Time

I wonder a lot about the flow of time through my life. How it speeds up and slows down at will so I can never say if a summer went by too fast or too slow. I wonder about what I would be doing a couple of years from now, this very date. I try to remember what I was doing this exact same date, a few years earlier. It helps put your problems into perspective and it reminds you of the person you were. And dream about the person you might be. That's one reason I write. It makes the past a lot easier to remember and a lot clearer.

On prejudices

A few months back I wrote about prejudices, about how I was falling prey to the convenience of them- the convenience of fitting people into different categories that predict expected behavior so you would know how to behave around them. The problem with prejudices is the problem with any classification algorithm. You are trying to fit an infinite range of people into a finite set of classes. And even the strongest classification algorithm supported by the strongest of data has its flaws. And there will be outliers.

I have never been exposed to people from other parts of India much. Tamil Nadu has always been stereotyped as an extremely self-sufficient or in less flattering terms 'not a very convenient place to stay in if you are an outsider and don't know the language'. So we don't have as many out-of-state people per unit area in Chennai as, say. Bangalore. Thus I grew up conveniently ignorant of how the rest of India behaves and had no need to learn the prejudices and stereotypes that try to describe an entire group of people in a few words. Now that I am outside my little cocoon and meet new people from across India all the time (what better place to meet Indians than the US) I have given in to this deplorable habit of learning about stereotypes and trying to fit people to them. And as I do that, I also come into contact with stereotypes about Tamilians. Like any self-obsessed blogger, I love hearing what people think of me and how they perceive us as a people. And a lot of it is news to me. As a disclaimer I must state that my family is not the stereotypical Tamil family and a lot of that is due to my mom who is not the stereotypical Tamil mo. So the reason I cannot make any sense of Tamil stereotypes is not maybe because the stereotype is false but that I am an outlier. That being said, I feel a lot of the people I know would be outliers.

Myth #1: Our ability to speak Hindi and English
A lot of my friends can speak impeccable Hindi though I personally suck at it. But most of us are pretty good at English. Most shop keepers and auto drivers can understand English and the ones that do love showing off. So have no fear. But I speak for Chennai more so than any other city/town/village. So dont take this as a general rule.

Myth #2: Our food habits
I hate curd/yogurt. I prefer rotis more than rice.

Myth #3: Our language obsession
We are not all fanatical about our language. Speaking for myself, I don't understand a lot of the most beautiful words of Tamil beyond the ones I use in everyday conversations and the only reason I can read and write it haltingly is because my grandmother taught me the letters of the text from gossip magazines about film stars. And that is the case for most of the urban youth. A lot of us are more comfortable with English than Tamil and I agree that that is a sad sad thing.

Myth #4: Our chutney serving sizes are too small
Chutneys come with unlimited refills. Ask and it shall be given.

Now follow the Chennai myths.
Myth #5: Autodrivers rip you off if you don't know Tamil
First things first. There are no fixed auto fares in Chennai. The meter is for show. It hasn't been in popular use since 1998. Everything is negotiable when it comes to auto drivers. The direct implication of that is that you are only as strong as your negotiation skills. If you are an outsider, you are going to get ripped off because you are not going to know the standard fare for going from point A to point B and that is a chink in your bargaining armor. And trust me, our auto drivers are a hardened lot. If they see a weakness, they will swoop in for the kill. The end result? You will be taken for a ride, pun intended. It has nothing to do with the fact that you don't know our language. It is not personal. If you don't want to get ripped off, study up on the rates you have to pay and brush up your bargaining prowess. Else, call a cab. We do have them and share autos and buses for the faint of the heart.

Myth #6: Chennai Tamil is ugly Tamil.
This is a myth that people who grew outside Chennai love to propagate and stress on every time I comment on their Tamil. Chennai Tamil is NOT just slum Tamil. We are NOT just a city of slums. The slummish version is a stereotype that Vivek the Comedian made famous and we didn't mind because he was funny. But we do not all start every conversation with "Ae kasumaalam".

Some generalizations about Tamilians and Chennai are true. We are a coastal city and the climate is typical of that. It is extremely humid. We love Rajinikanth, more so because he is a humble and generous actor, than for any other reason. We are not yet completely conducive a state to outsiders but we are slowly becoming better at understanding what outsiders need and implementing it- English signs on all buses and road corners and most shops is one such step.

All being said and done, stereotypes exist for a reason and do apply for the vast majority and as long as you remember that there will be exceptions and take care to not judge people too fast you should be fine. And personally, I am going to stop subscribing to prejudices and trying to slot people. That can be my new year resolution.

My Australian cousin shot this pic. Due credit therefore must go the typical NRI Praveen Gounder

And it begins again

I've been meaning to write for a long time. After all a lot always happens in December. I have a lot of half written notes floating around in my laptop's disk from all the posts I meant to write but got distracted through midway- one about my birthday, another about my trip to Arizona for a friend's graduation, another about being awkward around strangers, another about getting drunk on other people's happiness and happiness sponsored tequila shots and yet another about pretty girls making bad relationship mistakes which was precipitated by my Arizona friend's roommate bawling her eyes out several times a day everyday over her boyfriend.

This note however is not about something that happened. On the contrary, this is about nothing happening and about how my life seems to have become stuck in stagnation and how i wake up everyday with an incredible sense of deja vu. I talk a lot about the minor events of my life, how I'm feeling on any given day and in general treat my blog as a diary with minimal explanation about why I am feeling what I'm feeling and minimal context. The reason is I have no idea who reads my blog and who doesn't. Over the last few years, some very random people have told me they read my blog, my ex-roommates aunt for one, and I dont know if I am comfortable with some people knowing some parts of my life. Not to be secretive or anything, but I dont want to worry my family or scandalize them. Which is why I came up with the very clever idea of tracking my audience (thats the bar you see on the lower right) but clearly it is useless for anything except to feed your ego. So I've given up. I think this is a personal dilemma every public blog writer has to go through- how much do I put on my page, how much can I reveal and how do I not use my blog as a vessel to showing off and projecting an image of you that is not the real you but the you you've always wished to be.

Anyway, breaking out of this digression, the reason for my worry these days is that I am planning on graduating in March and my job search still winds on. When I got my internship a couple of months back, I was pretty sure I was set for life, that I'd never have to face the debilitating waiting and applying and hours and hours of staring at job listings and the slow waning of your confidence with every rejection. I thought I'd know what to expect this time around. And that would prepare me better- to get a job and to deal with the pressure if I dont land one straight away. But even knowing what to anticipate doesn't really prepare you for the depression when it hits. And the fact that this time the stakes are higher, that I need to find a job within the limited time I have, does nothing to help. Its like a constant sour taste at the back of your throat, an itching niggling prick that pulls you back to it, even when you try and prioritize and concentrate on something else. I so tried to avoid reaching this point, starting January and my final quarter without a job. There are a couple of my friends in other universities who just graduated and who are still on the lookout for jobs and I saw what that did and does to them. Slowly counting down to a deadline, reaching it, stepping over it and now starting another and more final countdown while waiting for a call and an offer. I saw what the stress does to them and it scares me, makes me kick myself for every interview I messed up.

I miss my friend K. He's gone to India for the winter holidays and among all my friends he is the one person I miss the most. Which is surprising. He is my cribbing partner. Especially when it comes to jobs and relationships and sometimes money, which I guess covers the whole gamut of reasons to crib about. Over the last few months, we've perfected our own cribbing routine.
 "Why is our life like this?" I would go.
"Why should we always be put through this stress and worn thin before being given what we want?" he would ask.
"Why do some people always luckier than us?"
"Why is life so unfair?"
And then we would comfort ourselves with our weak and watery consolation, "Someday we would look back at this and laugh. And we can tell other people that we too struggled to succeed in life. And we would know we are capable of getting through life's incredible penchant for pressure tests."

I had an interview two weeks back with Qualcomm that I kicked ass in. I got a reject a couple of days back and ever since then I have been walking around like a zombie. And yes, that is what precipitated this post. Life begins to descend into the chaos it once was. I am running out of the money I managed to save. I've always had money, so it surprises me that it would mean so much to me and cause me to dissolve into a fit of panic every time I open my account details. I feel lost at times and find myself staring into space for long periods waiting for someone to tell me what to do. I find myself shying away from talking to people I am convinced will never understand this, alienating myself from friends who really have no clue and can only offer mindless platitudes. I find myself letting Led Zeppelin blare through my eardrums and I wonder if anything has changed at all from the last December 23rd.

I tried writing a personal Zeitgest for 2011 but I really cant see much that is worth mentioning and that has changed my life around in the last year. I am sure that is not true and my perception will change when my mood improves but right now if I had to choose a soundtrack that will describe the year with all its associated growth pains, I would go ahead and choose exactly the same song Google chose- "Sooner or Later" (I would have chosen "Good life" for last year too. Seems like the world or atleast Google search statistics  reflects my life, like the country and the protagonist in Midnight's Children which I just finished reading). Its sad that the prevailing sentiment at the end of a year would be "we made it". Here's to an overall better 2012 for everybody.

Coffee cravings and silent afternoons in the university

Am annoyed at myself. I just got mad at a friend. And he wasn't even doing anything. I guess thats why I got mad. 'Coz he wasn't doing anything. I was on the phone with him and it felt like having a conversation with myself. Or talking to a wall. Dont get me wrong. He was listening. But he wasn't really responding. Which was why talking to him was more like talking to myself. And talking to myself is a very bad idea. I tend to out think myself and go back on my own decisions of 5 minutes ago and rethink the common sense of them. And get annoyed at myself. Or at him because he felt like myself in this case. If it makes sense. And annoyed at myself because I got annoyed at him while the person who deserved getting annoyed at was myself. Is that even a coherent thought? I need coffee. A lot of coffee.

It feels like my system selectively metabolizes coffee so fast that I need a cup every hour. I realize I am beginning to sound like a crack addict. I need to check myself into caffeine rehab.

But before that, lets give you some context about my day, just coz I can. I am sitting in my spiffy new clothes, the clothes that were supposed to be my bday clothes (atleast that was my rationalization for going thanksgiving shopping when I neither follow thanksgiving nor christmas, so I really dont have any reason for going shopping except that there was a sale and I really cant say no to a sale but I'd feel bad about spending money for no reason, so  need a convincing enough rationalization. So there!) But now I have already worn my bday clothes so I guess I will have to go shopping again. (Yay!) And I am trying to study. But every time I decide I am going to study some distraction comes up and somebody calls/pings me. Thats the reason I am not productive enough- Technology! And the distractions cause me annoyance so I have to blog about it. And in a bit i will feel guilty I havent done anything all day so I will go study. After having lunch of course. A girl has to eat! Which I havent decided is a good idea or not because according to Hillfiger, I have dropped 2 sizes but according to Victoria's Secret, I have gained 1. I am not sure whom to believe. Commercialism is a confusing source of personal information.

I ran into the professor of the course I am planning on reading up on in a bit, near the vending machine. Gave me such sadistic pleasure to see him as devoid of a life as he cause me to be. University vending machine coffee on the day after thanksgiving.... sad sad life.

I might be visiting India in December again. Just coz I can. And also coz almost every one who mean anything to me in this country will be in India and there really is no point in me just hanging around feeling sorry for myself coz I have no one to talk to here. Might as well go back and hang around with them back in Chennai coz thats where the action in my life is going to be this December. But its still a might, and a rather big one at that. On that happy (or maybe not) thought to my friends in India, I shall take leave now. And get back to my reading about Virtualization.

Someone seems to be on a blogging spree -Life Projects

I think it is all the repressed need to have fun pouring out of me after the crazy week I've had. But I've been having this compulsive need to blog since yesterday and its not like I am doing anything useful anyway, so might as well give in.

Goofy (some) and pointless (most) stuff I've always wanted to do and hope to get around to doing someday.

1. Have a different coffee a day at Starbucks (including the secret not-on-the-menu ones) and write a review blog about them all. Aim: to discover the best coffee there is and get over my single minded obsession with short-Cappuccino-less-foam-whole-milk in the process.
2. Visit every city that has a Saravana Bhavan in the US and order Pongal Vadai and Filter Coffee in it.
3. Brew my own beer. I've been wanting to do this since a friend here actually did it. She still has the necessary equipment. Maybe soon.
4. Go to a strip club. I've been suggesting this as a surprise for every friend's bday party. Somehow always gets shot down.
5. Jump off a cliff. I never really thought I'd do the airplane thing. Always wanted to do the cliff thing like in Rang de Basanti. Maybe next summer.
6. Combine my Flickr page and this blog into a mega me project which will feature my recipes (if I ever cook anymore), my photos and my writing. Update it regularly. Maybe even turn it into a book.
7. Watch the top 100 movies on IMDb
8. Read all of the top 100 books recommended by Times.
9. Print a coffee table book with my pictures of all my travel. Better still, make it a coffee table book of a photo project, like the Red Couch. (I once went around taking pictures of dustbins in Andaman because they were so cute and interesting. Especially in the island of Ross. If you ever have a chance to visit Andaman and go to Ross Island, do notice the dustbins. I am sure some clerk in the Tourism Industry spent hours thinking up each.)
10. I really cant think of any more. Just want to end on an even number.

Sure, I wanna do the serious stuff as well- get back to my music, get back to my dance, buy a better camera, buy a car, buy a house, decorate it, travel the world, get married and sometimes in my idealistic moods, join Engineers without Borders and go to Africa. But for someone with chronic fear of long term plans, this is a good start. Baby steps people!

Divya Recommends

Its very surprising that I write a post about people calling my behavior irrational and the next day a friend points this out to me. This is long read but a good one.

Women are not crazy!

I told you so and other things

While its always satisfying to say it, its also annoying. It means people totally disregarded your advice and went on to make the same mistakes you did. A lot of my friends who totally dissed the bouts of loneliness and mood swings I had during my first quarter of grad school (and still do have) and classified them all as "random things girls do" or even "Divya's unexplainable behavior" are now going through the exact same thing. And what annoys me more is that they are so much better off than i was. The have me for one. They shouldn't be complaining at all with my awesomeness around. And yet they do. But yeah "In your face!" does have a nice ring to it.

Also, girls are such simple creatures. We get depressed, we have a crappy day. People yell at us, make us feel insignificant. Things are generally grey. And we look into the mirror and notice our hair is perfectly straight and the light really brings out the very expensive highlights we got put in and our mood instantly lifts. Its like the last couple of hours just didnt picture in the story of our lives. We wear good clothes on moody days just so we might have a reason to be excited. We get all smiley when someone takes out a camera. We ooh and aah over the smallest and cheapest of trinkets. And all you need to win us over is a fluffy $5 toy. How complicated is that!

On the personal note, I just dealt with a couple of deadlines and am just chilling now. For the last week, i slogged my ass off. I couldnt remember the last time I took a bath and slept peacefully and didnt wake to drag my laptop over and check my project mate's updates and start coding. And I feel sick at myself because I am dropping the course that I've really learnt a lot in just because I am worried about my GPA. It is an extremely cowardly thing to do and I feel so bad at doing it and keep fluctuating about it. But for some reason the idealistic me seems so much easier to quell now than a couple of months back. So drop its gonna be!

I have a constantly irritated throat. I've had it ever since I got back from India which is actually worrying since that was a whole 2 months back. I have decided I am gonna test out and learn how the medical system here works, which is about time. The systems here always confuse me. Why cant I just walk into the hospital and ask to be treated again?

Also, I bought a new lens!!! Its a Canon 50 mm F/1.8 lens. If you've been to my blog in recent times and also before recent times, you would have noticed the new change which is my Amazon wishlist on the bottom. I decided to add that in case some generous readers fall so much in love with me that they starts contributing to my well being and the prolonged continuation of my writing a la Julie as in Julie and Julia. Somehow, considering the fact no one even clicked on my ads and got me any revenue with my Amazon Affliate program, I strongly doubt it, bu hey no loss in trying. So anyway, that lens was on it for a long time before i decided I'm just gonna get it for myself. Like I explained to a friend, happiness doesnt seem to be coming my way by itself so I'm just gonna create my own. Pretty deep, huh? So my new lens is here and its waaayyyy awesome! Unfortunately though I haven't had a chance to test it out yet. Sadness. In case you feel bad that you couldnt get it for me, there are still a whole bunch of stuff in there that you can get. My bday is coming up in less than a month and I'm so excited!!! I hope it doesnt work itself into being a damper which is highly possible considering none of my friends are gonna be in town. But I'll be damned if I let my bday not live up to its expectations yet another time. I promise you I am gonna have one hell of a whopper!

I am on an FB detox diet. Like I said, I get to log in only once a week or so and I've realized that when you do limit your accessing, it is not as interesting anymore. I look at sappy statuses and laugh. I look at pointless updates about Aishwarya Rai's new baby and I laugh. I look at random shares of stupid moderately sexist photos and I laugh. Its like nothing excites me any more there. And now that I am actively job hunting, LinkedIn is more my thing. I check my page every few hours to see if someone's taken a look at it. And it always makes me so happy when I get a notification saying someone's downloaded my Resume. Well, as Bradley Cooper said in some show I cant even remember the name of, what is life if not replacing one addiction with another. 

Ta for now!

The first of many blog tweets

I wonder how many years grad school has taken off my life. Not just the best two years of my youth but all those years I am going to lose off my lifespan from all the stress and excessive caffeine I have been exposed to. I wonder why no one warned me that grad school would drain your blood and suck your soul and drag your lifeless body through the streets before dumping you into the sewer. And then poke me in the eye and wake me up and tell me I have a degree and a job (we can always hope!). And I also wonder if the idealistic me that tends to resurface early mornings when the sun is out and the coffee is fresh and the music is fast and there are no deadlines in the horizon would have made a different choice. And if my mom would have let me anyway.


P.S.
To increase productivity, I made my friend change my facebook password and let me only use it once a week. I have to admit it makes me feel like an addict checking himself/herself into rehab but, hey, it works. But now I want a place to showcase my quirky/witty thoughts. Which is why I'm here. And which is why you'll probably be seeing a lot of micro blog posts (No, I am not on Twitter) in the coming few weeks or months if i manage to hold out. Watch this space for more.

Also, I was just hunting for a free note to type this out in my laptop, when I found this scrawled somewhere...

Better the sorrow of the future

Than the sorrow of today

I have no idea why I wrote that but it really sounds nice. Very poetic and profound and all great-Yoda-master kind of deep. Sometimes, I impress myself.

Midday epiphany

Its surprising because I have most of my epiphanies in the middle of the night, not just because nights do something to me, but also because there is more likelihood of me being awake at night than this time of the day. But I was cribbing to a friend about how some annoying guy and he told me something I should have realized a long time back. About how since I was just so open with everything, guys think they can talk to me and treat me anyway they like. And how their interactions with me are so much different from their interactions with other people. And how it was wrong that they can never say a nice word to me in public, that the only comments they can leave on my wall are lets-pull-her-leg sorta comments, how they'd ping me in private to say I look good on a picture or how my status in nice, but they wouldn’t be caught dead saying that in public, how they wouldn’t even acknowledge the fact that we are friends when we are in a group but would tell me their life secrets and text me every morning in private … how its just so so wrong that guys who are actually nice get laughed at. Also how it is wrong that all this and most social inappropriateness is considered acceptable guy behavior 'coz you know guys will be guys. And it seems to be exclusive to certain groups or communities of guys (thank God for that!). Since it is all I've ever seen back home in Chennai and since it is something that sticks out in particular groups now that I am here in LA, I tend to generalize and say that’s how Tamil guys are. I try to tell myself I am exhibiting the same narrowmindedness and prejudice that I laughed at my family for but statistically my prejudice is justified.

I was reading this article about how in this economy, people are scared to be rude but sometimes you have to be rude. (I tried hunting for the article, I cant find it now). Its true, you know? Its not ok to stew over a misguided comment or an ugly joke for a whole day and take it out on your friends and let it upset you but smile and act cool to the person responsible so that he/she can do it again. Sometimes people have to be put in their place. And if they are anywhere as nice as you deserve your friends to be, they'd understand and not hold it to you.

My October Snapshot

Well this is more an anthology of posts than a post in itself. Its just that with my mind in the stressed out and jumbled state it is in, I can only refer to other people’s writings to express myself than to try and put my own words to my thoughts. Plus, why reinvent the wheel, as we engineers like to say. I once wrote that writing a blog helps maintain a politically correct if not completely honest account of everything I am feeling at any given time, so that when I look back 10 years from now, I will know exactly what I was doing and thinking. Also, if I ever get Alzheimer’s or some form of dementia or just plain old bonk my head and lose all my memories, I highly doubt there is someone as hot as Ryan Gosling recounting my life story everyday to revive my memory. (Technically its James Garner doing the recounting but when has my blog ever been technically right?) So as I was saying, maintaining a blog does have its own benefits as a virtual semi-permanent record (as a friend was sweet enough to remind me in an attempt to urge me to right more often). But one thing I failed to mention was how writing a blog (and reading others’ blogs) can give you a feeling of belonging and not being so screwed up after all. Many a time have I ranted or cried out loud in this space only to receive a mail or a comment a couple of hours saying “hang in there” or “I’ve been there” or something of the sort. Its like how we Master’s students console ourselves after getting our grades. Even if you are below average, you are not far off the standard deviation after all. (Damn, Grad school is a veritable Zen House). All these benefits apart from being a showcase of your super huge go of course.

To start with my anthology, a long time back I read this post here. Its one of those posts that come back to you at random moments and with greater frequency as your friends start getting married. You stand at receptions, in lines, all dressed up and sparkly looking and tut to yourself at how your friend is throwing her (sometimes him, but mostly her) life away and all the things she could have done with her independence and youth. You feel jealous of all the fancy honeymoon pics in fancy locations and yet you smile condescendingly as you type out a “Wow! You guys look great” on FB. And sometimes, in the middle of the night, in the middle of a pile of ACM papers and coffee cups and a mobile phone that hardly ever rings anyway, you wonder if you are any happier or using your so called independence and youth any better. And sometimes after you’ve said “No” for the n-th time to a friend who enquired if you were in a relationship, to which you’d be greeted with a “why?” to which you’d stare blankly and give some platitude like “I don’t have the time” or “I haven’t met anyone interesting yet” and they’d smile condescendingly at you and say “Dont worry dear, you’ll find someone soon”..... sometimes after all that exchange of mutual condescension, you ask yourself “why?” and you wonder. Is there ever a right answer? Ever since I got back from India, I’ve been thinking why. Every friend I met has asked me that. And every time I’ve been stumped. What do you say to a question like that? Why are you not in a relationship? Why don’t you have a boyfriend? And it gets worse if you’ve just got back from a foreign country, which is surprising with me since I’ve also had the same choices and same opportunities regardless of the place I’ve been in, so not much changes, really.

I also read this post a while back and it reinforced this weird jumbled-up feeling. And it also is what I meant when I said blogs make you realize a lot of people are feeling the same way and you’re not as unique a snowflake as you think. It also made me wonder what I’d discovered when I was 20 (a lot, I realized, and a lot more in 21) and if I’d ever thought what I wanted to do with my life in the next decade. I’ve never been one for long term plans and planning out your life just seems morbid to me, though I do have some vague idea of stuff like Marriage and Career and going to Europe and buying a House. Anyway that post made me wonder if I wanted to wonder what I’d be doing in 10 years from now and I decided I’d rather not know. For one it might just lead to disappointment. Where I was very sure about what I’d do with my money when I get it, now I am only filled with doubts as responsibilities already peek in through the door. So I know not much good can come out of having a whimsical dream decade destination. On the flipside, now I can never say I did what I wanted to do and what I knew I would do when I turned 20, ‘cause I just didn’t think about what I wanted to do.

This blog, I discovered during my internship and fell in first sight love with. But as I read more and more, I didn’t know and still don’t know if it is something I want to be in love with. For one, it is a lot darker. And a lot more depressing. And doesn’t cut a lot of slack. And doesn’t let you tell yourself its ok to make mistakes and mess up a couple of relationships and ok to be airheaded and a little goofy. I read it and wish I never become that person who’s always right, even if she is, who’s always mature, and who’s judging even if it means she doesn’t make as many mistakes. Dont get me wrong. I really admire the blogger. I wouldn’t be able to do what she does. Its just that I don’t want to be her. And I cant stand talks of the One anyway.

And finally, I just re-read this poem and let me tell you I loved it. I know the person who wrote it and it surprised me as it always does when I don’t give as much credit to people as I should and it rears up and bites me in the ass. Dont read too much into my posting it here. I’m not going through a decision making crisis. I just think its an awesome poem. And yeah I agree that choices aren’t always as easy as choosing 1 out of 2 and yeah they never seem to end.

On a personal update note, life is the same as always, doing its up-and-down-thingy. Not much has changed except that I am finding it extraordinarily hard to keep up with its pace, even more so than usual. The contours of Divya’s map of friendship levels are changing again and I’m still getting used to not talking as much to people I used to talk a lot to and talking a lot to people I hardly ever spoke to before. I am addicted to Big Bang Theory. Its my new Master Chef Australia. Also, according to this algorithm, whatever it is, I am a happy-most-of-the-time person. All I have to say is, I hate to think of the 9683 people who got ranked below me on the happiness scale.




P.S. I just realized after publishing it that this post sounds a little lonely. Let me assure you I am not. Lonely. A little annoyed at the bent every conversation with my friends seem to take these days and some new restrictions about bringing up old flame stories of married friends, yes, but lonely, no. So to the people who might worry, dont. 

I stand where I stood a year back

...at the threshold of my life filled with wonder at what I am sure lies ahead. If I could say the same every year, isn't that more than what anyone can ask for? Thank you for being through it all with me.

Lots of love,
Divya

The obligatory milestone post and weekly update

Sometimes when I get tired of switching tabs on my chrome browser between GMail, Facebook and Yahoo, I think back a year and wonder what I was doing then. It's times like these that make me feel glad for having a blog, coz now I have a permanent (well, almost) record of exactly what I was doing or feeling at any given time. So here I am sitting at work, reading old blog posts from a year back and grinning to myself. And thinking 2 thoughts. a) I was much funnier-sounding a year back than I am now and b) (brace yourself, this one's a biggy) I was probably at Anjana's house a year back listening to her mom on important documents to pack and making a mental list of stuff to buy, after which I would probably have spoken to Maya and exchanged notes on the progress of our packing, after which I would have proceeded to drive around the city looking important and in a hurry after which I would have gone shopping/visiting relatives with my mom, after which I would have come back to the privacy of my room to fume and kick myself for making stupid decisions in relationships and wish I could go out with Niru and Maya and get drunk and bitch about guys. The month before you leave to the US, in my opinion, is the best part of the process that starts when you write your GRE. And since its going to be a year since I came here, I take it as a license to be even more obnoxiously nostalgic than usual. 1 big year and I wonder if things have changed much. For one, I still kick myself over my relationship choices and I still lick wounds of said relationship choices in private. You would think Time would take over already and I can move on but I guess moving on doesnt work without you taking an effort to NOT mope around, doing flash backs in you head and thinking of all the could-have-beens. For all the relationship advice I dole out to my friends ("You're 22. You have a whole lifetime of bad decisions and relationship mistakes ahead of you. Get over this one already."), and get yelled at for being insensitive might I add, it would help me to follow some, but then where's fun in not being a hypocrite?

But I guess a lot has changed in a year. I have become even more boring than realistically possible. Even the jokes I crack are nerdy pjs that very few can understand and almost none can laugh for. I have become more cynical as is obvious. I have also become more prejudiced and more inclined to fit people into undeserved slots based on where they come from and how they look. "Oh you are a Bihari, that slot right there. Oh, you are from Delhi. Sit here. Oh you are a Brahmin. Go there." So now my mind runs a pattern matching and clustering algorithm in the background every time I meet a new person, built on all the well-meaning advice of over-protective loved ones. In direct contrast to this, I have also become more open minded in some ways, more willing to try new things, finding it easier to blur some rules and forget there existed others.There has been a dramatic drop in the annual average of the number of times I have been felt up as there has been in the number of times I have fallen sick. My hair is thicker, away from the pollution of  Chennai public transportation. Perhaps having a non-existent public transportation helps to that account. I have also survived a year glued to my laptop living life more as a virtual persona than a social being.  I have discovered my inner girl in pink wedges, poufy sleeves and bright red lipstick and kicked off the last vestiges of my teenage awkwardness (more on that later). And due credit must be given to the absence of feel-uppers, snide-remarkers and the moral-policers that the regressive Chennai men can be.

On that thread, I went to the Slut Walk in SF last Saturday. It was nice, smaller than I expected it to be and considering it was SF, the Slut walk merged with a Gay Pride walk and snowballed into a Minorities United. I went expecting to be moved and came back feeling a little sad and a little empty and a little hopeless. As a means to band up people and offer hope and conviction and a sense of purpose to victims of violence, the walk probably succeeded. But all the while I walked I had to wonder how many perpetrators and bystanders of violence would be weaned away by a few people marching and carrying signboards. And if the walk was ever more than breaking a butterfly upon a wheel.

Building Character

That weird slightly off, slightly lonely feeling you get from being a single person person by people in relationships.

That slightly dumb, slightly sleepy feeling you get when you are the new guy sitting through a presentation you understand nothing about.

That slightly yearning, slightly nostalgic feeling you get when you look at pictures of South Indian thalis in the facebook albums of aspiring photographers.

That slightly annoyed, slightly helpless feeling you get when your roof starts leaking just as you are working against an assignment deadline.

That slightly sad, slightly angry feeling you get when you wait hours for a friend to return a call.

That slightly teary, slightly breaky feeling you get when you come home to an empty fridge and dirty dishes.




I'd choose being characterless any day.

An explanation

So those of you who read my blog on any regular basis know that I've been obsessing over the God of Small Things for quite a while. The last 5 months to be approximately exact. Which is weird because thats not me. I usually reserve this level of obsession for my relationships. And myself. And its even more weird that it was the one book in which I couldn't relate to the lives of any of the characters. And yet I loved the story. I loved sitting in it and watching the characters dance for me, like the book was a Kathakali performance. If you've read the book, you'll know that there is a scene with a Kathakali performance. In a small temple by a dying river, through the night, where no one is invited and yet everyone is. Like a secret. Thats how I felt reading the book. Like I'm leaning against a pillar and watching as a family lives out its choices. And the story, the story itself? It was like the universe colliding in slow motion, like having the pieces fall into place slowly just in time to fall apart, like watching the past rise up to meet the future. It was like nothing I've ever seen before, nothing I've ever thought I'd fall in love with. I went in ready to hate the story and I sat down against a pillar to watch and now the music has ended and the dancers have gone, but I'm still stuck in the story, in the beauty and the ugliness of it. Which is why I am sitting up in bed, writing about it at midnight like it is something precious. Like something secret.


There are some books that come with their own age limits, that have to be grown into, for which a certain life has to be lived to be respected and understood and if possible loved. I dont claim any wisdom I do not have. Or experience I havent gained. It was just that I read the book when I was at a point in my life where I was willing to accept pain. Willing to acknowledge it and let it pass. And smile wryly and go to sleep. It may be that you ought to be old and wise to fall in love with the story that way. Or it may be that you just have to be that kind of animal.

I hate it when my laundry doesn’t dry

Isnt it funny how the mood of your entire day can be determined by the efficiency of your dryer? The elation you feel when you open the dryer to drag your laundry out and touch warm dry clothes is indescribable. On the flipside, this is what you get when your drying cycle doesn’t go well- an angry irritable me. Today has been an exceptionally bad day. I am trying to not crib on my blog too much and lock all this negative zen for all of internet’s posterity but today has been one of those ‘Adam Sandler comic loser movie’ kind of days. It all started with cramps and an uh-oh moment in the bathroom right at the beginning of work. Then came 8 hours of nothingness, staring blankly into my laptop and the 3 and a half walls of my cubicle, with nothing, absolutely nothing to do except drink bad vending machine coffee every 2 hours. Then came the bad dryer incident. Then came trying to fix the bad dryer incident by blow drying my moist tshirt (yeah i had to wear those clothes. I didn’t have anything else to wear after my shower) with a hair dryer and accidently shorting some fuse in some cynical universe’s plan and plunging half the room into darkness. So am sitting here in my wet bra with my wet hair trying to think warm thoughts and lull myself into a sleep before i do any more swearing. And oh yeah all of us have to use the bathroom facilities in darkness, save for the torchlight we have set up to compensate for the lack of electric lighting, thanks to me.

Aaaaaaaarrrrrrrrgggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhh!!!

*Happy thoughts. Warm thoughts. Happy thoughts*

My resolutions for the month are going fine. They are: a) smile and make eye contact and/or nod my head and say hello when I pass a random stranger in the corridor as opposed to staring awkwardly at some spot on the ceiling or take an immediate interest in my phone and b) not be cynical and to be more supportive of my friends plans for the future. My dominating cynical subconscious half would like to interject that fine might be too optimistic a word to use to describe the progress of my resolutions but lets just ignore it for now.

Summer in general is going great. Which is why summers are and always have been my favourite time of year (Christmas is second). 2 of my friends left India for the green shores of USA yesterday and I’ve been nostalgia tripping back to my own journey last year ever since. 1 other friend is doing the opposite route, leaving behind the American continent to go back to mother India. 3 friends in the air. God speed to them.

I will start shopping for my India trip soon, as soon as i get my next salary. In the meantime, i make lists, amend them, change them, make new ones every day on the people who deserve my US returnee gifts. Sometimes i am in a lenient mood and i add everyone who has ever called me or texted me since i have come to the US to my list (which, dear readers, is a very small group of people). Other times, i strike out whole subclasses of people from my list. This usually happens after i have checked my bank balance for the umpteenth time. Ah, the feeling of playing God!

I think i am getting a headache.

The Cost of Sanity

Now that the dust has settled in the happy land of ‘no assignments and no project submissions’ aka Real Life, the little green monsters, formerly concealed, begin to emerge and I realize not all is glittering and sunny in my new found world. And I realize that the source of this non-glitteriness and non-sunniness is, in fact, (surprise surprise) me. While assignments and projects gave me plenty of reasons to crib, they took away valuable time that I could have to used to do said cribbing. And time to discover any more things to crib about. Life’s tiny compromises were always hidden by the fact that there were larger things looming on my horizon to worry about. Now that the larger things have been dealt with (temporarily), the little things start their gnawing at my attention. Big God and Small God as Arundhati Roy would have said (Yes, I quote her a lot these days, especially since I am rereading the God of Small Things). So the Small Demons in my case, start rearing their head now that the Big Demons have wandered elsewhere to demonize (and I seem to be able to track their progress from the phone calls I do not get and the words I do not hear). And irritation oozes like a common stench through my days. People piss me off more than they used to and my patience with them bleeds away faster than it used to. I hate them and yet I need them and I hate myself for hating them and I hate myself for needing them. Even my dreams seem to be restless and unfocused and I wake up disgusted at myself, my memories of reality tainted by my subconscious. So it is a lot of hating and a lot of negativity that brought me here, writing like a therapy while searching for productive things to do. In school, when I felt hatred rising in me, I would go to the gym and punch out a few calories while listening to loud music. Not only would that release some much needed endorphins, it also served s a subconscious incentive to not be negative (my mind can conjure up reasons to not work out), I believe.  Now, with no convenient outlet or release and not wanting to make it obvious that I am annoyed, I turn my annoyance inwards and sit passively with my laptop in my hands, crawling the web for a distraction. Until it becomes obvious to everyone that I am annoyed. That is the problem for us extroverts. We can’t shut the world out as easily as the rest of the world can and contrary to popular belief, we do need our vacations from the world, as much as the other person.

Space. That is the problem. And the fact that it is a relative and ever changing factor in the equation of personal happiness and sanity.

This is why I write. The fact that although it offers no answer, sometimes, I can figure out the question.

Miss miss...

I miss

The sound of traffic driving past uneven Veteran avenue, where I first lived in Los Angeles and my friends continue to live.

The sound of helicopters flying above at all times of the day and night.

The sound of sirens every few minutes.

I miss

The two buses I take to go to USC across town to meet friends. Driving past the lit up streetlights arcade at LACMA, past the fancy boutiques of Miracle Mile, past the mannequins in bridal gowns in brightly lit windows.

The walk to Ralphs in Westwood, past the Ronald Reagan Medical Center where Michael Jackson died and Britney Spears allegedly sought psychiatric help.

Sitting at Kirchoff hall coffee shop and sipping on warm coffee looking at the people around me and feeling the warmth of the room.

Walking past the Internet room and feeling humbled, touching the walls trying to feel history seeped into them, trying to imagine the countless discussions the corridors would have seen, glad to be a part of the place, just to touch and feel the greatness of it and the ordinariness of it.

Coming home to my space, sitting on my bed and drinking the coffee I made and a few minutes of music and calm.

Friends dropping by randomly to have a cup of coffee and sometimes an omelette.

Cooking with spices in my tiny kitchen and breathing the smell of them for the rest of the day.

Catching snippets of Master Chef Australia between reading papers.

Walking back home from the library, the wind biting my skin, listening to ‘Stairway to Heaven’.

Texting friends in the middle of class, planning lunch outdoors.

Petting Elvis and Princess, the two huskies who take a break next to the Bruin bear statue everyday at 3.30 after a long walk around campus with Tom, their Master/Grandpa.

I miss

Venice Beach.

LA.

Home.

Another sun soaked season

An ECG graph. That’s what my life looks like now. Flat lines with sudden spurts of activity. Or maybe that’s not what an ECG graph looks like. Anyway, days are the same. I wake up, get ready, walk 17 minutes to my work with my ipod pugged into my ears, and huge oversized glasses hiding half my face.  Don’t meet people I know on the way, in fact I don’t meet anyone at all. So I float along in my self sufficient little universe with my ipod and my sunglasses, lost in thought and music. Life at work is a blur of semi-activity. I bug my manager for something to do. Sometimes I get something, sometimes I don’t. After 1/3^rd of my day in my cubicle, I walk back home along the same tree lined suburban streets, the same self sufficient little bubble. I then proceed to watch a couple of House episodes on tv or my laptop, read a little, gossip a little with my roommate and go back to sleep. Sometimes I try to force myself to call someone, like I would have in LA. But life just doesn’t seem interesting enough to convey details about to someone on the other end of the line, or on a blog for that matter. Which explains the slow post weeks this month.  The Divya I knew who loved having people around her, talking to her all the time seems to have imploded. Now there is just one bored person grudgingly happy with her self sufficient shell.

The long weekend was different though. For once, I didn’t have to be the planner and just had to show up looking pretty. That was fun. A friend of a friend initiated the plan and it snowballed with everyone invited inviting everyone else. So armed with a GPS and debit cards, we travelled to the far, tourist-free (relatively) corners of the world (or atleast the Californian world) and basked in the sun on beaches and got pushed around by the cold wind on cliffs. And when that got boring, we decided to let ourselves get thrown out of perfectly good airplanes at 13000 ft AGL in the name of adventure sport. The skydiving got decided so randomly that I didn’t even have time to work myself into a fear. I think reality first really truly punched me when I boarded the plane and it started climbing. But then I got caught up in all the harnessing and the strapping to my instructor that I got distracted. And then I was so tightly strapped on to him (a rather hunky him, I would like to note) that I couldn’t have backed off even if I had wanted to. And then I was out the door. And boy, was it surreal. I expected to drop like a stone the way the coyote does in all the roadrunner shows. Instead I felt like I was floating along. Apparently that’s because you are falling with such a high acceleration that the air starts behaving like a liquid (Fluid Dynamics 101 by an instructor who had a Masters in Electrical Engineering and decided to quit her engineering job to sky dive professionally, atleast for a while). So anyway I jumped off a plane and in a single day achieved super stardom on Facebook and the Real World. Even my manager wanted to know what it felt like and noted down the address of the sky diving place.  

The friend I wrote about here is getting married tomorrow.  Two more are getting married in Sptember. I am getting my paycheck in a couple of hours, so I am all excited and making plans with the money I don’t yet have. Contrary to popular culture, I want to get myself something with my first salary, and then maybe something for Anjana and Maya if I have any money left. And then probably my family with my next paycheck. I have starved myself of the lifestyle I was accustomed to in India for so long, that I just want to pamper myself first without feeling obligated to get stuff for other people. The long weekend trip was a good start. And hopefully the clothes and the shoes and the bags and the hot-shoe clip on flash for my camera that I am planning to get will be a nice continuation. I also wanted to get my mom a Blackberry Playbook for her 50^th bday that I missed but my aunt beat me to it and got her a different tablet PC. So now I have to think of alternative gifts. Any suggestions, anybody? And while you are at it, it would also be great if you could suggest suitable wedding gifts to get the friends who are getting married.

I am all excited about going to India. I just want to relax at home and get taken care off for 20 days. I don’t want to ever step out of the house, except for my friends’ weddings and one night out at 10d with my school girl friends. Everybody else who wants to can come visit me at home. For some reason, I don’t even seem to want to go visit people. Another sign that I am becoming anti-social apart from the dwindling phonecalls. Maybe it is just latent irritation from the last 1 year bubbling up, all the unreturned phonecalls and the unwished birthday. Or maybe it is just normal growing up and moving on. Whatever it is, I don’t seem to be interested except to be disinterestedly intrigued by it. Which considering its me, is weird.

Overall, the summer is warm and slow and languid. And sparkling, like the champagne I tasted at the Wine tasting I went to. The kind of summer that makes you sing ‘Stolen’ by Dashboard Confessionals at the top of your voice. The kind of summer that is ideal for romance and dreams. Makes me of last summer with its brimming emotions and something always happening. It also makes me think of how lucky I am, to be where I am, doing what I wanted to. How many people can lay claim to that? Sure, life will change soon and my blog may take a dip towards the other end of the spectrum soon, but I want to drink deep and savor this while it lasts. And worry about feeling tipsy later.

That’s it for now. I will hopefully have more to write about soon. Meanwhile, the song I am currently addicted to is Lamha by Bilal Khan from Coke Studio Pak. I am absolutely in love with it and thanks to my playing it everyday, my roommate is addicted to it too. I hope you love it as much as I do.

That's one of the beaches we went to

And the lighthouse on the cliff we trekked to

And a view from the cliff itself

And a picture of me sky diving

Those are just to show why I am so in love with awesome golden California. Somehow the pics never look as good on the blog as they do on my camera. Its a beautiful place, people. Trust me.

Grey is the new black

For far too long, people have spoken of the grey area between the black and white with an air of disdain, as though it were a choice for the weak, and the spineless, as though it were the path of least resistence for the ones who could not afford the effort required in order to follow the strict rules and principles necessary for follow a way of life in the white or the black. It is frowned upon, the grey, and its followers likened to all metaphors of disreputable infirmity. But the time has come to speculate upon this bigotry and extend to the grey the respect it deserves and restore it to its rightful place among shades. We shall first observe the various claims against this humble shade and address each one of them to debunk them as myths and pure libel spread to defame the color in question.

Myth 1: Grey is easy. Therefore it must be bad.

In order to fully address this extremely mindless propaganda,  I propose to split the claim into two subclaims and tackle each separately.

Myth 1a: Grey is easy

The most common and constant argument against following a middle ground that is not well defined as opposed to one end which is more clear is that it is easy. Let us get this straight. Finding the middle is NOT easy, as anyone who has shopped for Medium sized T-shirts in a Forever 21 shop during Christmas SALE season would readily attest. The middle line is hazy, it is unclear, it is not as defined as the extremes are and that alone is proof of the fact that it is a very very difficult road to walk and not for the faint of the heart. Rules are easy o follow once some brainless bullshitter make them up. Deciding not to follow them and coming up with your own on the fly as the situation demands is much much more difficult.

If still in doubt about the veracity of this little known truth, ask any employee of the Indian Ministry of External Affairs. These brave warriors of our country’s gates wage a war against the standard and the norm everyday. There are no rules in the noble hallows of the Passport office, just plain and pure greyness and procedures that change everyday depending upon which subtle tint of grey prevails that hour. Let not the extremists undermine the difficulty behind making up procedures randomly. It requires great mathematical skills to permute and combine assorted forms and red tapes of diverse sizes. Thus one day, you will be required to fill a online form, the next day you might be asked to fill out a paper form, the next you might be called to come in again to sign on the back of the paper napkin and so on and so forth. Which is why there never is an average, or a usual . Noone can predict how many epochs would pass before one can obtain an Indian passport. It may be a few days to a couple of decades and everyday brings with it its own suspense and anticipation that adds its bite to our otherwise mundane lives. Thus these extremely creative and statistically supreme guardian soldiers of our country and protectors of the grey slog everyday to save us all from the boredom and the ‘easiness’ of the black or white.

Myth 1b: Easy must be bad

Clearly, haters have never heard of Occam’s razor that claims that the easiest explanation is often the right one or something along those lines. And clearly, this assertion has been solidified by moms of teenage daughters, generation after generation, by reinforcing upon tender adolescent minds that easy girls are Bad with a capital B.

Myth 2: It is better to an extremist rather than a moderate.

Perhaps, believers would like to have a discussion with Mr.Obama on the virtues of being a moderate. No other person alive is a greater embodiment of the middle than this brave politician battling valiantly a sea of extremism in order to find the balance and get everybody to like him, than the current President of the United States. Everyday is a tight rope walk for Mr. President Sir who has been claimed by many to be a “moderate Republican from the 1990s” rather than the star of the Blue camp. But truth is the President just does not believe in camps. He is one for erasing the great divide. He is truly the hero in Mani Ratnam movies, the dove in the peace sign, the irritating girl in high school who always wanted EVERYONE to come her birthday parties and EVERYONE to get her gifts, who truly aims at everyone uniting and coming forth to form a better world where people visit malls everyday and the economy soars and flies high like Ms. Marilyn Monroe’s skirt. Ask him about the merits of walking the grey middle line and perhaps a chat with Dick Cheney on extremism can be a fitting conclusion.

Myth 3: Grey doesn’t look as good as black or white. I have only seen grey on sweat pants.

If Brangelina find grey beautiful, who are we to claim otherwise.

Thus the post hopes that it has laid to rest once and for all the extreme prejudice against this wonderful way of life and convinced people that grey is beautiful. After all is not french the language that makes dirt sound like love. And thus I shall end this perfectly pointless post with a perfectly pointless quote.

Slow

Thats how my life is now. Flat. Predictable. And incredibly slow. I go to work, wait for work to get assigned to me, come back, sleep. Sometimes, like today, I go swimming in the tiny pool in my apartment. 20 strokes and I am in the other end. But just being in the water is so comforting, like being back in the womb, and leaves you feeling all warm and fuzzy. Very rarely, again like today, my roommate and I also go out for dinner. But then, as we just realized today, the roads are so fricking deserted that even a water sprinkler turning on in a bush scares the fricking daylights out of us. You know you're in the middle of nowhere when you google for clubs nearby and the first result you get is 'Crazy Horse Gentleman's Club'. Aaah I miss LA! I miss the university, my studio, my friends, the goofing around taking pictures, the cooking, the dancing, the fun.

So anyway, life goes on in its own slow pace. Once in a while drama comes along. Like today when I broke a nail and started hyperventilating so much that I had to breathe in a bag. And I wanted to be a medical doctor, a brain surgeon at that, thank God for that career choice not working out. So I called my mom and started whimpering to her about my broken nail. You would think a 22 year old girl would have better sense and maturity. And people my age are having babies....jeez!

Its so weird knowing the girls you went to school with and suffered teenage awkwardness with and discovered boys with are getting married and starting families. All while you are still a student and living on your parent’s money. I cant imagine how our get-togethers will be from now on, who will come, what we’ll talk about. I just don’t want to go there, that far ahead in the future, even though that future is almost here. And I’ll have to start thinking about wedding gift ideas. Do I get something for just her, or something for him and something for her, or something for them, or just give money? Aaaaaarrrrrgggghhhhhh! Weddings!

It just hit me now how some people are so different from the perception you have of them I always thought my roommate/college friend was a super dooper chilled out person but she's also this incredibly organized, meticulous and family-oriented person that I never knew existed. It also just hit me how lucky I am to have got my first dose of the US in California and in LA at that. Watching my friend discover Cal, makes me realize  I can never be happy in any other state now that I've been here. Anyway, its tough eavesdropping on your roommate's conversation and attempting to write a blog at the same time. So writing later. Eavesdropping now.

On the merits of being a shallow materialista

• Have you ever had one of those days where everything is crappy and messed up but you glance at a mirror as you're walking by and you see that your hair is actually obeying you for a change and looks good (maybe not movie star good but just good good) and your mood perks up all at once and everything is bright and shiny and happy again with the world? 
• Have you ever had a day where the fact that you are wearing your new peep-toe shoes were the only thing that kep you going? 
• Have you ever looked forward to going to work just to show off your new bag? 
• Have you ever experienced the simple feeling of elation that makes you disregard every other problem in the world when someone says the old shirt you dug out of the closet looks good on you? 
• Have you convinced yourself yet that shopping is good for your sanity and that of the people around you and therefore nothing to feel guilty about later?

If you answered yes to 3 or more questions above, you know what I am talking about. If not, you've lost the simple innocence of materialism sometime after pre kg. Dont worry, with hard work and effort you can regain it. Every morning, after you wake up, look at yourself in the mirror and repeat the fashion alphabets (A for Armani. B for Burberry, C for Chanel, D for Dior...all the way up till Z for Zegna) thrice. Soon you will be well on your way to achieving Nirvana.

Sultry summer nights

Nights like these, you just cant write. Your thoughts go 180 mph. Strands form and die away in smoke before you can braid them into nice-sounding words. One leads to another, until you have a twisted ball of yarn in your hands, not knowing where to begin and whether to end. Sometimes, a few persistent ideas pull at your fingers but you do not want to give in to them, do not want to write to one person, for one person, write about the one thing your mind wants you to. So instead you run around in your ahead chasing after formless ghosts to satisfy the niggling craving at the back of your head, the want to write, the addiction that keeps you up and staring at an empty white page while the cursor blinks waitingly. Everywhere and nowhere, you wander, wondering. Nights like these, you just cant write.

Life on my terms. Almost.

Sitting in my high bed in my new place in Pleasanton, with my new roommate asleep next to me, warmly fed, still full of laughter, I feel weirdly at a loss for words. What can I write about? My life seems so ordinary and yet not. Everything is so new, but nothing is so exceptional that I write about it. My mood on an average is happier, though I feel restless. I am not used to sitting 8 hours in one place and that still needs getting used to. But apart from that, I am happy. I am so happy, that I am scared for the happiness. I had an awesome end to my quarter. I am doing something I love. My new roommate is a familiar friend from an old life and she just discovered my aunt and her dad are family friends apart from our parents going to college together and a lot more double degree separations or rather connections. I have the usual twinges of irritation that comes with having to adapt to a new place and a new lifestyle and I miss LA, but life on an average is above average. A lot. So lot that I cant even think of something to write about except that I am happy. Just happy. This minute of my life to just appreciate the fact of my happiness. Things still go wrong, things still mess up every once in a life, but they dont shake my universe and skew my day the way they used to. I have a conviction and a confidence I have lacked for the last couple of months. And a day that does not spill onto tomorrow. A google task list that is close to empty. Aahhh, after months of holding myself in knots, I can relax and let go. So life becomes Laiiiifffeee! And every word becomes a conversation. And smiles last longer. I even think i have the people in my life figured out for now- the good friends, the friends, the people who interest me but I dont like, the people I like but bore me and the people who are not worth my time. The boundaries seem to be sharper than they ever were for me, but right now, I dont care. I have become self sufficient with my little support system of friends, that I know I dont really care about the others who drift in and out of my life. And so in this little valley by the bay, I live out my bubble, pushing it to see how far it would go. It hasnt broken yet.

Saturday afternoon as the sunlight dwindles- part 2

We keep life organized in little pockets, different parts of us go into different dockets, disconnected stories seen through disconnected glasses- the professional me in LinkedIn, families and friends go to Facebook, the ex boyfriends left behind in orkut, the old school groups in yahoomail. We show the persons we want to be seen as in our little bubbles of space in the cloud with different faces in different database views and we live as the people we are alone in our cars with the ipod on a loop and the windows rolled up tight.

Saturday afternoon as the sunlight dwindles

If you can find the dreams that drive you, find the people who love you, find the things that make you happy, the things that make you care, the little space to call home, if you can find your spot in the world and the person that is uniquely you, what more can you hope for? And what is left for you to live?

I always have a tough time naming posts

I am now blogging while I wait for my simulation to run. It seems to me that I always blog while waiting for stuff to happen. In this case, its waiting for my 5000 sample simulation in simulink to finish running. While I have a lot of respect for Matlab, I just cannot stand how slow it is in cases like this. My simulation has been running for the last 3 hours and I have to increase my sample size all the way to 150000. God save my sanity!

My life has been going pretty well for quite a while. After months of not getting any internship calls at all, I am being flooded with them now. I cant believe I am actually saying no to companies. I am in the kind of happily irreverent mood that if there was a hill, I'd climb it and yell 'So long you fuckers' or something of that sort. My projects seem to be going decently well (except for the 150000 sample part), I havent fought with any new people and even if I have, I dont really care, my India trip is almost confirmed, one of my closest friends is getting married and I am pretty sure I'll make it, I found a college friend to stay with during my internship period, I found a friend to sublet my apartment the time I am gone, I am convinced my friends have lost their mind to a new GRE-MS-money bug going around but thats their problem, I am working on some more Internet Drafts and I have BIG plans for summer. Finally life seems to be working itself out, like it was doing all along while I wasnt noticing. And oh yeah I am learning Kannada from my friends. I learnt to say 'I am hungry', 'I want food', 'I want water', a couple of swear words (son of a bitch and whore) and some weird phrase that actually means "Father-in-law talk to me and then go hang on mango tree'. Clearly I can survive in Karnataka. Now thats one big sentence but those are some of the things that have made me happy in recent times.

On the serious side, people and their inner wells of strength that they call upon during tough times continue to surprise and amaze me. One of my best friends is in Atlanta for her internship and she's staying with her friend who seems to have suddenly metamorphosed into a crazy psycho freak. She (my friend, not her friend) has been cribbing about staying in that place for a week when all of it culminated today with her calling me in tears after being left alone in the middle of nowhere in a strange new city by the b***h after they had a fight. That girl (my friend's friend, not my friend) so needs counselling. I am proud of my friend. She managed to find her way to somebody-else-we-know's place all by herself with no real money. Ha! Way to go! If and when you ever read this sweetheart, you know how proud I am of you for surviving this personal crisis. I dont know very many people who could have done this and I am so so proud of you for it.


I seem to be hearing a lot of stories of inner strength of character these days. And it makes me so proud to know the people that I know. And also a little scared of the demons that people hide, and what they are capable of.

But in this mood of sunshine and unicorns, I dont want to think about dark things. That shall be for another day. I have to go to my project mate's house to work on my 'Energy efficient job scheduling for MapReduce' and have chocolate icecream left over from my friend's bday party celebration. Ahhh! This has got to be the good life! #OneRepublic \m/

No time is a bad time to blog

I have a presentation in a couple of minutes and am suffering from a case of mild jitters and none of my friends are up in gtalk to distract me, so I thought I might as well write a blog to distract myself. Everytime before a presentation, I have this recurring day dream of how my peers would be so enraptured by my presentation that they ask curious questions to increase their knowledge about the wonderful idea I am presenting and I would dazzle them with my knowledge and witty replies but in reality, they often stare at me in a glazed stupor and I talk to the few people and the walls that are not engaged in a battle over angry birds and pigs with helmets and what not.

Which leads me to recurring day dreams. I have several, that I choose like a costume for my mood. I have one where all the people I hate to varying degrees and all the people I want to impress are congregated in one place and are talking about mundane things while I sweep into the room in a sexy outfit and dazzle all of them and then walk away to deal with better things. Another one is where all my friends come home and I cook something nice and exotic for them and I dazzle them with my domestic goddess-liness. Yet another one is I do some ground breaking research for the US government and so every time there is a National Security threat (insert other events of great gravity), they call me to ask for my advice and my friends are all dazzled by my my part in saving the world and how I am on first name terms with the Secretary of the State.

As you can see most of my day dreams involve dazzling people. Yeah! Thats just me! The attention seeker. I have a simple uncomplicated relationship with attention. I like it and it likes me. We hold hands and flirt all day and have candle light dinners by night. If only my other relationships were this simple...!

P.S.I just found this post in my drafts and completed and published it. 
P.P.S. My presentation went very well and 'kicked ass' in the words of my friend. People asked a lot of interesting questions and said they loved my notes on the topic. And that they loved my flow. Aaahh the dazzling!

Midnight and facebook do not go well together

You look at old profile pics of people and you wonder the stories behind them, wonder how they could always have been the assholes they are now, wonder if they had friends who liked them and who miss them, wonder if they went through the same heartbreaks you did, wonder who taught them to be the way they are now. You look at the profile pics of the people you hate, smiling and feeling loved, and you wonder....

Twenty things to do before you grow up (the feel better list)

This is not a list for responsible people. This is not a bucket list for the ambitious. This is not the typical list you make on your 21st bday/ new year/ after watching motivational movies/ when you enter college/ when you finish college/ after a birth/ after a death/ any important milestone in your life. This is the differently successful (no we'll not say it) list. Because, after all if you are gonna make mistakes (if they are mistakes), it might as well be now. And in the immortal words of Calvin's dad, "It builds character". Again this is not a list for responsible people. This is the loser's (There, said it) list.

1. Break a hand/leg/assorted body part or grossly disfigure yourself a day before an important social event.
2. Lose your wallet/handbag with your house keys, car keys, credit cards and/or passport in it.
3. Break your cellphone and/or drop it in a large body of water.
4. Get dumped. 
5. Have a one night stand with a guy you've never met before and whose last name you dont know.
6. Get trashed. Totally. Strip off your clothes and dance on the table.
7. Grow your own weed. Brew your own beer. Create your poison.
8. Accidentally set fire to your apartment.
9. Get a traffic ticket.
10. Lose your job for facebook-ing from work.
11. Fight with your best friend over a guy who doesnt deserve you.
12. Get an F. Screw up your GPA. Lose your fellowship.
13. Yell at your family. Walk out of home. And come back again.
14. Empty your checkings account in one day of shopping.
15. Stand up or get stood up by your date.
16. Fall for an online scam.
17. Lose a month's salary or more in Vegas.
18. Study all night for a test and then sleep through it.
19. Get suspended for getting into a fight.
20. Write an ugly mail to someone you once loved.

Doubtless there are several more. And doubtless I shall discover them soon and write a blog about them. If I've missed more, leave a comment and the list can continue over there.

All ye fellow faithful Castle fans

Now doesnt this look like the climax from Vettaiyadu Villaiyadu?

What the fricking frick was that??? Am I the only person in la-la land who thinks Castle is devolving into a predictable tamil movie. Seriously? Castle single handedly saves all of New York City from becoming the sweet spot for a mushroom cloud, he almost dies in a freezer and then miraculously lives again, saves Ryan and Esposito with Beckett's help and then saves Beckett with no one's help, solves cases that the NSA and some other hidden supersecret unheard of cogs in America's paranoid wheel couldnt, helps Beckett in her quest to lay her personal ghosts (which she has too many of) to rest AND manages to be the sensitive sweet chivalrous rich gentleman that every teenaged girl and elderly woman dreams off???? What were the writers thinking? What next? He wears tight red underwear and saves the world from a meteorite shower and gets back to the precint in time to cook dinner for Beckett??? And dont get me started on the part where the last letter a guy on the run would write to his ex-partner is that she should follow her heart to her true love. And the season finale!! Dude what was that??? Holy crap. All of season 3 was 1 big crap fest. Honestly, seasons 1 and 2 were much much MUCH better and much funnier and much more believable! What do I say now to the people who tease me for watching Castle. What can I answer. What reasonable reason can I give. Must not let it be known in public that I see Castle. Must not.

14th May 2011

Note to Readers: As you may probably have realized, my blog is undergoing an identity crisis as it tries to figure out what future path it has to take- a personal diary of random thoughts and rantings, a letter to friends in another place and time, a 'what not to do in grad school' guide,  a boy bashing forum or a selective coolness showcase to the selective few i want to either impress or piss off. In this confusing period, while it undertakes psychometric evaluations and career counselling, let us draw forth on our well of patience and understanding and give it room to explore its options with the hope that some day organization and structure shall be imposed on this chaotic child of thought.

Now for the customary paragraph on nostalgia. Walking back from a project discussion listening to stairway in heaven, I thought back of all the other times I have listened to this song in the last couple of months- curling up in the guest bed in my grandfather's house, crying into strange pillows over relationships lost and ended; walking home at twilight shaking with cold and the passion of the last few chords wondering if things would ever improve and if anything even matters; sitting in the library staring blankly at the laptop. Everytime I've wondered if I would reach this place where I am not, where I can be sure of what the next few days would hold, what the next few months would hold, searching for some certainty life wouldn't give. And now looking back, walking down nearly empty roads faintly smelling of perfumes and sounding of high heels on a Friday summer's night, the memories make me smile with acknowledgement. And gratitude. Storms are nicer looking back on.

Graduations happen all around me. Every weekend I see pictures of robes and hats and smiling happy faces on Facebook. And I feel so so jealous. Someday... someday.... 

I seem to play the "What was I doing this day last year?" game a lot these days. There is something comforting about summers. Something comforting and restful and full of hope. It makes you feel like you're a kid again- the little girl in grandma's house making up fantasy lands as the adults slept.

Its funny how much time you have to think nostalgic thoughts when you only have enough time to do your projects.

While we are on the topic of thinking inappropriate thoughts at inappropriate times, classes seem to stimulate more than their fair share of realizations these days. Just the other day, I was auditing an undergrad class when I realized that everyone else in the class had probably had sex. And that was enough to make me feel old and depressed the rest of the day. Even a good overdose of Cosmo tips after couldnt restore my mood. Graduate classes with their saturated Asian international student population are comforting. Undergrad classes with their over-inquisitive, hyper-energetic, hormone-driven teenage communities unnerve me. And incur in me a recurring need to check my hair for split ends.

I am all excited about visiting India in a couple of months. Already I am making plans in my head. My friends do their righteous best to not let me get too excited, but this time even their dampness cant kill my joy. At the same time, the prospect of seeing old friends scares me. Some people i am closer to now. Some people I can no longer relate to. Some people I'd rather not meet at all. I wonder how close reality will come to expectations, if ever it could. But we're still young enough to say, this has got to be the good life, this could really be the good life.

Sleep beckons. Dreams call. A nightwalker's tale pauses. And you, to you I will say goodnight.