Indian Ameri
Friday
Buahahahahahaha week
Never had I been so confused when I woke up on last Sunday thinking about the following week. I was sure that everything’s gonna mess up real tight. But it wasn’t as I had expected. I called my parents just as every other weekend and was speaking with my mom. I said to her that it’s going to be a real hectic week after all. Dad overheard this and immediately replied that I should stop worrying and he reminded me of how I used to schedule my stuff back in India (wrote this big timetable when exam season comes for 2 weeks and won’t follow anything in it). I laughed in the phone and said to dad that I need a memory that could be used as a scheduler which can arrange itself to my duties and also be compatible enough, that it would make my body take the beating. Dad gave me a advice. He said use the paper which u use to do stuff as ur scheduler too. Presto! I now have a scheduler under my disposal. It did help me out a lot.
Just as I had expected the week was pretty stuffed with loads of work and assignments. It was a busy but fun filled week. I was stressed to a level that without my knowing I was dancing in symphony to my mp3 player in the lab while doing my experiment. The best part of the week was when I ride my bike to (a lot of unexpected) places. Winter has set in and yet I rode my bike with sheer happiness. It reminded me of my driving back in India (rash driving with my Victor). When winter sets in heavens shall rain success upon u – my orkut fortune one day. One evening when I was standing in a signal this mid 40’s lady looked at me and smiled coz I wasn’t wearing any gloves (it was cold). Don’t know what came over me, I went fast and parallel to her car for atleast 100 meters and then I turned real fast in a corner that I went the wrong way. Fortunately there were none on the other side. One fine evening I had fun with my bike when I jumped from a stair near my department (had 5 + 6 steps). No words to explain the stuff I did with my bike.
I have been doing so much work this week that I had on an average 4 cookies as my lunch for 3 days. Wednesday I was so hungry that I decided to go have some desi food in banana leaf. While going I felt lonely coz there were none to accompany for lunch. But the loneliness went into dust when I saw this accident (strange eh, how come an accident changed my mood.. no clue) of an Indian uncle and an Italian. It wasn’t a major one. Just screeching of tires and banging at the sides. It happened in front of my eyes. When I looked at each of their faces it was really interesting. The Indian uncle had his mouth in an O shape. He was looking back and forth (I guess he was analyzing his accident). The Italian was literally dead. He had his hand in his chest and was shaking his forehead. The next thought which came into my mind was intriguing to me even now. I laughed out loud coz I thought about what would happen if this happened in India. I thought about all this ppl making a crowd, the guys lambasting each other and much more. Then when I reached my department, there was this not so old lady waiting for the elevator. When I entered the department, she was waiting and then she was mumbling “why do they provide 3 elevators when none come on time” and she gave up and went to the stairs. She was like 3 steps up and heard the sound ‘Ding’. She ran back to catch the elevator and unfortunately the doors closed again and it went down. I laughed not seeing her misery but by thinking how these ppl blame technology for making them late when they are built to haste their work.
Monday night I spoke with this cute kid of a friend of mine. His name was Avinash. When I asked him “what you wanna become?” he told me, “I want to be a big cartoonist”. I asked him “Why?” and he immediately replied me “Why not?” Those two words made me become his good friend. I instantly spent a lot of time with Avinash after that. Being a kid of 5 years this kid has got imagination beyond his age. I salute this kid.
I had been regularly getting up early in the morning and am starting my work at 9 am now a days. Dipti (post doc) working in my lab wished me good morning today and said to me, “this is the fourth time I am wishing you morning in 4 days”. I laughed and thought about the pride which is gonna kill me soon. 9 a.m is fine. But am still working late nights for my experiment. In the past 2 weeks I hadn’t slept for more than 6 hours. I missed my weekend sleep coz I had gone to smokys. That’s were this sudden transformation appeared. Everyone in the university knew that I go late to my lab and that my day starts at noon. I wasn’t embarrassed coz I still do my work. But this world needs achievers and more than that, achievers who are in the eye sight of the world. So I decided to go for it and am still getting up as I promised my friends. I just wonder how long can my body cope up with this sleep deprived period. I learnt one more thing during the trip. Communication is vital for achieving. I went with guys mostly from Maharashtra. So Hindi was the fast language. We had this antakshari when coming down chimney tops and I felt a fool not coz that I dint know old Hindi songs but coz I wasn’t great in expressing the songs.
Some of the friends in smokys are still under a misconception that I don’t socialize much and that I love my camera only. I’m a puzzle to myself. How come I expect others to understand me? Anyway I posted some pics in my orkut profile and got this load of laurels from friends, from relatives and even from some fellow photographers in flickr. But I still consider myself as an amateur and that I don’t do it for money or laurels. I do it for understanding myself. This hobby of mine is changing me into a completely different person. I was sarcastically called the department photographer by many. Later did they realize that no profession or hobby is to be taken easy.
Things I cursed myself this week were when I missed taking pictures of this guy who was moving rubble from his building and dumping it in trash. He had this yellow colored worker gloves, an apt colored apron, a contrasting cart and a shovel. I had to leave him to his duty so that I can attend my class. It turned out that my proff was ten mins late and so I went down to get a pic of the worker and I missed him. The same day when I was returning from the public library I saw this man in his 40’s wearing a thick ankle long black coat. His top two buttons were open showing his suit and tie givin a clear picture of his business and he was waiting for his dog to poop. They were on a grass field behind a church. If u don’t consider the poop, it’s the best possible scene I had come across for a picture. I stopped my bike, opened my bag, took my camera case, took the camera out and focused on the subject. All of a sudden he waved his hand to someone on the other side of the street (guess his colleague), let the rope loose and the dog just ran to the other end of the lawn. That’s it he called it and both met again outside the lawn. My snap was incomplete. It was real hard on me. The one mistake I did during this snap was, I had a dilemma of whether I should take this picture though knowing it was a good opportunity. Now I have decided to take snaps at willing.
I had been so occupied with my work and hobby that I forgot about the approaching mid term. On Wednesday after the class Nitin asked Dr. Puleo, “Does the exam on Monday deal with only the second set of chapters or does it include portions from the beginning”. Immediately I asked Nitin, “We have an exam on Monday?” I was completely taken by surprise and Dr. Puleo looked at me and smiled. He said to me, “Just don’t be late for this exam”. Man I was embarrassed, but also a bit proud coz this is the first time in my life I had forgotten about an exam. Seems like I had been workin too much. I decided to take a break from routine and so decided to go somewhere. Since my bro has my car and none were interested to go out, I took my bike (yep, it’s the bike again) and went downtown. I went to this parking lot near the chase bank sat at the top and watched all the vehicles going under my feet for half an hour. Disregarding the pollution I must have been exposed, I had fun.
My direction on the LTCA pantomime started fine until I met the actors. Two of the guys were great, but the others lacked the spirit but not the talent. I am quite positive that I can make them do what I imagined. Because of this I missed being in the folk dance and when I saw the practice of the folk dance I decided to dance at the backstage and had fun yesterday. I came home had fried rice from a Chinese restaurant and fortune cookie turned out to be “Dance as if no ones watching” (Coincidence? May be).
Things that were strange about others during this week were a) my roomies and juniors were browsing vehemently thro ebay, deals to buy and other sites and were talking about which laptop was best. One moment everyone were talking about PDA’s and other sophisticated technologies. I laughed out loud and everyone stared at me. I said to them, what did you guys do back in India when ur system slowed. My best buddy understood, smiled and said “I used to rub my RAM using an eraser”. Everybody laughed and we had a great talk about the geeky stuff we did back in India to technology. Things like putting sugar in ur friends fuel tank, stuffing the exhaust with rotten tomatoes, taping cellphones batteries, leading out cable from your neighbors TV, etc … it was fun. The other strange stuff I felt was b) there is this big advertisement and drive for a CRY walk. People have responded really big and since the committee is comprised of Indians many Indian students have lend support for the program. These were the same guys who never did anything back in India with the money they had. I was proud in remembering my buddies near my house back in Chennai, anna nagar where we gave our money and time to make children 10 years younger than us happy in Banyan ashram. I thought about the words my proff in undergrad said “Just give 2% of your salary for good cause”. So far I’ve been in US for 1 year and 2 months. I am well on target of my plan of utilizing the 2% money for my fellow brothers back in India. People say its not great to show what you have donated. But I say for the current community, to drive donation we need to show off so that atleast coz of jealousy and competition people would do something for the society.
Finally things I had learnt other than research this week were - why fall colors occur, why fog appears in your glasses when you enter an ambient room from the winter cold, why do eclipse pictures reveal a shadow when seen horizontal and show the image when seen at an angle. The most crazy thing I have done so far were – swing on a cold rainy day, close my eyes and ride my bike for less than 3 mins, shut off my car lights and ride at 75 mph in a twisty road, climb chimney tops from the more risky side, going triples in my bike (here they consider it gay) and finally playing blind chess with Morgan. Am running out of ideas. Lets see what life shows me……. Adios and as usual apologies for the long blog and thank GOD if you made till this point.
Just as I had expected the week was pretty stuffed with loads of work and assignments. It was a busy but fun filled week. I was stressed to a level that without my knowing I was dancing in symphony to my mp3 player in the lab while doing my experiment. The best part of the week was when I ride my bike to (a lot of unexpected) places. Winter has set in and yet I rode my bike with sheer happiness. It reminded me of my driving back in India (rash driving with my Victor). When winter sets in heavens shall rain success upon u – my orkut fortune one day. One evening when I was standing in a signal this mid 40’s lady looked at me and smiled coz I wasn’t wearing any gloves (it was cold). Don’t know what came over me, I went fast and parallel to her car for atleast 100 meters and then I turned real fast in a corner that I went the wrong way. Fortunately there were none on the other side. One fine evening I had fun with my bike when I jumped from a stair near my department (had 5 + 6 steps). No words to explain the stuff I did with my bike.
I have been doing so much work this week that I had on an average 4 cookies as my lunch for 3 days. Wednesday I was so hungry that I decided to go have some desi food in banana leaf. While going I felt lonely coz there were none to accompany for lunch. But the loneliness went into dust when I saw this accident (strange eh, how come an accident changed my mood.. no clue) of an Indian uncle and an Italian. It wasn’t a major one. Just screeching of tires and banging at the sides. It happened in front of my eyes. When I looked at each of their faces it was really interesting. The Indian uncle had his mouth in an O shape. He was looking back and forth (I guess he was analyzing his accident). The Italian was literally dead. He had his hand in his chest and was shaking his forehead. The next thought which came into my mind was intriguing to me even now. I laughed out loud coz I thought about what would happen if this happened in India. I thought about all this ppl making a crowd, the guys lambasting each other and much more. Then when I reached my department, there was this not so old lady waiting for the elevator. When I entered the department, she was waiting and then she was mumbling “why do they provide 3 elevators when none come on time” and she gave up and went to the stairs. She was like 3 steps up and heard the sound ‘Ding’. She ran back to catch the elevator and unfortunately the doors closed again and it went down. I laughed not seeing her misery but by thinking how these ppl blame technology for making them late when they are built to haste their work.
Monday night I spoke with this cute kid of a friend of mine. His name was Avinash. When I asked him “what you wanna become?” he told me, “I want to be a big cartoonist”. I asked him “Why?” and he immediately replied me “Why not?” Those two words made me become his good friend. I instantly spent a lot of time with Avinash after that. Being a kid of 5 years this kid has got imagination beyond his age. I salute this kid.
I had been regularly getting up early in the morning and am starting my work at 9 am now a days. Dipti (post doc) working in my lab wished me good morning today and said to me, “this is the fourth time I am wishing you morning in 4 days”. I laughed and thought about the pride which is gonna kill me soon. 9 a.m is fine. But am still working late nights for my experiment. In the past 2 weeks I hadn’t slept for more than 6 hours. I missed my weekend sleep coz I had gone to smokys. That’s were this sudden transformation appeared. Everyone in the university knew that I go late to my lab and that my day starts at noon. I wasn’t embarrassed coz I still do my work. But this world needs achievers and more than that, achievers who are in the eye sight of the world. So I decided to go for it and am still getting up as I promised my friends. I just wonder how long can my body cope up with this sleep deprived period. I learnt one more thing during the trip. Communication is vital for achieving. I went with guys mostly from Maharashtra. So Hindi was the fast language. We had this antakshari when coming down chimney tops and I felt a fool not coz that I dint know old Hindi songs but coz I wasn’t great in expressing the songs.
Some of the friends in smokys are still under a misconception that I don’t socialize much and that I love my camera only. I’m a puzzle to myself. How come I expect others to understand me? Anyway I posted some pics in my orkut profile and got this load of laurels from friends, from relatives and even from some fellow photographers in flickr. But I still consider myself as an amateur and that I don’t do it for money or laurels. I do it for understanding myself. This hobby of mine is changing me into a completely different person. I was sarcastically called the department photographer by many. Later did they realize that no profession or hobby is to be taken easy.
Things I cursed myself this week were when I missed taking pictures of this guy who was moving rubble from his building and dumping it in trash. He had this yellow colored worker gloves, an apt colored apron, a contrasting cart and a shovel. I had to leave him to his duty so that I can attend my class. It turned out that my proff was ten mins late and so I went down to get a pic of the worker and I missed him. The same day when I was returning from the public library I saw this man in his 40’s wearing a thick ankle long black coat. His top two buttons were open showing his suit and tie givin a clear picture of his business and he was waiting for his dog to poop. They were on a grass field behind a church. If u don’t consider the poop, it’s the best possible scene I had come across for a picture. I stopped my bike, opened my bag, took my camera case, took the camera out and focused on the subject. All of a sudden he waved his hand to someone on the other side of the street (guess his colleague), let the rope loose and the dog just ran to the other end of the lawn. That’s it he called it and both met again outside the lawn. My snap was incomplete. It was real hard on me. The one mistake I did during this snap was, I had a dilemma of whether I should take this picture though knowing it was a good opportunity. Now I have decided to take snaps at willing.
I had been so occupied with my work and hobby that I forgot about the approaching mid term. On Wednesday after the class Nitin asked Dr. Puleo, “Does the exam on Monday deal with only the second set of chapters or does it include portions from the beginning”. Immediately I asked Nitin, “We have an exam on Monday?” I was completely taken by surprise and Dr. Puleo looked at me and smiled. He said to me, “Just don’t be late for this exam”. Man I was embarrassed, but also a bit proud coz this is the first time in my life I had forgotten about an exam. Seems like I had been workin too much. I decided to take a break from routine and so decided to go somewhere. Since my bro has my car and none were interested to go out, I took my bike (yep, it’s the bike again) and went downtown. I went to this parking lot near the chase bank sat at the top and watched all the vehicles going under my feet for half an hour. Disregarding the pollution I must have been exposed, I had fun.
My direction on the LTCA pantomime started fine until I met the actors. Two of the guys were great, but the others lacked the spirit but not the talent. I am quite positive that I can make them do what I imagined. Because of this I missed being in the folk dance and when I saw the practice of the folk dance I decided to dance at the backstage and had fun yesterday. I came home had fried rice from a Chinese restaurant and fortune cookie turned out to be “Dance as if no ones watching” (Coincidence? May be).
Things that were strange about others during this week were a) my roomies and juniors were browsing vehemently thro ebay, deals to buy and other sites and were talking about which laptop was best. One moment everyone were talking about PDA’s and other sophisticated technologies. I laughed out loud and everyone stared at me. I said to them, what did you guys do back in India when ur system slowed. My best buddy understood, smiled and said “I used to rub my RAM using an eraser”. Everybody laughed and we had a great talk about the geeky stuff we did back in India to technology. Things like putting sugar in ur friends fuel tank, stuffing the exhaust with rotten tomatoes, taping cellphones batteries, leading out cable from your neighbors TV, etc … it was fun. The other strange stuff I felt was b) there is this big advertisement and drive for a CRY walk. People have responded really big and since the committee is comprised of Indians many Indian students have lend support for the program. These were the same guys who never did anything back in India with the money they had. I was proud in remembering my buddies near my house back in Chennai, anna nagar where we gave our money and time to make children 10 years younger than us happy in Banyan ashram. I thought about the words my proff in undergrad said “Just give 2% of your salary for good cause”. So far I’ve been in US for 1 year and 2 months. I am well on target of my plan of utilizing the 2% money for my fellow brothers back in India. People say its not great to show what you have donated. But I say for the current community, to drive donation we need to show off so that atleast coz of jealousy and competition people would do something for the society.
Finally things I had learnt other than research this week were - why fall colors occur, why fog appears in your glasses when you enter an ambient room from the winter cold, why do eclipse pictures reveal a shadow when seen horizontal and show the image when seen at an angle. The most crazy thing I have done so far were – swing on a cold rainy day, close my eyes and ride my bike for less than 3 mins, shut off my car lights and ride at 75 mph in a twisty road, climb chimney tops from the more risky side, going triples in my bike (here they consider it gay) and finally playing blind chess with Morgan. Am running out of ideas. Lets see what life shows me……. Adios and as usual apologies for the long blog and thank GOD if you made till this point.
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