My brain resists waking up to reality.... annoying alarm to the rescue

Have you ever had an experience where something happening around you has influenced the happenings of your dream? I mean literally, you are sleeping and dreaming and a noise like the alarm fits in the story happening in your dream. I know that events happen much faster in your dream (as shown in Inception), but I was amazed how quickly my brain was able to take the input from the environment and interpolate and fit it in my dream to probably keep me from waking up. Ok.... let me first explain what happened. Basically I was sleeping and dreaming that I was in some kind of residential place (I don't recall what I was exactly doing), and suddenly the fire-alarm goes off. I successfully locate the alarm in my dream, but was unable to switch it off. Coincidentally, the ringing alarm was the alarm set on my phone and it was ringing. While confused and unable to switch off the alarm in my dream, I realized I was not in reality and instantly woke up and switched off the alarm. This was probably the first time (that I can remember) an external stimuli had influenced my dream. I don't know if this was something normal or not, but it certainly had some sort of impact on me after I woke up. I was kind of startled, probably by the sound of the alarm blowing in my brain (I am definitely changing it to something more pleasant ;) ).
I guess the turning point of the dream was the realization that the annoying alarm could not be switched off my the expected means that I knew of in my dream and my brain got so disturbed that it physically woke me up.
As we have learned time and again that the brain can be very easily fooled, if this life is not real, perhaps someday a malfunction in the "real" world would trigger something so unreal to this world, that our brain would trigger the means to wake us up to the "real" reality (if there is any).
Till then DREAM ON dudes!! ;)

Staying hungry, Staying foolish! .... Hello Bioengineering

I just started a PhD program in Bioengineering this Fall 2011. For those, who know me from college or before, this could be a surprise and not something anybody would expect me to move. It doesn't make a lot of sense to me too when I start thinking about my future. But when I look back, I can actually connect all the dots. Reminds me of Steve Job's famous Stanford graduation speech.

"Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.
Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life."
-- Steve Jobs

Well Bioengineering didn't make sense a few years ago, now that I look back, I can connect those dots.

My quest for harder and complicated problems have led me exactly to them. What I interpreted to be a problem with mechanics, electronics and computers was not hard enough. Life gave me bonus of biology along to go with it. Thank you life for giving me that extra bit that I was missing. 

Now I know why people say, be careful what you wish for. ;)

Denial is the best medicine.