Escape

Sometimes it just feels nice to have a break. Some sort of escape. Today turned out to be one of those days.

As usual I was running late and the buses were running even later, hence the need for a cab, credits to Hari and Co. The cab ride to the station was pretty eventful in itself. The cab driver was new in town and had trouble finding the parking lot, and the ten minutes we spent searching for parking space turned out to be quite em… colourful. And he didn’t charge me nothin’ extra neither!

The train journey was pretty nice as well. For one, it was unlike any other train journey I’ve been on. The terrain was quite plain, pun intended, but it offered some pretty interesting sights. Tons of new birds, none of which I could identify of course, although I spotted something that could have been an American Kestrel. There were certain moments where I could see just white and nothing else through the windows – snow covered fields against a foggy dull white sky – an eerily beautiful sight, which gives the impression that one is floating around in nothingness. Very inspiring.

It was superb fun walking around downtown Chicago to the (somewhat poorly maintained) subway station, and even better riding the lightning fast subway station. I witnessed my first subway jazz performance – it’s amazing how talented these people are and yet how hard they have to struggle to make a living.

O’ Hare is a little cookie-cutter but absolutely massive- whoever designed it must’ve been out of his bloody mind! The flight to Memphis was delayed by half an hour, which meant I had just ten minutes after I landed at Memphis to board my connecting flight to Fort Lauderdale. I did make it just in time, not failing to notice on my run to gate 38B that the airport at Memphis is fact pretty neat, what with its own jazz bar and all.

Right now I’m halfway between Memphis and Fort Lauderdale, sitting in between some ten Eastern European types who speak not a word of English. The other passengers seem somewhat uncomfortable with their presence. I wonder why. We should land in about half an hour’s time from now, and if the Wi-Fi on the plane wasn’t being leeched by the other passengers on the plane, this’d go online right now. On a completely unrelated note, The Pixies are a pretty cool band!

It’s funny how you yearn for specific company sometimes and it’s frustrating when you don’t get it, but one day of solitude in someplace new makes for a nice escape. This cartoon I made seems appropriate to me at this moment.

PS. I'm posting this from my uncle's home. Too bad the whole posting from 37000 feet above sea level thing didn't work out. Damn Wi-Fi leachers!

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.