My way on the highway

I was listening to Norah Jones and I felt this was an apt song for me too. I sometimes wonder we human beings are always striving towards that unreachable star. We always seem to be on the hope for something better. I wonder if it's really stupid of me to travel all the way to another part of the globe, to spend so much of money in pursuit of what? One way it's great, you get to see another part of the world, learn about their culture, learn about your own culture and get to interact with some new professors. Why is it that people who come here never wanna go? I guess it's the comfort i.e materialistic. You need to make a lot more money to get this in India but there is family and of course familiarity. Most of my friends are here. It's not funny the number of people from church park and PSG who are here. In fact I am not sure if I would have spoken to so many PSGians in chennai. I am sort of going through the same emotions that went through me while I was in bombay. I...

I had written this long post yesterday because the weather has been so depressing but today I am back to being cheerful. I am off to niagara today. Raj Reddy has organized a trip for us students. ITs supposed to be the worst day to go to niagara weather wise. It's the last day of the fall attraction but nothing will deter the human spirit. I am wearing four layers of clothes apart from my down jacket. Hope it's not too unberable. I will post photos after we come back. Cant wait!

I am two days away from my interview with google and no I have not studied well. I spent a lazy saturday morning doing nothing. I spoke to my mum, then asif ghatala, then sowmya nayak. I bathed for an hour, what bliss! Just when I was in the mood to study, my friend called me from syracuse and we chatted for an hour. Then conferenced with another friend. Wow! I just spent time just like that till six. Then I got into the study mode and i did some timepass for sometime. But nothing fruitful. I guess some days are just meant to be wasted. I attended a meeting and just got off it and it's 2 AM. I have absolutely no social life. I mean it's saturday night and these people have to schedule a meeting only in the night when I am farting around the whole day. But this is where this onsite offshore thing comes. I am plagued by this, at TCS and now at school. God give me deliverance from this!!!! We will be going to niagara next week and I am really looking forward to that. I hope it wo...

Yesterday was a beautiful day. My risk class in the morning went off well followed by me having a meeting with my team mates on the security assignment. It was a nice discussion. IN the evening I went to a concert by heArtbeat which is a band from chennai at the Frick auditorium at Upitt. Wow it was simply amazing! I was transported to another world for the one hour that I spent there. I wish I could have stayed for the entire concert but duty called. They played some very different ragams. One of these was very striking called "Rathipathipriya". It was a very romantic raaga, it reminded me of the song by MS "katrinilai varum geetham" and "kuzhal oodhi manam endra kollai konda pindra". The silent violin is something I have never heard of and it sounded very melodious. The other ragam was saladam and it had tinges of hindolam in it. I was not sure but after that song was over the person playing the ghatam said that it has tinges of hindolam and I gave mysle...

This weekend, I was just looking forward to sleeping. I did not realize that I would be having so much fun. I woke up on saturday and went to play tennis in the morning, then I called up my dad's college mate, Dr.Pradeep Seethi, to go and spend time with them on saturday. The point to be noted is that my dad has never met pradeep uncle. The initial plan was to just meet them for lunch and come back home but I ended up staying the night. Let me start off by saying that there are very few people in this world who are very warm. Whenever I meet people who are warm, my faith in the world get reaffirmed. Dr. Seethi and Sonia aunty and their sons fall into one such category. They were super cool and so warm that I felt instantly at home, once I stepped into the car when uncle came to pick me up. Their house is on shadow ridge lane, a beautiful place. It's like a picture out of some discovery magazine. I was greeted to burritos and samosa and hot chai. Wow the way to my heart...

Yesterday I spent the whole night working. You know me, in my twenty three years of working I rarely have done such a thing. Well I felt quite sick in the morning. Probably also because of self pity. Well it has been a month in America and how do I feel. Quite frankly I like it. The work is hard but it keeps you busy so there is no time to feel homesick. By and large people are friendly. I once read somewhere that when you visit a new country rather than learning about their culture, you come to know of your own culture. This is exactly how I feel. Of course you do not get to interact much with Americans because a lot of people in my department are non- Americans. In fact one can count the number of Americans and Indian Americans in the class. Today after class at 7:30 PM I met this interesting person in the computer science lounge. He was an American. His family had immigrated years ago from Ukraine. He wanted to know more about India and then about Indian women. He had watched a docu...

This weekend, I went to atlanta to meet my soul mates from undergrad, Gopi and Divya. It was supposed to be a reunion Gopi, Divi, Indie, Raji and me. BUt Raji dropped out in the beginning itself because of the new orleans disaster. Indie was supposed to come till the last minute and then she had to cancel her ticket because her cousin was visiting her from england this weekend. And Indie being Indie forgot to look up this simple detail when booking her tickets to atlanta. Annway I was seriously upset that she was not there but was looking forward to meeting gopika and divya. So I left pittsburg at 3:00 PM by the 28X flyer which drops one off at the airport. I reached the airport at 4:30 PM for a 6:00 PM flight. But hey better late than never:-) So I went in and then looked around the pittsburg airport for a while and then waited in the boarding lounge. The learnings were that I had to take the metro to reach the gate from where I had to board. Such a difference from Indian Airports. Bo...

Today we had a break from orientation. We have two days before class starts. On Sunday we have a picnic with the department. I hope it will be fun. Yesterday Gopika and Divya called up and made my day. It was so much fun talking to them. I was to go to georgia but tickets were a little too expensive. Well I am planning to definitely meet up with them before I go. What's the point of coming here otherwise? Hopefully when sriram comes something will work out. So today I took part in a psychology study and earned 20 bucks. I was so thrilled. GReat to make money to spend. we had to play two unbelievably simple and interesting games to play and earn the bucks. God it was good. Now that we earned the bucks we decided to spend it! So I had chinese food and my friend had indian . Mine sucked but hers was okay. This place called tech streets has trucks or mobile units which serve food. It sort of reminded me of PSG Tech back gate. Except there you get yummier things for 10 rupees rather tha...

This week has been great what with so much free food and great fun things to do. Today we started off with continental breakfast (yum yum) followed by sessions on thrifty living at CMU. It was really amazing. All the teaching staff here are by and large very articulate and extremely witty. The dean of student affairs, Dr. Paul Fowler was amzing. It was such fun listening to him. The Vice provost of CMU happens to be an Indian and she also spoke really well. She basically stressed on mixing with people and really enjoying what you're doing as this is the only time that you have to enjoy yourselves. She said "this is the break that you have from society and family obligations. So do this for yourselves". That was really very stimulating. In the afternoon we had a four course etiquette lunch. The first course was soup, second course salad, third course was lasange and the last course desert. We had an instructor who lead us thru the whole meal. To top it we had a desert fair...

I have not blogged for two days. This is what happened. On sunday I swam and played squash an sort of felt a little good because I got to do some physical exercise. Sunday night the indian student association organised an Independance day celebration. We painted a fence at CMU tricolored and just socialised with some Indian folks. There are a lot of Indians out here. We sort of form the majority of the International students. The sour point was that there was only cake and no free food:-( On monday our department called us for a welcome luncheon. It was really nice. The staff were very friendly and we had a good introduction to software engineering by one professor, Anthony. All the people here are very funny and extremely articulate. There is something to learn from that. Today is the first day of our International orientation. We reached here at 8:15 grabbed some doughnuts and coffee and had some good introduction about the US way of life. The OIE (office of International eductaion) ...

I am at CMU now and it still has not sunk in. School starts from tomorrow only, I mean the orientation. What strikes me after five days in America is that it is such a rich country and we are all really poor. I mean the cars, the roads, the malls, the houses etc. Everything is so big and massive. IT will take a while for India to get to that. No wonder we are called third world. It really makes no sense. Another peculiar thing is that there are only two sizes of people here either extremely fat or extremely fit. There are no in betweens. Everybody follows the rules and the houses look beautiful from the outside. I can understand why many Indians stay back here. They become slaves to all these material things. CMU is lovely. One thing I cannot understand is that the campus just spills onto the road. There is no compound wall. That is quite alien to somebody from India. People are quite friendly and helpful. Of course there are some people who are rude. But I think I've met only one...

I watched this movie morning raga yesterday. The promos of the movie looked so very nice. It also has some brilliant actors as a part of its star cast. The only problem was that the movie had a very flimsy story line except for the carnatic music part, the music is nothing. They could have done a lot more. Lillette Dubey and Perizaad and the lead actor are like actors in a bad play. Even I would be able to emote better. Shabana Azmi is the only one who is a little believable. I leave on moday and I have not started packing as yet. Amma needs to help to carry out the mission.

The countdown before I leave has begun and boy is it madness! In all this rush I also need to meet up with freinds, go out for a movie, lunch and also do mundane things like help clean the table, clear out the cupboards. Yesterday I watched this yucky movie called dark waters. Sick and it is supposedly a horror flick but it was not at all scary. I went with a lawyer friend of mine from school. My parents helped me today by finishing off my errands at the travel agent and the automobile association. In the evening I went and bought myself a passport bag and a hand bag ( a good leather one). Then I came back home and helped my mom make dinner. I really have not done such a thing in a long time. Then I spoke to this other friend of mine who is getting married. She is one of those "socialite" types. They think they're cats whiskers. But she sounded quite nice on the phone. So we both carried out the fakeness for sometime and then stopped. Today I had a pow-wow with my pare...

I thought today was going to be just a usual day doing my usual jig before I leave for the US on the 9th of August. I got up in the morning, took copies of all my originals and then worked on getting a duplicate license (yes lost the original). We (Mum and me) had movie tickets for parineeta at 4 PM. So we set out at 3:45PM just to realize that we left the tickets at home. Drove all the way back amist a heavy downpour and rushed up and got the tickets. The show started late so we caught the movie on time. It was beautiful. The story was usual hindi movie types but the cinematography was top class. It was such a good eye candy film. Saif Ali kHan looked hot and the new girl vidya balan looked stunning. The sets, artefact etc were a visual delight. wow! It makes one feel good to see all that glitz. Back home I thought life would be cool, I would unwind watching frasier and go off to sleep. But then I checked my mail and I had got some info from carnegie mellon that they had not got my in...