Away From Home – 100 days – Review

More than 3 months have gone by since the last ( first ) post. I am a bit free right now , this being the Thanks-giving weekend and so I finally sit down to end the procrastination on this front.

If I say that not a lot has happened over that period then I would be lying and if I say I have gone through a great deal , even then I would be lying. I intend to include all that I can remember over the past 100 days.

Starting with the house and house-mates, after a lot of chopping and changing we finally are 5 of us who are to spend time together at 51 Crittenden till next August. Kamesh & Aymen – MBA candidates, Mansi – classmate of mine and Trina – PhD Geophysics are the ones bearing me at home. I would love to dwell upon the idiosyncrasies that I have observed but then lets leave it at that for another day. There is also Karan, done with his Phd- English Literature , who will be leaving in about 10 days or so. He has taken me around a few places as well as introduced me to a new people.

I did do some funding search, but found out to be a futile exercise. Took up jobs in the Strong Hospital, one at Cardiac surgery another at Psychiatry , both office assistant jobs involving some kind of accounting / peon type work. I prefer going to the cardiac surgery one because of the people I work under. All very motherly ( grandmotherly as well ) and make sure I have something to eat or the other whenever I go there.

Coming to coursework, I took up Digital Signal Processing, Introduction to Random Processes and Image Processing. Have been doing pretty well in DSP , ok in IP and ok-ok in RP. I will be working under the DSP prof., in the next semester for credits( not sure yet, have a meeting with her on Monday )

Food. I am missing every chaat-bandi , irani cafe, tiffin centre, kwality-icecream bandi, anusha’s and the related and mum, dad & aunts’ made food and anusha’s mum made curd-rice. Why? I can in no way be even compared to being a half decent cook as 1/10th of any of those above mentioned. Tried eating omlette but after a few days left that as well. Eating better these days due to Mansi’s cooking ( she is planning to shift away to UTD , bad news for me ) and my escapades to restaurants in and around here( not lost that habit ) . Juice intake has significantly increased. As such , I am not that bad a cook ( local relativity has a lot to do with that statement ), but it is the lethargy to cook that is the reason for me not eating well. That is changing in the recent past for the better and hopefully I eat well. By the way, tyre size has increased( for others, baby is growing ) but I have lost 8 kilos after coming here. This can either be attributed to my not eating well in the last 3 months , or to the fact that I have cut down to my original size after the bloating that ensued for the 4 months prior to this.

My first love : Laptop – Dell Vostro 1400. My second love : Phone – Nokia 6126. Both compete very well for my attention and I see to it that I keep both of them very happy. Who am I kidding; I would die without either one. They are the only lifelines I have, to be connected with the people I have known for the best part of my life. The lack of these two for the initial month made me realize a few things about myself, but one in specific is I NEED LOTS OF PEOPLE TO BE AROUND , ALL THE TIME. I have finally found a few , similar to me, in the past two weeks so lets see how things go on from here.

I do spend a significant amount of time on weekends on the phone, mostly UD3 mates having a roundup of the week, pouring in their troubles, laughing at each other, discussing deals for unnecessary electronic gadgetry and the alike. I suppose at some level, each one of us needs that crap talk to just be normal, i.e., the normal of the past because after all, we are all missing our family a lot. Quoting Mr. Thalimpu Reddy – ” I have never seen myself so senti but here it goes. I am missing a lot of people all the time”.

Onset of winter has finally begun with the Thanksgiving weekend. Since this is the first time I am experiencing snow without my mum being around to scold me for making snowballs and hitting people, I did all that. Experienced the sale-crazy american public. I could so clearly see Corporate America ( for that matter, add China as well ) laughing their pants off , all with the lines of miles outside stores in the chilly snowy conditions. We went to one such line just for the heck of it. 5 of us, standing in the line for about 2 hours , inside Walmart( they were the only ones who had made arrangements for people to make the line inside the store ) and just bought one microwave oven which one of us had to buy anyway. We were being looked down upon with contempt. Is this all you have to buy on a Thanksgiving sale kind of look. Then started the snowball wars. Double teaming. Double crossing. All that and much more. Luckily I was one of the three who had thought of getting gloves along, so that put me at an advantage. Had another round of it at BestBuy( Should have gone here , lots of gizmos on sale ) . Just couldn’t stop stuffing snow into others’ jackets. To hell with all those who say snow is depressing. Definitely not as far as first day first show results go. Snow is fun. End of story.

That is how as it stands with semester end fast approaching. Hopefully the general pace of things catches up with my pace 😛 :-).