Random Scribes

The Buffalo Bulletin

2006-08-20T18:24:00.000-06:00

"So how are you liking Buffalo ? "

I have lost count of how many times I have been asked this question (by strangers too !). They ask me with such eagerness and hope that I do not have the heart to say " how much can you like a place that's called Buffalo ??? " I still have'nt decided a diplomatically correct answer to it . So I just respond in a grand gesture that conveys little: a mix of the Indian head roll, a half grin and nonchalant shrug of my shoulders. Truth is I really have'nt made up my mind about how much I looove this place. The 8.75 % sales tax is not helping me much either !

The city is really not that bad. It is a small and decent upgrade for someone who stayed 5 years in a 'city' with one block constituting downtown and one mall (but the best mall among the 10 counties of Iowa). The downtown here has buildings with more than 8 floors. Besides here they have metro trains too...ok I mean one line that has trains running up and down from the University to downtown all day long. In fact this place is a lot like India and quite unlike USA ...all the roads are dug open everywhere with no indication of them closing anytime soon. Buffalo can probably be seen from space thanks to all the bright orange construction cones the city is littered with. I overheard someone at work remark casually, "Oh the same road work has been going on ever since I first moved here ...12 years back !!!. People honk for no reason. The roads are haphazard running in all possible directions.... a road on the left side of a intersection will have a totally different name from the right side. You will be driving along Winspear Ave ...singing along with Himesh Reshammiya (who I happen to enjoy...so kill me !), when BAM !!! Winspear has dissappeared into thin air at the signal . You are staring down Treehaven Rd not knowing where to go with cars angrily honking at you from all sides. Maybe I should have pulled down my windows and given them a dose of Himesh...that would have shut them up . I find it odd that Niagara Falls Boulevard..which is supposedly the mother of all roads here going all the way upto Niagara falls, ends abruptly in front of our campus.......just like that !

The biggest incentive for me to move here was that my husband and I finally managed to find something to do in the same continent. But I am still hesitant to blurt out that the city has kindoff started to grow on me, infinitesimally slowly though. I am slipping into a comfort zone I was pretty sure I would never find anywhere else in the world apart from Iowa city ( I had felt the same about Pune when I moved to Mumbai , and then about Mumbai , when I moved to Iowa city...you would think I should have seen this coming ... ).

But moving out of Iowa city was heartbreakingly difficult for me which is why I did not land here with dreams in my eyes, jumping with excitement about moving here ....in fact I had to drag myself out of the airport with a heavy heart and two bulging suitcases. Not to mention a knapsack with a tennis racket sticking out, courtesy of my friends. Its no fun getting stared at by people wondering which championship could I have possibly qualified for. If it was'nt for someone waiting to pick me up I probably would'nt have left the airport at all and tried to catch a flight back.

The first two weeks were the most horrible, and depressing time for me. It is still fresh in my mind like a bad hangover from cheap wine (you know... the ones you pick up from the grocery store when you are both greedy and stingy). With my husband's arrival still two weeks away, I was all alone in a new city. I went from depressed to super-depressed when I did not see any TACO BELL within 1/2 mile radius of my house or my lab. But then one day as I was returning from the lab my heart skipped a beat when lo and behold there it was in the mall near the house ....China King !!! Oh what joy to see the same menu, and the exact same way I was asked if I wanted "flied lice" with my orange chicken....they just had to be related to my china star aunty..the resemblance was too striking. And yes, the orange chicken had the same semolina instead of chicken. You can chew on it like a cow all day long ...it is not going anywhere....ah heaven !

The first day when I set foot in my apartment I told myself "hey this is not all that bad"...atleast this place has a huge square kitchen. My previous place had an alley in the name of a kitchen between the living room and bathroom. I guess they had designed it for people who needed to eat something on the go . The kitchen was so close to the bathroom, instead of DOVE, you would smell like curry after a shower. So this kitchen pleased me no end. The place also looked extremely bright with lots of sunshine streaming in from all the rooms. I also realized later that night that the place looks extremely bright with lots of streetlights streaming in from all the rooms creating ghostly shadows (for once I was glad I am blind as a bat without glasses).

For quite sometime there was nothing else in the house except for my suitcases and boxes. So my suitcases became my low chairs and my boxes doubled up as nightstand and clothestand. Rephrasing someone's (Jay Leno ???) words , it is said, we only understand the value of something when we don't have it with us anymore. I will never take my tea strainer for granted ever again. I had forgotten to pack mine, and so everymorning after I made the tea, I had to take a leisurely stroll around the house while the tea leaves settled to the bottom of the cup before I could gingerly sip the tea. A stroll too quick would mean eating tea than drinking it.

Boy ....was I glad to see my husband arrive two weeks later ....now the curtains could go up, the boxes could be opened and I could finally have my clean cup of hot tea thanks to the strainer I kept reminding him a zillion times.

And so after 2 months, ...the house is almost furnished, we have figured out the closest public library and Taco bell, made garage sale hopping our saturday morning ritual........life is getting back on track.

From God's Own Sauna Land

2006-05-11T10:13:00.000-06:00

I am writing this from malluland or as I would call it presently: Gods own sauna land !! I came here greedy for a long deserved vacation, phinally PhinisheD as I was.

Yes I would most humbly like to request you to call me Dr. M as of now. I simbly will not listen to you if you don't :-). I caught the first flight out of the country as soon as the graduate college deadline passed. The graduate college employs people to make sure every one of the 150 paged thesis is spaced at a 2:1 ratio, among the thousand other rules (don't ask...they should give us all a second degree just to figure out all the formatting mumbo jumbo in the thesis manual). Only after successfully completing every comma, space and font requirement are you worthy of the ‘Dr’ title. And now, I cannot even stop myself from formatting this crude write-up in note-pad….it becomes an obsession.

So, with dreams of a perfect vacation, I landed in the surprisingly neat and tidy airport in Cochin. I do not joke, when I say Kerala feels like a giant sauna without an off switch. It’s hot and humid all day long and the men walk around with hiked up lungis, barely covering themselves. My in-laws stay in a quaint village south of Allepey. The most ideal place for a vacation, I tell you. But I have sworn off a May vacation to this part of the world. I don't do well in hot weather. I literally run around like a guillotined chicken. You don't want to be near me when the mercury is risen so high. Just ask my husband! I genuinely fear I might catch fire (I also speculate on spontaneously combusting, but I don't remember how that works). But can I walk around in shorts and t-shirts? Even the thought of that makes me laugh uncontrollably. On the contrary, I am fully clothed and bejeweled at all times, just in case the ever curious neighbors stroll by the house in the hope of getting some of the chocolates from Aameriga. God forbid if they catch me without my gold necklaces, bangles, bindi, oiled and tied hair (i.e. whatever is left of it after washing it every day). I do not possess the trademark long black curly head of hair that every female here struts around in, which makes it really difficult to fit in. My mom-in-law is pretty sure I am balding. I try to tell her my hair type is ‘fine’ and requires all the chemicals in the shampoo and conditioners to get some body into them. She tells me (in mallu of course. On a good day I can decode only 20% of whatever is spoken in the house ).“Put oil nicely and just rinse with water …all this shampoo is what is stripping out all the hair” . Have you seen anyone with fine hair that is dipped in oil? Come on over.

So, my vacation till now has been cribbing about how hot it is, overeating on all the fish, chicken, duck, every imaginable (unrecognizable) seafood available here, and then cribbing and cursing some more. And oh yes, watching out for ants. Yes, ants. Not mosquitoes, or roaches, or lizards, but ants of all the pests in the world. The nasty little red ants can bite off an entire chunk of flesh if you let them. They are all over the house, but their favorite place is our bed. You can clean, dust and spray all the poison in the world, but they are right there sprawled on the bed by bedtime waiting for us. My surface area is covered equally with boils and bites. I layer myself with DermiCool all day and walk around looking like a panda…a bejeweled panda with oily strands of hair. But I don’t care how I look like as long as I am comfortable. I guess getting married for 2 years contributes significantly in developing this kind of attitude.

I must stop writing now. Its time to wipe the sweat of my eyelids, crush all the ants on the bed, layer some DermiCool all over again, taste mom’s shrimp curry, and guzzle down another liter of ice water. Who said vacation means no work? Now if only the heat could also melt away my fat, then I wouldn’t mind the may vacation to my sauna land after all.

2005-12-12T23:30:00.000-05:00

7/18/2005

No....no ...this date is not going down in history or anything...just realized that was the last time I had posted here. I was kind of going through a self imposed 'blog depravation' thinking if I had so much to say I might as well put it into my thesis writing then spend precious keyboard minutes writing about mundane stuff like how we started a fire and smoked everyone out of the building (which was quite fun actually), or gave my first ever public presentation at the conference..oh well !

After four years of crawling through, now that I am nearing the end of the PhD tunnel, I think I can make out a teeny weeny hint of light ...but even if I haven’t learnt anything during my years here , one thing is burnt into my brains forever : there is a huge....HUGE difference between "almost there" and "there". So never ever ever ever assume you are "there" ...when you are only "almost there". If you did'nt understand a word of that profound statement I made....then you, my friend, are probably not a PhD student ....congratulations !

I have never been one of those people who takes every decision in their life after thinking and rethinking and then thinking some more. Maybe thats why I sucked at chess!!! .

So when I decided (which took like 2 seconds) to give PhD a shot, I was totally clueless about what I was in for. Up until last year I was still clueless!!! Oh boy do I know now why we are called Doctors of Philosophy...thats all there is to it at the end of it all.
After this you realize how precious is
- your bank account thats not only malnourished but also suffers from diarrhoea...money is out even before it comes in !!!
- clearance shelf at Walmart...you can't imagine the treasures you can get there,
- your Russian car mechanic who yells at me like my mom, but charges me $2 to fix my overheated car. I love him.
- and of course Taco Bell...words cannot express my gratitude to this place.

What else do you need to survive other than a burrito, kapda aur kiraya ka makaan?

The “almost there” phase of my life has been going on for over 6 months and everyday I am that much closer to giving it all up. I come home every evening all morose and then something happens that will have me cracking up and happy again: a full hour of “Friends”. This is one serial that never lets me down …even after its 100th rerun I am still in splits .

Things have come to this stage now that I will do anything to run away from my work ...and that includes watching a movie like "Dus" ...what is worse ...I even enjoyed it :-( . I have realised that people get very upset / angry after watching movies like this . But I just shrug my shoulders and say "Ehh it was not so bad ...the girl wore some nice eyeshadow in that last scene , when the plane was going to jump into the lake and explode". What ? that was Zayed Khan ???
I do have an extremely low threshold for bollywood !!!

I just talked to my parents, who are vacationing in Singapore. My brother went back to India, and thought it was a good idea to give them an experience of flying ...since they had never got on a plane. So he took them to Singapore. Apparently according to my dad (who lives only to tease my mom over every goof up she does) my mom was so excited, she started "practising" how to climb into a plane. Every weekend when I call home, he is ready with his list of 'mom jokes'. Mom is a great sport though, and all she manages is a "thats enough now". Dad loves to entertain, and he does seem to have his own fan club in the khandaan. He keeps repeating his jokes ...but everytime there is some new masala in it...and exaggeration is his middle name ...nobody seems to mind as long as they have a good laugh. I do miss all those family get togethers , where everyone would gather in the living room after dinner and the tales and gossips would begin and go on till the wee hours of the morning.

Meanwhile, the other day my friend forwarded me a link that actually turned out to be one of my juniors from IITB. Its amazing how we bump into old friends and learn about their new hobbies

Anyways, this was fun ...although this is probably as random as I can get when it comes to blogging...but this is exactly how my mind works too ...its all over the place ...maybe that could be another reason I sucked at chess !!!

Happy Buddays

2005-07-18T17:21:00.000-06:00

While I was thinking about ‘blog worthy’ topics to post, something that was funny and memorable, I realized nothing beats the gal palz birthday party escapades. Btw "Gal Palz" is what we have officially labeled ourselves, complete with branded merchandise ranging from T-shirts, collages declaring everlasting friendships to the customary yahoogroups. "Bindaas Babes" was also strongly rallied for, but then we wanted to keep it real.

Another topic I thought about that came a close second, was documenting how almost each one of us has been called someone’s mom at some point in time (and no, none of us are even remotely lurking around motherhood) …but since that issue is still a little raw I decided it was wise to stay out of it atleast for the time being. I am still recovering from that accusation from our 60 yr old neighbour. Considering she could'nt speak hindi or english to save her life, she butchered me with that one word. I console myself everyday- its not me ...its her !!.

Like every girlie groups (or boyie (?)- girlie groups...I would'nt know as I was always in girlie groups) surprise birthday celebrations have always been a conventional way to show we care. That or just the fact that 'ab ek ke liye party kiya tho sab ke liye party karna hi padega'. We usually stuck with the same protocol ...sometimes even the same wrapping paper- one of the advantageous of not having girls that ransack the whole box to open their gifts. Firstly there would be the spate of emails flying into the inbox at 50 mails/hour. This phase would typically range from a thanda Code Green to a catastrophic Code Red that would be directly proportional to number of days remaining to execute the surprise 'happy budday ritual'. The plan would be to barge into the victims’ room the minute the clock struck 12 and break into the traditional and offkey "happy birthday". This was never really a surprise because each of us knew the gang was standing right outside the door thanks to the loud whispers and the light from the tiny bonfire caused by the 20 something candles. The only time this turned out as a true surprise was when one of the girls playfully warned us not to bother wishing her at 12 and destroy her beauty sleep. Boy...was she surprised, when we obediently did'nt show up !!!

Over the years we have had countless parties. From plain-jane to wild-two-day-hangover kinds. We have had our disagreements over perfumes and photo frames, gift cards and gift receipts. But the memories of each and every person's birthday is still fresh in our minds. Ok maybe not every one of them ...but there are some that stick out:

There was the surprise, for which we drove 4 hours to Chicago, to wish the birthday girl. She had spent the entire day sulking. The drama queen, that she is, quite predictably wouldn’t stop talking about how 'surprised she was' when we all showed up with cakes, candles and confetti. We didn’t have the heart to tell her, we were more interested in her sis’s ghar ka khana and Sony TV not to mention her adorable niece.

Then there was the poolside grill party with bucketloads of chicken and paneer. It was memorable because this probably was our first attempt at doing a la-american pool party. After hours of unsuccessful attempts to light up the grill and seeing that junta had started munching on the raw paneer, entire crew moved back home. To cut a long story short, 3 hrs and a tornado-struck-smoke filled kitchen later, we had enough pav, paneer and chicken kababs to feed a village . The party was for a girl who would rather have sugar in her veins instead of blood. So there were 7 different sweet dishes (one for each day of her birthday week) and three cakes with one baked for the sole purpose of smearing on her face. We not only smother our love, we kill too with our cakes .

I know after reading all this you will sigh and remark “oh such loving and caring friends they are”!!!. Ahem ….I do beg to differ …we are as loving and as caring as a bunch of cannibals can be to a fat meaty human.

We had a treasure hunt party for a girl whose hair was almost set on fire on her birthday the year before …thanks to one very excited female with a candle and matches in her hand. This time we decided to make it fun for her as well. So we hid her gift and the clues to it were also hidden in all kinds of places from the toilet seat to the cereal box. So while she scurried about the house scratching her head for answers, we all busied ourselves with food and drinks.

Then there was the party for which we used the same food, which the birthday girl had made thinking she would surprise us instead. So she creates this elaborate spread and invites us over. Instead we ask her to stop by at our place and while she is on her way, two of us sneak into her place pick up everything she has cooked and bring it over for ‘our party’. Initially she was surprised at how familiar the aloo tasted. But then eventually her Prestige cooker gave it away.

I cannot even begin to mention how wicked we can get towards those who return our hard searched gifts. There are some who have suffered our wrath and all attempts at explaining are just lame. You may hate the color of the dress; the silver chain might get all seriously twisted up; the perfume may make you smell like a skunk. Just because we also gave you a gift receipt doesn’t mean you use it…we just wanted to be nice, we don’t really mean it. Some of them have learned to outwit the gang ...or so they think. Every time we ask her about the jacket we gifted last year, she casually remarks, “Actually na, I have been thinking of wearing it …just waiting for the right occasion”. Hmmm...we need to raid her closet soon.

I may sit and mourn about my increasing age for the rest of the year, but for that one-day I couldn’t be happier celebrating it in the company of these lady goondas ...hey thats a nice name to put on the next group T-shirt.

Precious Nothings

2005-07-14T10:31:00.000-06:00

They say english is a funny language where noses run and socks smell . But when it comes to the GalPalz mouthing off what remotely resembles english with hindi thrown in liberally (not just the shudh common Hinglish , but one thats peppered with banarasi, marathi, baangali, and madrasi) , the end product is as comprehensible to the common man as Swahili. This is inspite of the fact that we do have a Grammar Police in our midst forever correcting our P's and R's . We even had our own month long G8 summit to debate the pronounciation of the word 'Cabin' . Yeah ordinarily cabin is not a debatable word you would think...but then we aren't exactly ordinary girls either :-).

So over the years, all this verbal goobledygook has transformed into a whole new language with sentences and phrases which the group understands perfectly and sometimes even uses it to communicate with other mortals. Needless to say all we get back in response is baffled looks, wide open mouths and unblinking stares. So if any of you guys happen to overhear conversations that go like this...you can confidently go up to them and say "hi, wait let me guess ....you are doing your PhD in Univ of Iowa and you are part of a group called GalPalz" and if she happens to be this short, chatty and loud girl ...then boldly throw in a "and your name is S ?" .

So how bizarre do we really sound ? Here's a trailer ...

"music khel na" (literal translation of "play the music")

"photo nikal na" ....(no it does not mean remove photos from the album...you dufus ...she is asking you to click her photo !!! )

"hey wo log chale gaye kya " ? "Haan wo log chal basse ."
(Geez, stop wailing and join them if you miss them so much !!)

"I am having a 'take out' moment" ....(that irresistable desire to order take out ...usually hits around 5-7 pm when we are at our hungriest and laziest. We are trying to get the owners at China Star and Taco Bell to start a special order line for us called "express lane 5-7 pm" )

"no, not yut"....(our efforts at fixing this are still ongoing ..."yet as in bet ...not but"...uffff !!!)

"I am wearing punjabi dress to the potluck" (thats the 80's mumbaiyya version of Salwar Kameez and we must be the only group alive that still uses this ancient word).

And then there are adopted sentences like "Kaa Jaani , Zindagi life ban gayi , Galti se Mistake ho gaya" , which are gaining popularity in other circles too. Phew ! that's one less clueless person we will have to explain our selves to.

I think I will keep updating this post to include all the (un)quotable quotes , and then just publish it as "The Dummies Guide to Understanding GalPalz" !!!

Back to the Nature

2005-07-04T18:52:00.000-06:00

After almost 2 weeks of hot and muggy weather this friday was perfect, and the weekend according to KCRG TV-9 was going to be fabulous. Friday evening ...actually more like midafternoon (can’t say why, but past 3 pm on a friday the lab starts feeling like an overcrowded perspiring mumbai local in summer… I just need to get out !!) ...the gang settles down at the house after a successful raid of the local Indian grocery store procurring everything edible from kachoris to kadhai paneer.

Being with these folks for four years I have come to realize that the situation on a friday evening is highly unstable and unpredictable. There is no telling who comes up with what to do over the weekend. And this being the July 4th weekend, which meant another day to procrastinate the work deadlines to, ... one can only imagine!!! And so we decided to go Camping. You know head back to the woods, rough it out, be one with nature...yada yada yada.

I must admit I have never been too much of a nature freak. Don’t get me wrong …I am all for the trees, the greenery and giving them their space and all that …but when it comes down to actually doing all that camping and heavy duty hiking and trekking through the mosquito infested trails …thanks but no thanks. I enjoy my bug-free, air-conditioned house on a hot summer day a little too much. But you see the other thing I didn’t tell you about me was that I can be quite a pushover. Besides, the convincing power of the girls can put even those telemarketers to shame (thanks to whom, I am now in a ‘credit protection plan’ which charges me more than my monthly credit card charges).

Needless to say I decided to give camping a try, mainly because it would be just one night and above all there were toilets in the campground. There was no way I was going all ‘natural’ to answer nature’s call! The excitement was so high that everyone wanted to head out friday evening itself, problem was that it was already 9pm, and we still hadn’t figured out which state park to crash into... and oh yes, we would be needing at least a tent. In ten minutes we were picking out camping supplies at Wal-Mart. We selected a pretty yellow and blue tent to fit 4 people (that diagrammatically showed the best sleeping arrangement to fit all four ...three vertical-one horizontal). The sales chap gave us all one look and not so subtly hinted that the tent probably would be too small for us. …Baaah humbug …what did he know? We filled up the shopping cart with sleeping bags, charcoal, lighter fluids, skewers, ice packs, veggies, drinks, chips, corn and what not. That’s the thing about girls…our idea of roughing it out is Maggie and sandwiches instead of a nine course meal. By the time we were leaving, we had bags that occupied 1/4th of my huge living room…that too because it was just for a night.

And we headed off to the Wapsipinicon State Park, which was supposed to be a 45 min drive on the interstate…that is if we had taken the right interstate. We passed through the Wapsi camp, the Pinicon campgrounds, but no Wapsipinicon in sight!!! Finally we were at the park, thanks to a map and numerous calls (yeah we are girls …we do ask for directions) to a very puzzled campground caretaker – puzzled considering it was only about 50 miles and there were only two ways from Iowa City to the park. We didn’t tell him that we also had driving directions from mapquest and google. The park was like most American State Parks …quite generic. But once you get inside, nothing beats that cool crisp air, thick green foliage of the tall trees and the freshly mowed grass that smells divine. All that coupled to the jasmine smelling freshener in the car and I was promptly transported to Kerala with momentary flashes of homesickness.

Pitching up the tent was a cakewalk…partly because I know squat about raising a tent, so I helped out by staying out and occasionally made myself useful by hammering here and there and holding on to whatever I was told to. Sometimes its better to have only one girl who knows what she’s doing...too many smart ass cooks can indeed spoil the broth. Then came the gargantuan task of starting the fire, which we got down to after we ambled down a trail collecting half dry sticks for the fire. By the end of the trail I had more cobwebs on me than firewood. Starting the fire was no biggie either …problem came when we had to keep it on long enough to boil the water, grill the veggies and the fish. Suddenly I have a newfound respect for the Neanderthal. After a grueling session of keeping the fires lit and smoking our eyeballs out, we reached the stage of the smoldering white charcoal, which I was told is the final goal every Neanderthal aspired for. Finally we sat down to a feast that tasted like ambrosia…grilled veggies with nimbu and chat masala sprinkled on them, hot spicy Maggie, grilled fish. …Yummm good food!!

Topped the night off lying in the open grass, chomping down sweet bhutta, gazing at the spectacular display of stars and showing off our half-baked knowledge of astronomy to each other. Then came the stories…I usually don’t believe in ghosts and spirits, but when you are in the middle of all that nature at night, trust me, even a raccoon will freak you out (no serious, I went nuts on seeing one). Even though we slept fitfully that night, we got up feeling as fresh as the morning dew. After the usual tug of war between man, err …women and fire …we had garam chai and toasted egg sandwiches. I told ya …we live/camp to eat…and then go on a guilt trip about weight issues. But this time we decided we should instead do one short trail before we headed back home. The trail lead us through dense conifers which opened into a wide open green prairie on a hilltop (yes, contrary to popular notion, Iowa is not as flat as a pancake). It’s true when people say that nature brings out the animal in you …there were some among us who turned into monkeys munching on suspicious looking berries, while others plucked every wild flower in site. Thankfully they were still alive the last time I checked. I was on high alert for poison ivy the entire trail…and since I didn’t recognize one, my friends spent half their time assuring me “that is not poison ivy, its just fern”. After photo sessions of tree stumps and ‘bleeding mushrooms’ (I christened one pretty looking thing in red…will upload the pic soon), it was time to head back to civilization. As much as we were sad about leaving the park, we were really glad too...we still had monday off.

In conclusion the trip was a lot of fun, all that food was hot and smokin’, and the memories. …simply priceless.

And oh yeah …nature rocks !!!

Double Battery Single Power: The Blurry Reality of my Life

2005-06-26T13:43:00.000-06:00

I am almost as blind as a bat in daylight. Without my glasses or contact lenses , the whole world is just blurry blurry dim. If I were to be stranded on an island, my glasses would be the only life support I would need. Inspite of that, I hate them with every bone in my body. I have worn glasses for as long as I can recollect. I started going down 'fuzzyland' around 7th class, when at school I found myself doing all kinds of visual acrobatics as I struggled to jot down from the blackboard. But I did'nt realise I might be going myopic... not even when I very confidently read out random crap from the blackboard while the teacher stared at me nonplussed, and the entire class was in splits. Things only got worse from then on. I winked, squinted and went cross eyed trying to read and go about my life . Catching the right bus home without landing up on the other side of town had become a daily grind. Eventually I gave up and told my parents, who predictably and immediately went into denial. They thought I was faking it, their reasoning being, because neither of them wore glasses, it was genetically impossible for me to be afflicted with myopia ...fact that they never read, or watched TV as much as I did, did'nt seem to be much of a contributing factor. Oh they had tons of similar very questionable illusions in life including the "you are not overweight at all..you simply look like you are from a nice khaate peete ghar ki" Meanwhile, my mom started hyperventilating when she had visions of me ending up as 60 yr old spectacled spinster. And then my doctor went into shock, when he checked my eyes and saw that I was actually going to school and functioning just ok without glasses (if only he knew !! ). My myopia started off with a -2, and I was told if I wore them reguarly I would'nt need them one day(I am still waiting for that day !).

And thus I entered the visually handicapped category for life . As much I was relieved that I could see and read clearly again (so ecstatic I read everything from billboards, shopsigns, license plates ...sab kuch ), I never liked the glasses, or how I looked with them. So any comment as casual as 'Hey, you look different with those glasses' used to open up my floodgates. No amount of but-you-look-nice-with-them would stop my bawling. I had begun to think the glasses had transformed my whole pschyche into behanji mode and I was never going to be the cool chick who wore sunglasses or flirtingly flutterred her eyelashes at guys (oh my priorities in life at 12 !!) . I was stuck pushing the specs up my nose, wiping the rainwater off them or steaming them up while cooking....for ever.

One day I was cycling back home from school. At an intersection I had to cross the road and as usual I looked back and put out my right hand to signal. As I was about to cross, out of nowhere two guys on a bike landed up right behind me and started yelling "Eh double battery single power, dikhta nahi hein kya ??" More than the shock of a possible collision (which was btw entirely their fault , whizzing past like that at an intersection), I was furious for being called that. So angry that almost for a month after that I used to curse that they and their whole khandaan would wear 'soda glasses' for the rest of their lives...you know those hideously thick glasses that made the person look like a Martian with eyes the size of golf balls.

And so "Dhapne","Chashmish" , "Double battery single power" were terms of endearment I had to make peace with. As much as I hated my glasses, I figured it was better to look like a nerd/martian than to make a complete fool of myself like a friend once did. We were out on a walk one night after dinner when she exclaimed what a beautiful full moon it was. The rest of all looked all around to see the moon, only to realise this chashmish, who would'nt be caught dead wearing her glasses, was in fact gushing over a white halogen street lamp !!

Eventually, I changed to contact lenses and things were not so bad anymore. Except, once you decide to go glass-free, contact lens wearers sign up for a whole new set of issues. The everyday morning fight to get them in, the silent prayers that you don't get caught in a duststorm or a stray eyelash decides to commit suicide by jumping into your eyes and make you go ballistic in between a lecture, or a meeting.

But now atleast I can strut around in sunglasses :-D ...ah , the small pleasures of life

Amrika Darshan: Phase 1- The planning

2005-06-14T13:29:00.000-06:00

May 9th 2005: It had been a year since we were married, so Sri decided to make a short trip here so we could atleast celebrate our first anniversary together. Meanwhile I was just scared that I might not recognise him after so long. We were really excited and I planned for months on the places to visit and dishes to be prepared and the people to be met. I created an elaborate excel spreadsheet, filled up an entire diary with airline and hotel deals and after almost two months of gruelling 'research' the itinerary was ready. Now you would wonder 'itna fight maarne ki kya zaroorat hein ? . But when you are a graduate student, there is no other way you (+1) can visit places from New York to California unless you spent hours and hours finding out the best (read cheapest) airfare and hotel deals. The research will not go waste ...I guarantee that . Because at the end of it , you will be amazed at how much you can save . And the immense joy you will experience when you can point and laugh at those poor souls who tell you that they payed through their nose for the same trip :-) .
Another reason for the ironclad itinerary was because Sri was going to be here for just three weeks and wanted to see as much Amrika as possible. So basically I had to work on a shoestring budget coupled with a tighter schedule ..I could'nt have been prouder of what I planned.

The plan was to basically cover most of the standard places every visiting desi went to...you know Niagara , New York, Universal Studios etc etc. The advantage was that it would be that much easier for your folks back home to recognise most of the places.

You (screaming on the phone thanks to that 8c/min calling card) : "Did you get the pictures amma ? ...sorry I did'nt get time to write details of each picture on the back. "

Mom (screaming at the other end coz her voice has to reach all the way to the US ) : "Oh don't worry molle...I recognised the places immediately. You went to "Neeeagara Faals", "Umpire State Building" and that big valley in caalifornia, no ?. Just last week, Mrs Perumal came back from Ameriga after visiting her son and showed me her pictures. Their pictures were also taken at the exact same spots "

You: "oh amma you should have said that earlier , i could have send some chocolates and these photos with her only ...could have saved me that much postage. "

Anyways, week 1 , we were to make pit stops at Chicago, stay a day at Niagara, breeze through New York on to DC and then back to IC. Week 2 and 3 were spent between IC and California visiting friends ...and Shamu !!!

Looking back, although the trip was exhausting , it was a lot of fun . We got to spend a lot of time with each other and for the first time I did'nt mind the 2 hour wait at the airport or that overnight greyhound journey !!! Now I am already having crazy ideas about taking a road trip through the US or who knows ...maybe even go backpacking through Europe ..anyone ???

April Showers

2005-04-25T13:17:00.000-06:00

It rained today . I could smell that earthy smell , which takes me back home everytime...that gili mitti ki khusboo filled with childhood memories of playing in the rain, making paper boats, splashing in the puddles.

It amazes me, how our sense of smell can take us back years and lets us relive that moment in time and again , forever.

"Reality continues to ruin my life"...Calvin and Hobbes.

2005-04-11T18:12:00.000-06:00

Of late I had kinda got into a routine of coming back to the lab in the evenings and staying late into the night. I can stay back working peacefully in the empty lab for hours as long as my imagination does'nt run wild and I start conjuring up images of weirdos waiting outside my lab !!! The moment I hear a thud or a click that is out of place, I will be out of the lab before you can say "chicken". Yeah, not scary monsters or white ghosts in my imagination ...mine is too realistic. Its strange people who scare me and besides who has ever seen a ghost lurking around labs anyway ??

So, there I was, all proud about getting my car fixed for 1/4th the price the crazy dealer quoted, and glad that I could now actually spend more time getting work done in the lab. But this being my life, how did I forget there is probably no one on whom the Murphy's Laws apply so well , as much as they do on me; if anything can go wrong, it will ...very very soon. I lost my identity card; the card which is as precious to me as "Khul ja sim sim" was to Alladin. It was my only after hours pass into the new high tech building we have moved into. I need to swipe it to get into the building , then swipe to come up 5 floors, another swipe to open the door in the hallway, and a final swipe to get me into the lab. I need to swipe to even get into the restrooms at the end of the hallway. I am guessing even people at NASA don't require so many ID card swipes to get into their most secret of missions !!! And even if someone does manage to trudge up all those stairs, I fail to see what they could possibily steal from here the bulky computers that are as old as me (hate to admit it , but they are), the stacks and stacks of journal articles or the chemicals in the cabinet with skull heads and warnings that go " Toxic: Do not inhale !!!, Contact doctor immediately if itching persists !! ? Although he could get quite a bit of money if he took all those empty coke and pepsi cans to recycle.

By that logic, I should'nt bother about any unauthorized person reaching my lab anyways, wierdos included...but my imagination quite predictably defies all logic.

I pride myself at never losing stuff ... atleast trivial stuff. Unless their disappearance causes severe monetary loss or drastically hinders my day to day functioning, I don't bother misplacing them. I don't misplace my junk jewellery, I have all the cards and letters and random scrapbook junk safe and sound, but I lost my gold chain , the precious gold bracelet Sri presented and was frighteningly close to losing my engagement ring once.

So, inspired by my friends stories of kind strangers calling me up or emailing me about having found my ID card, I waited patiently till today. But, I have given up hope. So, not only has this magnetic strip of plastic, made me curse heavily everytime I encounter my near death experience just climbing 5 flights of stairs since thursday, this one is also setting me back by 20 freakin dollars for a new one. And the way my luck goes, I am pretty sure that kind stranger is going to contact me right after I get my new card.

Meanwhile I can clearly make out the transition in my blogspace, from ones that talked about fun times at the parties or the movies to the ones in the last couple of months that has transmogrified into cribs and rants galore. Something a PhD student would blog about ....YIKES ...I can't stop it now ...its happening !!!

Spring is here ....FINALLY !!

2005-04-04T18:26:00.000-06:00

Life is like the weather ....you will only appreciate the warm sunlight after weeks and weeks of dull, cold and cloudy days ; but never during the hot summer time .

So here I was feeling all frustrated with life, wasting my precious years towards a meaningless degree (I will change it to a meaningfull degree the day I get a paycheck that does'nt look like minimum wage !!) . When after a long cold and gloomy winter , spring is finally here like a breath of fresh air ...hmmmmm . Today was just the kind of day everyone needed to treat their cabin fevers as we bid adieu to the days of dressing up like eskimos.

After 4 long years in the US , it has yet never stopped amazing me , how perfect strangers can carry out conversations for hours just discussing the weather . There is so much to talk about , the seven-day forecasts, the high pressure , low pressure areas, thunderstorms, tornadoes, wind speeds, last years temperatures for the month . Personally too, weather talk has been quite an ice-breaker (pun intended !) in many a boring potlucks. My conservations with strangers can go as limp as my over-conditioned hair right after the "how are you ? " "I am good, thank you "....long awkward silence, " whats with this years winter , huh" ...blah blah blah.

But maybe this is a phenomenon limited to the states that actually have changing seasons ...I mean what could people in LA possibly have to crib about the weather. Except when the torrential rains hit them last month , even Leno could'nt stop talking about it ...see my point ?

Weather was just never a yap topic in India. It was always Shahrukh who came to my rescue there (Bless his soul).

My friend the other day casually remarked that she kept herself regularly updated on the latest weather from her basement lab, using the www.weatherunderground.com website.

So as days are getting sunnier and warmer, necklines are plunging and hemlines are dangerously rising all over campus . Except it's no picnic for me, as I puff and pant on the treadmill as a last ditch effort to get into a reasonable shape (from 'round' i.e) before summer time.

I know eventually I am going to start my cribs about the hot, sweaty days, the constant freeze thaw I go through everytime I get in or out of a building, and the sunlight till 9 in the night !!! Until then , I am just going to take in the warm sunshine of the spring .

Hannibal, Missouri.

2005-03-17T10:18:00.000-06:00

Back in school , when I read "Adventures of Tom Sawyer", "Huckleberry Finn" did I have any idea that one day in a not too distant future I would be able to actually find myself in the town that formed the backdrop of these classics ?
I had heard of this place called Hannibal in Missouri which was the hometown of Samuel Langhorne Clemens aka Mark Twain. So when the university sent out an email about its day trip to Hannibal , we friends decided it would be a good chance to have one of those picnics we had in school ...complete with packed lunches and water bottles :-) . When we reached the place what struck me was how much the sleepy little town of Hannibal had become a slave to commercialism....a Mark Twain hotel on one side, a Tom Sawyer store on the other. But I guess, it is a small price to pay when it comes to preserving places with so much history. The most exciting part of the trip was the quarter mile guided tour of the cave . As we entered the cave, and the last person was instructed to shut the entrance after him, I was hit with a severe attack of claustrophobia...which I tried really hard to push aside and concentrate on what the guide was talking . Suddenly the book seemed to come to life . It was so surreal , imagining Tom and Becky lost inside those dark, bat infested caves with just a candle to guide them in the neverending maze. The tour guide was great as he regaled us animatedly with the stories and legends of those times. The caves are scribbled with about 250,000 names of people from all over the world ...but not allowed to write on them anymore. I found a narrow walkway that was aptly called the "Lemon Squeeze" quite amusing :-) . The walls in places appeared polished thanks to the thousands of people who had run their hands over them. The formations in the cave were so incredible that there was even a "room" in one part of the cave complete with a love seat, bookshelf , and a grand piano (that supposedly only plays 'rock' ;-). The village committees used to hold their town meetings in this room, when the weather became too hot outside during summers. After the amazing tour of the caves, we visited the lighthouse and Mark Twains house, the white picket fence :-) , Becky Thatcher's house which were all so well maintained . We walked on the cobblestoned streets, lazed around on the banks of the Mississippi and headed back home.
Deal of the day ? a $2 unabridged version of "Adventures of Tom Sawyer" !! . I know I am never going to forget this trip ...the book is going to take me back everytime I read it :-)
Some sites for those interested :

http://www.marktwainmuseum.org/

http://www.marktwaincave.com/

http://www.marktwaincave.com/Pictures.html

Vent -o- mania !!!

2005-03-14T20:29:00.000-06:00

One of those days , when all you wanna do is plonk in front of the TV and crib about how much life sucks !!! Not that any other day is any better , but just sometimes feel an overwhelming need to vent , and feel stupid after having done it . And my only reasons for feeling exceptionally crappy today were : I did'nt have a watch , my car is been sitting in my parking lot for so long i am pretty sure it's started laying eggs, and I don't have headphones anymore that fit my mutated ears !!! Ok I am feeling stupid already !
I somehow feel the need to justify all the three random and wierd reasons that apparently blew my top . OK so I did'nt know how much I was a slave to my watch....up until the two watches I had (one being a Fossil ) that together decide they will not budge another second ahead. I had everything programmed on these watches...when the minute hand struck 15 after the hour was when I had to leave home to catch my bus ...I would reach the bus stop and the bus would be there within 2 minutes...Perfect !!! I had worked it all down to the minute. None of the other 10 watches in the house were programmed this way...as long as I had one on my wrist, did'nt even care about what time of the day the others showed . So when my only two croaked and refused to budge...started the series of unfortunate events ...I was totally disoriented.. either missed the bus one day or was 5 mins ahead of time the other day ...5 precious minutes of my sleep ...gone !!! It was just too much torture the past two days ....i finally went and got a new one today !.
And the car ...oh Lord ...who knew a brake pad could just fall off the car if not changed on time ? I just drive the car ...i don't know a thing about them ...Now I need to get it towed and fixed ...which probably needs to be done one of these days :-(
And yes ...the tragedy of my life ...my ears ...the cruel joke HE played on me ...they look just fine to any other person ...but they are so freakin small ..I hate those phones that look like you have ear muffs on in the middle of summer ...I have almost given up on finding a pair of those cool tiny earphones that disappear into your ears, and stay there... what would I not give to have one cool pair in my ears ...without falling off every time I move an inch on the treadmill. I spend more calories just jamming the damn thing inside my ears then jogging. I just got me another pair thinking it just might fit ...guess what ???
Now i am bored of even venting ...I think I will just get back to work then ...stupid manuscript ...godawful PhD $#*& !!!!

What's new pussycat ??

2005-01-06T11:21:00.000-05:00

I can't get this song out of my head since last night , when I caught it on some random ad. about Santa and his Cereal.

Songs, once they find a way into my head don't move out that quick , unless replaced by an equally crazy jingle used in some arbit birth control ad. !!! But of course, the addiction is not limited to jingles. Hindi film songs which most people did'nt even know existed somehow just pop up and keep playing in repeat mode all day long . I mean who in their right minds will be caught humming a song with lyrics that go " Prem meri aankhon mein hein , prem meri saanson mein hein " unless your big crush is a chap called Prem. Although I do know a madrasi anna with that name in the city, poor guy would have a stroke if he heard what I was going around town humming . I tell you people , this is how rumors spread. Think before you hum or just keep mum ...( sorry...could'nt resist the rhyme !!!)

And talk about spontaneous behaviour ...my friends and I take it to a whole new level. So here I was sitting at home reading Suketu Mehta ( attempting to finish the 500 page book on a library loan of 3 weeks is a bad idea, especially when you are a snail of all readers like me ) and watching "Law and Order" on mute . I was all warm and cuddled up, while there was almost 8-10 inches of snow outside , deposited by a 2 day raging snowstorm. Suddenly there was a flurry of phone calls and within 15 mins I found myself bundled up and outside in the snow at 10.30 P.M !! It seemed like a great idea at home ...going sledding on the nearby golf course that boasts of the only version of hilly terrain known to Iowa city worth sledding for newbies like us. There was another one by a main road (this one's almost Mount Everest compared to the golf course one) , but then the whole issue of not being able to stop before we skid straight onto the road, scaring the hell out of passing cars and heading straight off into the Iowa River was too much of a hassle.

So there we were, the 25-something girls, in the middle of the night, making snow angels, and having snowball fights, sledding down the soft, fresh and fluffy, freezing snow like 5 year olds !!!

Who says people grow up ?

The year that was ...

2004-12-30T12:29:00.000-05:00

Ring out the old, ring in the new,

Ring, happy bells, across the snow:

The year is going, let him go;

Ring out the false, ring in the true.

~Alfred, Lord Tennyson, 1850

Its that time of the year again folks ...when you look back , take stock of your yearly screwups and your achievements (trying to make that 1lb you lost in the gym sound like it changed your life foreever...ignoring the 10 lbs u put on since) .

I never really did that kind of stuff, because I did'nt consider myself to be living what is called " a happening " life . It was the same year after year, college , studies, and the same old reruns of "Friends". My life was so disgustingly monotonous that it was depressing to sit back and reminisce . Or so I thought . But when you are over the hill (according to the theories of aging , your 'species propagation services' to mankind are required only till 25 ,you can age and die after that ...nature does'nt care if you did 'it' or not by then), you start acting all wierd and painting a rosy picture of your 'wonder years', the fun you had bunking that one lecture for no reason, or catching that last show because you just had to see Shah Rukh in "Chaahat" !! .

But then as always I like to look at the bright side of things however hard it may be . All is not lost ...I may be on the wrong side of 25 ...but I am still on the right side of 30 ! I can still manage to create some cool and wild memories for me to boast of when I am 50 and blabbering through my toothless mouth to my grandkids . Yup , I can bet all my molars, that by 50 my mouth is going to be as empty as a newborns , but I am not letting any dentist within 10 yards of my precious cavity filled teeth...nuh aah. One mistakenly done root canal at the hands of a totally inexperienced bimbo was enough for me (she probably had to shut down shop after I drove away every patient of hers with my screams). Anyways ...so I was talking about how hard I was working at doing fun stuff that I could talk about later. I am still going around getting them done ...but its tough when you are in a village like Iowa city .

I do like to exaggerate ...but I would'nt trade my life for anyone else's . The ride has been fun , crazy and I have so many fond memories of places and people. My only worry is my memory, that bails out on me regularly. I seriously suspect if I even have any memory cells left in my brain anymore. The result of which is I have turned into this pack rat , who will not even throw out a movie ticket stub . Maybe I should just write an book (Brainwave , courtesy ...the book I am reading by IITian Chetan bhagat called "Five point someone" ). So what would I write for this year ? Something about each of my friends, the fights over pictionary, our road-trips to chicago, the never ending bday's and endless rounds to the mall to pick that special gift. I would write about my wonderful wedding and my ever patient husband with whom I pick fights for no reason just so that we can make up and chat for another hour ( my favourite is when he claims my hair did'nt look so good on my wedding day :-).

And while I look back fondly at the year that was , 2005 is going to be the year I will be called Dr. Sarita , the year I will finally be able to be with my husband and live like a married couple , the year I am going to get my first job . Yes ...this year is going to be the year I will reap my fruits of hard earned labor. I can't wait for it to begin !!

Blah Blah Blah

2004-12-22T18:14:00.000-05:00

Another one of those 14 straight hours of work in the lab today . And yet I felt the need to blog today of all the days :-) . Work has been exhausting to say the least . I was happy doing an experiment here and there but when you decide, rather, when your adviser decides its high time you came up with your next publication ( I was perfectly contended with two ), you realise you actually have to get all those experiments done . And when the Boss drops subtle hints that border on threats, the visions of being stuck for another year are just too disturbing to ignore and continue surfing the net !! I also realised (rather my adviser realised ...again ) , that my committee needs to be reminded that I exist , and would like to leave with their blessings . Which means hazaar emails/ phone calls , organizing their dates and fixing a committee meeting, not to mention putting together a decent progress seminar convincing them I could actually graduate this summer ! It just does'nt end !!!
Meanwhile partying has pretty much come to a lull after some major masti for bday's, job treats, moving aways and secret santas ...that came one after the other. Now that I keep reminding myself , this may be my last christmas, diwali , bday celebration before I move out , I cannot get myself to miss out on anything. I may crib about this small college town of mine, but nothing beats that feeling of being back here again , everytime I return from a trip . At the same time I can't wait to finish up and go out into the world ...after over 25 years of 'education'.

Tale of the lost pencils

2004-10-27T19:57:00.000-05:00

That's two this week ..and its only wednesday !!! I don't usually create such a big fuss about losing a puny graphite stick (I never quite understood why they are also called lead pencils) . But today I just lost it , when I could'nt find even one of the 10 odd ones I saw around my bench last week. Instead, I see black pens, blue pens, markers, highlighters and every other imaginable scribbling paraphernalia sticking out of my pen stand. Even a desperate attempt of turning over all the contents and cursing did not yield the elusive pencil ! All I had wanted was one ...just one pencil to note down something useless ...on a very useful piece of paper. Why ? ...because I did not have an equally useless post-it lying around ...thats why, I needed a pencil and nothing but a pencil at that crucial moment.

During the course of these three years, I am beginning to believe my lab bench has been morphing into one ominous and intuitive black hole, which will promptly devour anything I look for.

I could have just sneaked around and seized one from my lab mate's area . But my case was one of "once bitten twice shy " . Once I had picked up a pen casually from my lab mate's overflowing pen stand, and then promptly forgot to return it . Now the main reason I got caught red-handed with her pen was that in my enthusiasm, I did'nt notice that she had pink-taped her pen so she could GPS track it anytime some idiot like me 'borrowed' it and never gave it back. Try explaining yourself when you are caught with a very annoyed lab mate's pink-taped pen !.

After a good 15 mins of running around like a hen with its head cut, I eventually found a piece of tissue and breathed a sigh of relief.

I can imagine what the US must have gone through. "Where are those WMD ?? We could have sworn it was right there !!! "

Maximum City

2004-10-23T13:16:00.000-05:00

Next book on my list : Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found. A memior of Suketu's life and views on his city, bombay before he left , and after he came back to visit. The books got a big two thumbs up from Salman Rushdie too !! Suketu Mehta had stopped by our university, of which he is an alumni, for a book reading, and from the few excerpts he read out to us, its definately is worth a read. The city bursting at its seams, and yet finds space to include one more person. My adopted wonderful city ..yeh hein bombay meri jaan.

Confessions of an oblivious mallu

2004-10-21T15:34:00.000-05:00

Inspite of being a "Mallu" by birth, I never really got myself interested in the art and culture of Kerala. I was totally ignorant about the history of the various dance forms, the famous "Poorams" , or the numerous prolific writers and poets that this peninsular state was known for. This could be partly due to my upbringing in another part of the country coupled to the fact that my parents themselves never displayed any keen interest in showing us the wonders of the place. Our trips to Kerala always had dad frantically running around for train tickets, boarding up the windows to avoid robbery, and sewing up cash in his pant pockets (don't ask me how !). While mom would be frantically running around making idlis, puris, curd rice for the journey and instructing the neighbours to look out for suspicious activity and taps that might be left open. When we reached kerala there could not be any other detours from home, because my mom wanted to spend as much time as possible with her mom. The poorams were too crowded and 'rowdy' for girls. By the end I could'nt wait to go back to Pune and hang out with my friends. My parents would have been really proud if I could atleast learn to read and write my mother tongue, which was an annual summer vacation boot camp my younger brother and I underwent. He learnt it eventually. While I am thankful for a husband who is literate and can take care of the occasional letters from home.
My uncle who stayed in kerala was a big fan of the kathakali dance form. On our trips back home, in the late evenings, during the 'power cuts' (that were so regular and precise, we could set our watches) I used to hear him hum on the porch...the only memory I can conjure up when I think of Kathakali...how sad it that ??? I think I am going to get some reading done on that ...why the sudden brainwave ...you ask ???
I came across this show about Theyyam and it piqued my curiosity ( its official now...it does'nt take a lot to pique my curiosity :-). So I read some more about it !!! I have a lot of catching up to do ....

Dating Dilemmas

2004-10-19T09:38:00.000-05:00

So I snuck back home y'day for a quick late afternoon lunch and just on my way out, in between my frantic search for the flipper and getting my jacket and shoes on, I happened to catch a glimpse of this author on Oprah (I wish she had better show times than 4pm !!! ). He has been involved with script writing for "Sex and the City" and apparently came up with this book around that time. The book has been flying off the shelfs all over the country ...a big hit among the millions of 'dating' women !!.

A book called He's Just Not That Into You: The No Excuses-Truth to Understanding Guys !!!

As usual a book endorsed by Oprah, and I could not curb by curiosity. I had to google it the first thing I came back to my comp...even though I am off the dating scene (Well ...I was kinda never in ...I promptly fell hook line and sinker the moment Sri handed me that Amul chocolate bar . He still maintains he did'nt give it with any 'intentions', but thats a different story ;-).

I landed up on yahoo and read the first chapter. Gosh !!! this is one of those (few) times I am glad I tied the knot. Not to mention my desi parents who would rather have me make tea for countless 'suitable boys' before I could even dream of dating.

Just this morning , I saw the girls in my lab all huddled in front of a comp checking the book out from Amazon...the city library has one copy with 3 holds on it already ( 4th is going to be mine...now I just have to read it..the books a freakin rage)

Seems its just not the guys alone who are clueless about the girls after all !!!

Hero

2004-10-16T15:47:00.000-05:00

One of the most visually and philosophically brilliant movies I have seen to date . And to think I was almost not going to go and see it , for reasons of sheer laziness to read subtitles off an Asian film !!!

The movie is set almost 2000 years ago , when China was not even a country but 7 different kingdoms, that fought and killed each other for years. "Nameless" (Jet Li), wants to avenge the death of his people and considers the Ruler as a tyrant like everybody else does. Only to realise in the end, after meeting up with the king (to kill him), that his only intentions were to unite all the kingdoms and stop the war and bloodshed. Don't want to give out the ending for those who just might catch the movie , after reading this ;-)

Its an artistic masterpiece in my opinion complete with vivid colors, breathtaking backdrops, and an exemplary display of martial arts.... of course if you can get past all those people being forever suspended in air and moving in slow motion. The things that bowled me over was the depiction of each characters version of an event in a different color....the swarm of arrows shot by the army ...and lastly the wall of logs that Li brings crumbling down with his swift sword !!!

Its definately worth seeing especially if you can catch it on a big screen . Although many of my asian friends do not share my fascination with the movie :-(

Trivia : The chap who directed this movie is apparently the same guy who made the teaser for Beijing Olympics , during the closing ceremony in Athens.

2004-10-13T14:34:00.000-05:00

I just came back from lunch .

A lunch I had the honour of having with Dr Tim Hunt ...a Nobel Prize winner of 2001 in Physiology/Medicine. And as I look at his signed copy of the flyer I know I will treasure this for a long time .

There was nothing grand about him . And that is exactly what hit me . He also rolled up his sleeves and dug into his sub , and slurped on his coke just like all the 7 students seated with him on that table. He was so down to earth , as he talked about his days of graduate research and his "Nobel" experiment, the moment when he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt he had discovered something new. He joked about the fact, that there are times when he has a hard time just getting the fact to sink in that he deserved the prize.

Although I appreciated the whole concept of recognising people who made a huge difference in the world by their work , I had'nt, up until today put a face on that person. The difficulties, the struggle, the triumph ...I could never associate with it. These Nobel laureates seemed to be some exceptional genuises or outer space aliens.

The whole experience was so refreshing, I sat and heard him talk, answer, and ponder about the possibilities of tomorrow. I could'nt agree more as he explained how sometimes its the simplest solutions that answer the most complex mysteries of the world.

Another Enigma of Life.

2004-10-10T10:27:00.000-05:00

How does one know when to give up ? When is it really ok to say I cannot go on anymore ...I quit ?

Or should one never give up at all ?

The fact that some people cannot succeed at something however hard you try ...is it an indication that you probably should explore other options without wasting your time ? or is it just that you have'nt tried hard enough ?

I guess we all have our own thresholds ...and there is only so much we can take before we quit . But then is'nt success about challenging your limits ....and then some more ???

Where's the party yaar ??

2004-10-03T21:59:00.000-06:00

The craziest two weeks of my life are behind me now . There were maddeningly busy and yet so much fun . Suddenly a career in party planning and editing movies seems very inviting ;-) It was once again time for a bridal shower ..only this time I was organizing one. And the one crazy bunch of girls that we are ...we love doing everything that is full of surprises. But the only other hitch in the whole plan was ....we also had a birthday for another friend of ours which had to be equally grand and a surprise. So it was only obvious that the planning committee had to keep two different emails ...that included one and kept the other girl out...without goofing up ...so all our emails eventually began with " remember this is for S's BS (bridal shower) don't reply to this when u want to discuss ...N's bday :-O ...it was crazy ....I went around the whole two weeks with a notebook ...noting down every tiny thing.

The planning, the execution...the works :
For the bridal shower ....there was a dance drama spoof on the bride and groom's love affair ...that needed songs and script to be written . Then the whole inviting the bride for the shower had to be grand too...We ended up having it parceled to her thru the apt office two days before. Then we decided to shoot a documentary depicting the whole backstage affair that went into preparing for the shower. We actually hit the streets and visited the bride's fav eatouts and interviewed the owners ..asked a group of goras for 'naughty games' . And then we recorded each of the friends message to the bride. Since we had planned to have it played through the projector ...friday was spent editing and assembling the movie only to realise that the whole damn thing was around 7 Gb in file size ...tooo big to move it anywhere !!!. Confusion, chaos all over ... "Did the bride get the invite ? " ...do we have confirmation for the venue....who is picking up the ice ....games , songs...after a point , I just wanted to go and sleep !!!!
But the most coolest part of the party according to me was the awesome cake we got custom made for the bride . We had the cake shaped like a book ...named it "KamaSutra: User Manual" ...had a la khajuraho pic. We spent all night designing the look ...and the result was simply spectacular.

Meanwhile ...we had to sneak out of the bday's girls radar and get her bday gift and party planned too. Friday night had real fun celebrating her bday in a salsa club. Saturday was the shower. I slept all day on Sunday !!!

I never knew ...too much partying also could exhaust me so much , that I longed to get back to work :-O

This and that

2004-09-19T00:00:00.000-06:00

After a long and seemingly never ending week , during which I must have thought of atleast 3-4 topics to blog on, but could never get around to sitting at the comp for more than 10 mins at a stretch...I am back ! And now that I can ...i don't feel like it . So I am just going to paste the one sad little entry from my diary I had so enthusiastically started on March the 24th. And to think I spent almost 1 hr just setting up the damn journal on WORD..complete with clip art and colors and fonts and what not. But then who would read it , besides me ??? This entry is 6 months and a marriage-old... for old times sake !!!

March 24, 2004
The alarm did not even bother to ring and I was up today. Well it is 8.30 already. I had to be in the lab by 9.
Gonna be late today also. But I just somehow cannot get myself to be up and early.
Inspite of the fact that I simply love the feel of early mornings. The air is so fresh and crisp in the morning. Its almost like while everyone was asleep in their beds at night, someone turned on the sprinklers and cleaned up all the smoke and dirt from the world. Just like the sprinklers in the supermarkets fresh vegetables aisle that turn on every few mins or so.
Sri says I would have to wake up by 6 every morning, while we are at his parents place. I guess I will enjoy the fresh world then.
Really felt I got a lot of work done today. Although did manage to get my daily dose of suleka , BBC news and of course my desi radio. Bad news is I am addicted to sulekha , good news is unlike the morning coffee it does not add into my calorie chart.
I did lazily skip my aerobics class today too, its just so easy to fall out of a habit, even when you have really struggled to get your lazy bones up to the aerobics room every week. A couple of weeks are all it takes to be back to square one. Will try cursing myself again tomorrow. Maybe will feel ashamed enough to trudge back in there. Amazing how much guilt can motivate/harass you to do something. All that cheesecake better be out of my body soon. Can actually feel it adiposing in my cells now. Yikes!!!

2004-09-14T17:00:00.000-06:00

Just when I was beginning to feel , may be this blogging craze is going last for a longer than expected season...boom , its gone. I am beginning to feel the enthu levels slowly dying. I guess some people never change . But then it could also be that I simbly ODed my way from blogdom to boredom. Only time will tell .

My life so far .....since friday i.e

Friday after a night of the usual catch-up-with-the-sorority/gossip/bitching session over fruity cosmopolitans, I hit the sack around 3 in the a.m.

Saturday morning, technically...noon, over a steaming mug of elaichi chai, i sat down to pore over a 35 page grant proposal . Someone's got to do the dirty work of pointing out all the silly mistakes the boss makes in his write-up ...the devil that I am, how could I give up on this opportunity ? (that and also the fact that boss himself plonked the document on my table with one line 'by sunday evening ').

Anyhooo, I did relish scribbling huge circles around typos, writing my intellectually BS comments all over the place ...he he , especially made sure I had my crimson red gel pen with me handy ...You should see those research reports I get back from the boss every semester end, so battered and bruised that I can barely manage to recognise those sentences I had so painstakingly and groggily typed at 2 in the morning...oh u bet ...revenge is sweet !!!

After some real serious scribbles for about 2 pages , I lost interest eventually. Sunday evening was still more than 24 hours away ...no worries !!! Dashed off to the lab , did some sample collections. Evening had a "dosa party" as a farewell for one very pregnant girlfriend, who was finally wrapping up her doctorate and joining her hubby for good. Oh ...happy stories make me sooo senti...*sniff sniff*. I attempted to show-off my malluistic attitude with some major claims on the lines of ..."oh dosas ...here let me show you how to make some nice crispy ones ". To put a long story short, I was royally kicked away from the smoking stove and the burnt pile of dough I had ended up with. In my defense ...I can only work my charm and make 'em crispy if I do the whole procedure myself , besides I just cannot concentrate with hazaar people around !! Party was loads of fun ...with crispy brown dosas with globs of aloo sabzi, yummy chutneys, spicy sambar. Its funny how desi parties are always about eating and antaksharis :-)

Tried very hard at reading some more of that grant at night ...gawd it was soooo boring. I would probably written that in there, if my degree was'nt at stake !!

Sunday evening after some serious headache inducing concentration, finished it !!!

Monday was pretty darn hectic ...started a whole new set of experiments ...which translates to less time I can spend playing literati :-(( .

Lord .....Mercy ....I had the worst working day of my life today ..oh yeah , have been thru worse lazy days . Two of my experiments bombed big time ...now that makes 4 expts that I have to troubleshoot and get it working before I can even dream of graduating ....oh I am sooooo sad , i could eat a whole grilled chicken burger with french fries and a coke...ok ok diet coke :-((((

Lessons from Kids

2004-09-10T10:04:00.000-06:00

I found this so adorably chweet that I am going to shamelessly copy paste it here.

*************************************************************************************
For those who already have children past this age, this is
hilarious.

For those who have children nearing this age, this is a warning.

For those who have not yet had children, this is birth control.

The following came from an anonymous mother in Austin, TX. Poor
woman.

Things I've learned from my children (Honest and No Kidding):

1. A king size waterbed holds enough water to fill a 2,000 sq.
foot house 4 inches deep.

2. If you spray hair spray on dust bunnies and run over them with
roller blades, they can ignite.

3. A 3-year-old's voice is louder than 200 adults in a crowded
restaurant.

4. If you hook a dog leash over a ceiling fan, the motor is not
strong enough to rotate a 42 pound boy wearing Batman underwear
and a superman cape. It is strong enough, however, to spread
paint on all four walls of a 20X20 foot room.

5. You should not throw baseballs up when the ceiling fan is on.
When using the ceiling fan as a bat, you have to throw the ball
up a few times before you get a hit. A ceiling fan can hit a
baseball a long way.

6. The glass in windows (even double pane) doesn't stop a
baseball hit by a ceiling fan.

7. When you hear the toilet flush and the words "Uh-oh", it's
already too late.

8. Brake fluid mixed with Clorox makes smoke, and lots of it.

9. A six-year-old can start a fire with a flint rock even though
a 36-year-old man says they can only do it in the movies. A
magnifying glass can start a fire even on an overcast day.

10. Certain Legos will pass through the digestive tract of a
four-year-old.

11. Play Dough and Microwave should never be used in the same
sentence.

12. Super glue is forever.

13. No matter how much Jell-O you put in a swimming pool you
still can't walk on water.

14. Pool filters do not like Jell-O.

15. VCR's do not eject PB&J sandwiches even though TV commercials
show they do.

16. Garbage bags do not make good parachutes.

17. Marbles in gas tanks make lots of noise when driving.

18. You probably do not want to know what that odor is.

19. Always look in the oven before you turn it on. Plastic toys
do not like ovens.

20. The fire department in Austin has a 5 minute response time.

21. The spin cycle on the washing machine does not make earth
worms dizzy. It will however make cats dizzy and cats throw up
twice their body weight when dizzy.

****************************************************************************

Disordered World

2004-09-09T16:14:00.000-06:00

The other day as I was vegetating (i.e sitting and eating my veggies ) in front of the TV there was this ridiculous ad for a drug that supposedly treated Social Anxiety Disorder !!! It went something like "Are you scared of social interactions ? do you not enjoy being with other people ? If so, then you may be sufferring from Social Anxiety Disorder . There is a new drug called blah blah to treat it . Ask your doctor today if prescription blah blah is right for you.
Side effects include dry mouth, fatigue, constipation, nausea and vomiting, yada yada yada."
The ad claimed to treat the disorder and make you happy and interactive in social settings....ya right...will join you right after I throw up....Jeez. I would gladly stay at home with my disorder than puke all day! This is Absane (absurdly insane ...i am on the roll here :-))

Whats with people in the medical profession and their need to name every microscopically insignificant deviation from 'normal' as a Disorder ? I am not even sure what is normal anymore.
I agree depression is a serious neurological problem , but what about behavioural disorders, eating, sleeping....SOCIAL disorders ??? I mean come on ....are'nt we taking this too far now ? What that kid with the eating disorder needs is some good old spanking from his mom coupled with a lengthy discourse of how children in somalia starve for days withour food ( I bet we all got those lectures ! ). And with these countless pharma companies churning out drugs for every itch, twitch and sneeze, are we going to end up popping pills like M&M's day in and day out ?

In Adult Attention Deficit Disorder, you can't stay focused on something for a long time ....hey who can, other than a hypnotised zombie ? Its mindboggling when you realise there are people who have been diagnosed with Seasonal Affective Disorder , borderline personality disorder, narcissistic personality disorder, panic disorder, paranoid disorder ....its all become so...so...disorderly

The sad part is however the increasing numbers of children being 'diagnosed' and put on these medications. Is this the price we pay for advancements in science and medicine that the future generation will probably never be able to get out of bed without ingesting a handful of those magic pills ??? Why can't we respect our mind and body anymore and trust it to take care of itself ?

I better sign off ...don't want to end up suffering from obsessive blogsessive disorder !!!

To Ma'm with Love : Part 2

2004-09-08T20:50:00.000-06:00

Ten years in school and I never appreciated how amazingly different and quirky each of my teachers were. We all had our favourites for whom we drew those special greeting cards, tried soo hard to study and not fail in their course :-).

Mrs N was one cool teacher I had. She was this feisty lady with a no-nonsense air about her. I adored her for her killer bluntness...she spared no one with her sharp and witty retorts. My friend and I actually used to jot down her 'pearls of wisdom' on the last page of our english notebooks.

Miss R : Yeah , she was a killer too...but she got the job done with her sleeveless blouses and belly button exposing saris which she draped around her 5 foot 8 inch slender frame..a very Sush look from Mein Hoon Na (wait a min...first, the princi and now sush are both oddly familiar...hey, who made this movie ? ) She was'nt all that great of a teacher, but the boys would gladly kill each other for a chance to wipe the blackboard for her . And when we girls were bored of ooohing and aaahing over her gorgeous saris, we used to count the number of times she said "that is" during a class and generate weekly statistics !!!

Mr L: The only male teacher we had in the whole school and guess what he taught ??? drawing and craft !!!

Mrs Ranga : She was our daily dose of bharatnatyam and biology...combined. This petite tam brahm, was the epitome of gracefullness as she oh so melodiously explained the digestive system and its inner workings with her bhavas and hand gestures. She certainly got us interested in bharatnatyam atleast by the end.

And then there were many more in college, in the insti , who in their own ways taught me something in life...the importance of education, importance of blaming fate for all my screwups , and above all being independant. And for all this I will be eternally grateful to my teachers .

To Ma'm with love : Part 1

2004-09-07T12:02:00.000-06:00

A line from Dad's mail today went something like this :
"Yesterday was Teacher's day - Mom got several gifts (cost of
which in the wildest dreams also cannot be beyond Rs.15, but the
sentiment attached to them is invaluable) from students and school
management including amba barfi."

As I read it , I could'nt help reminiscing about all those teachers in school, who pounded our tiny cerebrums and spanked our butts with knowledge and taught me things, I am waiting to implement in my life. Aside from the multiplication, division, addition and subtraction which I use on a daily basis to calculate my workload, time spent on working, calories I ingest and bank balance respectively. I just have'nt figured out a way to put into effective use the chronology of Chatrapati Shivaji's life and those battle dates we memorised for history (they haunt me to this day ! )

My teachers have left an indelible mark in my life. Most of them are still remembered as the tyrants they were.

My first ever teacher, of whom I have no recollection of was one . Mom tells me stories of how as a preschooler I was put into a tuiton class to learn the alphabets and numbers 'earlier'.( I still think she did it to have her much loved afternoon siestas). Anyways, I just hated going to those classes and I would throw such a tantrum. Even today I can recollect the foggy images of being dragged along the road lined by tall green hedges on both sides. My parents did'nt make a big deal of all those accusations I put on the teacher, of beating me ,yelling at me . They simply thought I was going to be one dumb kid. When one day I brought home a broken slate as evidence. Dad had marched right up to her and given her the scolding of her life.

The other cane-yielding Rani Laxmibai we had was Mrs Mala in the 3rd grade. She had one class in the week when she used to have those multiplication table quizzes. And that was my own Doomsday. I could'nt for the life of me (literally) remember tables and she knew that . Every week she would pick me (even with my head buried deep inside a book i could'nt escape), and ask me a 3x3 or a 7x8 ?? I would do some heavy duty acting of thinking hard , staring calculatively at the ceiling, scratching my head vigourously...but no...the answer would never dawn on me and then that cane would strike on my tiny outstretched palm with a loud thwack.

Another reason we scampered off from here was that she had hyperactive salivary glands. She was the Niagara of spitters and she could soak you to the bones if you as much as stood for 5 minutes in her vicinity ...remember that princi from Mein Hoon Na ?? Trust me there are people like that in existence. We used to have an area of the front benches where she used to stand during classes designated as 'Danger Zone: Sit at your own risk '.

Here's wishing you a happy teachers day Mrs Mala ...if it had'nt been for you , I would never learn 3x3 is 6..wait is that 9 ??? where's my calculator ???

**** to be continued ****

2004-09-04T17:27:00.000-06:00

Loooooong labour day weekend...the girls are planning to drive to chicago, to meet up with sniggsie's mom. She such an awesome cook ...and equally expert at emotionally blackmailing us to stuff ourselves. I think I will skip dinner tonite if I have to eat tomorrow's dinner :-). Its really fun visiting didi, jiju and aunty ...and darling taru. It almost feels like being back in india, with all the food and masti ..and of course Zee and Sony TV :-)
Friday night managed to catch Mira Nair's "Vanity Fair". Yup...managed to....was almost dragged to the movie hall in my PJ's. I still can't figure how one decides to watch a 9.40 show at 9.15 ...rounds up junta...drives to the mall , and is in time to even catch the movie trailers...popcorn and coke included ???
Nice movie btw...I could have rated the movie an A ...but its going to get a B+ from me ...gawd , Reese's a la-belly dance number totally blew it for me . Dunno why , but people who have the flexiblity of an iron rod , should'nt attempt shaking a leg...thats one of my weird pet peeves (actually all of them are ) ...she was sooo floppy ! But movies definately worth a dekho ...

Search search and then some... (re)search !!

2004-09-02T10:16:00.000-06:00

Sometimes, during those painfully long hours in the lab, trying to get some (correct) data to fit my hypothesis, (for the nth time) ...i think ...WHAT THE HELL HAVE I GOT MYSELF INTO ?????

For those who are not familiar with the whole PhD charade ..here's a quick trailer (of the 4 or 6 sometimes 27 years of 'research' some naive humans like me end up in). Believe it or not , there are tales told about this chap from somewhere in europe who hung in there for 27 yrs. The process essentially involves some nutcase (ahem *cough cough*) who thinks he/she is Einstein reincarnated, and a life of research and a cure for cancer is what they were put on this earth for. And then there are those who decide to 'continue studies' ...ya right, like you would have stayed back if even one of those 10,000 jobs you applied to, had hired you after your masters.

So after some initial coursework and exams (which have no relevance whatsoever to what you end up 'researching'), that apparently test your knowledge of the field, we dive right into formulating a hypothesis (aka a scientific statement to explain your crazy results). Now this is where I have a big problem ...I started out with one, did some experiments here and there ....some results fit , some did'nt ....so we (i.e me and my adviser..or Mr Moneybags) tweaked 'statement version 1.0' a bit to fit all the results...and thus statement version 1.1 was born.

Now ....I am working on version 5.0 !!!

I am beginning to think all that tweaking was a bad idea !.

So three years later with a desk overflowing of journal articles, countless hours of head scratching (no ...not the dandruffy scratch) and surfing on the net for the next international conference...there are somethings that you learn :

(1) your adviser is no Mr Moneybags. He will probably have to shut the lab, if that grant is rejected for the 4th year also.
(2) how to organise your lousy data to publish two papers and also earn a 'young investigator award' (thanku thanku).
(3) Printing journal articles is not the same as reading them.
(4) how to scourge for free food in the campus, at all those random poster sessions and guest lectures. If you get real good at it , you can schedule all your lunches for a whole month.
(5) By 10 in the night, the vending machine is sold out of Coke.
(6) Record everything ...even the glassware I washed ...helps to thicken up those folders and thereby create an impression of 'hard work'.
(7) Do not believe in miracles: rely on them to get you to finish that 30 page thesis proposal in one night.
(8) Murphy's Law of Statistics: when you are 100 % confident that your results are significant ...they could'nt be anymore statistically "trash".
(9) If you know what the hell you are doing ...then it is'nt research.
(10) YOU ARE NO EINSTEIN !!!

ok... got to get back to my surfing :)

My first love letter

2004-08-31T11:01:00.000-06:00

How many of us can still reach into the far recesses of the mind (or heart) and still relive the sweet and tender emotions of that first crush ? My childhood memories are filled with summer vacations ,trading comic books with friends, trips to my hometown kerala, a kid brother I bullied around, and those countless crushes I unrelentingly told myself was my true love... everytime. And yet, my first love letter was for someone who did'nt even matter to me.
The first love letter I wrote was a group effort. I was in the 5th grade and we were about 7-8 girls in our society. A couple of these girls considered themselves our 'elder sisters' and never missed an opportunity to boss us around. On the other side of the society, the guys had a similar group and the only time the two groups met, was during the annual festivals. We did'nt really get along very well and it was almost a war during holi and Ganesh Utsavs were sociable to say the least . Mysteriously, one of us developed a major crush on one of them and decided to profess her love in writing. But being a total wuss, she coud'nt do it alone. So she convinced us (I can't still figure out how ?? )that we also 'like' him , and we have to tell him about our feelings ...before it gets too late (yeah ...she was one scheming conniving little brat). I did'nt really care much for that boy, but joined the "love letter writing project" nevertheless. I was scared that if I refused , I would be excluded from playtime and sharing secrets...worse, those secrets would be about me :-O . I decided I would rather make a complete fool of myself, than become an outcast !!
Finally on a hot summer afternoon, armed with double-line notebook pages, pencil boxes overflowing with all imaginable sketch pen colors, we got down to work. I did'nt really provide any valuable input to the whole manuscript. I just hovered around in the background coz by then I was having my own fears of being caught and eventually disowned by my parents. You see, the guy's parents were very good friends of my folks, and so I was positive I was going to be in big trouble. I can't really remember what the exact contents of that letter were (and now I wish I did :-), except that it had sounded very filmy. In the end we all were to sign our names declaring our undying love to this chap. By now I was undergoing a full fledged panic-attack, that ironically distorted my "signature" so much that it was barely legible.
The next most important thing was to make sure the letter reached its destination. It could not under any circumstance land up in anyone else's hands ...and I vehemently seconded that. One smart-ass girl (maybe it was me:-D came up with the brain-wave that his bicycle seat was a great place to stash the letter, since he was the only one who used the cycle. After completing the whole operation, we retired to our homes. I could'nt sleep a wink all night. It did'nt care two hoots about the guy, his reaction ..blah nothing mattered , except what if my parents found out ??? I kept cursing myself all night for getting into this whole ridiculous 'love letter' business and vowed never to write one again. Not even if I actually fell in love ...it just was'nt worth it.
I can't remember what happened after that , except that I was pretty freaked out for atleast a month. I used to run for my life everytime I saw that guy's parents coming over. I am not sure if the letter was even read , but I did'nt care.

"I'm not rushing into being in love. I'm finding fourth grade hard enough." ...Regina, age 10

Blogoholics Anonymous ....

2004-08-30T08:32:00.000-06:00

Hi ...my name is Sarita and I am a blogoholic !!!!
I am really beginning to get a hang of this blog thing so much ...its almost addictive (almost... coz i still have'nt got to the stage where I get up at 3 am just to blog my dream :-D
I think I am getting there though , I have all the symptoms:
I have been blogging everyday, which is freaky for someone like me ,
all my waking time is spent in just thinking of topics to blog about (even the hunk in the lab next to me does'nt help me anymore :-)
Blogger.com is now my homepage.
And right this moment, I am feverishly typing away 10 mins before I have to run for my eye appointment...hmmm i think i will blog of my doc's visit....Yikes !!! Oh my god ...I am addicted !!! This thing was supposed to be just a phase ...and now its not going :-O I am not used to this kind of consistency!!!. 12 blogs ....1 comment ...I mean who continues to blog with so much sincerity ???

Sometimes I even surprise me.

Maybe this is just a longer-than usual phase for me. I think I will wait another week and see how things go before I go around asking about the best shrinks in town :-)

Rain Rain Come Again ...

2004-08-29T11:41:00.000-06:00

"Be careful what you wish for...it just might come true" .
Exactly . I started getting cold feet about the whole cricket thing, the moment I left lab friday evening. I was almost nauseous. But then that could also be that god-awful mushroom I bit into while devouring hunan chicken from CS (china star...thot it would be easier for me to abbreviate it, due to its excessive mention in my blogs).I don't know what came over me ...I should have just ordered my regular instead of trying something new. Even all the ice-cream in my fridge could'nt make me feel better ...c'mon there is only so much chocolate almond fudge can do.

To make things catastrophic, we girls also decided to 'watch' the guys practice at the nets . Yah ...like that was going to make us feel all inspired and raring to go the next day. It does'nt help much either to know your fellow players themselves are in the pits. I don't know how hard I must have prayed...but lo and behold we were drenched in a sudden shower of rain, that threatened to go on all night. I was so elated, I could have danced in the rain ...except that my fav jeans would be totally spoiled in the slush. We still could have had the game yesterday, if it had'nt rained all night. He he he, but it rained cats and dogs all night .

Its crazy, but I could'nt help feeling a strange sense of relief. But who was I kidding ...this joy was going to last only until the next weekend .We would eventually have to play. I do have an escapist attitude and that coupled to procrastination, frankly, is a very deadly combination to possess. Nevertheless, pep-talked myself into developing a "jo hoga dekha jayega" attitude. Also , shopping helps a lot ...atleast for the girls. Post shopping we had a girls night at my place. Celebrated the "postponed match" with wine and hummus & chips sandwiches (awesome combination btw).

Last Heard : The pitch was inspected on saturday morning and declared unfit. The matches are postponed "indefinately" ....he he he ha ha ha.

TGIF

2004-08-27T15:40:00.000-06:00

Phew !!! There goes another week , and this week I am reaaaally glad its friday . For one , we are going to have the cricket match tomorrow against the guys .So either we will get our asses kicked or who knows we might just win(hey why not ...don't underestimate the power of girls in shorts and tight tees ). And no ...its not going to be me in those...coz for someone who is ...well, "beautifully challenged" (huh ??? ) thats probably not going to help achieve anything :-D. I probably will have to actually play cricket.

Ok , and I am off early too today ....yipppeeee... China Star ...here I come :-D. Can't decide between the mixed vegetable with flied lice or curry chicken ...hmm this one's a toughie.

There are times when :

2004-08-26T11:43:00.000-06:00

....I keep playing that disgusting ad jingle in my head .

....I am at my meanest behaviour, and I actually enjoy it :D

....I spend an entire day doing practically nothing and yet feel happy with myself.

....I survive the whole day on a cereal bar , and not even realise it (happens very rarely though :-)

....24hrs have gone by without me speaking a word to anyone. (you may not realise it, but if ur alone and a student , I don't think its uncommon :-)

....I wear makeup...foundation, eye-liner, mascara, lipstick , blush ...the works !!

....I have'nt checked my emails for a whole hour !

....I have watched the nth rerun of "Friends" and still ROTFL.

....I long to leave everything here and fly back to India right this moment.

....The simplest gesture can move me to tears...and yet I did'nt shed a tear, when I said goodbye to my husband on my way back here.

....I wonder how life would be without chocolates ????

Maybe I will add more of my idiosyncrasies later :-D

Lazy Days

2004-08-25T22:05:00.000-06:00

I love my room to death but I am officially declaring it a pig-sty. This working hard at the lab thing is really taking a toll on my room . The poor soul has never seen such mess. I used to keep it spic and span (don't you open that closet !!! ). I have no idea when , but I think it all started out when I began spending more time at those evening cricket sessions (which are going great btw) . In between all this I totally ignored my pretty little bedroom, (and yet somehow I get the time to regularly post my blogs , hmmm wonder how ?? ) .

Technically, its not really a mess ...its just clothes all over the floor, and a big pile that gets kicked and thrown back and forth from the chair to the bed. The pile just keeps increasing, coz I have to try out atleast 3-4 of my t-shirts before I can make up my mind . I don't know what it is , but some days some clothes make me look slimmer ...and I can't say which one without wearing them !!

I am a pretty neat person . I do shove all the dirt and crumbs under the sofa while cleaning. But somehow along the way, I have developed this pile collecting habit that has kinda become chronic now. I remember having this pile of clothes around me right from my IIT days . But they were'nt mine ...they used to be my roomie's (name withheld to protect self from being thrashed up). But if I look at the bright side...I have only so many clothes to make a pile with . I do eventually have to de-pile (??) it . Unless I go shopping . Besides, I also have to unearth my floor from the pile and check if the carpet is ready for its monthly vacuuming !

Note: In dedication to my room, I named this blog "Lazy days", after my fav poster in the room. It has the face of the cutest lil puppy lazying in the shade.

Purpose of Life ?

2004-08-24T10:04:00.000-06:00

This blog was triggered by an story I came across yesterday :

A lady driving on a highway, gets distracted for a brief moment and hits the gravel on the side and her car overturns and catches fire. She is stuck inside . Another car with a elderly couple was driving behind her . The man stops runs to help this lady , while the wife dials 911. The man manages to pull the lady out of her burning car. Lady is safe but right then the man has a heart attack and dies.

I like to consider I am fairly practical person and find the concept of destiny, spirituality, sometimes even God a little hard to digest. Maybe I would have just dismissed the death of the guy , as a mere stress induced response he had during the whole event. There is a sense of comfort in that statement for me . But if I want to look at it from a whole other perspective, its pretty darn disturbing for me ...even scary . Are we all here with predestined scripts written or just random events happen based on our decisions ? How does one explain this complex dynamics of one person's life (and death), affecting another person ? What would have happened to the lady if the couple had waited another 10 mins at the rest area ?

I have read enough of thoughts and writings on such topics , but not one of them has convinced me till date , about my purpose in life....the big picture remains blurred even today.

Of cucumber face packs and afternoon siestas

2004-08-23T11:52:00.000-06:00

I have been cured of my monday blues . I guess you don't have any when you work your butt off all seven days of the week !! Yeah my massive claims of never working on a sunday , coz that was my well deserved (ahem !) R&R day has gone kaput :-(.

Once upon a time (ok 3 weeks back !! )an ideal R&R for me was sleeping in ,an 11 am chai , then a 'vatika' tel maalish (and freak out about all the hair i was losing), a cool cucumber face pack. This would then be accompanied by my mandatory india call. I would hang up in exactly twenty minutes ...coz thats exactly how long the face pack took to dry up and shut me up !.
And accompanying the two dudes while they croon "Dhaani", I would then whisk up a quick dal (or sambar), rice and sabzi ...maybe throw in a raita if the curd looked fit for human consumption.
Amidst all this there would be the usual sunday morning phone calls from friends planning out the evening. With hajaar phone calls to and fro we would be debating over a movie or the mall or dinner. And this discussion never ends ...if its the movies , then there is the whole other talk about movie ratings . Do the critics really mean it when they rate a movie C- ??? Some movies qualify as a $7.50 worth , others are the matinee show worth: $5. C'mon I am not going to shell out 1.50 extra for a C- movie ! Some disagree , and so it goes on .
Yeah and all this while I am concocting that meal I was talking about . Thank god for inventions like the cordless and glue sticks . Glue Sticks ...nothing to do with cooking but they are so cool. I used to hate those big blue bottles of camel glue dripping from all sides . It was such a yucky mess ! Ok here I go off on a tangent again . Btw, have i told you about my infinitesimally small attention span ??? Ahem ...maybe i don't need to anymore :-D.
Yeah so after a really long long bath (sometimes even a bubble bath ;-), and a nice hot meal it was time to hit the sack again for an afternoon siesta. Evenings were usually very morose. Not because we ended up watching that movie and figured why it was rated a C- after all, but thats when the monday blues used to hit me !. Hmmm I guess those were the happy days . Now there is no face pack , no tel maalish (and my hair is still falling :-O , no dal-chawal. The road to PhD is a long and winding one alright not to mention one ugly stinking mess I will end up being.

Bhaage re mann kahin !

2004-08-22T12:16:00.000-06:00

"Behta hein mann kahin ...kahan jaanti nahi , koi rok le yahin ...bhaage re mann kahin , aage hi mann chala jaane , kidhar jaanu na"

Don't know why , but I am simply crazy about this song . Its from the movie "Chameli" starring that bimboo, Kareena . Gawd she gets on my nerves like nothing else can . I hate her sooooo much that I could'nt get around to even watching that movie ,she would so kill the song for me !

Ok gotta go get some grub from the hospital cafeteria before they close . I used to read about the bland food and cold coffee served in hospital cafe's in Robin Cook books. And now I am actually forcing the same food down my throat ! I miss home...the heavy morning breakfasts , special sunday lunch feasts, evening chai and snacks ...awwww :-((

Cricket:101

2004-08-15T12:15:00.000-06:00

I am not really a very morning person...and that did really get me into a soup today . I got up with a start at 9 in the morning...pretty sure I had heard a tornado warning siren , only to realise the phone was ringing !!!

Friend: "hey ...still sleeping ..its 9 already ..yada yada yada ."
Me: "hmmmmm...no not sleepin..... zzzzzzzzz"
Friend : "blah blah blah ....so u game ???"
Me : "ya ok ...sure ...zzzzzzzzz."
Friend: "Great, see ya in 20 mins...byeeee " (click)
Me:"hey wait ...what for " ????

anyways ...literally dragged myself off my cosy warm bed , washed and changed (did i brush ??? can't remember)..to cut a long story short ...turned out I had okayed to be a part of the "ladiez criket team" :-O
The desi student association here has cricket tournaments every year ...and this year the gals wanted to be a part of it too !! (now if only I can lay my hands on that gal !!) Not that I had a problem with the sport ...I just did'nt know a freakin thing abt it, other then the fact that the players on TV got to drink pepsi during the break :-). Ok...I do love to exaggerate :-) I can tell the difference between the ball and the bat , and which one can be thrown and which one should'nt.
So the games are in two weeks , and we needed to "learn" it asap. The last time I remember I had batted was during our dept sports day in IIT. First ball ...i smacked it real high into the air...ended up quacking back to the pavilion !!! But this time I was determined to learn a thing or two about this game ...heck...if those villagers in "Lagaan" could do it , I sure as hell could too ! One of the "guys" had graciously volounteered to teach us some "basic survival skills" needed to atleast last a couple of overs . Turned out not one but three of the guys took time off from their busy schedules to coach us :-))...and we were 4 girls there !
We huffed and panted our way thru the 2 hr long gruelling schedule (hey, its not easy for us girls to stand there with that heavy bat in our hands and even hit that ball shooting down towards us ). Frankly, it was not all that bad ...we did do a pretty decent job today , although the boys did not agree . Turns out we have to report to practice everyday at 7 in the evening...damn ...I will have to miss all my favourite sitcoms till the games now ...well I guess if you really want to achieve something , you have to be willing to sacrifice :-)
So today I learnt quite a bit about the game ...
...that I should wear a cap .
...get my water bottle .
...and when fielding, you cannot chat about food receipes or sunscreen lotions with other fielder gals.
..."I could have chipped my nails" is not a valid excuse for missing a catch !

I think its going to be great !!

:-D

Fly back in time

2004-08-11T10:35:00.000-06:00

Guess what I ended up learning yesterday ??? (drumroll please ) ...Origami cranes ! After a few futile attempts ...(which were surprisingly quite few ;-) and crumpled newspaper sheets all over the floor , I finally succeeded in making one...tadaaaaa ! It was so cool . That thing even looked like one (to me atleast :-). My friend had made this really awesome wall hanging out of them ...cranes hanging down from chopsticks (courtesy ...cheapo china star...awwww now I am hungry ! ) . It looked so beautiful I had to learn it . And today morning I just could'nt resist making one, when I saw those big square colorful post-its sitting on my lab bench. I made the cutest yellow crane , that I gifted to my lab-mate , who took it with a very amused look on his face. He's getting used to it , while it sits on his monitor staring down at him ...he he he.
Yeah , guess that goes without saying that is my new calling ...paper cranes ! I even googled for them today . The art of paper folding actually originated in China , and eventually found its way into Japan. Origami in Japanese means to fold "ori" paper "gami" .As I was surfing those sites (My experiments are going on , I just had some free time ok ? ) , it took me back to the days when as a kid, I used to read japanese , chinese and russian stories (and of course those amar chitra kathas, chandamamas and oh yes champaks :-). It was all so magical ... beautiful girls with whom handsome princes fell in love and killed fire-spitting dragons to prove their love , and then they got married and lived happily ever after ...hmmm. Its amazing when just pure memories can bring back all the feelings and lets you relive it anytime you want to !

An excerpt detailing the journey and history of Origami makes an interesting read for those who wanna know about this wonderful art.

Also posting one of their fairy tales here ;-)
Once upon a time, there was a poor hunter. One day, he came across a trapped crane. He took pity on the crane and released it. A few days later, a lovely woman visited his house, and asked him to shelter her for the night. The next day she didn't go, and eventually the two got married. As well as being beautiful, the bride had a good disposition, so they lived happily. But the hunter couldn't afford to support his new wife. One day, she said that she would weave cloth so that he could sell it to make money (weaving was common as a woman's side job in those days). But she told him that he was never to see her weaving. She stayed in a weaving hut for three days. When the weaving sound stopped, she came out with a beautiful fabric. The hunter took the fabric to a town, where Merchants were surprised and paid gold for it. The fabric was a very rare one called Tsuru-no-senba-ori (thousand feathers of crane). After that, the wife wove the valuable fabric several times. The hunter came to live in comfort. However, little by little, his wife grew thinner. One day, she said that she could weave the fabric no longer. She was so consumed. However, her husband had learned greed, and asked her to weave once more. At last she was persuaded to do so and started to weave again. That time, she didn't come out on the third day. Three more three days passed. He became worried, and finally broke his promise, peeping in at her weaving. To his surprise, it was not a woman but a crane that was weaving. On the next morning, his wife came out from the weaving hut, with the last fabric in her hands. She said "You have seen my true form, so I can stay with you any no longer." And then, she turned into a crane and flew away, leaving the hunter cryng.

Later Gator !

2004-08-08T14:58:00.000-06:00

I don't even know what was I thinking , when I decided to wander into the lab in the morning. Like I have ever got any work done on a sunday ! Well maybe ,the one time when I had a conference abstract due and I had to get atleast one experiment done , so I could write and send something by 5 pm on monday :-D

Yeah procrastination : thats what I do for a living ! For me , if anything that needs to be done can wait ...then let it wait !. I actually have one of those magnetic stickers that says " I do my work at the same time, everytime; the last minute " :-)I even put it up on my work bench in the lab , until my adviser came across it one day and gave me one of those 'no-wonder' looks . I have moved it to my room since .

Somehow I get the general impression that procrastination is a very common desi fever . Have seen the symptoms in almost all my friends. Its always dilly-dallying till the last day (or even hrs amongst the most (over)confident junta) and then there is a delirious scampering to finish the assigned task. I have to say I have'nt come across many non-desi junta who share my excitement for the last minute adrenalin pumping thrill I get scurrying around with one eye on the watch.

Be it to attend the dreaded 8.30 am Immunology class back in IIT (that class deserves a whole blog by itself...but later ! ) , or the 9.40 pm movie at the mall on a friday night in Iowa city.

I guess some things just don't change. To my credit , I was on time for my wedding (did'nt miss the muhurat there ) :-D

"Only Robinson Crusoe had everything done by Friday. ~Author Unknown"

Whats in a name ?

2004-08-06T14:08:00.000-06:00

Yesterday I just happened to think about my name ...now you ask , whats in a name ??? But you see , I don't really like my name . Like Sri says, it sounds so archiac :-( oh yeah ...my blogs will have a constant reference to this person , who btw is my adorable, loving and simply wonderful hubby of 3 months.

So speaking of names , remember back in school when there were 5 pooja's, 10 priya's , 15 Amits , and infinite sachins in every class ?? Yeah ...I was the only Sarita in the whole of high school :-O. And there was this other sarita in 3rd grade , who I never met the whole time I was in school ! That was the beginning of my dislike to the name, which only increased , when dad told me proudly that he choose this name over their other choice : Nisha !! What were they thinking ? I love that name . I still think I could pull off a Nisha rather than a Sarita :-(

I really have given serious thought to changing it at times , but then its too much work ! Remember Phoebe in the Friends episode where she changes her name to Princess Consuela Bananahammock ??? (Weird, I could still remember that name , it rolled right off my tongue :-)And her hubby changes it to 'crapbag'...it was hilarious when she had to introduce him :-D

So just to come to terms with the fact that I am stuck with this name till the day I die, I actually googled my name to check out what hits it came up with . ( you done that anytime , its fun ) And boy oh boy, I actually got hits ...yippeeee. It was pretty cool . Aside from the numerous nude pic links of a certain name-a-like, I was surprised to know that there is a town in Texas with my name (complete with a local area guide online ) . Also came to know Sarita in spanish means "princess" . Now maybe dad was not all that off naming me sarita ;-). So I have finally made peace with myself, hoping I have a daughter some day I will name Pooja :-D

The weekend is here again and I will be doing nothing fun . Major plans of driving to Chicago to meet up with Sniggsie (who is interning there ) and have blast downtown , have been ditched. Just no money to even eat out at our cheapo 'china star' for this month :-( . I tell you china star is total pyasa vasool , if you are ok with encountering an occasional used bandage or pork in your "flied lice" (thats chinese for fried rice :-D

I guess its back to the lab and get some work done .

Let the blogs begin !!!

2004-08-05T12:46:00.000-06:00

Ok so finally I jumped on the bloggers bandwagon too. I must admit , I am one of those who do things just coz everyone does it (hey atleast I am being frank). Maybe its just to satisfy my curiosity about just what the hell people find interesting about it anyway . But then soon enuf (infact very soon enuf :-) I realise its not my cuppa tea , and then thats the last you will ever hear from me :-D I move on to more interesting 'pastures'.
So to the list of 'initiated-with-great-enthu-but-never-saw-the-dawn-of-completion projects' I officially add my blogs to it.
Atleast I can boast that:
I have my (incomplete) webpage,
A(unused)tennis racket,
$20 bucks worth of Glass painting stuff lying around my house
A whole folder of yummy receipes on my comp
I know whats a haiku (i suck at it :-(
A whole shelf of books i got on sale (ok that was just to show off , I mean who reads "How to buy and sell stocks" ???
A scrapbook with only a page complete (well , atleast I stuck the pictures )
I did try gardening (a plant), but plants don't respond very well if you ignore them !

So you get the picture huh ?? Welll ...We'll just have to wait and see now how long this infatuation lasts.

:-D