Long Overdue

My last few attempts of putting something up here have proved futile. And so, several unfinished starts later, I start (yet again) to write, with the hope that this will go public. I suppose this post should be about my new life over the last four months. But first, a bit about grad school.

Quite simply put, grad school has changed is my perspective of science and how one approaches it. I love the research I'm doing (which is on acoustic streaming due to oscillating bubbles), and I've been lucky enough to find an awesome advisor. But maybe more about that later. Something that's appreciable here is that there is focus on learning rather than doing well in examinations, as far as coursework is concerned. A stark contrast from what I've been exposed to so far; this fact coupled with the variety of courses on offer means that one can learn exactly what one wants to. This is possible, of course, only after one scrapes off some of the rust that inevitably accumulates through engineering, but once that's done, it feels great to have a bit of the shiny old steel back again.

At a personal level, things have been far more dreary, and emotionally quite intense. For one, I sorely miss the company that made NITK what it was. I also know why 'long-distance' is such a big deal, and trust me it is, Skype being the only saving grace. Public transport in the US is absolutely appalling, which means one is more or less restricted to the limits of Chambana, which is fairly dry in general. The weather doesn't make it any better of course. Not having a guitar here is somewhat vexing as well, and not being much of a reader doesn't help. 'You never know what you have until you lose it' is probably a nearly accurate description of my life here, except that there has been no real loss, just a very large extent of dilution. The things that one takes for granted at home - from the people that make you who you are, to the street food - are all sadly quite out of reach.

On the brighter side, things seem to be looking up from here onwards. I'm packing to Florida for a couple of weeks, a welcome change of place and weather. A guitar should follow suit if all goes well, and my restlessness should be assuaged for the greater part. Hopefully I will acquire camera too, sometime the coming semester. And then I can find my solace in technological goodness, if nothing else. Of course, the trip back home I've almost decided upon in Summer should do me loads of good.

But right now I am content with the strange peace I feel finally writing this, just having watched Yojimbo, Blackwater Park currently playing in my ears, and confident that for the most part, the next semester will be much more fun that the last.