Prologue

India vacation was a much awaited vacation. In the past I had visited home (home has become a rather overloaded term. Here I mean where I grew up) every 6 months or every year if not more often. This time it had been 1.5 years since my wedding & the last visit home and so the yearning to visit folks had grown. Phone calls saying that this was too long a gap and I was too far … and the usual stuff that nri daughters hear their parents say were coming in. Ofcourse the timing was intentional, I wanted to go to Cochin in the winter and the only choices we had with Roshan’s vacations were between summer & winter break.

The Vacation

My port of entry in India was Mumbai and the airport looked better & bigger than I remembered. My first reaction everywhere I went was why there were so many people. And why the rush. People never respected lines and queues, whether it was to pay a bill or get into a shuttle or board a plane. Not like the plane would take off without somebody or the next shuttle won’t show if this one got full. This wasn’t anything new, I see it everytime I go and I get annoyed each time. I started sampling food at airport and was extremely pleased. Next few days in Cochin I was thoroughly pampered with lots of delicious food.

Cochin has the same roads but many many more cars and so the traffic is painful. I wasn’t driving but even being driven around was stressful. After a day or 2 I got used to the honking; towards the end of my trip if I didn’t hear enough honking I’d wonder if I was still on the main road. Cochin had 1 mall the last time I visited and this time when I visited, the city was suddenly springing with malls. Apparently, India’s (or was it Asia’s?) largest mall ‘Lulu’ is coming up close to where we live in Edapally. It was still in the works when I was there. I visited Oberon mall which is relatively a new mall in Edapally, it was impressive considering its predecessors - Bay Pride, Penta menaka and GCDA. Despite 3 or 4 floors of basement parking, in the evenings parking lot is full and vehicles park outside the mall on the road many times blocking the traffic. Talk about lack of entertainment options… its like the whole city is in the mall. All this when Oberon doesn’t have a multiplex, my brain explodes when I try to imagine the crowd when it has its multiplex up & running. In the past, the only entertainment I could think of in Cochin was to watch movies.

I was impressed with the changes the city has had. I saw restaurants (in Bangalore & Chennai too) that had menu items with diet icons indicating that they were healthy options (still no calorie count – I am happy about that), restaurants that had child seats and malls with a dedicated play area. Oh and also a decorated xmas tree with fake snow. Where was all this when I was growing up!?!

While many of the hoardings there still are of gold jewellery, I saw a lot of new ads mostly related to cell phone providers or homes for sale. GCDA shops make me wonder what they did before cell phones came around. Talking about cellphones, I was quite happy with cell phone plans in India – the ease and low cost are a huge plus. With high GPRS costs, a lot of the folk don’t have data plans. SMS is pretty big, 15 min after Roshan got a new SIM he started getting spam sms-es. My siblings and even my dad text a lot more than I do.

India is a lot more expensive than it used to be a few years ago. Prices of food, clothing, and groceries are 4 times the cost they were. I was quite appalled at the costs. There were several instances when I thought US was cheaper.

After 4 or 5 days in Cochin, Roshan and I headed to Bangalore for a few days. Bangalore looked completely different from what I remembered, the last time I was there was in 2004. I couldn’t recognize MG Road at all. All the outskirts were now a part of the city and were apparently more “happening” than the “happening” parts in the past. There were new flyovers and some cool looking public transport buses that were air conditioned. Metro rail construction was in the works. More coffee shops and more restaurants and more chain stores had opened up. All super pricey which makes me believe that people’s earnings in India have also multiplied many fold in the last few years. Going from Cochin, the driving sense felt a lot better. I had some really good food in Bangalore … oh Bengaluru.

From Bangalore we left for Chennai for 2 days. Chennai city looked extremely good – very clean, wide roads, huge flyovers etc. Marina beach looked much much cleaner and well maintained than it did a few years back. We had some amazing food in Chennai. We heard about a hole in the wall authentic Sushi place in Chennai and decided to check that out. It was pretty good, while we were there we didn’t see any other Indians. The weather in Chennai & Bangalore was just perfect. Only if we had that all year round in Seattle

We got back to Cochin in time for a friend’s wedding. I have been to only 2 or 3 weddings in Kerala and 3 or 4 weddings outside Kerala. For a person my age that is an extremely low count of wedding attendance. I probably just don’t remember how it used to be, but I was a little shocked to see people rushing to get food even at the wedding. Of course they wouldn’t run out of food, it’s an Indian wedding after all . My sister said that it was pretty normal as everybody wanted to leave soon once the wedding was done.

Next day, I visited Thodupuzha and Karimanoor with Roshan and his family. Apparently after you get married the newlyweds need to meet everybody in the family. Besides my parents, my relatives are mostly in Rajasthan and northern parts of India, I am guessing we’ll visit some of them during our next trip to India. This trip we tried to cover Roshan’s side of the family. The drive through the country side is beautiful. Away from the traffic, noises and crowds I could see why I loved Kerala growing up. The lush greenery, lakes and mountains even after all these years continue to mesmerize me. Each visit during this trip left my stomach fuller and fuller. I have not eaten so much meat in such a short span of time before. (Remember I grew up in a vegetarian family). I can’t complain, everything tasted so good

We got back to Cochin and 2 days later left for Wayanad. This was a family trip. We visited Bandipur National Park in Karnataka and Muthanga Wildlife Sanctuary in Wayanad. Both are good forests, we just had the wrong expectation that we would see some wild animals on the safari tour. We saw monkeys, deer, peacocks and chickens. Elephants too but they were chained close to the entrance and hence not exactly in the wild. Wayanad may be a good place for non-Keralites to visit but for somebody who’s grown up there, I was quite underwhelmed. Pookot lake, Sulthan Bathery Jain Temple, Sita devi Tears lake, Luv Kush temple etc were nothing out of the ordinary. The walk to Edakkal Caves and Soochipara waterfalls was fun. The caves themselves were quite good too. We ended our trip at the falls where students kept coming in batches and leaving. It looked like a popular excursion spot.

We got back to Cochin in time to celebrate New Year’s eve with friends and family. We spent the next few days eating and shopping. And before I knew the trip was over. All the plans of sitting down with my folks and having long conversations and playing the silly indoor games etc didn’t materialize. Oh well. Next time eh?

Epilogue

(Like a wise friend said) "The thing about getting married is that the no. of people you meet double, the no. of ceremionies and functions you need to attend double up but your time stays the same". I hadn't factored this in in my planning. So, I didn't end up visiting or calling people I normally would. On the brighter side I did travel within India, I did go back to Mullapanthal for the spicy food (and this time I had 2 glasses of the repulsive toddy), I did try a lot of food and many new restaurants and I travelled by air, train, bus, auto, scooter and car within India. Yay!

One of the early mornings here, we took a walk to the fish market. Its the biggest fish market I have ever seen, Pike's place market looks like a tiny sample before this . The people moved around stuff within the market on these cool little vehicle thingies, quite innovative I must admit. We saw a lot of the sea creatures, many alive, some frozen, some being sliced ... pretty much all the phases it goes through after it is caught and before it reaches our plates. There was a guy cutting huge blocks of ice and sending up this machinery where it would go in and come out crushed. People would come on their vehicle thingies to buy crushed ice. I was staring at these shrimps moving in the little tank they were in, when the seller smiled and in what seemed like a gesture to help me see/photograph, pulled a shrimp out of the water and pointed at me. My knee jerk reaction was not appreciation but a loud scream seeing the shrimp wriggle for its life. He ofcourse immediately put the shrimp back into water and stepped back. Oh well :-(

We had japanese breakfast outside the market. The fish doesn't get much fresher. And bingo, I tried raw fish for the first time!! Just so randomly, just like that. I am also trying to eat with chopsticks. So far so good.
 
I often struggle finding  petite sections in stores in the US when buying clothes. Ever been in a situation where you love the clothes but they are almost always a larger size? Here while trying slippers on, my feet felt most comfortable in the LL size which is probably a double large or extra large equivalent. I am guessing that buying clothes here may be a fun experience. The japanese girls are so petite. I may be a large after all
 
I love all the expressions and the giggles. People are very friendly. Many go out of their way to help. I asked this girl which train I needed to take to go some place and she stared at the map for a few seconds, asked me to wait, ran and came back with somebody who spoke a little english. Similarly Roshan asked some guy if he knew of a laundromat close by, after some communication struggle the guy called his friend on his phone and Rosh talked to the guy on phone.
 
We visited Akihabara, the elctronic city which besides electronics has lots of japanese porn, comics, dvds etc. Women dressed in kimonos and school girl clothese were handing out flyers on the sidewalk. We also visited Shinjuku (sort of like Times square) and Ginza - they have huge shopping areas and a variety of pubs and restaurants. Lots of people. I noticed very few couples though. Most were by themselves or few guys togther and few girls together. I proably have seen 3 young couples holding hands (and no PDA) and walking so far. People in Tokyo are probably too busy to date. There is a vending machine for almost everything - drinks, food, cigarrette, dvds, posters, t-shirts ... Rosh and I wanted to watch sumo wrestling in Japan, but its not happening in Tokyo at the time we are here :-(. I hope we get to catch a geisha performance in Kyoto. I got to see Kendo, it was pretty cool.

Pachinko is some game that a lot of the middle aged men seem completely engrossed in. I have seen 3 pachinko places so far and people are so intently playing, I have no idea how its played and why its so interesting. The only equivalent I know is how some of the older people spend hours on slot machines in Vegas. If I knew the game, I probably would only play and do nothing else while in Japan (I get hooked on to games easily), so may be I wont find out.
 
I love Tokyo! (Few pics on http://www.flickr.com/photos/dolly/sets/72157621763892903/)

Roshan's internship gave Rosh the choice of doing it in New York and part of it in Tokyo/London. Rosh picked Tokyo. After his internship we thought we could take some time off and tour Japan. So here I am, in Tokyo, the start of my 2 week vacation this summer.I flew in from Seattle to Japan last night, it was a 9 hour flight - not so long international flight for somebody who's been flying internationally between US & India mostly

Unlike my other flights, where the advise it to sleep as much as possible on the flight, this time I didn't sleep at all on the flight. That helped coz after dinner I could fall asleep like other folk here. So jetlag has been gracefully handled.

The first thought when I got off the flight was 'whoa this is warm'. People starting taking layers of clothing off on the walkway. When I finally stepped out on the street to get some food, it was after sunset and still super-warm. Very much like Indian summers.

I am quite puzzled about how the subway stations, roads, sidewalks etc are so clean. There is no trace of trash, paper, wrappers nothing... And there are no trash cans or bins visible. I am hoping in the next 5 days of stay here I can figure out how this is possible.

I am staying in Central Tokyo (Shimbashi) and the view from our room (on the 34th floor) is breathtaking. I think I may have brought some of the Seattle rain here. It rained today and the forecast shows temperatures as 30C (~80F) with showers/clouds rest of the week. Hopefully it will not interfere too much with the sightseeing & exploring plans.

The plan is that after this week in Tokyo, Roshan and I will leave this saturday for Nikko. 2 days in Nikko, 2 days in Kyoto, 2 days in Nara and 2 days in Hakone. Then ofcourse fly back to seattle.

Stay tuned.

A fun read: http://james-iry.blogspot.com/2009/05/brief-incomplete-and-mostly-wrong.html

Its saturday, sunny, warm & beautiful - the sort of weekend we wish for all year in Seattle. I woke up early (very unusual for a weekend), made myself some quick breakfast, warmed a cup of milk and gobbled it all down. Got into my trackpants and drove out with the sun roof down.  I guess, I was enjoying the change and the morning breeze - so I was actually singing along with the bollywood music playing in the car. After about 30 min, I got to the field - a school playground rather and saw a couple of Indian girls with bats & balls. Considering that this is my first attempt at cricket ever, I was both a little intimidated & excited. It cant hurt trying was what I kept telling myself when I signed up for the practise sessions. And there I was.
 
No, I didn't find any hidden talents and no miracles happened. My bowling was too 'wide' or had too many 'pitches' apparently. My batting often missed 'connecting' with the ball, and in my fielding attempts I either missed catches or didnt throw the ball towards the bowler ... Oh and as a wicket keeper I let most balls pass through. I was struggling to get all the termilology & rules right, '1d', 'lbw', 'over' and what not. (In hind sight, It might have helped if I watched those cricket matches on TV with my family growing up)
 
Oh well, I am learning to play cricket this summer. We'll see after a few months if I develop any (people in the team seem to think that you got to be good at one of batting, bowling or fielding) talents in the sport of cricket.

I finally bought an xbox for myself. The only game I have tried so far is guitar hero and its been fun. The xbox live stuff is pretty awesome. Netflix streaming is probably the start of how we are all going to be watching movies soon. There was a time when I had just moved away from home and eating alone felt odd and sort of lonely; and here I am now, when I love coming home to nobody and eating on my couch watching TV. Good or Bad - who cares. It works and thats all that matters.

Coming back to XBOX, I am wondering what games to get that are fun to learn/play and dont have a steep learning curve. Drop me a comment if you have any ideas.

Seattle doesn’t get a lot of snow, when it does get some snow like for ½ a day or 1 day, most people work from home, kids skip school, shops close early, ... you get the picture. This year Seattle saw quite a bit of continuous snow. Enough that the governor had to declare statewide weather emergency.  I worked from home for a week. I drove around only for a bit and quite carefully. My car is a front wheel drive and I had been meaning to get snow chains. All stores in Seattle area were out of chains – apparently my tyre model is the most common. One evening on my way back from a grocery store, I tried driving down this small stretch of steep downgrade road to my parking garage, over what looked like packed snow. As it turned out it was ice and my car skid by 180 degrees on a 1 way street. Braking, steering, mumbling etc didn’t change the course of the car, A few pedestrians did run frantically though. That incident was scary, I parked the car by the street side. Either the snow had to melt or I had to get snow chains to be able to move around again. Next 2 days neither happened, I stayed home mostly and travelled on foot to get food & basic supplies (that includes ice cream). A day later, due to circumstances, I decided to drive to San Francisco. When I went to my car, I saw this. People do have a sense of humor. At least it didn’t say “Wash Me” like some other cars I saw. With all my inexperience I tried to shovel the snow away from the front tyres to get the car out. With help from some strangers, the car was out on the road again. I had to stand in line to get chains at a store, some of the gas stations in Redmond were out of gas and so I had to drive around a couple to finally get premium gas only at one distant gas station. When I went to get some food at a 7-11,  I thought that the staff there was unusually nice & friendly ... and then I noticed Fox News crew with the camera focused on the staff. I should have checked the news that evening to see if I was caught on camera buying ice cream.

Next day early morning, I started the much dreaded road trip. Had the skidding accident not happened 2 days ago, I probably wouldn’t have dreaded it as much.

A 11.5 hours drive took 18 hours, but thankfully there were no incidents. Some season to remember. I have never seen so many driving rules being broken; you could pretty much park anywhere not fearing getting towed/ticketed, you could drive in any lane, some went up the wrong way on a 1-way road, Cars/Trucks took any lane on the interstate, pulled over anywhere with/without emergency lights flashing, … While some of this was amusing, most of the stuff I saw around made me strongly wish that everything would return to normal. There were several accidents, tons of vehicles getting towed probably coz they got stuck in snow, ambulances & paramedics all around, cop cars all over, people crying … Quite sad that this was happening to many of them just before Christmas. Fortunately for me, I got to San Francisco on Christmas eve and got to spend the vacation with Roshan as planned. Except the whole order of places had to be changed/re-done with all reservations going for a toss because of the timings.

We spent time in parts of California and drove back via Nevada. I got to see pretty much all terrains on the road trip. It was quite beautiful. US has vast amounts of land with pretty much nothing. It was all quite pretty. When we got back to Seattle, it was drizzling and it was grey. Sigh, what a beautiful city and what crappy weather. Most of the year, Seattle is cold & grey & wet – and you are seeing it out of your window from a closed office, apartment or car  like watching a movie.

And with this trip the longest road trip for me has been 4150 miles. I will upload some pictures here.

The last one year passed by so quick, then again so much happened in the last year. I lived in US, India, Canada and back in US. I had series of events celebrating my wedding. I ate so much food when in India that on one occasion I threw up. I lived by myself in Vancouver and have started doing the same in Seattle. Having always lived with room mates (well, never shared a room, but shared the apartment) in the past (or siblings before that), this has been an awesome experience. Having a whole house to myself – tons of storage, exclusive access to living room & dining room space, using the bathroom as & when I want to, calling friends over as I deem fit, playing loud music late into the night and err paying all utilities (no this isn’t fun) … I am loving the change. For as long as it lasts J. I had my first experience shipping a product. Had some crazy work hours when in ship mode – all worth it at the end of course.  I observed my first fasting ceremony (karwa chauth) this year  – Unlike the glorified image that I had thanks to the hindi movies, it is quite difficult. And Roshan obviously has not seen Shahrukh Khan observing. By late evening, I was raging with hunger.

I have rented an apartment in Seattle downtown. Since I didn’t want to be in a tiny studio and wanted to be in downtown and not have room mates, I have decided to make it worth the money (rent, parking, …) by making sure I have fun, I *live* in the *city*. Unlike just surviving in the boring eastside (Redmond, Bellevue, Kirkland) (sorry east siders – I was you one time). I have decided to live in the less boring Seattle. So one of my resolutions is to walk & explore downtown. I am located opposite to the sculpture park and very close to the water front. Another resolution is to dine & wine at many of the cafes, restaurants, bakeries & pubs in Seattle. I have a growing list that I want to cover in the next 1 year. Lots of eating to do! I so miss Vancouver downtown!

I am ashamed of not keeping all my resolutions from last year (especially the gym one); I am going to shamelessly carry that one over. Though in my defense, the wedding & all the travel is a good excuse.

I am considering getting a XBOX for myself this year. Though I didn’t enjoy HALO, the last time I tried it for 30 minutes. Big learning curve there, esp for the impatient.

When in Vancouver, I had enrolled for Shaimak Davar’s Indi-pop (read as Bollywood) dance lessons and wasn’t too impressed by it. I am hoping to find something better in Seattle.

Here’s wishing everybody a Happy New Year!

Initially there was no time and so I didn't blog. I was caught up with re-settling in Seattle & burning midnight (& weekend on occasions) oil to meet shipping deadlines. And then because I didn't blog for so long, I didn't blog. Doesn't make any sense. Well, here's breaking through the bloggers block.

I drove down from Vancouver to Seattle early this week with the bags leftover after the movers took my other stuff. I am put up in Seattle downtown temporarily until I find myself an apartment. Seattle downtown is fun, much better than my previous stay in Bellevue downtown though not as good as Vancouver city. The best part to being back though is the face to face meetings with people I work with. And that I can walk into people's offices instead of typing a formal email, making a call or using IM. Just the pleasure of being able to get an issue addressed right then is awesome.

I am thinking of making frequent visits to Bloomington in the next year. Something along the lines of spend  a few days every month and work from Bloomington. It will be interesting to make real world use of all the technology we build for remote scenarios.

We use Office Communicator internally at Microsoft for all our internal IM converstaions, audio/video calls/conferences, file transfer etc. In the past when I worked in IDC, Hyderabad, we used email and VTC for communication with the Redmond team. The last 3 months I have been working remotely from Vancouver with the Redmond team. Things would have been definitely tough without communicator. And I am not saying that just because I work in the Communicator team. The round table is pretty awesome too.

I visited Victoria last weekend, it is a small quaint town and the capital of British Columbia state. It has a nice English town feel to it. I visited the museum which had a section dedicated to the rich cultural heritage of the state. One of the exhibits was a couple, mannequins in Indian/Punjabi clothes. Another was a grocery store setup with various items that included naan, ghee, basmati rice, etc. The museum is pretty elaborate entailing lot of detail to procure the right ambience. I could only spend only 2 hours, if you happen to go, plan to spend a few hours just there.

I think that completes list of places to go to near Vancouver in the state.

I went on the “Sins of Vancouver” walking tour last week. This is a 2 hour guided walk along some of the shady parts of town mostly talking about the history of crime in the city and pointing out some of the landmarks left today.  As we walked along those few blocks, I saw several  homeless people, probably living on the streets off a cart most likely stolen from a grocery store. Noticed at least a few stolen bikes on some of the carts. I saw some people completely zoned out, men & women pushing syringes into their wrists etc.  Prostitution & drugs apparently have been to date some of the biggest concerns in the city.

Nothing much to add, except that I saw some of this, a part of the system.

... is good!

I had the best idlys, dosas and mini-south-indian-thalis after leaving India in Vancouver. There is a Saravana Bhavan here!! Yeah! Not the best service; but hey, the food is great. I hope they start one in Seattle. The Indian food here tastes considerably better than the Indian food in Seattle area.

In fact, you feel a lot closer to India in Vancouver. Surrey which is close to Vancouver is supposed to be like a mini-India with a huge Indian population. I haven't been there yet, even then you see or hear random things in Vancouver that make you feel like you are not far from India. I guess England may me part of the reason for the sense of commonality in the two countries. The other day I was flipping channels when I stumbled upon a punjab channel, apparently this is included in the standard cable package. I guess that speaks for the Indian population here. Its awesome seeing *curries*, tandoori chicken, samosas etc in any food court.

And the Indian dvd stores sell/rent pirated dvds. I have been trying hard to find a Indian dvd store that will rent good quality dvds; no success yet.

Oh and they have hindi movies playing in more than 1 theatre

I figured why the Indian brides appear shy with their heads bowed down on their wedding day. I did too on my wedding day. Given that this wasn't an arranged marriage and that the groom wouldn't escape if he found out that I was not a traditional shy Indian bride, I had no reason to feel compelled to be *shy*. So no pressure of any sort. However, there I was ... looking & behaving like any bride I had seen. As a kid when I saw weddings I often wondered if the bride wasn't curious to lift her head up & look around, especially at the groom, after all in a typical arranged marriage you would expect high levels of anxiety. Even a kid knows that!

Nobody told me, and may be I am disturbing some layer of something somewhere in the whole Indian matrimony experience thing...by saying some of this, but here it goes. So, in my case I had to start getting dressed at 7.00 am for a 9.00 o'clock scheduled wedding that started after 10.00 am or so. Wait, I didn't have a watch on me, but that is what it felt like. I had some professionals help me with my costume, headgear etc  stuff. The first thing they told me was to visit the restroom as I would not be able to do that the rest of the day. Yeah surprise No. 1. Then the ordeal began. My hair is barely shoulder length and so they started attaching really long fake hair. This was my chance to see how I would look had I been a 18th century classical dancer. I don't know much about classical dance, and if you could tell that, it was no genius. They drilled a whole packet of hair pins & more, used thread to tie things together and pulled things left right & center to make sure things didn't fall off. A Maang Tika was also clamped on to me. The fake hair was probably as heavy as me, and I found it difficult to move my head up. It reached below my bottom, they plaited it and tied it with a parinda making the whole thing even longer. They then attached strings of fresh flowers to my hair to add to the weight and size of things. And thus I grew heavier. Oh and the chunni had to cover a part of my head , so they clipped that to my crown. And so the whole long hair thing was covered behind the chunni. Was there a point then, I thought. Then the whole series of ghagra, jewellery, bindis, safety pins etc followed one after the other and sometimes in parallel. A pull there and a push somewhere continued while I was hoping that I would emerge out of it all as a brave bride. I also had to wear a nose ring hoop with a little chain that was pinned to the side of my hair. The hair-do sort of took care of restricting the up movement, the nose ring would help in restraining the left right movement. That is a shy bride in the making. I had never worn a nose ring before, so it was awkward feeling some kind of metal inside my nostrils. I even wondered for a moment what would happen if I sneezed. Then the "being a brave bride" drive hit me and I was distracted by the photographer.

So, I looked down as I walked down the aisle balancing the weight on my head wondering why women had to work so hard on their wedding day when I lifted my head up to see the groom on stage wearing a turban and a feather standing up, a heavy sherwani, a shawl, a sword and the joothiya (uncomfortable shoes). Oh I forgot to mention it was hot on stage with the fire on and fans turned away. I walked up smiling.

"This is going to be so much fun" were my thoughts as I plunged into the whole marriage experience.

It is the first time I guess I am living in a real downtown. Seattle downtown looks pale in comparison to Vancouver downtown. I am loving being here. The best part is that as soon as I step out of my apartment, there are tons of small & big cafes, resaurants, bars, clubs, shops etc. Loads of stuff happening, people walking all the time, and high levels of energy around. I have stopped driving when in downtown as finding a parking spot is painful and pricey. Instead I have started walking to most places. The weather is great, we have long sunny bright days so I have no complaints about walking. There are several activities/events happening all the time in the area which keeps life interesting even for a newbie. Ofcourse all this comes at a price, a pretty high one when you want to live in downtown. As a temporary setup I am fine with this, but I think I would need more breathing space and more room to live in especially if I have visitors & guests.

I work in Richmond which takes me roughly about 45 min by car. I am trying to get myself to take the office shuttle. The drive is annoying with a lot of construction going on and several detours and the traffic in the area. Apparently the city is getting ready for the olympics in 2010. Already? That is what I thought too.

I landed in Vancouver, Canada yesterday and have started work at Microsoft, Canada from today. I hope to be back to Redmond in the beginning of October. Haven't seen much of the city yet so not much to say there.

After a series of events celebrating a certain wedding in India, I am back from the so called *vacation*. Ofcourse the bride never has a real vacation, as I have come to experience. In all fairness, I did have a great time. Its just that so much happened in such a short time, I am still recovering. The only annoyance that kept growing on me was the photographers interfering and asking us to repeat actions so they could capture it. Oh and the fact that I had to smile through all of it. For a few hours I thought I would not smile for a whole year after that.

Nothing much changes in life as Rosh and I continue to live in different cities/states ... for that matter even different countries now. The only change I see is that we now cannot ignore the spouse section in the visa, insurance, bank etc application forms. And a ring on my finger. And people saying "your husband"

I also visited Agatti island in Lakshadweep in India last week. The blue-green sea is beautiful. I would love to go back there, next time hopefully in a non-monsoon period.

I am flying to India next week and am having to do a million things before the trip. Since I will fly to Canada from India I need to pack carefully. Things to take to India and then to Canada and everything else to be packed up and left somewhere. I am having to vacate my apartment which is the biggest pain of all things. I will worry about finding a place to stay when I come back to US in Oct.

For now, the one thing that keeps me excited is the thought of getting good food. I miss home food and Kerala food. Yummm.

Just 1 week

I just learnt about the concept of a wedding registry. I had heard about wish lists and seen lists of gifts that kids wanted for Christmas etc in US. Recently, I heard about a wedding registry where the couple to be married put up a list of presents they want (usually pointing to the model/color/size of products in specific stores). People pick a gift from the list and cross off that item.

Sounds terribly non-Indian, doesn’t it. That is what I thought. Ofcourse from a practical point of view, it is nice that you don’t end up getting 4 copies of Star Trek!

One of those cultural things... First you shake your head then you move along

I may be working in Richmond, Canada for a few months because of some visa issues. While normally I would have been very excited about working for a short while in a new country, right now I am not too happy about it. Bad timing.

From what I hear there are good Indian food choices. We shall find out in a few months and see how true that is.

Looking at the Indian restaurants in the area, I have a half baked idea about a new business idea. (I have a few of those). Of course this is for when I hit the jackpot and am like 50 years old and ready to move away from computers. Not very soon

So the new business idea is to start a Kerala food restaurant. The closest I know of, is a few thousand miles away. The restaurant will be started as a social service and not as a *business*, as in making profits will not be a concern. As long as no losses are incurred, I would think of this as a successful venture. Of course I have worked out some aspects in detail in my head and not thought about several other details.

Going back to moving to Canada, I am thinking how different things are going to be from the US. I have only been to Vancouver & Whistler in winter for snowboarding and had seen a lot of international crowd and heard a lot of British English. I doubt that is typical though.

I am also toying with the idea of staying some place where I can bike to work everyday. After all its going to be summer. Its funny how summer sounds so appealing to me in US & around. Making a trip to India in summer has the opposite effect. I will be making a trip to Kerala in June, in the thick of the monsoon. May be then I'll stop complaining about Seattle showers? Nah!

For over a month now, I have been observing how every morning when I step out of my apartment to the parking lot, my car is loaded with bird shit and all the other cars to either side of my car look clean. I had seen something similar in a movie long ago and it had seemed fuuny then. Now, its just irritating. It does not make a lot of sense to me (You may argue that I am not a bird etc, lets not get into that).
 
My car is green in color, there is a black car to its left and a red car to its right - aren't those colors more attractive? The branch of the tree over my car is dry with almost no leaves, the branches leaning over some of the other cars are much wider with leaves & flowers. (Now don't remind me that I am not a bird yet again).

When I came back form Bloomington after a few days of vacation, I was surprised by the amount (I am positive it can't be just 1 bird) of bird droppings on the windshield, window panes and roof of the car. That was one time I wish the Seattle rains had poured heavily & washed off the mess. I was forced to go for a car wash that day. The reason I did that was to avoid any unprecedented attention.  A week before that I had driven to the grocery store & parked my car. I sat inside for a bit before stepping out. It appeared to me that every person that passed by looked at my car and the droppings with *amazement*. The car glasses are tinted, so they probably didn't notice me in. Some of them even pointed the car to their partners and giggled for a bit.

I have now decided to catch the bird in action one of these days and shoo it away hoping that it will be scared enough to not come back to that very spot. If not that, then at least I know the ... uhh face behind the mess.

What do you do when you feel low? I have noticed that I stay home & watch movies.

Having a bad day? ... sit on the couch all day, eat junk and watch whatever movie you have. Listen to music that will help intensify what you feel, Decline all invitations...Ah, be a loser in short. Sucks eh?

Instead, I should just go to the gym or something. I sometimes even go shopping and come back without buying anything. I guess it is better than going on a spree and regretting later.

No, I am not particularly feeling *low* at the moment, but irritable enough to crib & whine.

I got back from Bloomington today. I carried two small bags with me to Bloomington with the intention of checking in one & carrying the other with me. However, before entering the aircraft the officials claimed to have a full flight & so checked in what was to be my cabin baggage.

So I reached Indianapolis airport with just a purse. Yeah, both my bags didnt arrive :-(

(If you are wondering what the big deal is, you don't know my history with travel & bag loss)

So no gloves, hat, maps, directions, ... and the weather was just perfect. Snow, rain, ice :- all but the sun decided to welcome me in Bloomington.

On my way back to Seattle, I got both my bags, flight was on time etc. Too smooth & simple to be true? Yes, a friend who was supposed to give me a ride form the airport didn't show up & didnt answer his phone.

I am beginning to believe that I may be jinxed with respect to flight journeys.

On the bright side, both my missing bags were delivered on the same day to Bloomington, my vacation was fabulous (I just kept wishing I had made the trip earlier, sigh!) and I did get back home 3 hours after landing in Seattle. Oh and its a sunny day here.

I am in Bloomington from Friday - Monday(Feb 22-25). Going after almost an year, I am actually excited. I hope the weather forecast is right and it is not snowing or raining.

Nothing much on the agenda except meet friends from school & take it easy. And give Rosh a hard time

I thought I had a clear notion of what curry meant before I left India. Now I am not sure. However, I do know that curry wrt thai, malysian, Indonesian & chinese food is different from curry wrt Indian food. I often wondered what curry powder that Indian stores sell is. I thought it was powdered curry leaves, until I picked one packet. The powder was yellowish orange in color and the leaves are green in color. Also the powder didn’t smell anything like curry leaves. It didn’t smell like any masala (spice) I had known. Then I thought curry powder was probably people’s notion of spices that go in an Indian dish [so does that mean dish == curry?]… so would that be like garam masala? Though ofcourse not all Indian dishes have garam masala. It is all very confusing.

While we are at it, I also want to point out that nan, roti, chicken curry & paneer are only a subset of Indian food. Back in India, every state has its own cuisine, dessert etc where some things overlap with some neighboring states and others are completely distinct. Kerala food for example is mainly rice based, a lot of dishes are cooked in coconut oil, curry leaves & coconut are ingredients in most dishes. I am yet to find a restaurant in Seattle area that serves Kerala style food. The closest we get to Kerala food is idlis, dosas & vadas. Which probably is more Tamilian than malayali. (I Think)

The last time I had Kerala food with my non-Indian friends, they were amazed & said they had never seen & eaten any “Indian food” like it. Many of my Indian friends back in Kerala were surprised with they were served “dal-baati-choorma” or even carrot halwa. Not to mention mom’s hurt feelings when one of them asked if the halwa was chutney (chammanthi).

And on that note, I need to get back to cooking my chicken err … curry.

I finally bought tickets to Bloomington. The idea of visiting Bloomington has been brewing for a while, and now I am going back finally. I miss several small things about Bloomington - esp being in downtown. I guess if I was living in seattle downtown, I wouldn't miss it as much. I miss biking & walking to a lot of places, I miss the small town feel & I miss wearing trackpants. But given a choice between living in Bloomington and here, I would pick here anytime :)

I am in Bloomington during the last but one week of February. I am going to freeze but driving in snow is a lot better experience in Indiana as opposed to Seattle area.

Next weekend some of us girls are driving to portland. It is supposed to be a book club retreat which reminds me I haven't read the book yet. Initially we were going to take a train & I was all excited about going on a train for the first time in US. However some girls wanted the comfort of being in a car and avoiding walks....sniff...and so a car it is.

I also may be driving to Vancouver for a weekend trip sometime this month. I am liking this. I am thinking of getting a GPS though that would mean the end of some adventure :). In my case I think it will also save time & increase potential places to go to.

Ok, so another year has passed by and I have decided to note down (or blog) some key events/observations/blah blah, so some day when I am a few hundred years old and have free time I can read this and laugh.

So commenting on my last year’s entry, I think I have touched some things that I wanted to.

I didn’t do all the things in my wish list (Oh wouldn’t things be too simple & hence boring then) though I would have liked to. I am putting the “try sashimi” into the failures bucket. I don’t think punting it to this year’s wishlist will do anything, I am sort of giving up on it … for now. Things that I did but not as much as I intended to include going to the gym, indulging in sports, swimming & traveling. So these will get punted to the next year - 2008

Now moving on to this years list (call it a wish list, set of resolutions or what you will – its all correct)

1. Read books - atleast 1 book a month (want to read all the Smullyan books that Roshan & I have).
2. Go to the gym, start swimming (grrr)
3. Travel & see atleast a few new places within Washington state
4. Learn one new snow sport (already started with snowboarding, but still in the ‘getting frustrated’ state)
5. Keep up with all the girls get togethers, books club retreats, potlucks, blah blah. (No, I am not a feminist, just enjoying girl talk for now)
6. A huge to-buy list – get down to prioritizing & getting them. (List is too long to put up here)
7. Code - Work on at least one pet project outside of work
8. Write letters (yeah what's a list without stretch goals)
9. Cook more often
10. Keep up on the spa visits

Some of my friends who visited me in the past few months in  Bellevue are thoroughly convinced that I am suffering from OCD. Its coz they think my place looks too prim & proper. “Disturbing, … too clean” as they put it. They may be right, but I think I find it difficult to keep it any other way. It just lingers in my head “Oh, it’s a mess … Oh I need to sort it… uggh…” until I get down to tidying it all. I went to Leavenworth during the thanksgiving break where Roshan caught me looking at this book at a book store titled “life is too short to fold your underwear”. I thought it was a funny title…and he said “yes it’s a message, buy it”. I didn’t buy it but am thinking that some things have the effect only if you spend money. Things that come free are not always given their due importance. That goes for my gym membership as well.

Anyways.

Looking back, it’s been a great year. I graduated (yay), took a 3+ month vacation doing absolutely nothing. I got to really spend time with family for the first time after my undergrad. I moved to Bellevue, found a decent roommate who is finicky about cleanliness (Thank you, phew!) and a place close to Bellevue downtown. Oh and found a hindi movie theatre in the area! After 2 years in Bloomington, I know how much this matters to me J. I am enjoying work; I actually look forward to getting to work most days except the really cold, gloomy days when all you want to do is stay in bed.

Here’s wishing everybody a Happy New Year! Let it be the best so far J

I have been busy with work, apartment hunting, car hunting and unpacking my things that arrived from Bloomington. I gave up on the plan for staying alone for a while because of the high rents near the Microsoft campus. So I spent more time finding an apartment where I was mostly certain of finding a suitable roommate. I am now settled and unpacked in a 2 BR condo near Bellevue downtown. Its about 10 min drive to where I work. The only problem with the place is that I cannot bike either way. Its steep and way too tiring for me judging by the look of it. That would mean driving to some bike trail & biking. I wonder if I will do that.

I now have a *real* car, its a volkswagen passat glx. The good thing about it is that its fully loaded, all bells & whistles. Small change from my first car. I knew nothing about cars a month ago, and now I actually know a fair amount. No technical details, but about model/make and such. I learnt that the favorite desi car is Toyota Corolla. Next probably the honda cars. I am already thinking about what my next car will be. I am tempted to get a convertible, it will be fun in the summers. But we'll think about it when we get there. Winter is creeping in and I need to buy some new winter gear. My Bloomington snow jackets etc will probably be of no use here.

I am yet to explore Seattle like a tourist. I am hoping to do it on my own or with other newbies. There are three things that I put on my (stretch) goal list when I moved in.

1. To go to a gym

2. To go to office early & get out early (along 8-5 lines) and

3. To make more women friends.

I have failed in all 3 so far. Well actually, making women friends has probably been a success as in I do hang out with women more than I did ever since high school. That is one flip side of being a part of computer science. As an engineering student, the men:women ratio was very high during my undergrad, same with work life & grad school. And so, during my vacation I sat down and thought about the fun discussions that I have had in the past in women only groups... and I decided that I should do something to ensure that I do not miss out completely on those.

Though this is not my first visit to Redmond, this is the first time I am looking to live in Redmond. The longest I have stayed here is for 3 months as an intern during summer last year. As one may guess, it is different trying to settle in. I was hoping to find an apartment for myself close to campus but the rent is making me reconsider the roommate option. I also need to buy a car soon. If Bloomington needed a car, then this place demands one for sure. Public transport in both the places I have lived in US is poor.

On the bright side, I bought a new cell phone, actually a pocket PC - the 8525. Its cool.

My journey from India didn't result in any (baggage loss) surprises except that I was 9.5 hours later than expected thanks to missing my connection flight from New York. So not completely uneventful.

I am flying out of Cochin tomorrow after an unexpectedly long but rather pleasant vacation. Now that all work permit & visa issues have been resolved, I will join Microsoft, Redmond again as a SDE, this time full-time.

I have a 30+ hour journey ahead, phew! I am carrying two Kushwant Singh books along, these days I seem to enjoy his writing quite a lot. I hope I do not have any *interesting* stories to tell about my baggage at the end of this

I am reading some books by Kushwant Singh and came across a sher that I found very funny. The situation is that when Kushwant Singh visited his birth place Lahore he met the minister on a formal dinner and “offered him an appropriate sher (verse) for his next confrontation with orthodoxy”:

Mulla, gar asar hai dua mein

To masjid hila ke dikha!

Gar naheen to do ghoont pee

Aur masjid ko hilta dekh.

There is an english translation that I didn’t find so funny but will quote here

Mulla, if your prayer has power

Let me see you shake the mosque!

If not, take a couple of pegs of liquor

And see how the mosque shakes on its own

He then goes on to talk about the difference between Indian & Pakistani college girls saying that in India one looked at a group of girls and tried to see if there were pretty faces whereas in Pakistan it was the other way round, one tried to see if there was anybody not pretty.

While my vacation in Cochin has got prolonged I am making sure I read, eat & sleep as much as I can. In short, I am having a good time.

I recently got an invite to join Shelfari through email and I decided to join. It suggested that I sign into my gmail address book so I could look up who's already on shelfari. It showed me a (rather small) list of people already on the network and I intended to send them add requests. Instead what seems to have happened is that every person/unit I have had any correspondence with through my gmail id was sent an invite. Uggh. I do not like the idea of gmail being smart enough to store every email address I communicate with. Stop watching so carefully and ask me if I want to save any of these.

So, if you got such an email from me, apologies. It was unintentional.

I finished reading Harry Potter 7 and it meets my expectations, which was very high. At least one of the hopes (snape) came out true out of the two (snape & dumbledore) I blogged earlier.

Roshan is reaching Cochin tomorrow after 2 years in US and a 24 hour delayed journey. I am excited to hear what he has to say about the place, people etc after this gap.

Welcome back to India, Roshan

I got back from chennai yesterday after a great time & some adventure with shopping in the busy streets of T-nagar.

Going from Cochin, Chennai was a pleasant change. The roads are much wider and traffic controlled. Also there are some signs of night life, like the number of autos and people after 9.00 pm. Shopping was great fun, loads of variety, choices, big crowds and unbelievable amount of bargaining. Oh how I easily fit into my old shoes and enjoyed bargaining! Its quite a skill and my sisters think I am good.

I did not like Chennai because of my not-so-good ~2 months experience with the place after my undergraduation, as is indicated my my previous post. I think its a little unfair, it was the first time away from home and having to do things I had never done before all on my own with limited resources was a little overwhelming. But, now I like chennai enough to say that I would consider it over Bangalore to stay in if I were to choose between the two. The weather & water is a problem, some stretches of drives bear such fragrance that one would feel completely knocked out but the congestion in Bangalore is a bigger problem IMO.

Now I am very happy to be back home, Harry Potter & the deathly hallows is on my table and I have decided to read it slowly (i.e. as slowly as possible). It is sad that there will not be any more waiting for future Harry Potters :-(

I grew up in Kerala but never went to a local toddy bar, never had sea food in a restaurant and never had any ayurveda treatments done. Once I stepped out of Kerala, the curiosity arose and I wanted to try everything Kerala is known for. I had never tasted toddy and more importantly never seen a kallu shaap ... it was this unspoken men-only place I occasionally saw in malayalam movie clips. During my last trip to India, I asked some friends for good seafood restaurants. The recommended upscale places turned out to cater too much to non-keralites especially to the foreigners. And so the taste was far removed from authentic Kerala style seafood. The other strong recommendation was toddy bars which came with a warning "ofcourse you can't go"
 
My brother in law discovered this place called mulla (jasmine) panthal (roof) in cochin, which apparently has a website & even an orkut community dedicated to it. Before going we called up and were briefed about the place by a friendly manager who said it was fine for "families" (meaning women folk) to visit and they were given separate rooms but that it essentially was a bar. And so my sister, brother in law and I set off for lunch at this place. It was a much longer drive than we expected and stopped at several places to ask for directions and everybody just pointed ahead asking us to drive ahead further. Reminded me of the "abhi dilli (delhi) door hai" episode. Finally far from the main roads, in an alley lay our destination. Yeah it was a Harold & Kumar's white castle moment.
 
The usher helped us park the car and showed us the way in. We were seated in a room and briefed about how their toddy was made. We were then served with an earthen pot full of toddy (2 litres as we discovered later) and glasses. Toddy smells repulsive and tastes even worse, to the untrained palate such as mine. Once we settled in we ordered a whole range of dishes including karimeen (pearl spot) fry, prawns, kappa (tapioca), kokku (crane or stork from description) & duck (my first time). The food was delicious, a banquet I must say. Tears flowed profusely, sweat trickeled down our bodies but there was no stopping us from munching the super spicy prawns. Once I was done with food, I was curious to see what the rest of the bar looked like. So I asked the man in the group to accompany me, my sister was too stuffed to walk. The place looked busy & big. I suspect not all local bars are this big or spacious. The food was inexpenisve compared to any other place I have been to but some local folks say that for a kallu shaap its expensive. I am positive I will go back there atleast once more during this trip.
 
That is one more thing knocked off the to-do-before-I-die list.

I am reading gone with the wind at the moment. It is a book I have picked and never gotten very far a couple of times in the past due to various reasons, lack of interest never being one. As a teenager I would have been completely taken on by a character like Howard Roark in fountainhead or Rhett Butler in this book. And to some extent even Ashley Wilkes. My gut feeling is that it takes a woman to write, imagine, describe & build a strong male character like these. [Let us not argue over whether a man can write it or not. He possibly can, trying hard to think like a woman but he may not choose to ... dwell on all the fine details that women tend to. Possibly different ones. Or wait, let us argue.]

Now I suspect it is an impossible character, quite removed from reality & existing in works of fiction only. They sure make an interesting read.

My plan to visit Rajasthan had to be called off due to flooding in Gujarat & Rajasthan. Trains are being delayed & re-routed, so my folks thought it best to travel at a later date. Unfortunately that means for me, the trip wont happen this year for sure. And who knows when, if at all. I was looking forward to a scenic train trip via konkan and meeting up with people in Rajasthan. Too bad :(
 
This also means that I need to think up of some alternate journey so I make good use of my short time during this trip in India. Then again, with rains pouring as hard as they are, there are hardly any choices. I am definitely upset about this trip getting cancelled as there were so many things I had planned on doing - seeing camels, desert, peacocks, mehandi, clothes, doing shopping, trying rajasthani food, meeting lots and lots of people (family largely), taking pictures & just the different air & sand that is so unique to the state. And to think that a few weeks ago I was dreading the heat ... oh well!

Two weeks ago when I came to Cochin, I was pleasantly surprised to see that folks at home separated out plastic & trash as plastic was picked only once a week and trash on a daily basis. Last week, it was announced that plastic, metal, glass, egg shells (why?), paper & coconut fibre would be collected only on Tuesdays & remaining trash everyday. While folks are initially finding it difficult to make it a habit to separate out trash and there is ambiguity as to certain wrappers being plastic or not, I am happy about this big change. Hopefully it is a step towards a better Cochin.

Last week I travelled a bit & found Calicut railway station cleaner than any railway stations I have been to in the past [which is not a small number ] . Apparently there was a 2 week cleanliness drive with banners all over the station requesting passengers to use dust bins, not to spit tobacco etc. And for once it looked like it was working. I am not sure if in the recent years there has been this kind of drive in other parts of the country. Cochin & Shornur railway stations looked the same as they always have except for some computer kiosks installed for railway information access.

Next month I am travelling to Jaipur & I hope the railway stations on the way are cleaner than they have been years ago. My memories of travel in north India date back to at least 5 years ago & are full of extremely unclean areas in and around railway stations, for that matter most public transport locations. I also realize why as a kid I never liked travelling in India. Lack of clean toilets. Now it seems like the pay & use toilets in ladies waiting rooms in stations are kept clean. Phew. Travel aches. Disgusting topic. So moving on, I have a nice, adventurous journey planned out for july that takes me through Jaipur, Jaisalmer, Udaipur and our family place. Nice because some of these places are beautiful & I saw a few as a teenager. I am sure I will see them different now & I have a digital camera now. Yay! Adventurous because it is going to be in the scorching heat around a desert.

No, the k-series haven’t stopped. And the 3-times-repeat-scene-for-emphasis has increased (yeah, as if there was scope. Nahi nahi nahi, Kya kya kya, Maa maa maa). And the bollywood song sequences which fill a good 1/3^rd of the serial time has also increased. One of the popular k-series started in my 2nd year of engineering, I remember kyunki saas bhi kabhi bahu thi in ~2000, guess what - it’s still running. Yeah! And the hero & heroine at different points refused to continue. As if that would hinder the continuance, the hero got replaced by some random man & the heroine ... well since she was a little more important in the show, she had to either run into an accident, get a plastic surgery to look like a totally new person or die & come back. How smart & original. All the tv serials seem to be doing exactly this. That way characters are dispensable. And story *dynamic*.

I haven’t watched a whole single episode of any serial yet, but I have watched enough clips to boldly claim a few things. The serials have several generations, earlier the only way you could tell the mother from the daughter was this streak of white hair somewhere in the mass of just-groomed hair. Now, the white hair has left the scene, so when I guess the daughter & mother & check with my mom if its correct – I am wrong. Yes. For the clothes, these are women at home – always dressed like it’s a festival or party, decked with jewellery & bright colors & layers of make-up. Yeah, most of them look good alright, but far removed from the character they play (Then, again are they?). It’s very easy to spot the bad from the good, they tend to indulge in long soliloquies making weird faces at the camera which is the director’s ingenious way of showing evil intentions. In Malayalam serials, it is even simpler to make out bad girls from good, bad ones wear jeans. Ahem. No comments on that.

The scary part is not any of this, it is the fact that many many housewives (& possibly others) watch this stuff, enjoy this stuff. Creeepy! Women I spoke to, including my mother, refused to enjoy watching it & say they watch it to kill time. Right, prefer this to anything else … is exactly my point.

As to why I am watching this stuff, I enjoy mom’s food too much and spend considerable time in front of the tv in the evenings & don’t have much jurisdiction over what plays. Moreover, its fun to see folks watch & react. Even crib & continue watching. I did that some time back but strongly believe the serials were actually well thought out & good – still remember some names buniyaad, chutki, byomkesh bakshi, malgudi days, farmaan, honi unhoni …

Finally, after switching blog hosters we have a blog up and running again. The down time was quite annoying especially because I had finished with IU & was free like I haven't been in a long time. I spent a couple of weeks in Seattle having my first experience with 2 cats as pets and changing from either running away form them or driving them away to missing them wake me up by scraping my door in the morning & running after me until I serve them stuff with my breakfast. I think I am going to get cats as pets. So much easier than a dog. Considering that I never had a pet before & am generally uncomfortable around creatures rubbing their fur or licking me, this is a huge step!

I flew Air India for the first time this week & since the number of hops were 1-3 less than my usual, I actually got all my bags. The worst leg of my travel was from Delhi to Cochin, the crowd & the pushing & shoving their way through every little gap to get ahead in line at the airport was quite frustrating.

Haven't stepped out of home yet in Cochin but the rain & the smell of wet earth are so reminiscent of childhood. I look forward to this vacation in India.

So, I can swim the breadth of a pool now. Free style & back stroke. I still need to get comfortable with breathing in water and expending lesser energy than I do now. But being able to swim feels good, after 2 months of struggle.

There are so many things to keep in mind while swimming, I just don't have that many buffers. A little like learning to drive. So, hopefully with more time in water I'll internalize some of these things and the book keeping won't be as cumbersome. The length of the pool makes me nervous, just the thought that if I stop I will drown is scary enough. It is one of those initial mental block things I guess.

Swimming has changed a few things like the days I swim I have to eat well before & after swimming. Boy, does swimming make you hungry or what! The intake of water has increased many fold when in the pool. It is not intentional. I spend a substantial amount on parking every class. Sometimes during the session I know my instructor is talking to me only through his body language or coz I see his lips moving, my ears are full of water and I feel stupid trying to make sense of what he said. There should be an easy way to get the water out of your ears spontaneously.

I have been busy with random things.

The good - Spring has begun here, the weather is great (yeah, its shorts & bike time again!!), the car is running fine and I can finally use an arm for swimming.

The bad - I have been keeping unwell and am still unwell.

The good - I have to book tickets to India, I am planning a 2 month vacation in summer in India

The bad - I have to pay for the tickets

Besides school, I did a bit of travelling to discover that "Hot Springs" in Arkansas is a myth. Hot springs, Arkansas does not have any hot springs left, yellowstone national park is still the only place I have seen real hot springs & plenty of them. Mammoth caves in Kentucky on the other hand has some beautiful caves with some fabulous stalactite formations.

I would like to:

   Eat a good meal, sit back, relax, meet some non-CS people, return some of the missed calls, sleep like there is no tomorrow

I will

o   Not cook & when absolutely starved, struggle to find some place open and drive-able and get a take away some thing.

o   Get worked up about the no. of things that need to be completed.

o   Sit before my monitor for hours and get up only to visit the restroom or get some water when the bottle is empty only to realize how my back hurts, my legs hurt, my posture isn’t right, eyes feel heavy as I forgot to blink and come back and continue.

o   Go to sleep when I have made the same obvious mistake over 3 times and feel completely brain dead

o   Wake up to an alarm that I want to toss away in the morning

On the bright side, next week is spring break and I hope to spend at least a few days *not working*. The remaining time, I hope to catch up with things, esp. the compiler.

We had a snow storm last week and my classes got cancelled for 2 days. The weather was bad, there was no question of driving. After a few days, the snow began turning into ice. Here are some pictures taken in the last 2 days. You can click them for better clarity.

And today there was lots of water, thanks to the sunshine after what feels like a looong time. (temp: 6C)

The first week of the semester has been quite good. I will continue working as a research assistant with Dr. Fox and will continue blogging about the status on blogspot. For the courses this semester, I have taken Compilers and Dynamic Logic in my department. I have also enrolled for swimming lessons with the sports school. I am quite excited about learning something new outside of CS after, who knows, how many years.

The winter here has been very mild so far, which is quite great. Its mid-jan and we have not had a proper snow fall yet. Great! I look forward to an exciting semester, I am also telling myself to make best of the time I have left in Bloomington & at Indiana University. This would mean watch some of the auditions, performances, oprahs etc in the music school here which is one of the best in the country; see all the museums and whatever little there is to see in the city.

Its going to be an eventful year in many senses.

[This entry was written on Friday, I couldn’t post it as dasblog failed to add new entries. So, some things like "no snow" etc are meaningless now]

I got back to Bloomington 2 days ago. No points for guessing that both my bags didnt make it. One was delivered yesterday to my house, the other hasn't been spoken of yet. Its funny how on the way to India, I enjoyed the flight food and ate everything that was served and on the way back how everything tasted bad and I got back to my old habit of selecting 1 out of 5 things to eat & wasting the rest.

I ate the best french food at Le Petit cafe in Bloomington, today was my 2nd brunch there. Great food and great service. Thanks to Kyle  for introducing the place to me.

Tomorrow I shall start the final semester of my course. I have the liberty of choosing anywhere between 1 and 4 course(s) this semester. I have enrolled for 2 courses, I can't find a 3rd interesting course. I am wondering if I should look outside of computer science. I have one week to finalize the list.

I miss India already but its great being back in Bloomington. Sort of enjoy the streets and campus with no students (most are yet to come back from the break). Strangely my car seems to start without any trouble. What a pleasant surprise!

I am back in Cochin after 1.5 years. I left Cochin in 2002 to work but would end up visiting cochin for some major holidays atleast twice a year. Even then I’d notice changes, but now after 1.5 years it interesting to see how things are changing. More places to eat, not sure more is right, I do not see some of the old places I’d go to. Now you’ll see signs of the popular brands like café coffee day, barista, nilgiris etc. Bigger malls and a better selection of clothes, but the same old stares by men & women. Yeah! For those of you from Kerala, you know exactly what I mean. Others, well, forget subtlety & glancing, this is a straight outright stare. And you look back and it has no effect on them. It’s annoying sometimes & sometimes funny.

The traffic is just amazing. The whole scenario seems so chaotic with a 2 laner being used as a 1-5 laner and I’d feel really scared in a car when a bus was next to us ignoring the squeamish little car and headed straight on its way as though we ceased to exist. And I’d be terrified when we were sandwiched between two buses. But then once I saw a guy on a bicycle in the middle of the heavy traffic riding happily and the whole traffic appeared to adjust to his meandering around. It was just great! And then I noticed this amazing pattern in what had seemed like chaotic traffic. People didn’t really yield, they raced but just when they needed to they’d move away and get through or brake just in time to avoid  a clash. You have to be really skilled to maneuver you way through, and probably ie what the biker was up to. It’s what I call aggressive (yet safe) driving & survival of the fittest. Imagine buses, auto rickshaws, cars, motor cycle, scooters, bicycles & pedestrians – all with their urgenicies, communicating with each other using the horns in different frequencies & pitches. It’s like the whole traffic is dynamically adjusting to you and you to them. My sister isn’t aggressive enough as a driver and so gets easily left behind until somebody notices that it’s a lady driving and shows his chivalry by staying behind and honking continuously so she takes off. It works. With my dad, drives are fun. Not for him perhaps, but I am not talking about the driver’s sentiments. I wouldn’t know.

So the latest addition to my Things-to-do list is drive in cochin without fear. Some day I will.

Another thing I realized is how advantageous it is sometimes to be a woman. The lines are so much smaller when buying movie tickets for example. It’s almost unfair to the guys. But I ain’t complaining. I had forgotten how it used to be, until the help I got with my luggage on the flight to Cochin. Aw, I didn’t have to ask for help, men just helped out. My backpack was so heavy I could never lift it up by myself and would usually end up asking the gentleman/lady in the vicinity to lend a hand. And I got help. But here help came before I asked. Same at the airport. Same with my mother when she’s bought groceries at the supermarket. Same with my sisters when they are driving or parking. Oh, in the last case it’s probably more like “oh it’s a lady driving, no wonder” attitude. That’s there in US as well. So it must be one of those gender things I don’t understand.

People are very friendly & generally helpful, again something I had forgotten I guess. I’d not be worried about my car getting stuck here while driving, in US on the other hand it’s a major fear. No wonder things like AAA are such a hit there and so unpopular here. I am also amused by the curiosity of people here, I absolutely love it.

The best feature though is not any of this. It’s how practical it is here to eat great food outside. You don’t have to be a vulgarly rich person to eat every meal outside (Unless you are in Bangalore downtown, which is like mini-US anyways). And not a taco-bell, burger-king, mc-donalds, pizza, burger kinda food. I just feel better having said that.

The third semester has come to an end for me today (though officially it ends the end of this week), it has been a rewarding semester, bits of sweat, some long nights and occasionally some interesting problems to solve. The annoying part was that my office this semester was in a different building from where I have my classes. Biking uphill in the cold was no fun, so I would end up TS-ing from home most of the days. This would mean sometimes spending days within the walls of my apartment and finding a short-lived blissful state when I stepped outside. Unlike India, sitting in my apartment here gives me absolutely no idea as to what it is like outside. Probably due to things like lack of ventilation and constant temperature inside.

I look forward to a break back in the midst of palm trees, family, *real* food, old friends, sea, the traffic noises, the vegetable market and speaking in hindi and malayalam. And for the unfortunate souls who decided to stay behind, I promise to come back with stories, many!

PS. Kochi has internet, and I can blog. So don't even think about LOTA!

Not sure if it is lack of sleep, too much data and a small buffer, ageing, retardation, maturity or something else… But there are enough mishaps to constitue a (blog) enumeration. So here it goes

• I realized that I never gained 15 kgs. It was a wrong pound-kilogram conversion. (Somebody calculated 100 lbs as 55 kgs & I believed it, grrr)
• Today I put clothes for laundry & the detergent in the laundry basket and the laundry card over the clothes. I went to the laundry room opposite to my apartment and started loading the clothes after pouring some detergent. At the end I had to swipe my card to start the cycle and realized I hadn’t taken the card out of the basket. I didn’t see it in the basket and took the clothes out thinking it probably fell in the washer with the clothes. But no, it wasn’t in.  I looked around thinking if it had fallen out somewhere & traced my way back carefully till my door but no luck. Now the card was missing, I had loaded two washers, clothes were in detergent, so there was no *no washing* – I had no time to waste and I was frustrated. The leasing office was open, I could take a walk and perhaps explain the story and get a new card. Sigh, anything that involves me talking to the *polite* staff in my leasing office sends this electrifying sensation in my veins. You have to be in a certain mode with all the shield of thick skin you can muster to talk to the women there. I carried the basket back to my house and was trying to get into a different mode. When I put the basket down I noticed the laundry card sticking to the vertical side! Blue card against blue basket standing up…and I had missed seeing it. Uggh. Hurray, no visit to the dreaded place.
• Few weeks back, I was cycling back home in the night. I had just begun to pedal and thought something was wrong with my back tyre. I turned behind, all looked good and I turned back to see that I was headed straight for a post. Next, I was on the grass next to the post and all I felt was embarrassment. There were probably some house parties going on in the neighbourhood, I could hear some girls in the distance discuss “Oh my God Oh my God…Look…..Oh she is moving…oh she is getting up….”, I got up and lifted my bike and pedaled away telling myself that I was wearing a helmet & a light jacket and it will all be forgotten tomorrow when the world sobered up.
• Now, I do not recall this, my sister cited the whole story to me. Apparently she called me, I took the phone and she asked if I recognized the voice. I said “no”, she then said she was Neha. There were some question answer series and my sister got upset and hung up. Apparently she waited for me to call her back and apologize. My second sister cited the story to me (& the phone records validate the story :-( )and I had to call up Neha and justify.
• In the beginning of the semester, I mailed by broadband cheque with the to and from addresses interchanged. And when I found it in my mailbox after a week+, I told myself I am not desperate to mail cheques to myself. This resulted in my broadband connection getting disconnected for 2 weeks. Life was bad then.
• I finally got an old car last weekend. I am yet to affix the license plates but I have been driving a bit. All the 3 people who have sat next to me while I was driving have been slightly uncomfortable. I know that I need to brake when they stretch out their legs involuntarily. I am having a lot of fun driving though.
• I showed some pictures of my car to my brother and he very politely said (in hindi) "Car thodi khataara nahi hai"!(I am not sure how to translate that). I laughed and replied "Thodi nahi, kaafi khataara hai".  
• I can’t help smiling when I see a stop sign, especially a 2-way, 3-way or 4-way stop sign. For those of you who don’t know, if there is a 4 way stop sign at an intersection where 4 roads meet then all vehicles stop completely at the stop sign and proceed in the order they arrived. Now, I smile when I see this because I think how this would be if it were in India. The day we follow this rule in India, lot of things would have changed. It would be very very interesting.

Thats me these days

Yes, I need a car.

Aug 2005 – Sept 2006

The most

1. I saw the most no of english & foreign movies [french, spanish, italian, israeli] in the last one year compared to the movies seen in the rest of my life put together. Same goes for television series
2. I thought and thought. I probably did the most amount of constructive thinking and retrospection in the last 1 yr
3. I spent the maximum amount of money out of my pocket in the last one year – tickets to US in aug 2005, laptop in sept 2005, travel to Europe & back in aug 2006, round trip tickets to India and back
4. I gained 15 kgs (~33 pounds) of weight.
5. I missed Indian food the most in the last one yr. Also home & Diwali.
6. I cooked more than ever
7. I ate the most amount of junk food, skipping breakfast
8. Some would probably say I am very independent now, I paid an electricity bill for the first time myself last year. By mailing a check :P

The least

1. Watched the least no. of hindi movies compared to the no. every other year
2. Least amount of physical labour. No laundry, no sweeping, mopping. That explains point 4 above. way too sedentary

Achievements

1. I quit Microsoft and rejoined Microsoft as an intern last summer
2. I joined IU
3. I got a drivers license last summer
4. I cook non-veg. Chicken & pork. Tried fish & prawns once and may be the last time for a while.
5. I ate seafood. Shrimps, mussels, clams & crabs cooked in sauce. An year ago, if somebody told my future as me wearing an apron to eat steamed seafood in its shell using tools, I would have never believed it.

Realizations

1. I should have learnt Haskell or scheme as my first programming language
2. I work great as long as I stay excited. The excitement rarely lingers
3. I have a long initial warm up time. It took me 2.5 semesters in undergrad and 1^st semester in grad school.
4. I never wanted a million dollars before. In other words, I started wanting to be a millionaire starting last year.
5. I had the best summer. Seattle was great, made some new friends, kept all the old ones.
6. I feel more mature & cynical. I also get occasional pangs of “what is left in life to do”, I called it enlightenment once but Anil pointed that then in the same breath I wouldn’t crib about how life in most parts of US is built around the assumption that you have a car. Oh well, I am growing old.
7. Life in Bloomington is a lot fun-ner with a vehicle. Bike can get me to places foot won’t, but cannot get me to several places. I need a car.
8. I need to see a lot of the US – Manhattan, other parts of NY, museums of DC, the Niagra  falls(sounds so absolutely desi, J), at least I have photos at universal studios & Disney world to add to my desi profile ;)
9. I know more about the world, I understand that I don’t understand American politics very well yet. I don’t particularly want to either.
10. I always believed in multiverse, now I hope that I would either be able to go into outer space or have an alien encounter in this lifetime. No, I don’t want to do anything in this direction to make it happen. Its one of those things you just want to happen somehow. Wishful thinking huh.

Things I hope to say next year

1. I go to the gym
2. I am back into sports – play something regularly – Frisbee, squash, badminton – something
3. I am eating healthier food
4. I am thinking about getting married
5. I blog
6. Travel in India (I want to go back and see Rajasthan)
7. I have the digital photo frame among other gadgets
8. I am enjoying work
9. I have a car
10. I tried sushi [read as sashimi]

[Update: Added links to seafood]

On my flight from London to Cincinatti [US], I went through the usual screening. Just before boarding the flight there was another check. I just carried a purse with my passport, I-20, pencils, wallet, cell phone & keys. The officer asked me if I carried any liquids or any pens or pencils. I said yes to pencils and he asked me to leave them with him. I did that and wondered as to how on earth I could take a flight down with a pencil. [Yeah later Michel argued that one could kill using a pen]. Once the flight took off the airhostess passed landing cards to the passengers and asked us to fill them up. Since we didnt have anything to write with, they provided pens. 

In a conversation, in order to illustrate the difference between urdu and hindi I brought up the analogy of UK English and US English. Not sure how many would agree, I think Urdu is to Hindi as UK English is to US English.

Cambridge, UK

The whole city is like a collection of monuments & ancient architecture. And the unusual thing is that they are being used today and are not turned into some kind of a museum.  Walks randomly throw names like Newton, Charles Babbage, Fleming, William Harvey, Rayleigh at you. Wonder how it is for a student studying there – knowing that Sir Issac Newton probably sat at this spot and wrote his equations; the pressure of history must be overwhelming. 

A trip to Cambridge is not complete if you don’t go punting on the river Cam. Punting, as I learnt in this trip is “An open flatbottom boat with squared ends, used in shallow waters and usually propelled by a long pole.” (Dictionary.com)

It was common to see students refer to their English guides before getting into a store, it seemed amusing then. Later I was doing that at Rome with an English to Italian guide

London, UK

I have never comprehended a big (modern) city like London being the way it is. They have very well preserved some of the old ways - including architecture, road signs, the squares, carriages etc. Victorian architecture fills the city. I thought American food was bad for my taste, but English food is no better than what I had comprehended. Mashed potatoes, No offence but come on, that is not real food!

Paris, France

Aah, Paris is one place I definitely wouldn’t mind spending a couple of years in. I was mostly a tourist during my time there though one day I spent as a traveler to get a feel for the place. It was common to see porn magazines in all kinds of shops. Tobacco shops, chocolate shops, places I would go to buy water, make calls etc! Men & women pay a lot of attention to grooming themselves. Initially I thought may be women in Europe are more beautiful than the women in States, then I realized women are a lot more feminine in their sense of dressing. Longer hair, hair curled or crimped usually, skirts & dresses and things like that.

One weird thing I saw was the Catacombs of Paris. It is the sort of thing that I could never have imagined, Plastination is shocking enough. Human skulls and bones stacked up artistically. Who would have thought of associating skeletons with aesthetics! Apparently when they ran out of space in graveyards, during the black plague they exhumed the bodies and dumped them in this big abandoned quarry in Paris. Today this is a tourist spot! We were not allowed to use flash while photoghraphing the bones, and it was quite dark in there, so the photos do not really show what we saw. However, wikipedia and other websites have some good photos. On exit, they checked our bags to ensure we hadn't hijacked any remains!

The city seemed clean and the trains, stations looked well maintained. But the underground always stank of pis and I wondered how in a crowded station and a nice terminal people would pee. May be it was the lack of ventilation or something, all the subways smelled of pis. I remember asking a lady owning a souvenier shop if there was a toilet somewhere and she said "No, not in this area. If you are asking for a man he can do it anywhere here (she moved her hands gesturing all around) ..."

The ads in the stations read "You have a great resume, but do you speak english". My impression from my conversations with many of the local people is that they think speaking English is cool, I don’t think they know how cool they are, the way they are. Then again, that is the case in most places, huh.

I had often read about French cafes in novels as a kid and I was excited about visiting some of them myself to enjoy eating & sipping a drink the way they did in the books. I got over that fantasy after trying a couple of them. I'll be happy to be proven wrong, may be I always tried the wrong dishes - but 5 days of trying different things and not finding anything satisfying ... I can conclude, I don’t enjoy French food.

Rome, Italy

My first impression after I took a bus from the airport to the main railway terminal and stepped out of the bus was “This is so much like India, I already feel good”.

I could smell pis all over (no, that is not why I felt happy. And here the smell was at every intersection on the roads), the buildings around, roads,  people – all so similar to our railway stations. The feeling reinforced when the lady at the breakfast place near my hotel gave me a huge hug from the 2nd day. Its like we were friends for a long time! Oh, people were so warm & friendly. And Italian sounds so cool, they taught me more Italian in those 6 days than I taught them any English. I enjoyed being greeted with signora di buona sera ☺

I saw some of the ancient remains that are preserved from before Christ was born. Forum around which Rome was developed was excavated & preserved, it shows the (remains of) palaces, secret passages, spa facilities etc from the times of Caeser & Augustus. Also the colloseum next to it which they say is only 20% of what it used to be. Its over 2000 years old and the changing shape of the stone steps prove that people have been using them for several years now. The movie gladiator is no exaggeration, the colloseum is huge & can seat upto 50,000 spectators at a time. It is built with multiple exits designed such that within 10 min a person seated anywhere can exit the colloseum. Today, only one such exit exists.

The Vatican, I had expected to be surprised – and I was ☺. Sistine Chapel with its rich paintings on the ceiling, St. Peters Basilica – sheer size of it is daunting. I can imagine how powerful this would have been. No photography is allowed in the main chapel, so I do not have any pictures.

The subway system is not as good as Paris & London, there are more signs of vandalism and often bigger crowds. Also the looks easily change from glance to stares. The men are not as subtle as the Brits or French with respect to looking at women.

And finally the food, it is great! Yes, see I told you it’s a little like back home ☺

I was using an eyewitness travel book as my reference guide and they recommened eating at this little hostel called Fraternity Domus run by a group of friendly nuns. Finidng the place was difficult, but the food was worth all the trouble and more. They served a first course of pasta (you could choose between 2) with a choice of wine. The 2nd course was roasted beef and chicken with some cooked vegetables in sauce. The most delicious meat I had after leaving India. I told myself I could eat no more when a 3rd course of salad followed concluding with a final course of fruits (plums & peaches). I had to go back for lunch the next day. The other people there were all local folk and greeted us in Italian. If you go there make sure you call and book in advance and you are there at the right time. There is only a 15 min window. Thankyou guide book for recommending this place!

And now, I am back in US. Unlike how it had seemed when I came from India the first time – it seems a lot cheaper now (London & France are expensive!), more conservative and there are other smaller things that I see different. However, out of all the places I have been to people in the States have a better civic sense. Some may argue that it is the result of stricter enforcement of law – I do not know.

It is funny how little of the world actually speak english, but how much importance the language is given in many countries. 

I have uploaded photos from my travel on Flickr, the sad thing is that most of those photos need to be viewed in full screen mode to see the grandeur of the places but flickr doesn’t let you do that in a slideshow. To see it in original size, click the image, click the zoom icon above the pic and then click the original size option, painful - I know! Until I find a better option, you can follow these links - Cambridge, London, Paris & Rome.

Updated: Fixed some typos & links. Added Cambridge link.

After a long (really long) travel including delayed flights & long airport waiting times I reached Bloomington without my baggage. Yes, all my bags didn't make it. Same with Roshan who travelled back with me. I flew from Rome to London & London to Atlanta (in US). The scene at Rome airport wasn't very good. Besides the no-carryon-liquids, pens, lipsticks, pencils etc restriction, the flight was delayed by several hours without any announcement in between. Things were much worse at London airport. I spent 4 hours there to receive my baggage form Rome. People were quiet & patient. Most of them lay on conveyor belts, trolleys, their luggage and some on floors. People who were walking by seemed to carry a lot of suspicion in their eyes. I can only imagine how tough it can be for a guy who appears to be a muslim to travel in these circumstances. I sincerely hope that the situation comes to normal soon & there is peace.

My bags were delivered the next day, intact. I hope to blog about my travel with some pictures after getting some rest.

So, when I joined for my internship there were two things I was super-excited about.

1. Write code [or rather to see if I can live upto the challenge of designing & writing code at MS] &

2. Get to go to Bill Gates's house. Today this happened.

So about 200 of us (graduating interns) set off in buses at around 5.45 pm. We stopped at a church near Bill's house for some security check. We were told ahead of time not to carry anything except keys & ids. The security check was to ensure that we checked in any electronics/weapons/forbidden material with them if we carried any. We changed buses there and went on this winding road uphill in the middle of what seemed like a jungle. Narrow road on which only a single bus could pass at a time. We disembarked and took a long flight of stairs down to get into the yard at Bill's house where we were to spend the rest of the evening. Yes, the house appeared big [though most of it was probably underground from where we looked] and the yard was big. The view was awesome with lake washington around & trees all over. Also worth mentioning is the little beach [artificially made close to the lake shore by the house] and a rumor floating that the beach sand was actually imported from hawaii. Interns seemed quite happy with the food & wine, I wasn't much of an eater/drinker.

I was chatting with some interns when one of them whispered "he is here" and I asked if Bill Gates was really there. A small group of interns had already surrounded him and in a few minutes, the entire intern group was standing around Bill. ...First few seconds of sheer silence and Bill just looking at all of us. It was one of those moments, I guess everybody felt the same way. Just quiet watching Bill, mesmerized, filled with awe. Then there were smiles and polite comments about "Big yard", "nice house", "thanks for the party" from some interns. After about what seemed like ~7min people started asking questions. Later in the evening Bill gave a small talk and stood around to answer interns' questions till the end of the party. A couple of VPs were there through out walking through the intern groups & making conversations. Soft music was playing throughout - you could hear it in the same low volume by the dock, in the yard, by the beach and by the little pool.

The party got over at 9.00, I came back to office and thought to myself "This place looks a little different from there. Just a wee bit"

Oh, my internship is so worth it thanks to today evening. Wow, its not the wine that's keeping me high :)

I figured I was really bad with directions & maps a couple of years ago. To be precise when I started my undergrad. That is precisely when I started traveling on my own.  By bad I mean not as good as an average Joe, really bad. And I think I think I know the reasons. Here’s a short, quick list

1. I am a girl
2. I am from India
3. And most importantly, May be I just never did anything on my own that required me to think in terms of directions. Or like some would say I don’t have the knack for it – hardwired or otherwise

Before the points above send out the wrong vibes, I will elaborate them to clarify what I mean.

1. In our family when I was growing up the women never went to places by themselves. They didn’t drive, navigate or work with maps. This is what the men did [when needed, if at all]. Either the father, brother, cousin, uncle or chauffer – all men. I grew up oblivious of what was north, south, east and west. Well that is only partly true. My mother followed some vaastu shastra and so the beds faced north south and the entrance was east or west I forget, etc. So when we had visitors and they asked about west/south we could immediately point it out in our house and then they could decipher which direction to face for their prayer and stuff. However, if I was driven to some place and asked to find my own way back I am sure I would have made more mistakes than anybody else in my place.
2. In India we rarely talk in terms of NSEW directions. If you ask for directions in India you will hear something like this: “Go straight, when you reach the junction take a left, then take the first right, then go straight for 2 kms and you will see a temple. Take the road behind the temple and ….When you get there you can ask somebody”. And then you would walk a little and ask somebody again for directions. This is not the case when you are walking only, it’s the same for people who are driving. In the US, I initially found it quite difficult to follow directions. If you ask for directions you are likely to hear “Go north 2 blocks, then east on <abc> St…” or “Oh, it is in the far South end along <xyz> Ave” or they will point it out in a map saying where you are and where the destination is. And ofcourse this is for people walking. If you are driving, you carry your own map/directions and if you get stuck your best bet is to stop at a gas station and maybe ask somebody in the store there. Actually, you carry a map whether you are driving/walking or riding a bike. People here grow with this around them, holding and working out maps all their life.
3. Nothing much to say here. May be it is a good thing that I didn’t become an architect or anybody who worked with directions, projection, proportion, dimensions & space. I understand better why I found my engineering drawing lessons so un-intuitive despite a lot of help from this man.

Finding your office room at Microsoft can be a challenge in the first few days. And this is from a returning employee. [I told you I am bad.] I bought a bike recently and have been biking around some of the trails around where I stay. I stay in Kirkland and didn’t realize that I had an amazing neighbourhood until I biked in a random direction last weekend feeling the breeze and the lingering fragrance of flowers after a light downpour. I saw some huge houses, i.e. small houses in huge areas, massive yards with thick blades of grass all over. It was beautiful. And I tried hard to recall the last time I was in a similar situation. Just looking around and looking up at the sky and smiling to myself. Saw a woman riding a horse [I stopped biking when I saw the horse, it was big. Yeah I was intimidated and she politely came close and said “don’t be afraid, he isn’t afraid of you, see”] and saw a huge stable a couple of miles away. Yeah, ‘huge’ is the key word.

In short I am having fun. Work @ Microsoft is very exciting, I should check with my mentor before I blog about it. But I can say so much, its fun writing code after a long time and fun to do so when you believe that it will be shipping soon. The interns are well taken care of, I feel too old most of the time to join in for any of the intern socials [In the past I didn’t like people who sounded like this], a good majority are undergrads. A bunch of young, enthusiastic folk. It would have been fun to have the concept of internships when I was pursuing my bachelors, I could have used the experience. Met some Indian students, i.e students studying in India and doing their internship at Microsoft Research, Redmond, its good to see interns here all the way from India.

I am also eating a lot of Indian food and will watch Fanaa tomorrow. Yeah, its almost like being in India J

And now I need to collect some mapquest printouts, yeah need to get somewhere. These maps are not difficult to read/follow. Its like an installation read me file. I'll be fine. Also, I declare myself a beans thoran expert. Made it twice, came out just the way I remember it from Kerala.

With the onset of spring, the weather in Bloomington is quite lively & pampering. 9.00 pm at night is like 6.00 pm in Cochin. Days are much longer, I see more people, lot of outdoor activity, children playing in parks & undergrads partying almost everyday. In the midst of all this what I like doing most is taking walks in the night after the sun has set. Last week I sat on a flight of steps and looked up at the sky and wondered why I couldn't view this from higher up. I knew then what I was missing at such a time, it was a simple terrace. And then it occured to me that I hadn't seen any house/apartment with a terrace here. Why? Don't the people here like taking a walk on the terrace?

Why do we have terraces in India? If it is for drying clothes, grains, papad etc then it makes sense why I don't see terraces here. In Rajasthan the terraces are much larger, in many old houses terraces are bigger than the house itself [i.e. multiple houses share a huge single terrace]. In the summers people sleep on the terraces. I am not sure why the terraces are so big there actually. May be coz people do fair amount of cooking and washing on the terrace?

So I added one more thing to my list of "House preferences" which is Have a terrace . If I ever get down to building a house [read as getting a house built rather than buying an already built house] then I have a long list to cater to. One more addition doesn't make a big difference.

I am a victim of Anand's *game* targets. And since its fun to fling this onto some fellow friends I decided to play along. Lets see who would I pick to write up all this stuff? Well here it comes: Sid, Maverick, TS, Joseph - I'll stop at that. If any of you don't show inclinations of blogging about this in about a week's time, I am editing your name out [Yeah, it’s a threat so you play along to be on my honour list ;)]

So here it starts:

5 people who top your sh1t list..... and why:

I changed this to 5 people/things/orgs/lists
This question forces me to be political which I do not like. However, to do justice I shall answer them

1. Floridaway dream escape - for repeatedly stealing money from my account until I was forced to close my account

2. Ann Coulter - Read http://www.idsnews.com/news/print.php?id=34257

3. Anu Malik - plagiarize and claim innovation

4. Osama Bin Laden & similar religious extremists - you know why

5. Slashdot for being full of sh1t

Close brushes with death/danger:

1. When an elephant in Rajasthan almost had me by its trunk. [My hand were wet from the close contact, it probably sneezed or something]. I was 8 and it felt like I was just reborn!

2. On my way back from Delhi I complained of stomach pain on the train. After 3 days in train + 2 days in govindan's hospital in TVM, I moved to cosmo hospital to find out that my appendix had inflated and woud burst if it wasn’t operated immediately. The word *operation* scared me to death.

3. Drive from Jaipur to Udaipur - My family and I were travelling in a taxi on a winding route up an elevation when I was woken by the car taking sharp turns. The car had skid because of spilled oil on the road. With abyss on both sides of the road and fortunately no vehicles behind...the driver frantically turned the steering wheel all the way left and completely right a couple of times and finally stopped the car. Each such turn seemed to get the car completely out of control in the opposite direction. I am thankful to the driver for not jumping out and instead persistently trying to get the car under control. People from around came over and said we were lucky to have survived that and that that was a common accident spot.

4. When Anando pushed me in the pool. I don’t think he realised it, but I don't know to swim and am quite hydrophobic in some senses.

5 Preferable modes of suicide, in descending order:

1. On LSD, listen to trance and pass off into some kind of surrealism

2. Smoke, drink, music, sleep and stay asleep.

3. Heavy dose of sleeping pills

4. Go up on a mountain top, possibly hike, tire out, talk and try a cyanide tablet

5. Same as 4, instead of cynaide take a pistol and shoot against the temples

Kinda depressing question

5 Guilty pleasures:

1. Dragging Sid and Rosh to watch hindi movies with me in Bangalore

2. Beating up some friends [guys you know]

3. Burning the experiment and then spraying perfume in Jayshri's brother's room when we heard her grandmom walking up the stairs

4. Watching my maid kill cockroaches, millepedes and spiders

5. Writing code on linux - time spent on the cycle

1. Getting discharged from the hospital after 30+ days. I was extremely excited to go back to school. This was after 4th grade. 5th grade was much awaited: more subjects, no boys, write with pen, we would be the seniormost and so would get to boss over the junior students etc. And I hadn't been to school for over 3 months [summer break + a mnth]

2. My sisters expression when I showed her my first job offer letter. Before that I fooled her with a long story about losing the job.

3. College day at Cochin in my 2nd year

4. Survived a sky dive

5. Where I come from ... & dreams

I have to remember now and write them down, huh?

0. This blog entry [~140 LOTA comments, grrr, had to delete ash's comments - consumed too much space]

1. Feeling the bandage on me when I was conscious after my appendicitis operation and thinking "Oh my God, I am pregnant?".

2. The feeling I got as a kid everytime I saw the hippos in TVM zoo - "Oh my God, if I fall in…I am dead"

3. Working on cobol for my training at my first job

4. An email thread that I initiated to deliver a *surprise* birthday gift to a friend overseas. I had put him on the CC

5. My brother falling off his chair and crying on his 2nd birthday party. And him crying in the lunch breaks everytime he saw me during his 1st week at school.

Oh, I am bad with names

1. Fresh hot Baklava from the turkish place in Bloomington

2. some dessert stuff from painted platter in bangalore

3. Some american-russian dish with shrimps & caviar that I had at a russian family dinner.

4. Fried Calamari

5. Lamb gosht

1. Neville & Kiran [few months]

2. RAP [few weeks]

3. Short cute guy at college, forgot his name [~1 week]

4. The guy next door in my hometown where I spent a summer break. Never knew his name. [1 month]

5. RB [short span between his break up and new girl friend ;)]

Okay, that’s a tough one. I have always had strange dreams. I will pick one of my earliest dreams I can remember.

This was in my 4th grade when I had probably read about man going to moon etc. In my dream I had accidentally reached some planet [or probably moon itself] and was sneaking around, probably checking out the place. I stood behind a wall and looked slowly over the edge. I saw some bald big men chanting something [I think there was fire or something similar in the center and they were sitting around. Much like a hindu puja]. I was scared I would be captured so I was trying to figure out how to get back to my ship or aircraft or whatever that got me there. My oxygen mask slid off and yet I was breathing fine. Apparently my logical explanation then was that those *alien* [I didn't know this term then] men inhaled CO₂ and exhaled O₂. :P

I take it that this refers to material possessions.

1. My laptop

2. Some of my old books, some notes and some diary stuff

3. Some letters, cards and gifts

4. Some amount of e-data - code, docs, mails, photos, scripts [not material directly]

5. ipod nano, camera

Uggh, I don't have any favorite superheros

Edit/Update: 1)Updated taggees links to point to their tag urls

How to grad students manage their time. There have been a couple of times I thought about this in my first semester and now during my second semester, I am wondering how on earth students finish their PhD in 2 years or 3 years satisfying all the credit requirements. With 4 courses and a RA I sometimes struggle to just stay afloat with all homework assignments , exams and tests. I finally decided to drop 1 course and stick to 3 courses which is the minimum requirement to meet 9 credits per semester goal. Even then, time management is a huge issue. And in the middle of the semester if somebody asks me if I have a life, my answer is definitely a NO. But there are others I see who are much more at ease. I am guessing that its about working smartly and managing time well. Most of the time you expand your work to fill your entire time [less or more].

I have a lot of respect for students who actually work their way through and finish off all their requirements, thesis and research in a matter of three years. And the super geniouses who do it in less than 3 years time. Wow, assuming that one does this after their undergrad.

In the middle of all this, I need to ensure that I do not miss out on other things like

- File my tax returns - I need to start from scratch, what to do, how to do, when to do blah blah
- Find 2 subleases for my present house for summer
- Find a new room mate, my present room mate is graduating this summer
- May be find a new apartment or re-lease this one for next fall, still solving some issues here
- Find a place to stay in Redmond. Given that I still don't have a driving license I will have to find a place that is either walkable or bike-able to office. Which reminds me, I need to get a license this summer. Then I can buy a car when I return and feel the sens of independence I have never felt before. Ha, what fun it will be to just drive away in a direction randomly and see the trees and mountains. There, I got carried away.
- Figure out dates for internship
- Sleep, eat

And to all the friends who send me emails, I will reply to them eventually. I am replying to short emails that wont take time and am marking the others for later.

Well, on the bright side, I will be in Seattle for summer - I have never seen Seattle in summer and people say that its a beautiful place to be in during summer. In fact during my interview trip, a friend rightfully said that generally summer interns see the *demo version* of Seattle, I found that quite funny. I am also excited to be on the Office Live Communicator team. Should be fun developing stuff that you know will be used by millions soon.

Will sign off before I get carried away any further.

Its spring break and I am in Seattle for interviews. This time for SDE [read as developer] internship interviews with Microsoft. I thought I would have interviews in the morning [around 9.00 am] followed by a lunch interview and then post lunch interviews. However, I went in as told at 11.00 am. Here's a brief description of my interview day:

Interview 1: 12.00 - 1.30 noon

   Questions - string functions, data structures, tree traversal, optimizing a communication scenario

Interview 2: 2.00 - 3.00pm

   Questions - synchronization problem.

Interview 3: ~30 min [didn't keep track of time]

   Questions - why managed code, sliding window algorithm for a specific scenario, finding common elements in arrays

Interview 4: ~1 hour [didn't keep track of time]

   Questions - No technical questions. Discussion on what I want to do, what the team is doing etc. 

All my interviewers asked me about the role change, reason etc. No puzzles - I don't know if that is good or bad. I am supposed to hear from MS within a week. So this is the suspense time. I will put up an entry indicating the interview results.

Also, this resulted in an addition to the wardrobe!

Disclaimer: This is my interpretation of my interview with Microsoft.

So, like everyday, I got up in the morning, opened my closet and pulled out some random t shirt to wear with my jeans. Well, the way it works I guess is, that I pull out something [based on some pattern somewhere] from some corner in the closet that I think to be LFU or something. Its winters, I am going to be wearing a coat and I am going to the computer science department, no reason to think twice about I am wearing. Err, How and when did it come to this? I don't know.

Today morning something struck me and I went back to my wardrobe and took a sweeping glance. Wait a minute, Where are all the normal t-shirts? What, I have been wearing these every day? May be I need to do some shopping, and this time not at college mall or microsoft company store. I decided to take pictures of some of them [Yes, there are more] and put it up here to see if there are others who feel the same way. I am sure there are men, but women...Anybody?

Unrelated, but since I don't want to make another blog entry for just this, I will say it here. I assembled a book shelf. I bought it last semester before classes began. I procrastinated the assembling, thinking of it to be some huge time consuming task, until the (mis)organization of books, printouts and handouts started affecting my productivity real bad. Then I conjured a tool set from somewhere and decided to get the furniture together last weekend. It was quite simple, the detailed graphical instructions made it simple even for me who had never really assembled anything  wooden (sounds funny). And as I hammered those nails and wood together and saw the wood below begin to deform I thought how weak these things were...ha, good old sturdy Indian furniture, comes pre-assembled and lasts forever.

No mama, I am not doing this coz I am poor and am forced to handle my own carpentry. And this is kind of fun, atleast the first time.

Nice to have a shelf, my table is all empty now with just my laptop and 2 friends. Its great seeing my room over and over again. And on that happy note I shall end this entry.

[Edited: Added the collection table here on demand - well 1 person is demand)]

I just finished reading State of fear by Michael Chrichton. It wasn't as fast paced as Da Vinci Code but I kept thinking of it while reading state of fear. Well, it has occured to me in the past but I have let it pass. It is the feeling that you get when you read 1984, about how we possibly live in a make-belief world unaware. And how all the history is what some of us decided should be and the rest of us believe as *real*. It bothers me to think that what we know and are told about things around us are not true, more precisely the fact that somebody [or some bodies] is [are] intentionally making up stuff on a global scale or covering up stuff. I dont know about global warming being an issue or not, but the idea that the whole thing could be a farce is something to think about. And then you start questioning everything around you.

There was a story that I had read in school in my 7th grade or so in hindi called, if I remember correctly, "Akbar ka kila" which was about this woman who let Akbar in to her house on a stormy night when he was escaping wounded after a war or something. The story goes on about how she had saved his life by providing shelter,medication and food.... several years later his son or grandson sent men to find her/her place. They built a fort there inscribing words about Akbar having spent a night there after fighting a war bravely. The moral [Oh yeah, back then we drew morals from everything] was about how history had no record of the lady and about real heros never getting named. My memory is rusty and I may have gotten the story wrong.

Somehow, it feels a lot more spooky in my current circumstances. It appears to me that life here is a little too dependent on the media for information. People know and believe about the world only as much as CNN shows them. One could argue that each place sees other places through media, credibility of CNN etc - these are just my perceptions.

When I read 1984, I knew that things were dramatized to build a world of fiction, but now I wonder if they were that *dramatic*. A lot of it is already there, been there. And well ... will in all likelihood always be the case. I could draw parallels between it and some events captured in the movies 'LA Confidential' and 'Enemy of the state'. That is when I shut myself off so I didn't find comparisons that didn't exist (like Dan Brown does after a point in da vinci code!)

So what is the probability that a century later or couple of centuries later people will know about the past as being like our present today? With all the blogs [now this is new, it hasn't been around in the past. The only remotely similar thing is a personal diary that some maintained and was possibly more subject to decay/destruction] in e-space and electronic media and tapes, there is hope that people will have access to several views. Or like paper in the past, bits in the future will be manipulated...?

I don't know, but its a nice way to spend your weekend by thinking about possibilities.

Well lets see, a whole semester got over, had a winter break for 3 weeks and 2nd semester started. In short that is what happened. Ofcourse, there is a long story version which I shall type rightaway

Matlab is a cool language, the sort of language mathematicians, electrical engineers, scientists etc need. I would have felt like a hero if I knew about matlab when I was in high school. Absolutely no learning curve and comes with rich libraries [and other specific libraries that one can buy]. Most matlab programs span over a couple of small functions. In fact a lot of the code I came across in the last few months is less than 2 pages long. Dynamic arrays, plotting graphs, matrix operations etc are done effortlessly in matlab [compare this with C/C++!]. I built a type inference system for matlab in matlab as a part of my RA work at IU. The research project involves studying high level language operations, finding mechanisms of parallelizing it, increasing the robustness and performance by generating equivalent low level code. We are working together with a group at Ohio State University on this. The type inference engine is done, now we need to use the type information to call the appropriate C library routines before generating C output.

This semester I am going to be working with Stratego to do some parse tree optimizations. Currently I am working on SSA renaming, I should have a public link to this project soon. 

I got to attend the supercomputing conference SC05 at Seattle in November 2005. I saw some similar work and research in the areas of parallelizing matlab and generating C/fortran code etc by MIT [StarP, pMatlab] and Mathworks [Matlab using MPI].  I also saw Bill Gates finally, with 5000+ other people when he delivered the keynote speech.

Besides this, I have finally got accustomed to the winters here. During the winter break I went to California and Nevada, aah the heat never felt so good. I met this 17 year old kid who told me in a conversation that his dad had won 4.7 million dollars on a slot machine in the casino next block. Ever since then, there has been a very similar dream that I have been dreaming over and over again[days and nights].

I am in the 2nd week of the spring semester. I have taken Computation Complexity, Introduction to Applied Logic, Recursion Theory [Math Department] and Practical Compiling for Modern Machines this semester. I am excited about learning a lot of this stuff, Computability, decidability, P-NP hard, Godel's incompleteness theorem etc. My courses are a little heavy on the theory side, but that is what I am here for :)

I have been thinking about what courses to enroll for for the past few days. The fall '05 CS subjects that have been interesting me are

1. Independent Study with a professor I will be doing research with

2. Operating Systems

3. Principle of Programming Languages

4. Quantum Computing

5. Algorithms

Practically I can do only 3 of these in a semester and it was easy for me to decide that I wanted to do 1 and 2 for sure. I also decided that I could take algorithms next semester. Now between Programming Langauges and Quantum Computing, I didn't know which to drop. I wanted to take the compiler course (and parallel computing course) next semester, so Programming Langauges would have been a good thing to study this semester. However, I decided I would study quantum computing. Scheme scared me off and I decided to drop programming langauges.

Half an hour before my appointment with my graduate advisor, I bumped into Dan Friedman. I introduced myself, he seemed to remember that I had emailed him. I told him how intimidated I was by him and so how I hadn't met him earlier. I knew of him as this big man who wrote a lot of scheme books. I have never programmed in scheme and do not understand many of the functional programming concepts. I have not understood continuations for example. Roshan and Sidharth often discuss the stuff and I participate in it as long as it seems mathematical and the moment they write scheme on paper [its usually paper napkins in some cafe/restaurant], I shy away from the discussion.

I told Dr. Friedman about my interest and about my inexperience with scheme and he said I must take the course. A 5 min conversation with him and I decided to take the course !
Quantum Computing will have to wait I guess. I am excited about the classes (I can't remember the last time I waited with anxiety for a lecture), they begin on 29th August.

Do not read this blog entry if you are not a Harry Potter enthusiast or if you intend to read book 6 and haven't done so yet.

Like many Harry Potter enthusiasts I read Harry Potter Book 6 as soon as I could lay my hands on it.

Harry Potter and Half Blood Prince is like a prequel to the last book. Its quite obvious as you read the book that Rowling has thought out the entire story before she wrote this book. It kinda ends abruptly, but like most Harry Pottter books keeps you hooked on till the end. I see it as a good improvement over the previous book which was a let down for my high expectations. This one quite lived upto my expectations and wait time. When I finsihed reading the book at some insane time early morning [or late night for most of us], I was very depressed and shocked about Dumbledore's death. I woke my brother [Ankit], who is generally very irritable when asleep, and told him "Ankit, Snape killed Dumbledore..", he woke up instantly with a wide grin and said, "I knew it". The two of us sat and spoke and discussed the book for sometime after that. Our discussions and conclusions and thinkings are below.

Seeing Dumbledore's faith in Snape, I believe that Snape is not a *real* villain. Ankit thinks Snape is what he is projected to be in this book. I actually think of Snape to be this smart cool guy [I could fall in love with if I were at Hogwarts :)] after reading this book. Probably a secret setup between Dumbledore & Snape to get to the next trust level in Voldemort's eyes. The next guess is that RAB  is Regelus Black, the deatheater who I think died at Azkaban in the previous book. The final guess is that Harry Potter could be a horcrux and so Harry Potter may have to kill himself to destroy Voldemort completely after he destroys the remaining horcrux-es.

The next day I googled for Harry Potter and Half Blood Prince and found to my surprise that there were others who came up with the same theories. I hope Rowling is reading it all and manages to surprise the readers with the final book.

If you are a Harry Potter fan http://www.dumbledoreisnotdead.com/ is a place you may want to visit.

I reached US after what seemed like a never ending flight. I had to change 5 flights and visit 7 airports to get here! Boy, the airlines should have paid me for trying this route out! I am sure not too many would. Cochin - Colombo - Bangkok - Hong Kong - LA - Chicago - Indianapolis !

Well, look at the bright side, I saw the airports of quite a few different counties :)

Bloomington is a small town, a large bulk of its population coming from Indiana university. The Indian population here is quite small.

I am getting used to some of the american jargon [egg plant, okra, pickles ...] and realising that India has its own additions to the Indian english language.

Cell phones in the US work quite differently. Believe it or not, cell phones in India are quite a blessing and the service works much more reliably. And we crib about airtel and hutch not working in caves and mountains when we go for vacations! Here cell phones are based on minutes [time], it doesn't matter whether you receive or make calls, most plans its just the same. Your usage minutes go down. And this applies for toll free numbers too. Well, the good thing in US is you could sign up for a 1 yr or 2 yr plan and get a handset free [the way our reliance phones work] and that you could change your service provider and still retain your phone number. I guess we'll get there soon.

I have my international students orientation next week. I hope to spend free time in finding an apartment to stay in and buying essential furniture if its an unfurnished place.

I am in Cochin till Aug 9. Thought it was a good idea to spend time with family before leaving for pardes. So the general advice I am getting from family, relatives and their friends is to come back to India soon. All the talk is managable as long as I am being fed good home made food.

Last few days in office, I saw how much of a pain storage still is. About 6 months of photos and only photos and I have over 4 giga bytes of images - none I want to part with. What is the best way to carry this data around? And what is the best way to arrange them without spending too much time on it and assuming that they aren't well catalogued? I don't like the idea of resizing them and uploading them as an album in one of the photo-upload websites. I want to preserve the resolution and exif information of all the images. And we are talking about a few gigabytes here. Any clean solutions?

The grand canyons; Shot from a helicopter.

Shot from a boat on the Colorado river

The hazy ones are shot from a flight window

At Las Vegas

(The ceiling gives it away). The Venetian.

In full spirit for Christmas J

From Love Story by Eric Segal

She was staring straight at me. Her eyes were brown. Okay, maybe I look rich, but I wouldn't let some girl -- even one with pretty eyes -- call me dumb.
"What the hell makes you so smart?" I asked.
"I wouldn't go for coffee with you," she answered.
"Listen -- I wouldn't ask you."
"That," she replied, "is what makes you stupid."

From Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown

Next time you play a prankster, you really know what you are doing :)

Whoa, after a 2 month long stay at seattle I finally am back to India. I had a great trip, quite an adventurous, fun filled and fruitful journey.

Among other interesting people, I got to attend training sessions by Mark Russinovich and David Solomon. Work has been going well and has been keeping me busy most working days.

Thanks to thanksgiving day, christmas and weekends I got to move around a bit and see places. From gay clubs at San Francisco to snow-filled mountain peaks at Vancouver to hellicopter and water rides at grand canyon to casinos and strip clubs at Las Vegas to skydiving over mojave desert to universal studios at LA to salsa classes at Seattle  - I had an awesome time.

I will be getting a tablet pc soon which means working form home and possibly blogging too. The sad part in life is that I am back at Hyderabad. Which means back to cribbing about not being at Bangalore.

Happy New Year. I dont think I have been blogging for an year, so technically its not time to say that yet.

Its been one hell of a crazy eventful year for me. For years I believed that at the age of 24 there wouldn't be much in life left to do and that I would have done all I wanted to, by that time. And now at the age of 24, it feels like life is just starting in many ways. And that things are just beginning to settle down, Its now that I can start living. The wars have been fought, at least the major ones. I look forward to a calm-er, steadier year, enough of sine waves :)

I don't exactly make new year resolutions but I look forward to doing some things this year including travelling in india, playing and dancing. For some unknown reasons, I haven't been blogging. [Oh why did I just say the obvious?]

The first word that comes to mind when asked how I am feeling is “cold”. Sadly, people around me walk in shorts and so its not the weather, its just me.

The Microsoft campus is beautiful. There are trees all around in the colors of autumn that you read so often in poems and hear about in love songs. And of course see in the movies. I have never seen trees with leaves in green, red, yellow, orange, brown and more colours. I hope to take some pictures and put them up.

Microsoft has many buildings and they are not numbered sequentially, in fact no pattern exists in their numbering. And I have meetings and trainings in different buildings. First two days were quite a nightmare. It was like being put in a maze and asked to reach the exit at xyz time. We use shuttles to move between buildings and a map to figure out which shuttle to take. Its a little like playing scotland yard. There are red, green and white routes connecting different buildings and you decide what works best for you. One thing I love about the place is the way it’s labelled and the way they have reduced manual efforts. Automation rocks. The candies in the shuttle are a good idea, at least it distracts me from the cold for a while (kidding). The first 2 days, each time I went to my room at office, I took a different route; every time I was lost in a new area. But slowly the structure starts making sense. Now it feels quite simple.

I am seeing my first Halloween celebration here and to play a killjoy I haven't bought myself a costume yet and have declined all invitations to a halloween party. Friday evening there were lots and lots of kids walking with pumpkin containers collecting candies from outside our rooms at office. I was pretty amused to see their enthusiasm, they looked immensely cute with tails and whiskers and horns and crowns.

In the next few weeks, I will be meeting up the entire WinFS team and Jeffrey Snover among others and will be going for one of Scoble’s geek dinners. Should be fun. I also am very excited about a week of training on Windows internals. Wow!! In the middle of all this I hope to venture out into seeing a bit of the States and their culture, if weekends permit me.

It’s just Sunday morning. If the day is spent the way I would like to then I should have a few things to say by tomorrow morning J

**This is probably what could be called forceful blogging ;)

I am travelling to Seattle to work at Microsoft, Redmond campus, I should be there for a couple of weeks. May be I'll put up a travelogue sometime.

I haven't been blogging for a while. I have been busy but more importantly I haven't had much to write. </sigh>

I have been in Hyderabad for about 3 weeks, so its probably too early to comment on the city. And no matter how much I tell myself, involuntarily I end up comparing it to Bangalore. And that is the entire fault. Most things seem not good enough. I work and stay in this place called Madhapur which is some distance from the main city. Everything around Madhapur is exorbitantly pricy thanks to the impression that software folks make a lot of money. Many of the local people are puzzled as to what these guys do on the computer to get paid so much and change the city completely. Hyderabad has seen a lot of growth in the last few months [and years]. The govt. seems to have done some really good work in terms of growing the city. The roads are wide and well laid out, traffic is a lot lot better than you know where, and it’s largely a beautiful city. Lot of rocks and hilly terrain in and around the place – the sort you would travel miles to reach. The people are yet to catch up with the growth though. Its like a sudden gush of activity has poured into an otherwise laid back, quiet, conservative place.

Microsoft is a fun place. A lot of smart folk around and very little time on hands. I am working on the WinFS team here. I should be talking more about this soon. Last week I went for the 6^th anniversary celebration of the India Development Centre. Kinda weird to say my first 6^th anniversary.

I have rented a flat here and am finally going to try to live independently. I haven't started cooking yet, but considering the options that I have I might as well cook :). Before I took the house, I liked the idea of opening my door/window and looking at the fields around. Now I know I see the fields and the pigs together. Sometimes buffaloes too. Hmmm.

Interviews, perceptions, misconceptions

How do you select an ideal candidate after an interview and what is the best way to interview are just as complex and contestable as saying what is a good house. In the realm of software where there are product companies and services companies, many companies have tried to use interview methodologies what they think works best for them. While some are good, some other practices are ridiculous. Like asking what the 3^rd option in the 5^th dropdownlist in  the 2^nd screen of XYZ is and rejecting a candidate based on that. I don’t know how well the method of selecting candidates for software development jobs after a 30 min interview works. How do you know you picked the right person? Given limited time, resources and vacant positions how do you get the right people for your job? It’s tough to find smart people who are excited about working for you. But as an interviewer (IMO) besides asking questions and listening to answers you should project the company, its values and policies in the course of the interview. This makes sure that the interviewee has a clear idea of who he is applying to work for, what they are looking for and if he is still interested in being offered the job. If the place is the sort the candidate is looking for, then at the end of the interview he must go with a  feeling that this is an awesome place and I would love to work for them. This depends a lot on the interviewer, what he says about the company and how he puts it.

The best experience

My best experience with interviews has been with Microsoft, PSS, Bangalore. Before the real interviews started I had a one hour talk each with 2 of the managers. This time was effectively spent in letting me know what they do, what I will get in as and in finding out what I really want to do. They were making sure that I understood what they were looking for and what I would be doing if I got into the organization. If any of the candidates are not sure, this talk helps clear some of the ambiguities and is probably a good time to decide that this is probably not what you want to do. My real interviews started one week later at 2.00 pm and went on till after 8.00 pm.
More than the questions asked, what impressed me were the people. The sorta people who make you say “I don’t know if I like the job profile or not, but I would love to work with these guys”. Something that the other interviewers could pick.

The Microsoft Interview

Microsoft interview is again a 1 day procedure if you are lucky. Initially there is a one hour screening round to decide if they should interview you or not. After that if you are in, the grill begins. I was asked some amazing questions, [no, none like the manhole question J], the sort that churned my grey cells. Most questions required me to write code. I shall not write the questions here, they will spoil the fun for you if you ever go for a Microsoft interview. All the questions were new to me [surprisingly], there were some design questions, some general problem solving and some CS fundamental stuff. The interviewers help out and drop hints, its your job to pick them and think further.

Just one tip, keep things simple. [Its tough to do that]. Most of the seemingly tough problems have simple answers. Just think out of the box [What is the “just” in the prev sentence doin?] J

I have been getting some weird referrals [no, don’t think about Rory. This is far from it :)]

Apart from the *<wats_the_right_word>* search results by search engines[which I shall not talk about] taking people to my blog, I have had some referrals in languages I don’t understand. One of them is a thai website [http://community.thaiware.com/index.php?showtopic=122226] that I happened to stumble upon and on scrolling down I found a link to my blog entry on monad. Next to a half-nude pic of Halle Berry!!

Quite amusing to think that for men who don’t understand thai, it can be quite a disappointment to find a link to monad ! J

I have taken a snapshot [just in case the link doesn’t work]

I am joining Microsoft, India Development Centre on the 23rd of August, 2004. I will be joining as a Program Manager for the Windows team. I am yet to find out the details of the exact group I will be joining. Judging by the interviewers and the work happening at hyderabad, there is a good chance that I will be joining the WinFS or SFU team.

If you want to discus about Longhorn, we must talk :)

A lot of people write about Bangalore in their blogs and now I seem to be yearning to do the same.

While on one end I am very excited about my new role, on the other end I am quite sentimental about leaving Bangalore. This has been the only place [of all the places I have been to in the country] where I could go out alone, be on my own and return home at 10.30 in the night feeling safe. Back home [cochin], being on the roads after dark [6 pm] attract suspicious stares and dirty looks as though you were committing a grave crime of the first order.

The pleasant weather [that I can compare to having centralized AC in the city] has pampered me too much. The roads and the trees also seem to be talking to me these days J. The cosmopolitan crowd, the baristas, the privacy, the groups, the friends, the pubs, the views, and ulsoor lake – where will I get all this?

Oh well…I will miss Bangalore!

[Hindi]

Aaj mein upar, Aasmaan neeche

Aaj mein aage, zamaana hai peeche ..

Tell me Oh khuda, ab mein kya karoo

Chalu seedhe ki ulti chaloo …

Well, before I let out the big news, here’s your chance. Any guesses? </chuckle>

Late, late yestreen I saw the new Moon,

With the old Moon in her arms;

And I fear, I fear, my Master dear!

We shall have a deadly storm.

            (Ballad of Sir Patrick Spence)

I work out of the 10^th floor, the view from my window is splendid. All I need to do is turn around and look out of the window, the glass-panes open into this picturesque view  encompassing ulsoor lake, the sky above it and the trees around. I will miss the view; wherever I go.

The past few weeks have been crazy, with disparate advice spurting in from relatives, friends and colleagues about what I should be doing in life for a better future. I was thinking if I had no cares and responsibilities [na, I don’t have too many of them. Fortunately] and if safety was not a concern, what I would do and how different would it be from what I am doing now.

Well, I am in for some changes in life. To start off with I will have to be more diurnal ;) and less nocturnal in my habits. The bigger changes are something I look forward to.

It’s a little more than half of the year, life has been following this topsy turvy curve. The highs have been higher than ever and the lows, err lower than ever. And, the inkling that this year will decide a lot about the coming years, persists.

"In the path of your happiness shall you find the learning for which you have chosen this lifetime." - Richard Bach

Ankit Fadia

Recently, Ankit Fadia came to Oxford bookstore at Leela Palace, Bangalore to inaugurate their book exhibition and to give a general awareness talk on internet security. I was quite excited about seeing the young champ.

The audience were largely press people with about 3-5 non-press folk; guess this was a publicity funda for Oxford more than anything else. Ankit Fadia started his talk with

“How many of you use messengers like yahoo and msn”

“Don’t use it, its not safe”

“How many of you use search engines like yahoo and google?

“Don’t use it, its not safe”

etc etc

“and finally how many of you use the internet?”

“Don’t use it, its not safe”

He went on to say that since that is not practical, it is better to be safe by thinking like a criminal and taking precautions. He gave an example of this lady in Bombay who had a cable internet connection and a web cam and was a chat freak. A guy from Russia who was chatting with her apparently managed to install a Trojan and switch on her webcam. She had no clue about any of this and life went on. She went for a job interview 3 months later and the guy said he was too happy to offer her the job and that he saw her everyday at the porn site. And then she went totally paranoid and is probably not using the internet today. Sounded too contrived to me. Sum total of the talk was that use a proxy server to connect to the internet else you are in soup.

Well, wasn’t exactly very enlightening. Had a QA session towards the end when some of the press guys asked a lot of questions. One of the questions was “Is Linux more secure than windows” to which Ankit Fadia answered yes. I was quite curious to hear the reasons. “Since Unix is open source, its more secure. Since it is open source and there are tens of thousands of people working on it, when a bug is found anybody can take it and fix it. Whereas windows will have only about say 1000 people team, so finding and fixing bugs will take time….” [!!???!!!]

I didn’t find him technically accurate and after all the media hype this talk was probably a small let down. Then again, for what he is doing at his age he must be quite smart. I wouldn’t have been able to do that when I was 19. And he is at Stanford, obviously the guy is smart. The media is probably a little misleading, can’t really blame the young man.

Martin Fowler

I had read some papers and methodologies by Martin Fowler and appreciate the agile methodology a lot especially since I have seen and been a part of the conventional methodology. So I had all the reason to be excited to meet Mr. Fowler. This time excitement was coupled with nervousness, coz he was going to be listening to me do a session at the Bangalore .NET User group meeting.

After my talk I had a small conversation with Martin Fowler and others. Was surprised to see how approachable he was and how easily the discussions stemmed and ideas were exchanged. He liked monad, monad is quite agile anyways ;)

God

No, I haven’t met God but I think he knows of my existence J

-James Gosling is talking at Hyderabad, Too bad it’s not at Bangalore.

-Canadian Differentrepreneurs: http://www.microsoft.com/canada/mac/default.mspx#

-How easy it is today to get pirated stuff? http://www.the-cool-book-shop.com/ [Scroll to the bottom and read].

-From “The FountainHead” by Ayn Rand:

"Look," said Roark evenly, and pointed at the window. "Can you see the campus and the town? Do you see how many men are walking and living down there? Well, I don't give a damn what any or all of them think about architecture -- or about anything else, for that matter. Why should I consider what their grandfathers thought of it?"

"That is our sacred tradition."

"Why?"

"For heaven's sake, can't you stop being so naive about it?"

"But I don't understand. Why do you want me to think that this is great architecture?" He pointed to the picture of the Parthenon.

"That," said the Dean, "is the Parthenon."

"So it is."

"I haven't the time to waste on silly questions."

"All right, then." Roark got up, he took a long ruler from the desk, he walked to the picture. "Shall I tell you what's rotten about it?"

"It's the Parthenon!" said the Dean.

"Yes, God damn it, the Parthenon!"

The ruler struck the glass over the picture.

"Look," said Roark. "The famous flutings on the famous columns -- what are they there for? To hide the joints in wood -- when columns were made of wood, only these aren't, they're marble. The triglyphs, what are they? Wood. Wooden beams, the way they had to be laid when people began to build wooden shacks. Your Greeks took marble and they made copies of their wooden structures out of it, because others had done it that way. Then your masters of the Renaissance came along and made copies in plaster of copies in marble of copies in wood. Now here we are, making copies in steel and concrete of copies in plaster of copies in marble of copies in wood. Why?"

The Dean sat watching him curiously. Something puzzled him, not in the words, but in Roark's manner of saying them.

"Rules?" said Roark. "Here are my rules: what can be done with one substance must never be done with another. No two materials are alike. No two sites on earth are alike. No two buildings have the same purpose. The purpose, the site, the material determine the shape. Nothing can be reasonable or beautiful unless it's made by one central idea, and the idea sets every detail. A building is alive, like a man. Its integrity is to follow its own truth, its one single theme, and to serve its own single purpose. A man doesn't borrow pieces of his body. A building doesn't borrow hunks of its soul. Its maker gives it the soul and every wall, window and stairway to express it."

"But all the proper forms of expression have been discovered long ago."

"Expression -- of what? The Parthenon did not serve the same purpose as its wooden ancestor. An airline terminal does not serve the same purpose as the Parthenon. Every form has its own meaning. Every man creates his meaning and form and goal. Why is it so important -- what others have done? Why does it become sacred by the mere fact of not being your own? Why is anyone and everyone right -- so long as it's not yourself? Why does the number of those others take the place of truth? Why is truth made a mere matter of arithmetic -- and only of addition at that? Why is everything twisted out of all sense to fit everything else? There must be some reason. I don't know. I've never known it. I'd like to understand."

"For heaven's sake," said the Dean. "Sit down....That's better....Would you mind very much putting that ruler down?...Thank you....Now listen to me. No one has ever denied the importance of modern technique to an architect. We must learn to adapt the beauty of the past to the needs of the present. The voice of the past is the voice of the people. Nothing has ever been invented by one man in architecture. The proper creative process is a slow, gradual, anonymous, collective one, in which each man collaborates with all the others and subordinates himself to the standards of the majority."

"But you see," said Roark quietly, "I have, let's say, sixty years to live. Most of that time will be spent working. I've chosen the work I want to do. If I find no joy in it, then I'm only condemning myself to sixty years of torture. And I can find the joy only if I do my work in the best way possible to me. But the best is a matter of standards -- and I set my own standards. I inherit nothing. I stand at the end of no tradition. I may, perhaps, stand at the beginning of one."

-And fans of “Friends” may find this interesting:

http://shlomif.il.eu.org/humour/TOWTF/TOW_Fountainhead_1.html

I am leaving for a vacation trip today. Its after 8+ years  that I am going to be traveling to Rajasthan, am quite excited. I am back on 17^th May. I am going to Baroda [Gujarat], from there to Udaipur. On the way back will be visiting Nathdwara and Bombay.

Will have lots to say when I am back. I wonder how life is going to be without a computer for 2 weeks at a stretch :)). I wish I had a digital cam, that is one of the things I am going to get soon after I am back.

Adios!

Today’s the 4^th...no the 5^th day since I started feeling sick [sick as in ill]. The reasons - not sure, except that I had this really stale milk peda from Woody’s at commercial street, Bangalore. I knew it was stale the moment I bit into it, I still gobbled down the whole piece to make it worth my money [I can be really stupid sometimes]. This was on Sunday evening, April 18, 2004. Monday evening my stomach started giving me trouble. Tuesday, it felt funny but I wasn’t sure if it was the Stress Management workshop or something else.

Couldn’t get sleep the whole night, neck hurt like mad. Wednesday felt giddy the whole day, and in the night again no sleep. Thursday morning I knew something was wrong and that I better see the doctor. I had developed these rashes in my whole body and the back of my neck was swollen. I stay with about 15 girls as a paying guest with a family. Now each one came up with her own reasoning as to what the disease could be. One said it could be measles/mumps. Another said it couldn’t be that since I had no itching. So it was more likely an allergy. One said I needn’t see a doc, she advised me to take an anti-allergy tablet and take rest. Apparently she had done that and had recovered. Another said run to the doc, she got an injection when she had the same problem and the rash went instantly. My maid said it was coz of the food poisoning and probably the egg I had had the previous night. My friend said it could be an insect bite. Well, I was feeling quite tired and restless, I decided to see the doc.

I went to a general physician on Thursday morning. He seemed quite unsure what the problem was. He said it could be an insect bite, allergy, acute viral fever etc etc. He gave me some medicines and asked me to see him again on Saturday morning. He asked me to see him the next day i.e. today if my condition got worse. I also took a blood test. I feel quite uncomfortable seeing a syringe go into my skin and even worse when it stays there and they draw your blood. As a kid I was a lot braver, there was a time when I could watch a nurse take a syringe, inject it into my vein and pull it out. Very normal. But that was long long ago.

The medicines gave me temporary relief. But today morning I got up feeling worse. I also think the illness is beginning to affect my head. And I don’t like it when I can’t think straight. I have been asked to take 4 days complete bed rest, Today’s the second day. I do not have a comp at home and so I keep running to my office [People think I love my office]. I thought I could print out some stuff, sit at home and read.

I am really sick of being this weakling for 5 days now. Can’t wait to get back to normal and do some work.I think I will visit my doc today evening itself.

I thought the day went well until I came to office and checked mail about an hour back.

Today I went for a stress management workshop from my office at Taj Gateway, Bangalore. We were about 20-25 people and the facilitator was a lady from Chennai. The workshop was in a huge hall with single sheets laid out on the carpet for each of us. We did some basic yoga, sitting, lying down and even walking around the place.

Three of the most embarrassing things we did today

-          We were asked to sit down, open our mouth wide, stick out our tongues as much as possible and pant like dogs. So we all go “huh huh huh…” This was an exercise to get our voices from our diaphragm, to conserve energy (like dogs).

-          crawl on all 4’s again like a dog in a square on your sheet. And facilitator said things like growl if somebody encroaches your territory, boy that was hilarious. [Just to tell you, we 25 people had people of both genders and almost all designations].

-          We were asked to just walk around casually in the hall after lunch until she asked to stop. After which we had to find a partner and look into his/her eyes until the facilitator asked us to stop. This was the most uncomfortable. We did that two more times, we had different partners each time. The fourth time, the lady asked to us to be friendlier and asked us to greet the other person with our palms joined in a Namaste, a gesture of kindness and love. Quite funny if you think about it, as we faced our partners in that gesture the facilitator continued speaking “give love, … admire the partner’s beauty … “ Glad it didn’t last long.

It was a relaxing workshop, especially since it wasn’t my daily routine and I could lie down after lunch J

I thought I would drop in at office to check mail, I have been expecting to hear from Antlr support and my university admissions. Come here to find that I have a reject mail from a university. And no mail from Antlr team.

I have been trying to setup antlr to generate C# code. It generates the java files as expected. Now the documentation for this talks about building a C# solution provided which has two projects. One of the projects has a few files missing. There is no mention of where to get the files from or how to generate them. I downloaded the binary and had the C# runtime dll required to generate C# code. Now again, there is no mention in the documentation about how to actually reference the dll in an example rules file that you write or what command line parameters/switches to include while running the tool.

After fiddling around with some example files and intelligent guesses when I tried running the tool for C# it gave me the standard error. The only relevant discussions I found were this, this and this. The last one talks about modifying the config.make file in V2.7.2. I do not have a config.make file in V2.7.3. [Also I think some of their example files are not right, like \antlr-2.7.3\examples\csharp\java\java.g has an extra paranthesis] I had spent two days trying to figure this out and had finally sent a mail to the antlr folk. Hopefully they will get back with some solution. I really wish their documentation was better.

I am going to download and try NAnt for the first time. I hope that can help me with the antlr setup also.

This title is from an article that Nishant forwarded to mvplist, A good write up and is quite true. I agree with most parts of it.

We see a lot of man-woman talk everywhere; statistics, percentages etc are flaunted. You don’t really need any sound proofs to be convinced that women are way behind men in numbers in the field of technology [and a plethora of other fields]. You occasionally get to hear reasons as to why women are fewer; with psychoanalysts talking about women thinking different from men and researchers giving numbers and theories justifying the fact that women are built that way.

Starting from the time a child is born we rub some of these long held beliefs into them. By the time the child grows to a mature individual, he/she has grown to believe a lot of our gender theory mostly unknowingly. Boys this girls that…talk is so deeply ingrained in us, we don’t even realize we are doing it. Involuntarily you say to a little boy “Stop crying like a girl”. You are convinced of your capabilities and limits [based on your gender] before you can venture into finding them on your own. This is probably the worst and the most harmful kind of brain washing that can happen.

“When a woman shatters these myths and succeeds in the technical field, she is made out to be a honchess, arrogant feminist or said to have slept her way through to the top. Instead of being accepted for their accomplishments, successful women are questioned as to how they became successful.”

Sad, but true.

If you have not had the misfortune of visiting one, great. Lucky you. You have no idea what you missed and you should not care to find out also.

During my 1^st grade my father took me to his dentist friend’s place to find out what could be done about my two canines growing behind two existing ones. Oblivious that I was, I happily went to his place and was asked to sit in this chair that looked like it was some kind of a space ship. It had these long adjustable arms and a huge set of lights connected to it from the back. Such a huge chair and a puny thing like me had to hop up and sit there. One quick glance around and I saw all kinds of instruments that set me thinking if it was a wise decision to come here in the first place. Scissors in all shapes and sizes, pincers, some things that looked like pliers, hammer and tongs and a whole pile of accessories, this added to the general grin on the dentist’s face made me very uncomfortable. Innocent as I was then, I didn’t realize that this was just the beginning and the worst was yet to come. He got me to open my mouth and examined it with some gadgets and said that he had to pull out two teeth to make space for the new ones. Dad asked him to go ahead. The old dentist then came with a syringe and that scared the hell out of me. It was my first time and that too in the mouth…uggh, definitely not a good first time. On asking he said he would give me an injection so it would not pain when he pulled my teeth out. He still had the grin.

I got 3 injections on my gums, boy I was mad enough to kill him at the end of it. You hurt me so much before pulling out my teeth, might as well pull them out straight. Finally with something that looked like a pair of pliers he pulled out my tooth – it hurt. Probably he never got the injections in the right portions or something. I asked him with all the cotton in my mouth if I could have both my teeth [that he so happily extracted], he said he wanted to keep it. Whatever for. So I went back home with all the pain, ill-feelings and two teeth less with a mental resolve that I would do all it takes to never visit a dentist again in my life.

Life went on happily and humans that we are I forgot the dentist and the tortures. During my 10^th grade my sis had her teeth growing in all directions. We were staying in Trivandrum near Medical College, There were doctors all around the place including my landlady who was a senior dentist at the Dental College in Medical College. My landlady suggested that she visited the hospital and had a cleaning + check up done. She was asked to wear braces and had to go every Saturday morning for a routine check-up. It so happened that one Saturday instead of my mother I went with Neha [my sis] to Dental college. Many of the junior doctors there are students, scary thought isn’t it. Things happened a lot faster than normal thanks to my landlady, no queues and no waiting. After the initial ill-feeling that I had thanks to hearing children cry, the general odour and old memories I looked around. Wow, lots of good looking young doctors. Hmm, not a bad idea to actually come here once in a while with sis ;)

During a conversation I just happened to mention to my landlady that my canines were a little behind the rest of my teeth in my upper jaw and she suggested that I go with Neha for a check up. During the check up I was asked to open my mouth. I opened it and they kept asking me to open it wider. Uggh, gross. They suggested that I wear one of those removable pair of braces for 2 weeks. To make these braces they need your teeth impression.

From the dental dictionary “impression A negative image of a tooth or dental arch. An impression is produced by placing an elastic compound like alginate in a preformed tray and inserting the tray into the mouth around the teeth until the compound stiffens. The impression is removed from the mouth and filled with plaster to produce an exact positive reproduction of the teeth or dental arch.”

So they put this pink sticky stuff in your mouth and you are supposed to sit there till it hardens. Besides all the sick feeling and wanting to puke, imagine the embarrassment. You sit with your mouth wide open and these good looking doctors keep passing by L [I was a silly teenager then…]

The other day I was talking to Rosh about dentists and experiences when we both came up a logical reasoning as to why dentists are so cruel. They are usually the ones who do not get admissions for an MBBS course and so take up BDS [dentists, pardon me for probably I know not what I say]. So probably rest of their lives they get all their frustration out on their patients.

I think I found my boggart.

I have been having tooth ache for past few days and I have been postponing visiting a dentist. This would be my third encounter, if it happens.

I recently read George Orwell’s 1984 and found it quite disturbing. Ever since, the number 101 has been spooking me out.

“'You asked me once,' said O'Brien, 'what was in Room 101. I told you that you knew the answer already. Everyone knows it. The thing that is in Room 101 is the worst thing in the world.'”

“'The worst thing in the world,' said O'Brien, 'varies from individual to individual. It may be burial alive, or death by fire, or by drowning, or by impalement, or fifty other deaths. There are cases where it is some quite trivial thing, not even fatal.'”

“'In your case,' said O'Brien, 'the worst thing in the world happens to be rats.'”

The book gets very gross and leaves you with this sick feeling. In many parts of the book, you feel how happy you are; the way you are. They describe all the “normal” things like being able to talk and express and love as fatal deeds that people did not dare to indulge in.

Somewhere in the middle of the book the main character Winston talks about some things [that we comfortably take for granted], these lines keep ringing in my head:

“He wondered vaguely whether in the abolished past it had been a normal experience to lie in bed like this, in the cool of a summer evening, a man and a woman with no clothes on, making love when they chose, talking of what they chose, not feeling any compulsion to get up, simply lying there and listening to peaceful sounds outside. Surely there could never have been a time when that seemed ordinary?”

Very touching and more than that creepy.

On a much lighter note, in Harry Potter a boggart is supposed to take the form of what you fear most. I wonder what it would be in my case. Ever thought about it?

I sometimes visit my college when I go home. Model Engineering College was this small college with just three branches when I enrolled for a BTech [1998-2002]. Computer Engineering [60 students], Electronics Engineering [60 students] and Biomedical Engineering [40 students] – so you know how small a place I am talking about. It is located a few kilometers from the city and every time I drive to the place [rather am driven, anyway that is just a minor detail that I shall blog about another day] I think about my college and how it might have changed. But I get there and bang…the whole world seems to be changing, the rest of Cochin is growing but here is MEC – it stands the same. Nothing changes here.

There is this ad that they play in some of the Indian theatres where there is this barber standing and happily serving his clients when in front of him the roads are dug and cables and pipes laid. Each time there is digging done, newer equipments used, better pipes laid..and the barber is the same, doing the same job, the same way. And there is “Mere desh ki dharthi...” playing in the background. That is a little like the way I feel about MEC.

However, this time I went I found a few things changing. And that is good. J For one there are more classrooms coming up thanks to the increase in the no. of admits in each branch. Some construction work was happening to set up a bigger Computer lab (CL). The principal said that he is planning to get about 84 machines with win XP. Wow…lucky students. I remember sitting before these unix terminals with lynx to check my mail during my first year in my CL. Apparently the college has got some huge funds and is thinking of the best ways of utilizing it. The students and staff are working on making proposals and stuff. Some of the juniors came up and spoke about their ideas including wi-fi, access cards for all students/staff, setting up forums on our college server etc. Good to see them coming up with ideas, but the problem with most students is that they get too ambitious and when don’t get the expected returns, give up very soon. Over the years I have learnt that it is better to do smaller things and get them working than setting big goals and leaving the work to your juniors to continue/finish. Our college programming group hash_define_mec is a little stable now with 200+ members including seniors. A few of us from my class had started this with the idea of forming a programming community in college, today its good to see that though not all of it, a few things that we wanted in the group has really worked out.

Hopefully, MEC will not be as secluded as it has been in the past and will grow with the rest of the world.

I had decided somewhere in my mind in the last 2-3 yrs that I would not get a cell phone, credit card and would not start a blog. Strangely in 2004 all 3 happened…all 3 after a lot of urge and push and force and argument.

Cell phones always seemed an unnecessary luxury to make holes in your pockets and to disconnect you from your immediate friends sitting around whilst you are busy chatting away with some one somewhere. Credit cards seemed to be an enticing evil that would sit with you unused and still cost you. I had seen my dad pay annual bills and some service charges despite not using it at all during my undergraduate study. Web log seemed to be something that I thought I never could do. An online diary…my God...that is exposing myself …and then writing for your readers…eventually you end up writing stuff that your readers want to read and not what you want to write. I used to write a diary only to whine and complain and the stuff that you normally wouldn’t want to talk or couldn’t find an ear to speak out to. No way am I putting it up on the internet in my name!

Well, well…I have denied the need for a long time; but have finally procured a cell phone which almost works. My parents kept insisting I get one; I finally got an antique handset from someone. I got the one year free credit card from Citibank; it almost became a dire necessity while doing online applications to American universities. And now I start a blog. Well honestly speaking, about a year back I did start a blog, an anonymous one just for the heck of it. Nobody knew about its existence, so I guess it is right to say that this is my real first blog.

So what am I gonna write here? Well, I am going to use this space to shout and complain about things not working in my life, to groan and whine about the atrocities of life and all the things that I don’t get to talk in person to anyone.

If you are still reading, welcome to my blog J. I shall look forward to reading your grumblings in the comments section and then we could be whining pals. If you are a happy person you can still come here, read my blog and be a happier person. [For its only when you see another suffer that you realize how comfortable you are]

So I am blogging, huh? Wow!