Ever since she arrived at the city, Smriti has been fascinated by its charm. It defines why the US of A is called the melting pot of the world. As she was standing at the cross-section of 42nd and 10th, she once again appreciated the diverseness the city has to offer. The collection of people white, black, Hispanic, middle eastern, Indians, Chinese wearing formal suits, trendy jeans, baggy pants, funky t-shirts, traditional thobes, colorful sarees, beret caps, English hats with their hair swinging low, trimmed, spiked, colored, spiraled, tucked … The walk sign went on. The small world stepped on to the street absorbing Smrity in its course. She blended in the crowd of New York.
Smriti hated walking with ipods. She considered it an awful way of cutting oneself off from the world. Only fools walk listening to ipods. They don’t know how much life they are missing all around them. She was despising the white leads that ran from the side pocket of a Chinese girl and culminated into two soft tiny earbuds, when she spotted Alec.
“Hello Smriti!” greeted Alec, his long sharp face beaming with a hearty smile.
“Hi. How are you doing?”
“O, I am great. Thanks. What’s up? Walking around alone on Friday night? Still no friends in New York! Are you staying alone?” Alec worked in the same office with Smriti. He knew a bit about her.
“Oh no! I can’t imagine living alone. It would be so boring. I live with another girl. But she had to leave for her friend’s wedding this morning. She had invited me too but I couldn’t get a leave.” Smriti made a sad face, pulling her cheeks down, curling her lips and the eyes subtly wet. Alec couldn’t hide a smile; however promptly wiped it off.
“It must be hard to be away from your family.”
“Sometimes it is. But not always, if you have friends. In Mumbai, it was so much fun. I was there before coming to New York, you know that, right?” Alec had no idea but he dared not interrupt Smriti, who didn’t wait for his response either. “We were eleven people in our group. We all used to go crazy every other day. You can’t imagine office colleagues being like that. Chitchats, leg-pulling, movies, eating out, hunting the malls, beaches, chaats, long drives …” Smriti’s voice drifted. Alec opened his mouth to say something. “You don’t know what a chaat is, do you?” Alec swallowed whatever was coming out. “Don’t worry, I will make it and invite you to my place someday.”
“I am sure,” Alec faltered, unsure what an unknown Indian dish would be like, “it will be very good.”
“You bet. I made it for Kumar’s birthday. Everyone liked it. It was yummy! Kumar was a really nice guy. We packed everyone else to go to the movies every Friday. I love watching the first day first shows. And did I tell you about our Goa trip?” Smiriti with her eyes round and glowing continued, “It was awesome! And guess what happened there. I told you about Rahul, that lethargic idiot; he never used to talk much. We were celebrating New Year’s Eve on a beach and I asked him to sing. You should have seen his reaction. That was his worst nightmare. But I was stubborn and so were some others. We pressed him, coaxed him, abused him. And finally he gave up. He sang. And …”, she slightly swayed her head from side to side, “what a voice he had! We had no idea. It was breathtaking. I will show you the pics from our Goa trip one day. Oh! Actually there is one on my desk in the office. The whole gang. When I get overloaded with the work, I look at it. The spirit inside helps me keep going.”
Smriti paused as she relished the spirit once more.
Alec grabbed the chance. He spoke his eyes squinted, “Aaaaa …. You know what! I actually have a friend waiting at home and I am supposed to get back with a pizza in five minutes”, he kept his lips slightly pulled in and pressed together as he finished.
“I am sorry. I kept you waiting too long.”
“No problem. Now I know where I have to go when I have to relax in the office; to imbibe the great Indian spirit”, Alec smiled as his voice switched to a melodramatic tone in the last part of the sentence. Smirity giggled. “Catch you later.”
“See you.”
Smirity was at the verge of the sidewalk when he heard Alec calling from behind, “Hey Smriti”. She turned. “We are driving to Rochester tomorrow morning. Would you like to join us?” Alec screamed.
“I would love to.” She shouted back. There was no second thinking, she always loved going out. Alec held out a thumbs-up and hurried towards the pizza place. Smriti waved and turned back to cross the street.
No sooner had she stepped on the road, when a chill ran down her spine. There was an SUV with its beam light on headed straight for her. She hadn’t noticed that the walk sign was off. Her senses went numb. The muscles refused to move. Everything seemed distant. What remained was all but a blurred vision like a painting obfuscated by an upturned glass of water. The isolation from the outside somehow triggered her inner core. Her first fleeting memory, the jealousy for her neighbour’s talking doll, the excitement of receiving her first prize on stage, the pride on her first composed poetry, the agony of her best friend’s death, the shock of her first period, the sensation of her first kiss, the confidence in joining the first job, the satisfaction of buying her parents first gifts, the thrill of leaving her country brushed past her. All her momentous feelings, treasured and loathed alike, came pouring down on her as if someone had opened an over-packed cupboard.
It took her a few seconds to realize that she was actually still alive. The car had screeched to a halt few inches from her. She was safe, although shaken. She stepped aside. Now she could see the driver, a middle-aged gentleman, gazing at her muttering under his breath. As Smirity mumbled a thank-you, she couldn’t miss the look on his face, a strange amalgamation of alarm, rage, disgust and relief. Deaths and near-deaths have peculiar effects on human beings.
Her initial plans were to go back home and cook. But it was too late and the recent encounter had left her is a disarray. She took the easy refuge of the glittering Macdonalds on 8th street. By the time she collected her order from the counter, she had already spotted the only Indian in the store. To fully recover from the shock, she needed to talk and the guy at the corner table looked like the perfect companion for a little chitchat.
“Excuse me! Can I sit here?” The guy seemed lost in his thoughts. “Excuse me!”
He looked up, inspected her for a moment, then appearing utterly confused in face of this unforeseen predicament of a girl wishing to talk to him, replied, “Ahhh … I am expecting someone.”
She didn’t really believe that. It was a bit embarrassing too. But now she had no choice. She apologized and took a table by the street from where she could observe the passersby. She wished she could see someone familiar! She hadn’t even taken her first bite when she watched the guy at the corner table pick up his bag and leave. So he wasn’t actually waiting for anyone. He just avoided her. That didn’t make her feel good. As she pecked at the burger, she tried to concentrate more on the trip tomorrow. This would be her first trip outside New York. Alec was a nice guy, and it got to be fun. That worked. Her mood improved. She could feel the excitement and the liveliness creeping back into herself.
Sunday, November 23, 2008
Sunday, November 16, 2008
The Solitary Dinner
“#1 please … no cheese and coke with no ice”. Sanjay now remembers the usual questions from the lady behind the counter. In fact he knows a lot more. He is accustomed to see this African American woman in her forties as he visits the Macdonald store at half past eleven at night every day. The store must have several other employees too but she is the only one at the counter during the hours Sanjay graces the store with his presence. After every customer, she would shout “Can I help next guest please?” in a very harsh tone which always makes him feel repulsive. As if to counter that, she always backs it up with a “Hi! How you doing?”, with a stretched ‘hiiiiiiii’, sporting an even more out-stretched smile on her face. Initially Sanjay had replied back, acknowledged her greetings and on several occasions thought that she actually recognized his face. Now he knows better. She does that to every customer. There is no special bond with a regular customer. She doesn’t even mind if you keep a straight face and go about business without any personal touch. To put it simply, she doesn’t care for Sanjay beyond the point he orders his regular #1. And he loves it that way.
It was a great respite when the company decided to move him to New York. Even though he lived alone in his tenth floor apartment in Bangalore, many of his college mates were in the city. They always had an excuse or the other to invite his attention. He could avert most of them with his often true and occasionally made up urgent assignments in the office. Eventually most of them stopped calling or contacting otherwise save for forwarding emails. Still a few persistent ones held on. New York saved him from them. Here nobody knows him. The liberty of anonymity is thrilling. Two guys live next door to him. Both are in their twenties. One has a shaved head, thick metal earrings and four rings on each hand, each ring engraved with a letter to make up the words ‘ZAAP’ on the left hand and ‘ZOOR’ on the right. The piercings through his eyebrows and the lower lip always give Sanjay a tingly feeling. Two huge dragon tattoos on both arms complements his sleeveless Harley-Davidson tee-shirts while an eagle medallion silver chain jingles around his neck. Sanjay is sure that the guy has guns, or knives at least, hidden somewhere in his heavy jeans and boots. The other guy is rather skinny and prefers an ordinary get-up. However, as if to make up for his otherwise highly ornamented friend’s shaved head, he did quite a bit of work with his hair style. He has a standard Mohican strip running down the middle of the scalp, the hairs converging into five separate specks pointing in five different directions. In addition, he has two supplementary narrow strips of hair running parallel on either side of the center one. Presumably, that wasn’t enough to match his friend’s charisma. So they were emblazoned with a motley collection of colors. It looks like papa rainbow is out taking a stroll with his baby rainbows.
So far, Sanjay has never exchanged a word with them. As he was moving in the first day, his neighbors eyed him once and immediately discarded the formally dressed, timid looking Indian as out of their league. Sanjay was relieved too. He would have hated a middle-aged Indian uncle walking to him with his mouth ajar enquiring about his whereabouts and the aunty asking, “beta, why don’t you have lunch with us today?” This was much better. On a few occasions he could not sleep due to the loud party music. But he can handle apathetic indifference better than unwelcome attention.
“#1, no cheese!” … Sanjay collected his order and walked straight to the table at the corner. He likes this particular table as he can sort of blend in with the store walls. In the office, he is really content in his separate cubicle. With his PC, the laptop, a comfortable revolving chair, a telephone, documents organized in folders and a dustbin, it is perfect for him. He has a calendar stuck on the wall with some important deadlines marked on it and another paper with a few necessary phone numbers like that of his immediate boss, the IT maintenance department, the pantry service, the internal mailing system and stuff like that. As he took his first bite off the burger after carefully spreading the fries on a napkin and squeezing out some ketchup on them, he wondered how people could keep functioning in a messy workplace. There isn’t a single male co-worker in his office, and here New York being no different from Bangalore, who he could bet would find a piece of document when needed. They would hunt through their pile of papers on the desk, fumble with their folders, haphazardly open and close the drawers, lift up their keyboards, look under the coffee cups and food packets from the past three days, eventually inside the dustbin, proclaiming without a cease that they had seen it but a few moments back before starting the whole cycle again, unless they remember that they have a soft copy and take a fresh print-out. The story with the more mysterious kind is different. Sanjay sighed. First of all, it is difficult to find a woman in her seat alone or find her at all, if she knows at least two other women on the floor. Secondly, if you do find her, it is a rare occasion that she is not on the phone. You have to endure the frustration as she would continue talking for another half an hour albeit with the courtesy to gesture an apology and signaling that she would be done in a minute, every five minutes. Once she is done, another round of verbal apology would follow with vocal and facial feats of acute emotions. Finally she would listen to you and if you are in the HR department, on most cases you would be, almost invariably she would direct you to someone else who would be the ‘right’ person to take care of your trouble. If it is another woman, expect similar treatment. Assuming that you have the ability to resist the compelling urge that is building up inside you to shout, to turn down a table, to punch someone hard, to pluck at your hair, to do something destructive in general, you might ultimately get to the right person. By the way, this right person might very well be the first lady you encountered because this i-am-not-the-right-person-to-do-your-job often goes in a cycle. Now that she is sure that she has to do the work, she would ask for a few details and would go about wandering in her computer screen figuring out what exactly to be done. In the meantime, you could concentrate on more interesting objects in the world, say for example, her friends, husband, kids or grandkids along with herself in a nice framed picture, the contents varying according to the age. The pets are also not very uncommon. You could comment on how beautiful, smart or cute someone looks, depending on as the case may be, faintly hoping that it might speed up whatever she is doing on her computer. Be careful though, the discussion might divert to when and where the picture was taken, how the person in the picture affects are life and accounts along similar lines unless you are cautious enough to pull it back in to the job at hand. Rather watch the twenty something birthday cards she received this year, her oversized or tiny little purse that goes with the color of her dress, the magazine peeping out from underneath or the uncapped nail-polish that she had reluctantly put away because of your interruption. If everything is sorted out that very day, consider it one of your luckiest. You should not forget to thank her for the enormous help lest you further mar the reputation of men as an ungrateful and callous breed.
Finished with the burger and killing the fries one at a time in an almost involuntary motion of his right hand, Sanjay drifted back to the last New Year party in his office. Parties always make him tensed. The prospect of socializing drives him nervous. He never knows what to say when he meets someone, known or unknown alike. As Sanjay remembered the girls in his office giggling and chatting in that party, he wondered how there can be so much to talk about when two persons see each other everyday and spend the better part of their day sitting almost next to each other. And then there were these resting breaks during the office. It is beyond his most deliberate comprehension why the girls are so keen to use the women’s room as their favourite meeting ground when there are obvious better choices around. Secrecy is something. But why bother! They will sooner or later spill the beans to their male counterparts. What’s the fun in the gossip if not enough people know it? Sanjay used to have his fair share too thanks to Dilip who shared his desk back in Bangalore. Whenever he started “Dude, have you heard …”, and he did start every other day, Sanjay knew a new story was coming his way. Who said gossiping was the domain for girls! They should be up for some serious competition.
“Excuse me! Can I sit here?” ….. “Excuse me!”
It is an Indian girl almost Sanjay’s age, wearing a jeans and a white shirt. She held the chair opposite to Sanjay’s in an angle and had almost landed her tray on the table. She has that cute warm appearance that doesn’t dazzle you but soothes your senses.
“Ahhh … I am expecting someone.”
“Oh! Sorry!” Half embarrassed, half surprised she made for a table next to the glass wall.
“How lame was that!” Sanjay mused dejected. He could have let her sit and talk for a few minutes, or could have left the entire table for her; he was going to leave anyway. All in the world, he had to say that he was expecting someone in a Macdonald store at midnight with a finished plate in front. Now that he will be leaving in a minute, what would she think about him! But then, who cares. What difference would it have made to talk to a girl for a few minutes? Sanjay shouldered his laptop, disposed of the leftovers and made his way to the front door carefully avoiding a look towards the girl. Tomorrow is Saturday, but he has got office.
It was a great respite when the company decided to move him to New York. Even though he lived alone in his tenth floor apartment in Bangalore, many of his college mates were in the city. They always had an excuse or the other to invite his attention. He could avert most of them with his often true and occasionally made up urgent assignments in the office. Eventually most of them stopped calling or contacting otherwise save for forwarding emails. Still a few persistent ones held on. New York saved him from them. Here nobody knows him. The liberty of anonymity is thrilling. Two guys live next door to him. Both are in their twenties. One has a shaved head, thick metal earrings and four rings on each hand, each ring engraved with a letter to make up the words ‘ZAAP’ on the left hand and ‘ZOOR’ on the right. The piercings through his eyebrows and the lower lip always give Sanjay a tingly feeling. Two huge dragon tattoos on both arms complements his sleeveless Harley-Davidson tee-shirts while an eagle medallion silver chain jingles around his neck. Sanjay is sure that the guy has guns, or knives at least, hidden somewhere in his heavy jeans and boots. The other guy is rather skinny and prefers an ordinary get-up. However, as if to make up for his otherwise highly ornamented friend’s shaved head, he did quite a bit of work with his hair style. He has a standard Mohican strip running down the middle of the scalp, the hairs converging into five separate specks pointing in five different directions. In addition, he has two supplementary narrow strips of hair running parallel on either side of the center one. Presumably, that wasn’t enough to match his friend’s charisma. So they were emblazoned with a motley collection of colors. It looks like papa rainbow is out taking a stroll with his baby rainbows.
So far, Sanjay has never exchanged a word with them. As he was moving in the first day, his neighbors eyed him once and immediately discarded the formally dressed, timid looking Indian as out of their league. Sanjay was relieved too. He would have hated a middle-aged Indian uncle walking to him with his mouth ajar enquiring about his whereabouts and the aunty asking, “beta, why don’t you have lunch with us today?” This was much better. On a few occasions he could not sleep due to the loud party music. But he can handle apathetic indifference better than unwelcome attention.
“#1, no cheese!” … Sanjay collected his order and walked straight to the table at the corner. He likes this particular table as he can sort of blend in with the store walls. In the office, he is really content in his separate cubicle. With his PC, the laptop, a comfortable revolving chair, a telephone, documents organized in folders and a dustbin, it is perfect for him. He has a calendar stuck on the wall with some important deadlines marked on it and another paper with a few necessary phone numbers like that of his immediate boss, the IT maintenance department, the pantry service, the internal mailing system and stuff like that. As he took his first bite off the burger after carefully spreading the fries on a napkin and squeezing out some ketchup on them, he wondered how people could keep functioning in a messy workplace. There isn’t a single male co-worker in his office, and here New York being no different from Bangalore, who he could bet would find a piece of document when needed. They would hunt through their pile of papers on the desk, fumble with their folders, haphazardly open and close the drawers, lift up their keyboards, look under the coffee cups and food packets from the past three days, eventually inside the dustbin, proclaiming without a cease that they had seen it but a few moments back before starting the whole cycle again, unless they remember that they have a soft copy and take a fresh print-out. The story with the more mysterious kind is different. Sanjay sighed. First of all, it is difficult to find a woman in her seat alone or find her at all, if she knows at least two other women on the floor. Secondly, if you do find her, it is a rare occasion that she is not on the phone. You have to endure the frustration as she would continue talking for another half an hour albeit with the courtesy to gesture an apology and signaling that she would be done in a minute, every five minutes. Once she is done, another round of verbal apology would follow with vocal and facial feats of acute emotions. Finally she would listen to you and if you are in the HR department, on most cases you would be, almost invariably she would direct you to someone else who would be the ‘right’ person to take care of your trouble. If it is another woman, expect similar treatment. Assuming that you have the ability to resist the compelling urge that is building up inside you to shout, to turn down a table, to punch someone hard, to pluck at your hair, to do something destructive in general, you might ultimately get to the right person. By the way, this right person might very well be the first lady you encountered because this i-am-not-the-right-person-to-do-your-job often goes in a cycle. Now that she is sure that she has to do the work, she would ask for a few details and would go about wandering in her computer screen figuring out what exactly to be done. In the meantime, you could concentrate on more interesting objects in the world, say for example, her friends, husband, kids or grandkids along with herself in a nice framed picture, the contents varying according to the age. The pets are also not very uncommon. You could comment on how beautiful, smart or cute someone looks, depending on as the case may be, faintly hoping that it might speed up whatever she is doing on her computer. Be careful though, the discussion might divert to when and where the picture was taken, how the person in the picture affects are life and accounts along similar lines unless you are cautious enough to pull it back in to the job at hand. Rather watch the twenty something birthday cards she received this year, her oversized or tiny little purse that goes with the color of her dress, the magazine peeping out from underneath or the uncapped nail-polish that she had reluctantly put away because of your interruption. If everything is sorted out that very day, consider it one of your luckiest. You should not forget to thank her for the enormous help lest you further mar the reputation of men as an ungrateful and callous breed.
Finished with the burger and killing the fries one at a time in an almost involuntary motion of his right hand, Sanjay drifted back to the last New Year party in his office. Parties always make him tensed. The prospect of socializing drives him nervous. He never knows what to say when he meets someone, known or unknown alike. As Sanjay remembered the girls in his office giggling and chatting in that party, he wondered how there can be so much to talk about when two persons see each other everyday and spend the better part of their day sitting almost next to each other. And then there were these resting breaks during the office. It is beyond his most deliberate comprehension why the girls are so keen to use the women’s room as their favourite meeting ground when there are obvious better choices around. Secrecy is something. But why bother! They will sooner or later spill the beans to their male counterparts. What’s the fun in the gossip if not enough people know it? Sanjay used to have his fair share too thanks to Dilip who shared his desk back in Bangalore. Whenever he started “Dude, have you heard …”, and he did start every other day, Sanjay knew a new story was coming his way. Who said gossiping was the domain for girls! They should be up for some serious competition.
“Excuse me! Can I sit here?” ….. “Excuse me!”
It is an Indian girl almost Sanjay’s age, wearing a jeans and a white shirt. She held the chair opposite to Sanjay’s in an angle and had almost landed her tray on the table. She has that cute warm appearance that doesn’t dazzle you but soothes your senses.
“Ahhh … I am expecting someone.”
“Oh! Sorry!” Half embarrassed, half surprised she made for a table next to the glass wall.
“How lame was that!” Sanjay mused dejected. He could have let her sit and talk for a few minutes, or could have left the entire table for her; he was going to leave anyway. All in the world, he had to say that he was expecting someone in a Macdonald store at midnight with a finished plate in front. Now that he will be leaving in a minute, what would she think about him! But then, who cares. What difference would it have made to talk to a girl for a few minutes? Sanjay shouldered his laptop, disposed of the leftovers and made his way to the front door carefully avoiding a look towards the girl. Tomorrow is Saturday, but he has got office.
Monday, November 03, 2008
Down the Memory Lane
As I was mugging up another boring string of characters for my electromagnetic course, I was observing the pattern in which I memorize. I don’t know how interesting I can make this post to you, but it was interesting to analyze myself. Well, I imbibe things much the similar way you download a high quality graphics picture from the net. Initially, I get a blurry image which then gradually, if at all, becomes sharp and distinct. I scan the subject several times and these are the steps I guess I follow.
Step 1 is generally very crucial for me. I cannot remember things unless I know where I am going. Even if I try, as I did for one of the ‘probable’ questions in the test, I feel so uneasy with the progress. I actually went back and figured out what exactly was being accomplished with whatever deduction I was supposed to memorize.
Step 1 ultimately eases step 2. Once I know where I want to end up, I can dispose of the unnecessary portions and concentrate on nothing but the gist. That might not be good if you are studying literature, but that definitely helps studying scientific derivations that involve mathematical expressions running for pages. Specially when the exam is the next morning :P
Step 3 and 4 go in a cycle. As the name suggests, this step can vary a lot from person to person. I find it easier to memorize a list if I note down points in a particular order. Sometimes it helps if some words or their abbreviations rhyme. I find it obviously easier to remember a mathematical deduction that flows logically from one step to the next. This stupid course however had ‘logical’ steps which declare that using the previous equations we can ‘easily’ see that the result follows. Since those were not very easy, I had to look for patterns that relate the initial and the final form. If patterns in step 4 are not apparent I might need to revise step 3.
The more efficient step 4 is the less important becomes step 5. However, step 5 is always there since I have to memorize at least small bits of information even if I have done a great job with step 4.
Example 1 – Q. What are common chemical hazards? (This is a question from a different test.)
Ans. Fire Hazards, Explosions Hazards from incompatible chemicals, Extremely Toxic Chemicals, Lachrymators (substances that irritate the eyes and produce tears), Vesicants (substances that can blister and burn body tissues by contact with the skin or inhalation), Carcinogens (substances that produce cancer)
Memorizing. Step 1 is obvious here. Step 2 would be to note the key words – fire, explosion, toxic, lachrymator (eye irritation), vesicant (burn body tissue), carcinogen (cancer). Step 3 I would note that there are 6 points and arrange them alphabetically Carcinogen, Explosion, Fire, Lachrymator (…), Toxic, Vesicant (…). However this order didn’t suit me much; plus the words ‘lachrymator’ and ‘vesicant’ were new to me. So I arranged them like this Fire, Explosion (Group 1, explosion follows lighting a fire), Toxic, Carcinogen, Eye irritation, Tissue burn (Group 2, toxicity is like a superset; causing cancer, eye irritation, tissue burns are like subsets albeit not exactly and the last three are in alphabetical order). Next is step 5.
Example 2 – I have to memorize the following equations –
Note that equation (1) and (3) and similarly (2) and (4) are dual of each other i.e. I interchange ‘mu’ and ‘epsilon’ to get one from the other. It is easier to remember the even-numbered equations. Also in the whole system, there are actually two units. One is 
and the other is 
. The rest is a combination of these two. So instead of remembering the whole forms, I would rather remember the two units and how they are used to generate the rest.
Also if there is an equation which says A gives B. I would notice the differences (delta_AB) between the two and remember A and delta_AB and then derive B using the two. There can be a lot more examples. I would be happy to know if you do it in a similar fashion or what other methods you use to memorize. I have one more test to go in this semester. I could use some help.
Step 1 is generally very crucial for me. I cannot remember things unless I know where I am going. Even if I try, as I did for one of the ‘probable’ questions in the test, I feel so uneasy with the progress. I actually went back and figured out what exactly was being accomplished with whatever deduction I was supposed to memorize.
Step 1 ultimately eases step 2. Once I know where I want to end up, I can dispose of the unnecessary portions and concentrate on nothing but the gist. That might not be good if you are studying literature, but that definitely helps studying scientific derivations that involve mathematical expressions running for pages. Specially when the exam is the next morning :P
Step 3 and 4 go in a cycle. As the name suggests, this step can vary a lot from person to person. I find it easier to memorize a list if I note down points in a particular order. Sometimes it helps if some words or their abbreviations rhyme. I find it obviously easier to remember a mathematical deduction that flows logically from one step to the next. This stupid course however had ‘logical’ steps which declare that using the previous equations we can ‘easily’ see that the result follows. Since those were not very easy, I had to look for patterns that relate the initial and the final form. If patterns in step 4 are not apparent I might need to revise step 3.
The more efficient step 4 is the less important becomes step 5. However, step 5 is always there since I have to memorize at least small bits of information even if I have done a great job with step 4.
Example 1 – Q. What are common chemical hazards? (This is a question from a different test.)
Ans. Fire Hazards, Explosions Hazards from incompatible chemicals, Extremely Toxic Chemicals, Lachrymators (substances that irritate the eyes and produce tears), Vesicants (substances that can blister and burn body tissues by contact with the skin or inhalation), Carcinogens (substances that produce cancer)
Memorizing. Step 1 is obvious here. Step 2 would be to note the key words – fire, explosion, toxic, lachrymator (eye irritation), vesicant (burn body tissue), carcinogen (cancer). Step 3 I would note that there are 6 points and arrange them alphabetically Carcinogen, Explosion, Fire, Lachrymator (…), Toxic, Vesicant (…). However this order didn’t suit me much; plus the words ‘lachrymator’ and ‘vesicant’ were new to me. So I arranged them like this Fire, Explosion (Group 1, explosion follows lighting a fire), Toxic, Carcinogen, Eye irritation, Tissue burn (Group 2, toxicity is like a superset; causing cancer, eye irritation, tissue burns are like subsets albeit not exactly and the last three are in alphabetical order). Next is step 5.
Example 2 – I have to memorize the following equations –
Note that equation (1) and (3) and similarly (2) and (4) are dual of each other i.e. I interchange ‘mu’ and ‘epsilon’ to get one from the other. It is easier to remember the even-numbered equations. Also in the whole system, there are actually two units. One is 
and the other is 
. The rest is a combination of these two. So instead of remembering the whole forms, I would rather remember the two units and how they are used to generate the rest.Also if there is an equation which says A gives B. I would notice the differences (delta_AB) between the two and remember A and delta_AB and then derive B using the two. There can be a lot more examples. I would be happy to know if you do it in a similar fashion or what other methods you use to memorize. I have one more test to go in this semester. I could use some help.
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