn't bite like a serpent and wear out like a lie...
Finally, during my long teaching years at IIT KGP, I tried to be userfriendly than just friendly to my students, colleagues, and public....with memorable spinoffs.
Row row row your police boat!
From DC, Page 5 Sunday 3 February 2013
"The police boat and the surveillance camera mounted on top of the police station, have been dysfunctional for quite some time now..."
gps: Naturally...that's what happens if you mount a police boat on top of the police station, no?
...Posted by Ishani
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