Nevermind The Camels

December 6, 2011 - Roshan

An American soldier receives his first international posting and heads out for Iraq. He reaches the unit camp and reports for duty. After a week he goes to his sernior officer and asks ‘What do u do for fun around here? There are no women anywhere around!”

His superior says “Well every two weeks the camels come by. And the next visit is 5 days from now”.

The soldier is disgusted and leaves as soon as he can. However in 5 days he is desperate for some action and is horny as hell. Finally the day the day the camels are to come by is here and he can see the camels coming from a distance. Losing all control he runs to the first camel, unzips, goes behind the camel and starts to hump it.

His senior officers runs over ‘No, No you idiot! The camels are here so we can ride to the next village where the young women are waiting for us!”

How I Define Romance

December 6, 2011December 6, 2011 - Roshan

My ideas of romance have changed a little bit as I grow older. From the first time that I got interested in girls and sex, I was 12. Ofcourse nothing too serious but I did have my celebrity crushes. As I went through my teens my idea of romance was typical teenage stuff that you see in Hindi movies or American sitcoms of the 80s & 90s. As a couple of relationships, heartbreaks and overall change in my life happened my outlook also changed. I no longer have some of the same ideas about love & romance.

Romance to me is more about commitment, friendship, companionship & the feeling that you are never alone. I truly believe that you should be best friend with your spouse as those relationships have a better chance of lasting forever. After the initial novelty of a relationship fades off and the excitement of the newness dies away, what you are left with is the friendship. So when that happens life takes over; do you want to spend the rest of your days with this woman, waking up to her eveyday, sleeping beside her at night, having most of your meals together, deciding if you wanna go out or stay in, wondering what movies to watch, how to pay off all the bills, adjust with each other’s family members etc etc.

I want a woman who can be my best friend, who knows me inside out and still wants to be with me forever, who knows what I like and tries to get it for me and similarly I should know her inside out and anticipate her wishes and needs. When you say a lot without words. When on a rainy night you know that there is that warm body just waiting for you to hold & to be held. The lazy sleep in Sunday mornings, the reading newspapers together, the deciding whether to get a dog or a cat together, buying stuff – no matter how small – that the other needs even before either spouse knows that they need it.

I could do on and on but I think you get the picture. I want a quite, comfortable and peaceful life with a loving woman who wants to be with me and me alone. That’s all I ask for. Someday….

Kepler 22-b: Earth-like Planet Confirmed

December 6, 2011March 16, 2012 - Roshan

On the 5th of December Astronomers confirmed the existence of an Earth-like planet around the “habitable zone” around a star not unlike our own.

The planet in question, Kepler 22-b, lies about 600 light-years away and is about 2.4 times the size of Earth, and has a temperature of about 22C. It is the closest planet that is a lot like ours – Earth 2.0 as some are calling it. However, the team does not yet know if Kepler 22-b is made mostly of rock, gas or liquid. At the conference for the announcement, the Kepler team also said that it had spotted some 1,094 new candidate planets – nearly doubling the telescope’s haul of potential far-flung worlds.

Kepler 22-b was one of 54 exoplanet candidates in habitable zones reported by the Kepler team in February, and is just the first to be formally confirmed using other telescopes. More such planets are bound to be confirmed, after reconsidering the details and bringing the possible candidates down to 48, 10 of which are Earth-sized. Kepler 22-b lies 15% closer to its sun than the Earth is to our Sun, and its year takes about 290 days. However, the planet’s host star puts out about 25% less light, keeping the planet at its balmy temperature that would support the existence of liquid water.

The results were announced at the Kepler telescope’s first science conference, alongside the staggering number of new candidate planets. The total number of candidates spotted by the telescope is now 2,326 – of which 207 are approximately Earth-sized. In total, the results suggest that planets ranging from Earth-sized to about four times Earth’s size – so-called “super-Earths” – may be more common than previously thought. As candidates for planets similar to Earth are confirmed, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (Seti) has a narrower focus for its ongoing hunt.

Can you imagine if we find sentient lifeforms on this planet or any other? What if they are humanoid and about the same stage of progress as we are? Or are they capable of quick space travel and can reach us? What we get a chance to one day, sometime in the near future, meet one of these aliens who could possibly live on Kepler 22-b? What if I was that guy and an alien from that planet approached me? What would be my first words?

“Hi! Wanna beer?”