Another year

Well the truth is now the New Year means nothing to me- one more year have passed by, nothing around me has changed much (although a lot of things have happened in general around the world- mostly the kind that bring sadness). I am still the same crazy person, well a year older and waiting to go bald any day now!!! The beginning of a new year only reminds me of the fact that I have not accomplished anything in the past year- same old same old mediocre life! The only thing that I always have trouble with is writing the dates correctly especially in my lab notebooks, apparently I like to be stuck in the past!
As a little girl, I used to want to celebrate the arrival of a New Year with all my friends and family - you have fun and all that, you know; but that never happened. In fact for most of my life- it was just the four of us and grandma sometimes; then it came down to the three of us and grandma. These years have dragged along with them, the very little fun-side I once used to possess (I believe I had a fun-side!!). Now, I don't understand why one should celebrate- apart from traditions, I realize that people celebrate the hope that the next year will be better than the one that passed. It could also be because people want to forget all their woes last few days of the year and be happy. I do respect all these sentiments and traditions but I just don't understand what the big deal is!
So those of you who already are in the next year and those of you who soon will be- whats the point, its just another day, innit?!
That was not pathetic was it- well this however does not mean that I would not WISH YOU ALL A VERY HAPPY NEW YEAR, I do wish all of you the very best in life (but I do that almost everyday)
LOKA SAMASTHA SUKHINO BHAVANTU (Sorry blogger does not yet have the Hindi translation thingee for Mac!)

Now I really am in Boston

A 10-day trip to San Diego, CA and Boulder, CO; a week-long trip to Madras, India; and an eventful 4 day trip to College Park, MD, I am back in Boston. I have so much to write about and hopefully will get to all of them before I forget what I wanted to pen.

Am DONE!

People accomplish various things in life
Oct 8th , Chalfie, Shimomura and Tsien won the Nobel Chemistry
Oct 10th, Paul Krugman won the Nobel Economics
Nov 4th, Obama became the President of the United States
Nov 11th, Abbhi defended her PhD (normally I do not talk in third person!)

So those are some pretty big ones I can think of!!

What should I be doing

This question has been creeping for a while now- should I stay put in Science? I don't think I am capable of staying put for a simple reason that I am very absent-minded. Though not always, but the times that I am not myself, I make mistakes in my experiments. It might be normal, no one is perfect but in Science the feeling I get it you have no room for that. Being yourself, the worst self is just not an option. The other thing is, for a person like me who takes experimental failures as personal ones (oh trust me nothing can be more stressful than using your work to gauge you as a person- it almost always becomes existential!) , science may not be the best option.
Since this is one of those "why-am-I-doing-what-I-am-doing" moments, I took this test that tells what careers suit one's personality- and the things it came up with are pretty much what I would love to be

• Artist- YES
  
• Historian- who does not love history
  
• Banker- yeah right!
  
• Novelist- have been thinking about it for a while now
  
• University Professor- I don't think students will like me
  
• Photographer- can call myself an amateur
  
• Vet- thanks, but no thanks
  
• Paralegal
  
• Graphic Designer
  
• Online Content Developer
  
• Webmaster
  
• Producer
  
• Managing Director- hmm, this might just be perfect
  
• Nutritionist- I need to use it on myself
  
• Advertising
  
• Nursing

This test did not get me out of my bad mood completely but it sure did boost my morale, after all I have a shot at being a novelist!!


PS: OK back to preparing for defense, hope it goes alright!

So long Greenbelt

I love this quite little city- one of the first cooperative housing ventures in the US. The people are as beautiful as this quaint place. A stroll on a gorgeous summer evening would always entail cheerful hellos and heys from the passers-by. The Roosevelt center, my favourite haunt, has great food with places like New Deal cafe and Generous Joe's deli. Oh I definitely will not forget the smells of freshly baked pastries at Chef Lou's (that is if you can catch a slice before he closes for the day and I don't think he is open everyday!). The center has a lot of activities in the summer.
And recently we have even started having our own farmer's market, that is all that was missing...
So why would anybody not like a place with great food, a good movie theater (don't expect an AMC, but I sure love the Old P&G), a farmers market and a "yummo-baked goods-anytime"and all of this you could just walk to....come on now!!!
I/We are out of Greenbelt (I am a temp acco at a friend's in College Park) as of yesterday and I am already feeling miserable. I love Greenbelt!!

Kudos to all those who still value such cooperatives and take the efforts needed to maintain it.

PS I cannot believe I spent nearly 10 minutes writing this post instead of preparing for my defense. One week to go junta

Weird

How come when we desperately want something to work it NEVER works. Is that an anomaly only in my life, I wonder!

I don't understand this

Okay, so everyone wants a bipartisan bailout deal worked out. "They" keep saying we got to do what is best for the country, put the country first yada yada yada (isn't this McCain's punch line?!)
So how come Nancy Pelosi's statement about how Republicans have failed in their economic policies is the biggest reason for the failure of the trillion dollar bailout deal? Both sides should have put country first and worked out something out, right?! It just seems so appalling to me that the politicians can be so hypocritical, on one hand all we hear is "this is the biggest crisis, akin to the great depression" so on and so forth and on one the other, both parties have been using this crisis as the biggest marketing strategy, pointing finger at one another...quite annoying actually and I am not even the one voting!!!


PS Aim for bipartisanship, try not to be an elitist...

say, can I do this again later sometime

Boy, that is one question I won't ask myself, may be I will consider it if someone offers to write my thesis for me! Its so hectic, I can hardly think about anything else. I guess part of the problem could be that most of next month will be spent doing experiments for my last chapter and writing my thesis. And of course it does not help when your boss says "you are going to stress yourself and you are going to stress me out; you brought it on yourself" yada yada yada......so its like a Law and order CI episode- Will Goren and Eames catch the killer? Will I finish on time so that I can defend on the date I have set for in October? I tell you similar emotions- people who catch killers should be made to write a thesis (not necessarily theirs, that would be more fun I suppose)

So the latest development, I postponed my defense by a month (so hopefully November folks) and now I am hoping that I will be actually done by then. Not that much has changed because of that, you know work expands to fill time, so am back to nervously muttering "oh god let my experiments work and please please let me finish at least in November!"

Frankly work is the only thing right now in my life and not that I mind it but sure don't mind easing up a bit!

So about Denali

Denali Natl Park- really beautiful, mountains do have character don't they?!
Drive was just filled with amazing views. We stayed at Savage river campground- mosquito free zone. Can you believe we actually socialized with a bunch of people who were also camping- 2 of them go to school in Fairbanks I think and there were 2 more of their friends from California- the point of telling this, we were so loud apparently that we got shushed...how can someone go to sleep when it was nice and bright outside? So the first day was mostly spent on a bus from the visitor center to Wonder lake (private vehicles can go only up to a certain point in the park) but we got to see so much of the wildlife- grizzlies, a fox, caribou, moose and its calf (oh the calf was really cute), sheep, sheep, more of sheep!! I must tell you the ground (tree?) squirrels are ugly. We hiked a little bit at the end of the bus drive (had to stretch a bit)- took the McKinley bar river trail, our first and only encounter with huge mosquitoes! And by the way, have you ever seen a person walking, well more like a stroll, fall face down in a slush- too bad you should have seen me- all covered in mud..
It does not matter- we got to see the double peaks!!! It happens only 3 or 4 times in a month and we were there, magnificent double peaks.
The next day was more on a less trodden trail- it was fun, just drove up to Talkeetna and started walking in one direction. It was fun to cross those little creeks, the water felt really good. After that little bit of well hiking around, we decided that was that and got back to the car where the ranger told us interesting stories about fightin' off bears and how he saw a bear chasing a moose, he was pretty vocal, I am not exactly sure if I felt like believing everything he said but it sure sounded adventurous. It was kind of disheartening that the trip was getting to its end.
Untainted beauty is what it was and I sure want it to stay that way. I would love to see how the place looks like in winter (only I am not sure if I can brave it!) But it would be fun to go back again and again and again folks!!!
ciao

Alaska- the last frontier

So we are back from Alaska. That was a long time ago and this post is way past due!
I flew into Anchorage on the 26th of June, well it took a while since I had flown all the way down to Dallas and then up to Anchorage. On the way to Anchorage, we saw Mt.Rainier- oh what a pretty sight, magnificent! Reached there at around 7:30PM. Sun never sets in the Alaskan empire during summer- interesting trivia, the moon was around only for about a maximum of 1h. Anyway-
June 27th- (not many great snaps from this trip because it was raining, and the camera was fogging up pretty bad!)
~2h ride to Seward for the cruise to see some cool glaciers. But the weather had to play spoilt-sport. I guess I should not complain since the cruise did not run the day before due to really high ocean. And also because I got to see an Orca pass by at about 10feet!!! Oh most amazing, it was this close- I could have jumped on it and rode!! We could not go down to the glaciers, there were people on the boat who did not have the stomach for it, no literally they were quite sick.. and the waves were pretty high. Oh ours was a small boat- she was called misty, went upto 25knots (or layman-22miles/hr) pretty fast I would say. We saw a lot of wildlife- humpback whales were quite sight, lone bald-eagles high up on a tree, penguin-like puffins adorning the island (the name of which I have forgotten) and the same island there were a harbor seals, man these are some lazy creatures! The glacier that we did see was one of the Aialik- Holgate glacier, quite massive, very blue! There were some interesting world war II stuff too. It was really cold though, I mean after the first 5-6 h of the journey, I was pretty much inside the cabin the whole time.
The next day was at Anchorage- went to the state's largest flea market. It was beautiful weather and seemed like everyone was outside. That evening we left for Denali national park.

But I will blog about it in my next post folks! Be patient and trust me Alaska is worth spending money on!

So the end is in sight folks

The end is in sight- I now have a job, well if you can call getting a postdoctoral position as having a job. Anyway what is important is I finally get to move on but hold on- who is going write my thesis? I cannot think of anything else that I dread so much- oh-the-no one-reads-this part of my PhD. But it has to be done, and I will have to get it done somehow.
My labmates have been nice enough to give me the wildest suggestions but unfortunately using any of those would be deemed as plagiarism (LOL). The only hope for me- I have a job and I need to start sometime in October (hey hey, I did not come up with this, my boss said so!)

A journey

Trains have been a part of my childhood and most of my teen years. Over those years I have developed a strange bond with Indian Railways. Other countries might have better trains but none can offer "the journey" that our trains provide. There is something about traveling by trains. I remember the time in BITS just before holidays- I used to be so eager and excited to being my journey back home, I initially thought it was due to homesickness but I got the same feeling of excitement when I left home (well, I was sad to leave my family and go far north to study...!!). Those oh-about-2days of train journey were a bliss. Sit by the window muttering a song to yourself, once in a while humor your fellow passengers with a story or a joke (inquiries about where they are coming from-great starters!)- somehow when I am on a train, sorrow/sad is not an emotion- usually its laughter, solitude and happiness!! I pretty much get down wherever the train stops- very important, get a taste of the local food. Oh..those matka chais in Kharagpur, jamuns (the fruit, if you have never had these you have missed something great), vadas in vijayawada, not-one-of-my-favorite-srikhand, guavas (when they are in season)....Not just food but somehow getting down at a stop, I felt like I belonged there and that to me was way cool!
I used to stand the door taking in all the air and smell of the earth as much as possible- as if I were going to die tomorrow or something. Interestingly, there were ticket checking guys-some of them just warned me, there were others that yelled but there were few others that always had a gruesome story to tell about young boys and girls getting killed by standing alongside those giant iron doors. When I am on a train there is always sense of urgency- finish a good number of books, taste all the food you can, oh sleep, I forgot that, sleep as much as you can!!! T might be dirty, my co-passengers might be annoying, hey but all that.. cannot keep me from enjoying my train journey. Live a little, let go of your comfort for a just a few hours and you will be the happiest passenger in the world!!

PS my dream- to travel the Indian subcontient by trains, stop at every little station and explore the villages nearby- and take a shot at writing about it!

Fear...

Here is another one borne out of my thought-experiments!

She sat on the couch- TV was on, music was playing on her laptop, phone was ringing. She sat still on the couch, unmindful of all the noises that surrounded her. (gosh! how I wish I could do that...get away from all the noises) She was scared- scared of what, that she could not tell. Fear of the unknown possibly, her mind wandered, it was as if taking a stroll in Central Park. Why do people fear the unknown? Why do we as humans have to know everything? This was her chance, chance to be happy and not worry about the unknown. After all she had everything that she could ever want, well may be not ever want but it was more than enough for the time being. Then why could she not get the unknown out of her mind? She knew giving up things she loved doing most or the people she loved was not helping either. It was debilitating. What is her way out, when her thoughts are chockablock with the unknown?
Well, her mind seemed to have fagged off after the stroll. She jolted and was greatly stricken by the noise around her. She decided to take a stroll herself and find the comfort she needed under the starry skies.

One world, one language

As a lover of languages, such articles always make me fret a bit. Not that I don't understand the importance of learning English, after all it is soon to become the ONLY language (even with a billion + population each of China and India). But my only wish is to not see such a thing happen in my lifetime! I take pride in the fact that Indians are very multilingual- we somehow do not even realize this fact, most of us can speak at least 3 different languages including English. Isn't that quite a feat?
So why do I think trying to do our bit in saving the languages from totally dying out is important? Quite simple really- I consider English to be a language of stinginess- alphabets have been stripped down to bare minimum. English lacks the bounty of some of the other languages. Well, I can only imagine that it would not be too long before we start using Newspeak as the "world official langauge". We can see it heading there, can we not? What with A and Es being replaced by whatever?!!
So folks go on learn as much languages as possible and don't forget your own native tongue!!

Thats it 4 2nite, BCNU soon

PS Orwell, IMAO was one of the best!!!!

Finally...

Hold on...I am not graduating....well at least not yet. Finally my/ our paper has been accepted.
It is a suspense as to where it got through but I can assure you- its big ladies and gentleman (please people don't spoil the surprise and crse others can take guesses)!!!
But you know what, there is hardly any excitement left in me, may be because I am tired and it just took too long, too many people and too much of work (most of which first ended up in supplementary section during the first review process and then removed altogether from the paper after the 2nd review!). It was very funny, here I was thinking I could relax a little, but the reverie was spoilt when my boss comes to me the next day and goes "so- any-data-for-me".
Anyway am back to work, well it never stopped actually.

PS Next time I give this title, I probably means that I have either graduated or just left the country

Its already February!!

I have been trying to crawl of this hole I am in right now to at least say hello to the blogosphere- but seems like I am not doing a good job of it.
So for now just take it from me- if you are going to a PhD, think first- do I want to die young or go crazy? if your answer to either of the questions is YES then by all means go for it....My friend you are now in the MATRIX!!!!


PS did you notice how the title had nothing to do with the content?