happiness

i'm home. life is good.

that's all there is to it :).

zero!

i'm sitting in the los angeles international airport lounge, listening to the sound of the planes flying by. after many an adventure (at sjc and lax) i am finally on my way home. i have my boarding pass, my seat number (8a), am through the security check, and thus - all set. i will miss all the beautiful people i'm leaving behind in the bay :)... it's good to know i'll see them in three weeks' time.

take care, world. while i go tend to my other life.

two

argh! two more days. i hate this last-minute-ness of things. the quarter had finally come in control (yes, in finals week, that too), and now i have to start packing, do last-minute errands, make random deadlines, and grade on the plane. gone are my plans to read page 24 (and more) of shantaram... :(

and in general, i'd like to scream out at the world for putting me in this last-minute phase again. i don't have a long list of to-dos. not yet anyway, 'cos i have *no* list of to-dos. all i know is what other people want to do. i have no idea yet about the things i need to get done before leaving. at some point i'll pull out a suitcase and dump stuff in. but what suitcase, where, what stuff, w h e n... i haven't a clue.

i was supposed to meet about a 1000 people this week - for lunch/dinner/tea/coffee. i don't even know who they are anymore. i need a personal assistant. will someone pleeeease apply?

five

five more days, and i'll be on my way home. never mind that there are to-dos left to be checked off, errands left to be run, courage to be mustered, and bullets to be bitten. at the end of it all, i will be on my way home, and that, after all, is everything that matters.

not that i've been away from home too long. i was there the 12th of september. so really, it hasn't even been a full 3 months. but in 3 months, as i have found, much can happen. the face of the earth was very different when i had just arrived from india. there was newness in the air, in so many shapes and forms. a quarter later, i wonder if i could have (should have?) done things differently that would have made a difference.

of course, now is not the time to introspect. it is the time to finish up my third answer for going green, to finish grading problem sets 3 and 4, before i can start to grade the final exams. here and there, other things add to the list. much as i may try, it cannot not seem like the end of a quarter. this is, very much, an end. stressful still, at that.

it's a surprise that it's still monday. i feel like it was monday days ago. when i had 3 pages of my essay to write. now i'm on to greener pastures (ha, pun intended), post walk, dinner, song, and conversation, and it's still monday. well, while i'm still on monday, i'll try and get some more done.

g'night.

and finally, 8!

in fact, the references began on the ninth page, so the paper was exactly eight. yay, i'm done!

on a more serious note, i'm amazed at how i managed to survive this class and at how much it taught me. when the quarter had just started, i felt physical pain at the thought of going to class. that i had d.school right after made up for it, somewhat. the class was required, and attendance was mandatory. luckily wednesdays were "example days" so it was mostly mondays that i had to scrape past. 

when it was my turn to present a reading in the second week of class, i thought it was the end of the world and i'd find myself just staring at the class not knowing what to say. instead, my professor wrote to me to tell me i'd done a good job. later on, c and i had to do an example for "play". we somehow pulled off mafia, and it was such a success :). then i did the hanson presentation - after going prepared for five successive classes, the final one ended up okay, and the example was a great bonus. all this while, i was shocked beyond belief that i had lasted this long in this class. so shocked that i didn't realize i was actually learning about learning :).

even the thought of the paper had killed me. eight pages seemed so long and painful. but in the end, they went by fast enough, and the paper forced me to read 3/4ths of the readings for the quarter, over a span of two days. not only that, i enjoyed writing it. it's amazing what necessity can force us to achieve, really. 

i'm tired after the paper, but in perfect awe of the world... and how it makes us achieve what we set ourselves out to, albeit with a little bit of struggle.

enormous potential

things would work really well for me if my mind could be programmed to believe that all deadlines were 48 hours before when they really were. i would ace everything. brilliantly.

sigh. life is tough.

yes, and indeed there will be time

to finish the 8-page paper i must submit by tomorrow (midnight, i'm assuming). i'm done with one page so far, but that page is just the introduction. there are 7 more to write, though if i change the font, perhaps 6.5. and if i include space for references, then 6. minus the conclusion, perhaps even 5. i've taken 3 hours to write one page, another 15 and i'll be done. there are 32 hours from now until midnight tomorrow. ah, tons of time. i could even get an extension if i wanted, no problem.

ok, time to relax. phew.

and indeed there will be time

And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;	25
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;	30
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.

this poem i revisit often, and find myself stumbling upon in thought, time and time again. the verses never made complete sense to me, but i realize now, that they will make more sense, little by little, as the years progress. like this one, for instance.

the song book

in the year 1988, my parents gave my sister a new year's diary which she used as a song book. in those years there was deadly competition between us over new year diaries. we got a handful for the house and i, being the youngest, always ended up with the worst ones. (no i'm not just being sore about it, it's true.) that year, my sister ended up with two. i'm not sure how that was fair, and i made my feelings abundantly clear (for years to come) by writing (in ink) on the very first page of her diary (no regard for saraswati, obviously) - "this is my diary. you have a very fat one."

well, that didn't make it my diary. and unfortunately, i got told off for it (as expected). the words stayed on forever because ripping the page could've caused other pages to fall out, and we just didn't have correction tape in those days.

over the years my sister added many, many songs to her diary. there were many old songs i hadn't ever heard. some were songs i had only ever heard my mom sing (albeit beautifully). and but a few i was familiar with. i remember "aaja sanam" was one of my favorites, although i had learnt it listening only to mom, and "deewana hua baadal" from kashmir ki kali. the diary was a most-loved possession, and while i understood, at some point, that i was not to hold a pen to it - i was joyous enough to sing from it. as a kid i was perennially bursting into song, and the diary was my sole companion. i would make song requests to my sister, and she would rewind/fast-forward our tape player repeatedly, until she had all the words down. she would listen to a song, write all she could, then listen again and fill in the blanks. even when i graduated to writing down words of a song, it was she alone who did the writing in the diary, for it was she who had the beautiful hindi handwriting. i didn't mind that though, all i wanted was the words... soundness and completeness were a must.

[it was at the age of 10 that i first fell in love with songs from ijaazat, and i remember asking sis to write down the words. she did so - and i first learned "katra katra". that song stuck with me forever, becoming one of my all-time favorites. i just heard it now on youtube, and it put me in a happy place. i wonder how they do that - put people in happy places - but i love that they do.]

when my sister first left home to go to iimc, i took charge of the diary. i was old enough, at 14, and had acquired a legible handwriting myself. of course, my initial contributions were frowned upon (i wrote the lyrics of "seene mein dil hai" from srk's raju ban gaya gentleman... the song in which every verse ends with "i love you". embarrassing!), but soon enough i was doing justice to the diary's illustrious past.

alas, i lost the diary in my third year at berkeley (when i was 20). that didn't hurt my sister as much, but it did hurt me a fair bit. even though it was the age of the internet, and all lyrics were available online, the book took invaluable childhood memories with it. singing, after all, had been everything. what hurt more was that it was lost irresponsibly. i gave it to a not-very-close friend... on the offer that she would lend me her rilke. rilke was precious to her, and this was precious to me. seemed like a fair deal. except it wasn't. duh. rilke was replaceable for some amount of money... this wasn't, obviously. i kept her rilke, and she kept my song book. years later when we met, i asked her about my song book, and she claimed to have no memory of it. it was lost beyond hope.

perhaps it would have no better place than my box of memories... but at least it would have that. right now, i wonder where it is. does it exist? and who else might have read it, without a realization of what that book meant to me. that, when it wasn't mine to begin with...

excuse me while i dedicate a tear.

it's that time of year

i would like nothing better than to have christmas vacation already, while it is cold and rainy outside, and slide into a cosy, warm blanket at home, to watch home alone on tv. it is my single desire, every december, to do so.

all for a ticket to ride

i do believe every day brings forth an adventure (refer to earlier post), but today was something else. i needed to visit the ai office in sf this morning, to get my paper ticket issued (for my flight next week). my only class today was at 12.35, and i figured i could start out at 6, get everything done, and be back by 10 (at the latest). then realized that the office opened at 9, and it's the ai office after all, so decided to leave at 8 instead. i thought i'd take the caltrain (one of those super-fast no-stop trains), and walk to market st. where the office was. (had considered the caltrain/bart option, but that just seemed like a lot of unnecessary scheduling, and overly expensive). last evening, however, a called to suggest dinner this evening, since he was in the palo alto office for the day. he told me he was driving down from sf at 11, and i decided to hitch a ride with him on my way back. he had a dentist's appointment at 10.30. when you add that to my class at 12.35, the inflexibility of train schedules, the processes involved in getting to a train station and parking etc., that's a lot of constraints.

this is what happened: i decided to go to bed at 10 and get up at 6, so that i could work for an hour or so, then take the train. at 10 something, k called me after months. when i hung up to go to sleep, d called me after days. when i hung up again it was past 11. pretty much 12. i woke up at 7.20, and it was raining. rain always delays the getting-out-of-bed process. got out of bed at 8.10, was showered and ready by 8.35. it was the 9.11 train i was to catch. this was at university ave, palo alto. i've only ever picked up people from there, never gone anyplace. but i couldn't possibly leave without tea, so i made some, packed my bag, debated on whether i should take the umbrella or not, and made the smarter decision (this was the smartest decision i've made in life i think, given how much of a burden it posed to me then). i carried the tea in my car (because 15 minutes to drink i did not have), and hoped for red lights so i'd be able to finish it before getting to the station. but i also hoped for green lights so i could make my train. after much confusion, i decided i'd just stop hoping, and that made things simpler. got to the train station at 9.08, yay! there was just enough time to get a ticket and make the train. but what about my car? :O :( with a sinking feeling (yes, i really felt the sink), i realized that this was the one link i had failed to consider last night, and felt like a miserable failure. i did see some parking spots, but it said "no public parking". i even debated in my head as to whether i counted as "public" or not. i mean, wouldn't one think of public being government-related? like public transportation, public schools, etc.? anyway, that was confusing. i saw buses inside and figured that meant they wanted me out :(. i went ahead, only to magically land on 82S. in another minute i could take a u-turn, but i would also miss my train. with a sigh, i kept going down 82S, and made some panic calls. it was d's turn to save the day, as he read out the caltrain schedule to me from the internet. made best sense to go to the cal ave station, where i could park in peace, and take the 9.37 train. this would only get me to the city at 10.41, but of course i had no choice. of course, if i had been smart enough to realize that the 9.11 train at university ave was also the 9.07 train at cal ave (which i could have made), life would indeed have been a whole lot rosier.

i proceeded to 220 college ave, parked my car, and headed for the train station. ran into s on the way, who showed little sympathy for the ordeal i had just been through. at least i knew how to get to the station this time. a and i have walked from the station to college many, many times now. so i got to the station. only, i needed to get to the other side. for the northbound train, that is. i couldn't see a bridge or anything, but i did see an underpass where bikers were emerging from. i felt good about figuring out that bit, and went down the underpass. came up the underpass, and felt like i was in another world altogether! it was almost like going down a tunnel, and coming up in the meadows, not kidding. i knew i was in the wrong place, and went down the underpass again. figured people would help me figure it out.

walked to the 'wrong side' of the train station, and asked a kindly looking lady how i could get to the other side. she didn't understand. i said i wanted to go to san francisco, not san jose, so i needed to get to the other side. she still didn't understand. finally when i asked if both trains came on the same track (that is technically possible, isn't it?) she understood, and told me we could just walk on the tracks and get to the other side. ha. just so simple. ha.

but i was fortunate to run into her. not just because she showed me how to buy a ticket from the machine - even if i was stumbling, i knew i'd eventually get it right :). but because she was marvelous company on the train ride up to millbrae (where she got off). her name's marlene, and she's of brazilian descent. she's been living in this area for ten years now, and has several indian friends. (she also thought i looked too young to be a graduate student. that's a lie, but it made me happy :).) she was warm and effusive, like all the brazilians i've ever met. she told me about her kids, and her husband, about her parents in brazil and how much she longs for brazil, and ways in which she doesn't. she told me how she'd love to visit home but for her fear of flying. she asked me what i was doing at stanford, and understood what i told her (which is so rare, that it warmed me to her even more). her husband just bought an olpc laptop to give for christmas, but she didn't know which country he had picked...

i'd have loved to get some reading done on the train. in fact, i had really looked forward to looking out of the train window, day-dreaming - it's been so long. but i'm happier to have met her, and to have her goodwill. and i know it will make me believe, for years from now, that brazilian people are warm and kind. who cares about half an hour of reading or day-dreaming instead.

after she left at millbrae, i was alone for about half an hour. not technically alone, because the train was filled with people, but by myself. i listened to neil halstead on my nano, and did some reading. ran into something that will form at least a page of my 8-page paper. perhaps i can then say my ride was productive as well.

it was a great feeling to reach the city - 4th & king. every time i'm in the city in the morning, i remember the days when n lived in the peninsula and i'd do monday morning commutes with her to the city, and then proceed to berkeley on the bart. every morning in the city reminds me of those monday mornings on market st. but there's enough in this post already, so i'll do the nostalgia some other time.

i felt i'd accomplished something when i spotted signs that said 4th and king. only, there was a long walk ahead - far longer than i'd imagined. i felt i'd walked for hours before i saw signs of market. thankfully a hadn't called yet, which was great, because i wasn't at the ai office yet. (i realized, as i walked, that i hadn't noted down the phone numbers for the ai office. nor had i written down the address. what if i didn't have my number memory? what then? no one could have gotten me the info from my laptop which i'd left home had i lost my way. i'd just have had to come back and then make another trip tomorrow. oh, the horror!) anyway, i reached the hearst building (#5, 3rd st.) at 11 something, huffing and puffing. the attendant didn't even wait for me to say anything, he just asked "air india office?". how's that for racial stereotyping (it's a large building with several offices, that's why)?

the air india office felt like india, and i tried hard to figure out why that was. the magazines were all over, for one. chairs sat randomly along the waiting area. there were binders sitting in the waiting area that really shouldn't have been there. there was no receptionist. there was no reception. just two large desks covered with papers haphazardly arranged. the walls just had air india posters, and an air india calendar. yeah, no wonder it felt like india. (oh, and how's that for stereotyping? :).

it took 20 minutes for zarine (i used to wish my name was zarine, when i was small) to issue me the ticket (15 minutes on 3 different calls, and 5 minutes on the ticket). a called to say he was still waiting on the dentist and maybe i should head back so i could make it to class on time. i was thinking "what? walk all that distance again to the station? are you out of your mind?". i told him that it was ok, i'd wait :).

i got out of the office and into the elevator, to find an elderly gentleman who made me look terribly unkempt :x. unfortunately, the elevator had a steel interior, and it was so clean that i could look at my reflection and feel that terrible! but i bet he would look the same if he walked from 4th & king to 3rd & market. so there :P.

since i had time to kill, and since i'd earlier spotted the sf moma shop everyone's always raving about, i rushed there. forget cafe, forget reading, forget all those things that could be done anytime, anywhere :). i liked the shop a lot, but felt that while it was a beautiful place to kill time at, it had little i could/would buy. as i looked at games and puzzles, i spotted a game called snatch. that, my friends, was the find of the day. the rules of snatch are identical to those of grab, for those of you who know what i'm talking about. and yes, it's now a registered game - produced by u.s. games (i didn't even know there was such a company). although i totally didn't need another set of tiles, i bought it to add to my game collection.

a called me to tell me he was done. two more blocks of walking, and i was at 2nd and howard, where i met him. we got indian food to-go from mehfil (trust a to know every desi restaurant in town... any town!). his car was parked at his apartment, which was another light year away. i did get to see his apartment though, and thought it was perfect. it's just the kind of apartment i'd like to live in - almost exactly, with a view of the bay in addition :).

i did think of taking my camera with me. as i'd planned things, i'd expected to have limitless time to take pictures of people walking up and down market, and the coffee shops, etc. thank god i did no such thing, or i'd have stressed myself sick about the water entering the camera, or about the pictures i wasn't going to be able to take because of the rain.

oh did i mention that it was raining *all* the time? all along the walk from 4th & king to 3rd & market. then on the walk to sfmoma, to 2nd & howard, and 1st & bryant. boy what a relief to get into a's car and forget about the umbrella for once.

the ride back was great. i ate my sumptuous meal from mehfil, talked to a when he could spare time from his conference call. (he was half listening, half talking to me, all along. there were 5 other people on the call, and a was a muted listener.) he dropped me off at my car and i rushed to my last class of the quarter, 45 minutes late.

phew. i'm done. that was the adventure for the day. though it's only 4.30 now. who knows what the evening might bring?

mail vs. entourage

although i feel fondly for entourage, and love using features i had developed in my internship long ago, i am happy and contented to now use apple mail instead. here's where microsoft fails and apple rocks:

• entourage doesn't let you subscribe to rss feeds, mail does. i'm really up to date with the headlines of the world these days (um, at least today).
  
• on the stanford residences network, the gmail smtp server won't send mail. this is not microsoft's fault necessarily, but hey - it could be.
• mail allows one consolidated inbox where you can check new mail from both accounts. it also allows two separate inboxes for stanford and gmail. all at the same time.
  
• the search feature rocks. you needn't specify a thousand things (like in entourage) before clicking "search".
• the layout is better. this might be subjective, but oh well.
• you can write notes to yourself or to others, like little stickies. this is useful for me especially, since i can now use just mail instead of entourage and stickies.
  
• mail uses half the memory that entourage does - can't argue against that one. think of all the things you could do with that extra memory!
  
• with mail, the number of new messages shows in the dock. convenient.
• messages don't pop up no matter what you're doing, as with entourage. it's embarrassing when people are looking at your laptop screen and entourage shows a message alert that's somewhat personal.
• you can hook it up to ical, which, in itself, rocks.
• i'd rather be emailing now than writing this blog post :)...
  

ufff...

i just got a compliment. must document (for the world to see) before i forget :P

i like the way you capture stories in the faces of the people... very nice :). there is never a dull moment in your albums :).

gee. thank you, m!

the f.r.i.e.n.d.s. quiz

at last i know... i'm a monica :).

man, i've been waiting for someone to put up this facebook app forever. i'm not sure how i ended up being monica though, because i didn't really put down cooking as my hot favorite activity. but i'd rather be her than anyone else i think :). here's the quiz. happy figuring out who you are...

1. How would you like to spend a Saturday afternoon?
Cooking a fancy dinner
Shopping, of course!
TV - 'nuff said
Doing absolutely nothing
Saturday's a great time to get that research done!

2. What do you consider your best asset?
Your intelligence
Your sense of humor
Your butt
Your cooking and organizations abilities
Your ridiculous tantric massage skills

3. When was the last time you had a hot date?
I don't do dates
When I met my husband/wife
Umm last night?
Would sex count as a date?
As much as I would like to, I haven't had the time

4. Where would be your dream vacation spot?
Egypt - the pyramids are fascinating!
In a far away country - like Vermont
Paris, it's so romantic!
London, it's so charming!
Uzbekistan, you know just to be different!

5. What would you be rather known as?
Someone different who made a difference
Someone who was bloody good at everything they did
Someone who hooked up with the most number of people
Someone who made a lot of money
Someone who made a significant contribution to academia

6. How would you describe your childhood?
White and nerdy
LOL
I was the kid flirting during lunch hour
Sighs! It was horrible
Shady business

7. For you, each day is...
An adventure :)
A battle to be conquered
A hangover to be conquered
Whatever
Business, as usual

8. What kind of food do you enjoy?
Meat, and lots of it!
Anything fattening
Chocolate!
The kind I cook.
Ethnic food, of course

9. How many people have you slept with in the last month?
It depends on your definition of 'slept with'
One - my partner
I don't know - Fourteen?
Five.. I mean three.. okay, fine there was this one person
Don't depress me

10. What do you think of this quiz?
Not intellectually stimulating enough
It's a waste of time.. but it's not like I'm doing anything better
It's cute and funny!
The formatting is messed up
It's too conformist and mainstream