Yesterday was the last date to apply for BEST courses. These are short courses offered by universities in EU as weeklong fun/learning activities and mainliy offered by Engineering Universities. Event though there were many courses to choose from one could only apply for three courses.
I applied to two courses, PARobotIcS and Rome against the Machine. The results of selection will be in by Jan 15th 2008. Let’s see how I fare in the selection process. I thogh I share a question from one of the applications on my blog. The question and it’s answer as follows
We know that you have the exact quantity of plutonium needed to activate our DeLorean time machine, you have to find a way to bring it to us in Rome, avoiding security. Please use your fantasy and let us smile!
"(I am )Assuming that I have masted Dr. Brown’s (Doc’s) design of the flux capacitor and the plutonium based reactor I can easily make changes to the time machine. But with exact amount of plutonium for one temporal jump I have the potential problem of not have 2.1 gigawatts of electricity to jump back to the present. So I have two options at hand, first I have to come up with the same plan which worked on Oct 15, 1955 in Hillvalley for for Doc and Morty. But I have to find precise lightning strikes with in the city of Rome. I tried to look it up but didn’t find any thing precise enough. So instead of running towards a lightning strike, why not run and make the lightning strike on the DeLorean. This would need a bit of change in design as lightning could strike any where possibly on the surface of the car. Then I would need to drive back in time lets say 1929 (so I still can get fuel if I need and still have some roads to drive up to 88 m/h) and drive around in Rome at night hoping lightning strikes the DeLorean. Of course this plan has a very big flaw that in 1929 there will not be Internet so I would get bored to death in the case I have to drive for a longer period of time.
Second option is to befriend James Bond and convince him to get my DeLorean fixed from ‘Q‘ branch in the same way as he had his Lotus Esprit fixed (one which would convert as a submarine). So all I would need is to load the car on a ferry bound to some where near Rome and dive it in the sea when shore comes near and surface at an appropriate time and place. So I guess I would have to wait till the next time James is in town here in Gothenburg.Sweden (he must have some Swedish girlfriends I suppose). The only variable here is tracking his Swedish girlfriend. I think I can attract lightning more effectively though"
I did the mistake of not looking up what was actually happening in 1929 in Rome as I just guessed a year and planted it in. But atleast in the 1920s lead added gasoline was available.
I remember that I first saw back to the future in 1994, renting from Officers Mess Movie club in Wah when me and my sister were visiting our Dad. Actually in that one week we saw all kinds of Trilogies including Aliens and StarWars for the first time. That was perhaps my SciFi media frenzy.
I look back and realize that at that point I really wanted to be like Doc. Aloof and always in his world, accomplishing scientific things and not worrying about other matters in life, where as Marty was the normal kid with social life, taste for music and fashion sense. But in the end travelling through time Doc finds his own sense of normalcy (and a family). There are some real life lessons which one can learn in this movie.
- Your parents were perhaps way lot cooler in their time (before you were born)
- than they are now and it’s actually sort of good for you (they nag you and scold you, because they love you)
- You can do what ever you want to do, you just have to believe in your self.
- It doesnt matter what your destiny is, it’s the journey that makes you the person you are
Do I still want to be Doc, perhaps no, but I love his transformation.
