Hilarity.

This post deals with something that happened a while ago but I thought I would put it up here since it is quite funny ( in hindsight ).

After I got accepted into the university of Florida for their masters program there was this long wait until august 6 which was the day I was scheduled to fly out. In the time between my visa interview at Chennai and the 6th, I did all those things which my mom considered necessary when travelling abroad. Getting a hair-cut, buying new clothes (mostly formal), taking spare passport sized photos, Getting a hair-cut (I'd managed to avoid the first time she attempted this), and on and on. Bit by bit, the time I had remaining in Cochin was chipped away at until one day the 5th of August had managed to successfully creep up on me.

Suddenly I was not ready to go, there were so many things left to do. I kind of felt like Frodo when he was leaving the Shire, and my friends also mocked me just like Merry and Pippin did later when they told him about how moody and depressing he had been, making remarks such as "oh, I wonder if I shall ever see that brook again". For the record Trippy ( which is what I call Tripunithura ) has no Brooks, we have backwaters, canals, and drainage systems which are all suffering from identity crises stuck between being stagnant pools of water or newly created, accidental canals.

Funny side note: When I was in school (Bharatiya Vidhya Bhavan, Eroor, Trippy) we had this one peon person who used to run around doing all the menial tasks (I sound snobbish). On some days he would turn up with his arm in a sling and the story that went around was always that he had gotten drunk and fallen into one of the above mentioned accidental canals/stagnant pools. It was and still is quite funny ( assuming that one ignores the sanitary implications of spending the night in one of the aforementioned water bodies ).

Back to the main story. So, August 5th was here and I did not want to go. On that day however time decided to really speed up and before I knew it evening had fallen. My mom, dad, brother and myself were on our way to Ernakulam to pick up a last set of clothes the tailor had failed to previously finish. Once there we were told that there was a further delay and finally we got the clothes much later. After much confusion, running around, yelling, and running around whilst yelling we reached back home and the packing began. When I say packing began please do not bring into your minds pictures such as the dutiful son packing his valise while the family looks on with barely concealed tears and anguish. What happened was more along the lines of me talking with my brother or wasting time some other way while my mom packing my bags for me.

The night drew on and on, got drunk and tripped over its own feet at midnight, tumbling and falling down on its bottom bringing in the 6th of August, my day of departure.

I had never been more sorrowful in my life.

Throughout school and college, I had always maintained that I could hardly wait to go to the US and get away from Cochin and India as a whole (my views are drastically different now, but that is not what this post is about) but never did I expect to feel such sorrow at having to leave all the familiar things behind.

As we drove to the airport, my brother was too sleepy to really talk, my mom and dad were talking giving me advice on how to conduct myself in a world which I had only heard of, but one which they had experienced in person. The airport loomed in the distance and suddenly everything was happening way too fast.

Car stops- Trolley - Hugs - Passport to guard - Inside the airport with my dad at my side and my mom (crying :) ) and my lil brother (possibly asleep on his feet) standing outside though in my brother's case the verb "to lean" might be more effectively employed than "to stand". My dad turns to me, says "Nikhil, allright then, call us from New Jersey, all the best, ok kutta?" (For those who don't know what kutta means, its similar to the word "boy" or "son" mostly used by extremely close relatives when talking to the person in question. For those among you who are north indians and think that it means "dog" well...if the context in which i write this did not help you decode that it does not in fact mean canine, I have no more time to spare on you. I will leave you with this advice, find a cave, crawl into it and never come out)

My dad shook my hand the only concession he made to admitting that I was finally grown up (yeah right, both of us knew better than that). He then went outside to wait with my mom and brother (still leaning, mind you).

I got done with the check in procedures, and after waving to my family walked into the immigration section.

I had promised them that I would call them as soon as I got into the lounge and as luck would have it, my phone's sim card died on me. I had to call them from a payphone and then sit in that rotting lounge for 2.5 hours, unable to call my friends, or anyone at all. Just sitting there.

My flight to delhi arrived and departed soon with me on it. At delhi I had a few adventures but those shall occupy the contents of another post perhaps. I eventually got to Gainesville and was staying the night with some of the Indian guys here.

So we had to go for dinner at the house of a friend, someone that knew someone that knew someone that I was traveling and eventually going to room with. So while there, after a 20+ hour journey, tired and missing home like crazy and obviously suffering from critical jet lag the conversation moved to the university of florida and its faculty and so on.

This is how the conversation went

* - Names changed since I can't remember the actual ones :D

Random people: So Rahul*, you have work experience?

Rahul*: Yes, I worked with blahblahblah inc for 5 years.

Random people: And your major is in the same area?

Rahul: Haha, obviously.

Random people: So Nikhil, what about you?

Me: What about me?

RP: Do you have work experience?

Me: nope. Fresh outta college.

RP: (Shakes collective heads like I just announced I was off to do battle with a kraken)

Me: What?

RP: What is your major?

Me: Computer Engineering.

RP: (more head shaking, including a few heroes who felt like they had to outdo everyone else so they sighed as well)

Me: Seriously what? (I might have phrased this differently, more along the lines of "What the f**k is your problem?".....no I didnt, but looking back, I would've liked to)

RP: The professors are ruthless, the grading system is screwed, job opportunities are few if any, cost of living here is high, no chance of getting a part time job, bad weather, global warming, hole in ozone layer, whale hunting...

Me: Gulp..!

RP: But dont worry you will be fine

Me: how?

RP: yes, yes, just fine

Me: How will I be fine?

RP: just fine

Me: Sigh...! Can I call back home?

RP: Sure

at which point they set me up with one of their laptops so that i could call back to my parents.

I was confused, frightened and surrounded by strangers. None of my experiences in 22 years of living had prepared me for this and so I nearly wept when I told my parents about how horrible everything was. I told them that I wanted to come home and that I could not do this. At that point going back home seemed like a very real option since i had not yet declined to join the two jobs I had been offered coming outta college. Among the gazillion other things I owe to my parents, another was added, when they told me to try it for about 15 days or so, and then if I could not do it, then to return.

I stayed.

So which part of that was supposed to be funny? I don't know..for me, at least in hindsight, the whole thing is something I can laugh at.

Putting up a post after quite some time, hoping to write more frequently after this.

Magus.

Almost four months.

Hey everyone,

Its been almost four months that I have been working at this job and things are going good. Before launching into any kind of rant I shall describe the general condition of my life at the moment. I finished my MS on the 4th of May, joined for work at a certain company on the fifth and have been there since. My lease at the last apartment ran out and right now am staying at a friends place, however today at 2PM I shall receive keys to my new apt so am looking forward to that.

Most of my team got reconfigured recently and it is an interesting time in the company for our product. While on the one hand I am going to miss the guys I was working with, I welcome the potential avenues of opportunity this might open up both career wise and creativity wise. The whole company life thing is weird to me, the numerous Dos and Donts, and the latter list in this case contains a lot of items that can potentially get you booted out the door. I recently heard of a guy who got kicked out since he was caught sleeping at his desk :-) I dont know whether to be scared or laugh at this.

One thing that has not changed is my stupid outlook when it comes to girls. Recently hung out with a friend of mine, his girlfriend, and a couple of her friends (yes the ratio was definitely in my favor). During the conversation I was mostly silent, messing around with my droid phone and so on. When I did talk it was to ask the folks gathered there as to who had read the hitchhikers guide to the galaxy. This one girl responded that she had, and she even went on to answer in the affirmative to a few more of my questions. Contrary to my usual MO I thought nothing of this.

Once I came back to my colleagues place, his girlfriend remarked that this girl was single. My colleague immediately pitched in an idea about how we should set up a double date. My mind leaped at the possibilities. Sparkling magnificent vistas opened up in my mind's eye blossoming into fruition and never fading away.

Yea,....nothing happened. Somehow the proposed double date never came to be.

My life is changing in interesting ways now. I seem to be developing somewhat of a social nature which is nice since for the longest time my friends have likened me to smeagol from the lord of the rings world. Just today I went out to this sushi place called sushi matsuri and had dinner with two of my friends. The job is great in that, even though im making no great strides as far as my savings account is concerned, im living comfortably with what I earn and for once, thats enough.

The changes are not always on the positive side, there are some neutral and possibly negative ones as well.

My definition of personal space has sky-rocketed. Actions and activities that were favored and even liked by me earlier are now brought into measure keeping in mind my redefined boundaries. This leads to a lot of changes but I have now come to know from my other friends who are working that this is only to be expected. I feel a new sense of independence which is great. Helping to make all of these even more enjoyable and colorful is the fact that I have a room to myself again and I cannot stress on how significant and long awaited this change has been in coming.

Musically, things are getting interesting again. After a disastrous attempt at forging yet another band I had given up all hope and put up a last ditch effort post on gainesvillebands.com asking if any metal band out there was looking for a guitarist. A few weeks later I got contacted by the drummer of this band who had just lost their guitar player when he moved to california. One audition later I am now playing with the band, I dont know if I am officially in yet or not but the signs are positive. Also, the decision to buy the crate shockwave amp worked out to be one of the best decisions I have ever made.

I have a car now, a toyota corolla 2010 SE, black in color. I love the thing to pieces and it drives beautifully also giving me excellent mileage and the kind of satisfaction that only a well made piece of japanese machinery can give you. I leased this car for a three year period which I thought makes sense since what if various events cause me to relocate or have to change my job and so on. So far this has looked like a great decision hope it stays that way.

That is about all I wanted to talk about at this point, once again will try to write more often.

Magus.

Innocence..

Its a powerful word is it not? The interesting thing being the evolution of the word from something that everyone had in ages past to something that no one has these days. A new born baby is innocent for maybe the first few years of his/her life and then its gone. Sadly enough, the world as it is today has no tolerance for the innocent ones.

A long time ago, a friend I used to have remarked to another friend that one of the best things they liked about me was my innocence. This shook me a little bit since in my eyes I was not innocent in anyway, true I was childlike in certain departments but my mom had always attributed that to my immaturity rather than any innocence.

Just the other day I got a ride from someone at work, and it was quite nice talking and just chilling on the way back home (I don't really do either of those much these days). Later I gave the person a call just to talk and find out what was going on, and guess what? yup.....voicemail..!!

Now for those of you who have not yet figured out that the other person in this story is a girl, really? go home...hide under a rock (for those of you who can do both at the same time since you live under a rock, well done...100 points for that..)..and other cruel stuff like that which I cant be bothered with creating since people are generally stupid these days.

So, voicemails ok...I mean if the persons not there, then shes not there....end of story right? As in, if you are really physically incapable of taking the call then I get that....I'm not so short sighted as to take every natural occurrence as a personal slight..but then , I never got a call back which ticked me off a lot.

I know for a fact that I gave her my number as well when I got hers, and this led me to wonder as to why she would not give me a call back. Note at this point that I had no intentions that were not straightforward, I genuinely wanted to chat with someone I thought was an interesting person...and thats it..nothing more, nothing less. The world works differently I guess.

I wonder if she figured me for some kind of stalker psycho kinda person....and if she did then I wish I knew why because if I am sending out these signals I definitely wanna stop doing that because I am not a stalker psycho kinda person.

In other news I started working and its been going great so far, I love the workplace the people and my manager is one of the few nice ones in the world.

When I am sitting at my desk, reading through document after document on my product and trying to learn the inner workings of it..I find myself wondering about the meaning of life (as cliched as that may sound). Its not that I am not interested in what I am doing, on the contrary I think out of all the areas I could be working in, this one is most interesting (in the realm of computer science of course). Life is ticking away with every second we exist and its running out isnt it? I mean, on average we live till what? 75-80 these days? or if we're lucky (or unlucky depending on your personal outlook) then maybe we hit 90-95. What is it that we were meant to do in that time? if this was all just a huge random mistake then I feel like the whole thing is pointless and we might as well lay down in the mud and wait for oblivion to collect us. However ,if there is some kind of purpose we are meant to fulfill should we not spend every waking moment trying to figure out what this is?

There are times when I can feel the existence of a grand scheme of things within which I am an actor, but it is always fleeting, one moment I can sense the purpose and the next it is gone without so much as an "I'll be back soon".

I can feel it in music, certain songs capture me with the melodic beauty, the notes intermingle to create meaning out of nothingness. Its all about the perfection of the sequence though, as in, if those same notes were played in any other order it would not have the same effect. The different orders might convey different emotions but there can be none other than the "one" which conveys purpose.

At the end of the day though what does it matter what we think? It doesn't matter if you're smart, brilliant, intelligent, funny, wise, kind or anything else.What does matter?

Are you wearing aeropostale? Is that an american eagle jeans ur wearing? Rolex watch? Sports car? facebook profile with a few friends short of infinity? At every pool party in the state? Make rapper like gestures when talking ? and so on....the list goes on... then you're in....you are golden...people shall fawn over you, and the world shall hold you dear.

But...hey....I'm not bitter....

Wraith.

Growing up....its weird..

Hey there,

I am going to graduate real soon and am going to be starting a full time job for the first time in my life. The very knowledge that you are locked in to start a job is venomous, and I do not mean in the "keel over and die" sense of that word. These past few weeks have seen me becoming more carefree in the way I spend money and this is a very very bad thing when seen from my eyes.

I purchased a TV/Monitor because my mother and brother had initially thought of coming over and staying with me for a while. These plans were cancelled because my current living arrangements do not encourage any thoughts of hospitality of any level.

The effect of the cancellation is that I am now proud owner of a TV/Monitor which it looks like I bought for my own leisure while in reality I had procured it for my mother. No complaints however since I love the thing.

The behavior that worries me though is not this. I have been looking at buying a game console to use with the TV. Chief excuse for this, generated in my caffeine-addled excuse for a brain, goes along the lines of not leaving the TV/Monitor idle.

I also started looking at cars to take me to and bring me back from my intended workplace. The point of "What the hell!!" came when I found myself making plans to call a dealer to talk about buying a twelve thousand dollar sports car. I do not know what is coming over me.

I can fight it for sure and am doing so even as I write this. I went to the super market and managed not to go on a shopping spree, and I consider this to be a major victory.

So, in order to remain myself, I have decided to use the public transit system for as long as humanly possible and only consider getting a car if no other option presents itself. The game console idea is going to be harder to fight since I am a video game aficionado.

Now more than ever I feel like I am in the middle of a rapidly flowing stream and I know not where the waters take me. Sad thoughts have been surfacing in my mind concerning me growing up. I do have problems with change, and this is something that became infinitely clear to me when my mother and brother considered moving to dubai to join my father. At one point I called my best friend and cried to him about how nothing would ever be the same again.

He asked me what I was talking about.

I started quoting things like "Never again shall I sit there at the dining table in the evening, drinking coffee and talking to my mom and irritating my brother"...and so on...specific instances, which required specific configurations of people doing specific activities. It seems that I desire the threads of others people's lives to be wound around my own, which is under the best conditions an insane requirement.

Now, since I cant whine to my best friend anymore, I started thinking about the complaints in my mind.

One jewel that came to me today as I was standing out in the afternoon sun was that never again can I enjoy standing around doing nothing on a weekday afternoon and that sucked. This thought self amplified and within no time I found myself sad.

So, am I growing up? I have not the slightest idea. I am moving up through the phases, this much is plain to see. I was a school student, then came engineering, now post grad comes to a close, and my career phase starts. However, even though the various phases come and go, I still pretty much feel like the same kid who never wanted to go to school on monday and who jumped in joy whenever some political party or labor union called a hartal (Strike) which resulted in a school holiday. The school student who went to engineering college expecting something great and who had the crap kicked out of his expectations. The disillusioned kid who went on to do masters without ever really knowing why. The master of science engineer, still a kid, who goes on to start a job....the tale continues....

Posting after a long time...hope to keep this up..

(P.S: to future nikhil when you read this...and no this is not a reference to how-i-met-your-mother....."dude, did you ever get the eclipse??" )

Magus.

At arms length..

Its been a while since the last post, thats mostly cause I've been busy with trying to graduate et al. Managed to land a job with this one company called SumTotal systems and I think its gonna be pretty awesome. I look forward to this with great anticipation and even greater hope.

The theme of this post shall be about this phenomenon I observed among certain people here. Indians who come abroad try to distance themselves from everything Indian, they keep others from India at arm's length (yea I know...thats the title of the post....hooray!! yaay!! .....$@$#^@#$^). Now, I cannot completely attack this point of view since I guess that these folks are tired of being around Indians after having spent twenty plus years among them. Also, lets face it, there are some characteristics that make us not the most preferable people to be around (For the guy who just yelled "speak for yourself, I'm cool, people love me" thank you sir for proving my point..).

There are, however, some other characteristics of Indians that make us invaluable to other Indians. One well known double edged sword is our famous inquisitiveness to the point where the neighbors have to check on a weekly basis as to whether their phones have been bugged. Why do we do this? Heaven knows but heres the two sides of this characteristic. On the one hand, it is irritating enough to convince certain people to stop talking to us completely or to run us outta town. On the other hand, when some kinda trouble strikes your family, guess whos the first person to know aside from you and yours. Yup, that Indian guy who lives next door. I know that we dont find too many Indians going around saving people but that doesnt change the fact that we do care about our own.

I used to frequently drift in and out of contact with my origin (lets call it for the length of this rant) for instance I would hang out with my American friends for a long time and then talk to my parents back home for a longer period of time. I came to the US and for the first three months I was desperate to integrate. I wanted to become one of those folks who returned to India once in a blue moon with those ever so delicate accents and that fresh glow emanating from them signifying the three reverential sacred letters, NRI. However the veil was somehow ripped away from my eyes and I found myself clinging to every ounce of my culture for all I was worth, be it literature, religion, music, cinema or memories. Dont get me wrong I dont mean that I started associating with Indians a lot....even when I was back in India I was never one for associating too much. What I did do was gain and install a stable point of view concerning what I thought about this land and what I thought about my own homeland. While earlier I was immature about a lot of things concerning being in the US, now I know better.

When you're a kid (not too young though), wanting to hitch up with an american girl (or any white girl for that matter) was almost a given. I mean, for crying out loud, we are graduate students and we can still kinda be knocked breathless by the sight of some of these girls walking across the street. However, I would like to think that we have grown more serious when push comes to shove.

I continue to enjoy studying the interactions between the various social groups and cliques here.

weird post I know..but I just wanted to get something out there again..

Magus.

Changes...

Who among us likes change? I guess that there are a lot of people who would say that they do..but I wonder..
so many things in my life are changing right now...I moved out of my old apartment (aka my safe hiding place), came back to school after nearly an eight month hiatus, my roomie and one of my only friends in the US has graduated and he is moving away, I quit my band...and so on..
Changes are ok...but only if you have a few concrete pillars to support you and to keep you anchored. My pillars at the moment are kinda shaky and so I am floating about in the void quite clueless as to what I am supposed to do.
On the positive side, the new apt is kinda cool and I am having an ok time..trying to get back into a band (audition tonight) and shit like that..

But even as far as the future is concerned I have no clue where I am to go. I tried to visualize myself working on web dev and stuff like that..and my mind just refuses to go there. I mean, at the end of your career what can you look back on?
At least I helped put up a few sites for greedy corporations which want to basically rear door a lot of people...thats only if you are lucky otherwise you would not even have any individual claims to make. Suppose you spent most of your life working as part of a team maintaining some application or something, how pathetic is it to look back and realize that you did not really do anything worthwhile.
Conversations between kids and their grandparents through the ages

long frikkin time ago:
kid - urrr
grandad - errr
kid - booga
grandad - booga booga
and then they went and killed some sabre toothed tigers who never knew why they were being killed and that too by being bonked on their skulls by crudely fashioned clubs. Eventually it became a bad thing in sabre-toothed tiger society to be killed by a human. It was this social stigma that forced them to start picking fights with T-rexs who were too dumb to know much of anything at all.

more recently:
kid - What did thou do today grandfather?
grandfather - Me and mine army sacked another kingdom, thy father was most noteworthy in his feats.
kid - Where is father?
grandfather - whistle---whistle----
kid - Grandfather, where is my father?
grandfather - furious whistling----
kid - starts crying
grandfather - Now, now, Do not shame thy father by crying. He pierced the heart of the enemy's champion and slew him with barely a thought.
kid - So he is still alive?
grandfather - Unfortunately, the enemy's champions horse was none too pleased by its master being slain and it expressed its displeasure in a rather physical way which involved its rear hoof and thine fathers neck.Rather unpleasant actually.

(Why I am not stopping this right now I have no idea...)

much more recently

kid - What did you do grandad?
grandad - I created the most brutal form of music ever
kid - So you mean you were like one of the jonas brothers?
grandad - kicks kid in groin
kid - rolling around in agony
grandad - I said brutal, not faggish..now die..

even more recently..

kid - yo old man, whatdja do?

grandad - whos there?..

kid - ur grandson

grandad - virtual memory severely low, windows must shut down a few programs to keep the old geezer running

kid - knocks old man on side of head thereby solving a problem microsoft engineers have been wrestling with for millenia (yes millenia, before earth, the MS engineers were the think tank for the ruthless zondarian empire based out of the andromeda system. To this day certain similarities can be observed between their terror inducing code back then and their migraine/tumour inducing code now..)

grandad - what, were?....

kid - what the win*%ws did you do back in the day?

grandad - I made websites...!!

kid - yea? anything I might have seen?

grandad - Do you purchase huge orders of chinese umbrellas?

kid - wtf? No I dont..

grandad - then u prolly havent seen nethin I've done..

kid - really? chinese umbrellas?

grandad - yea, they were pretty cool...they had tiny speakers to where you could hook up your ipod.. and a webcam so that you could take pictures in the rain..of course they had to pull those features back since about a million of them short circuited in the rain, instantly killing the bearers..

kid - yea yea, sounds interesting....im gone..

do ya see a pattern here? do ya?

if you dont I cant help ya, if you can I cant help ya....why? cause I am also deeply enmeshed in this system..

I am trying to break out though...

anyway, this has been a long post..so I end it now

Magus..