Monday, August 27, 2007

A New Life!

Living a new life in an old body - kind of seems strange .. but then there are always stranger things in life :)

Let me take you back to the last couple of months in India.
I had a wonderful time. I think I was able to meet most of my friends who I would not be meeting till the next time I went to India. Vacations merging, Spicejet offering cheap fares, Mck holding a timely ISB session, Lufthansa night flight, a timely Kgp trip, Singapore dollars - I was lucky!

The little cooking and driving I picked up haven't been tested yet, but I think I have learnt well :)

And then came the hard part :(
Saying goodbye .. I saw the tears roll out and on one of the rarest occasions, there was nothing I could do about it .. I wished I could cry too ..


3 flights later .. and there was a nice stop in Singapore .. I was in SFO and then in Berkeley!

The last couple of weeks have been a completely different experience. When I was settling into Kharagpur four years back, I never had this sense of independence. Nor was Kharagpur so different from the living standards and environment I have grown up in.

Berkeley, on the other hand, is vastly different. As I said before, 'A new life'.
The settling into process has been a lot different this time. Its always easier to shift into greater luxury - so its been commodity-wise convenient. But knowing that the people who mattered the most to you are physically half a globe away does change the whole dynamics of this process. There have been moments of helplessness (not homesickness yet) ..
And then there is a new-found sense of independence. But the tricky part will be the added responsibility which comes as a free add-on.

So classes start tomorrow :(
Fox Soccer Channel to bring EPL, HBO for movies, Free DVDs from NetFlix (I know that's an overdose), a home-entertainment system (thanks to Shantanu), a HOME (how can I forget that?!?!), great apartment-mates, wonderful food, awesome cereals (they needed special mention!), a Lenovo T61, just one notebook and possibly no pen - I am all set!

Thanks to the wonderful system here, I can just take 2 courses and concentrate on research without any administrative problem :). That should leave me with a decent amount of time to explore the entertainment possibilities both in-house and outside in the next few months :D


The long hibernation from blogging is now over!
For good?
Well .. its still the old, lazy body .. but its a new, invigorating life!