A dollop of ice-cream....: August 2005

Thursday, August 25, 2005

Rantings and ramblings of a.....maniac

I love to crib...its one of the things I am most comfortable doing as you would have seen through the remainder of my blog. And today , in retrospect gives me a whole lot of things to crib about.
I remember how whenever we had a bad day, or a submission went badly, or late, or we had managed to do and submit it in time,..... the reason ranged from depressed moods to hunger to me just urging them on , Monika, Sapna, Komathi(sometimes) and myself would head to the ice-cream shop in our shopping centre or s.c for short. Its amazing how spending a little money makes you feel good or better or temporarily satiated :).....

Anyways getting back to where I was, my day went badly because
1. I was having trouble understanding the head and tail of Dijkstr'a paper on the structure of a multi-programming system.
2. I had zilch or nil class participation today ...since it was the same paper that was discussed. The only thing I learnt was "take things easy " .
3. My interview for a job, the second round went horribly. It was very nice of them to try to match me with the kind of job I would like....namely data mining , but as soon as it came to answering questions part it back-fired .......I could recall nothing of any A.I algos I would have studied or not studied while passing Bachelor's .
Sigh! There is nothing worse than making yourself out to be a fool.....I mean proving that you ARE a fool to someone.

And just to get over these two incidents, Shalini has decided to accompany me to Gallagher theatre ...its the on campus movie theatre and we have an offer of one ticket free with another (student discounts books- are available all over campus which have all these great deals like free pizzas and movies).
Plus LuAnn has planned a weekend for us in downtown, for a festival celebrating the founding of Tucson. So there is a lot to look forward for the weekend. I am also planning on a new laptop ...not getting it free ...I have to buy it for now. And my brother is really after me to get an Apple, becoz the Ipod is free with it. Only thing will be getting used to the Tiger O/S. But I am still leaning towards Dell, since it will be out of my loan money it should be on the cheaper side with the best configurations :)..............

So long for now, who would have thought I would be having not-getting-a-job blues after having worked for a year .......

Tuesday, August 23, 2005

Classes... :) dawn of a new era

Yesterday the 22nd of August, I attended my first classes in the UofA. It was fun ....each of them in their own way.
Why ! Well I somehow never imagined that networks class would turn out to be studying papers over a span of forty years to see how the internet developed, of the then and now.....how the ideas were before their time, how some of those ideas are now taken for granted, like for example the basic concept of a distributed system for the internet. Next I had my Advanced Database course, and that turned out to be on designing databases for XML. The course may involve a project or final exam. The final exam option is to ease out the workload ...... but the project sounds interesting.
Today was Operating Systems, and though this too will cover the beginnings and progresses of the modern day os, today the professor concentrated on giving us a picture of "what is the so-called world of research", its currency of publications, from where the funding comes from ....which are the research labs in the country.
Well none of it is a piece of cake, even with a three day weekend I find myself wishing for an eighth day in the week just so I can complete reading all the papers and doing all the assignments.
But yes, it does give a new dimension to things, new examples to visualise what is going on around you and what was going around in the past.......

Apart from that, job search still on. :) Its difficult alright, to search for a job after having had the comforts of an office and a personal system .......and easy incoming hard cash. :) But for once, or for today, I am not complaining.

Sunday, August 21, 2005

Warm welcomes

I am just back from a stint at the zoo. Oops, I guess I am starting off nearly at the middle of the chapter. Well here goes then ...... There is an organization called International friends here in Tucson, who arrange to have a student matched with an american family, so that there can be an exchange of culture of sorts. Yeah! I know, I never usually go into all this.....come to study , so why get into anything else but this was highly recommended by my senior here, Pooja. So I was a little excited when I was contacted by LuAnn a few days ago. She happens to be a judge here in Tucson.
She planned an outing for me today, August 21st, Sunday.
When today finally arrived I was looking forward to the evening with all smiles. This would be my first proper outing in Tucson and for somebody like me who scarce stays indoors or works 24 hours a day......it was going to be a welcome break. Shalini would have been left alone at home ,so she also joined in.
And it was precisely at 5:15 that LuAnn herself came knocking at our door. After a brief round of introductions, she handed over a complete goodie bag to me, there was a packet of wild rice with spices and instructions on cooking, some masala naans, a packet of sweets, a water-bottle and some Tucson postcards .....which she told me I could write home with. There was such a wonderful and almost carelessly included sense of warmth in her gesture and in each carefully chosen gift..... which astounded me.
Her other international friend, Sudhir from bangalore, was already waiting in the car with her boyfriend Dennis. They drove us to a restaurant called Chopped, where I ordered a chicken sandwich which was delicious. LuAnn, Sudhir,and Shalini opted for salads. The sandwich was delicious, and I got lemonade too with ice. LuAnn kept us alive with jokes throughout and asking us about what surprised us the most about the states and our first entry here. I replied it was the diversity in their topography ...India has the same thing but on a very small scale....and that people here were so friendly. They said New York would be different, Tucson being a small town people were very friendly.
We were met at the restaurant by two of LuAnn's friends, Sue a school teacher who had the summer off and had joined a research expedition to Africa on the trail of wild elephants. And Veronice or as LuAnn called her, V, who was a judge too and also an athlete. She was talking about having biked to Mount Lemon on the top of the Catalinas and then run down the slope.
The greatest thing about it all , was the amazing range of professions on that table......... and the backgrounds alone, of all the people sitting there, could have told stories till breakfast the next day.
We left Sue and V to go to the zoo. It was a 5-10 mins drive. On the way LuAnn pointed out the park, where people were roller-skating, doing squat exercises or simply running. The mountains bordered the lush green park surrounded by tall palm trees, and it was beautiful.
The zoo had an ice-cream safari on, and on going inside I had an ice-cream sandwich. It was ice-cream in between two slices of chocolate cake. I had been complaining just two days back of how I had not had a ice-cream since I had come and here I was.........
The zoo was not San Diego, .......there were kids all around , some having their faces painted , others with popsicle sticks, and with the word "popsicle" I felt as if I had stepped right into a story book chapter of the Five find-outers. But the zoo was not like Alipur zoo in Calcutta, where your nose warns you of what animal is next to come in sight. It covered a very small space and within it, it had tried to recreate the jungle atmosphere. Walking under overgrown bamboo trees hovering over our heads and thick bushes beside the walkway......our first encounter was with the rhino. Then the pelicans on one leg, zebras and antelopes....and there in a pond, the first thing which made me stick to the railing for a few seconds , were two little ducklings........a shade of brown and black , not much larger than the palm of my hand , who were wading from one end of the pool to the other in glee and showing off their newly developed swimming skills I guess. Their mother kept a watchful eye from the shore .....but they in their own companionship and the coolness of the water seemed to be having the time of their lives.
In Hyderbad it had been Charminar which had first made me stop and love the city. In Tucson, two little ducklings are responsible.
Later from the lion's cage to the rhea to the camdary (I have forgotten its name) to amazingly colored macaws and parakeets, and elephants, and tortoises that looked as if they were rocks, and a snoozing polar bear which looked totally like bruno while sleeping ...trying to snap its nose and running as if living his dream, and sprinklers which suddenly shot out of the ground and started watering the plants like in Jurassic park, and with melting ice-creams in our hands ,...........and a mountain which hovered in the distance but seemed closer , much closer .....
well that was how today turned out for me.
I was amazed by the warmth of it, the warmth of the hug LuAnn gave me with a wish for the "all the best" for classes, the drink Dennis toasted to the start of our classes...... this was the first time I shared a conversation on a dinner table about elephants and research on their dna , and mount lemmon and climbing and jogging it for your workups, and books and jhumpa lahiri's Interpreter of Maladies, and Life of Pais..........three indians and four americans across sandwiches and salads ina restaurant called "Chopped".

Saturday, August 20, 2005

Scattered reflections....

I was debating over the title of this blog-entry yesterday night.....whether to name it as "Randomn reflections" or what it stands as now. But I decided on "scattered" bcoz it immediately brings to mind scattered sunlight, scattered glass.....and holds much more warmth than "randomn".
I was writing my diary , musing and brooding and pondering over happenings, going back in time , forward in time, in a sense I was jobless. :) Till classes start from Monday I am, so bear with me. And it is truly said that an idle mind is the devil's workshop. So it was that I had so many millions of thoughts floating and roosting in my head that I thought I might as well put down the ramblings of a jobless, lots-of-time-at-hand, lonely and half-crazy mind.
Before I came to USA, it was one of the "THE" things to do. Somehow whether it was your company sending you or whether it was through higher studies, this was one way of coming to a different life. It was only a few days before coming that some true pictures actually started to unfold. Examples ??? ...... mugging, security, carrying ten-twenty dollar bills on your self.........
But even then that is only half the picture. There is always a difference in each of the situations life puts you into. When I was in college in Trichy, I was away from home (this will recur as a common factor again) .....we shared rooms, we were dependent on our parents for money, most of us were out of our homes for the first time and far away from it, and all of us .......the batch of 2000-2004, were trying to learn to survive. We had ragging, we cried back in our rooms to go back home, the stronger among us did not cry either in rooms or on the phone.....we attended classes after walking what seemed like two kms in the hot sun, half slept or totally slept in classes.........and we weathered it through, through to our final years and our graduation. And we emerged with Bachelor of technology degrees from NIT Trichy (bringing to nought the proud claim that the chemical people had had before of being the only btechs in REC). What developed were some of the best friendships that college brings....of having lived, shared and fought it out together through assignments and ragging and professors and pennilessness and treats and cycling and walking around campus...."chumma" (rec slang meaning "just like that").

The important word in the last parah........"weathered".

The next phase of my life pushed me into Oracle, quite before I could comprehend where I was and what I was doing with my life. The only thing I knew from the first day was, I know I am going back home soon. But that wa smy earning life, and when you earn believe me ....there is a confidence which overtakes you from nowhere. Money power ...you could call it that or you could call it as standing on your own feet, which is one of the most amazing things .... (I realise it only now and ofcourse, when my mother had told me I was too blind to think about it........I was getting money, enough of it, and all I knew was how to spend). When you earn, there comes automatically with it a sense of "I can afford it" and hence magnanimity. And things are happy, becoz you get to do what you wish and live how you wish.

The important words in the last parah........"independence" and "earning".

Finally, I land up here in USA. Back to student life, but not quite the same. Note you are not earning anymore, (you will probably soon in the future) and there is a loan at the back of your mind to be settled. So every dollar that you take out and buy eggs or rice or chilli powder.........something is calculating a multiply by 50 and you are stifling a groan of "Oh my god, so much for this!." Maybe once you start a part-time job and start earning on your own , the money power (now in dollars) will come back and you will be magnanimous again. But as for the part of fighting it out together, surviving, or for growng comradeship........forget it! Remember you are alone here and you have grown to depend on yourself for yourself. And your horizon has narrowed down a lot , you are here to survive so why care..........

The important unsaid words in the last parah : selfish, serve yourself.

Life ! probably teaches you a lot. Just living from day to day is a lesson. There was a time when I had seen nri's on Tv and pitied then and felt sympathy for them somewhat for having to celebrate festivals in an alien land, for having to shop and pay $5 for 1 kg rice. They immediately brought to mind, a wealthy dollar-making class but huddled and small. Yesterday when I was shopping in India stores where you get all the indian spices, rice, bournvita even......I realised I belong to the class of people I once felt sorry for.
At the end of it, it doesn't make much sense writing all this down, except that it is a phase of my life and when I look back, I want to remember that I once felt like this. For now, its just go on living ...and while at it and while going through it, keep the ray of light at the end of the tunnel in sight ....... and probably that will make life a lot easier for now...........till the devil has time to move out of your mind. :)

Thursday, August 18, 2005

Opinions .... count ??

I have been attending orientation upon orientation ...today was GATO = graduate assistant teaching orientation. It is meant for all the TAs or teaching assistants, that is the graduate students who will be teaching american under-grad students. The entire program was based on a set of do's and dont's in class. We cannot discriminate, we have to give space, how should you capture the student's interest ...how to introduce new ways of making the class involved.
In some ways, I think it applies to American community as well and not only to the students. Space is something very important to them , so is not speaking out about your political reservations. But the point was, so many of us from different countries were sitting there and learning how we should treat American students, how they could come in chewing gum, or wearing night suits or keep their legs on the tables and we were not allowed to question. As to why this is amazing to me, is because we come from quite a different culture , where we do believe in independence, but we do also believe in respect. However informal everything is, and however much freedom is given to the students, it does seem to me that this is on the border line or over it.

I was contacted by my international friend. International friends is a group which pairs up students with American families so that there can be an intermixing of cultures. I found out my international friend is LuAnn Harley, a judge in Tucson. She already has some other international friends in the campus itself and she is arranging a get-together for all of us on Sunday which is very sweet of her.

Today was also the first time I was able to show my parents the house and me typing away at the computer using the webcam. And when I spoke to Maa later, I learnt how surprised and happy they all had been on being able to cross oceans and continents in a matter of seconds and see me like that....... And I was grateful to the same technology which has always seemed mechanical and robotic to me, for once.
I have been waiting for my brother to logon for ages and he has finally come online, so its back to harnessing the advances of technology for me again :) .......bye goodnight all for today.

Tuesday, August 16, 2005

UofA....Providence...God and ..friends

The University of Arizona, as I was introduced to on the morning of 8th of August, was a sprawling campus of red brick buildings. It ironically or what seemed extremely funny to us to learn, was started by two gamblers. The building they started off with is the oldest one on campus called Old Main. There is a fountain behind it which is beautiful to watch and which quite transports you, away from America to London.
Now, Tucson is a city surrounded by mountains on all sides. There are the Tucson mountains on the west, Reno on the east, Santa Rita on the south and the magnificient Catalina ranges on the north. My shared bedroom commands a view of the Catalinas, but the department of Computer Science, 9th floor has a much much better view of the mountain ranges bordering the city and the campus.....and they are breathtakingly beautiful. There are some seats in front of the large glass windows in the department, and you could sit there and spend hours looking at the peaks hiding in the clouds.
Initially when I had come, nothing had been impressive. I remember having said to myself, "They are just mountains, they were there in Jamshedpur also, for all I care. And in no way do they seem mine to me."
They still don't seem mine to me, but there is a familiarity which has grown over the last week and now I know they are trying to accept me, as I am trying to accept them . I am slowly learning their contours.....how there is a steep peak at the leftmost end and then a trough..... and how the clouds being vertical over them, means that it is raining there.....

Today we were cooking at home, and every little thing kept reminding me of Vishnu. How she would stand and monitor the pressure cooker and not let me just tilt the cap and take the steam out......today the cooker was taking a long time to let the steam out and I did just that, all the time remembering Vishnu and her admonitions of being a little patient. I try to find all of them among people here ...and I suddenly realise when I end up disappointed how the gathering here is not the same as at Hyderabad.......and I reprimand myself for having expected it to be. I feel Shobana will say a "haan kya" in her exact drawl, and Shalini will smile and start laughing the way she does.... ... and yes it doesn't happen. I know I have to stop moulding the present in the ways of the past. I remember cribbing about Hyderabad when I was there, wanting to be home and now I am cribbing about Tucson and wanting to be in Hyderabad but I guess living in the present is the best thing to do anyday.

It seems Oracle Hyderabad has a new building minus a tt board...I can't say much about that. I will always , always remember Oracle as Cyber Gateway.
And yes life does not seem so very negative and depressing as my writings might sound like.... I have been lucky in more ways than one and that could not have been without providence , god , fate ...........or whatever you call "belief". And ofcourse I always have the option of boarding the flight and flying back. So "ssssomebody stop me" a.k.a "Mask". :)

Sunday, August 14, 2005

Fears and first impressions...in USA...final part.

When the flight finally touched down in USA....there was no special feeling, no great excitement, but yes a fear that I might be denied entry in customs based on anything. But it didn't turn out that way at all. When the immigration officer scanned my fingerprints, the only thing he said was "they are a bit dry".... which meant they were not getting scanned properly. Going on to collect my luggage, the next fear was they would have been lost in transit, they would have been shipped to some other plane ......worse, they would have split right down the middle.
Even when after the last baggage had landed and there was no sight of mine I realised I probably must go to lost baggage. But an attendant pointed out that luggages from SQ12 had been coming on another conveyor belt on the right as well. There, carefully picked from the belt and kept aside with a number of others, were my two suitcases. Thanks to Samsonite and I can say they are worth every penny (paise :)) you pay for them, except for some scratches......they hardly seemed to have made such a long journey right across oceans.
From there, just a submit of the customs form where they did not even see what declarations I had made or not made.....to the baggage checkin where they checked in my bags for Tucson and directed me to the domestic terminal.
Fears again...it was only 3:30 p.m local time.... what would I do till 8:30 in the night. I first found my way out and to my surprise found myself standing on an underground highway or broad road (it seemed like an Indian highway to me). There was a flyover on top....the flyovers were works of art ...twining and interwining and again untwisting .... they were amazing.
LA .... skyscrapers in the distance...clean roads and all Mercs, air conditioned volvo buses zooming by. My first impression of USA .....was not bad. The domestic airport was a bus journey away.... its supposed to be so huge you need buses to travel internally. Terminal number 7, I checked in , got my ticket. Then went in for security check. There, they had put some SSSS (quad s) category on my ticket which meant extra searching. I was rattled by the discrimination...I found another Indian lady behind me subjected to the same thing.
After that, I made my way to gate eighty something and there were open windows on one side from where the entire terminal was visible. There were boarding gates ....80 - 85 or more and in front of each were lounge areas. I sat before mine , roamed around a bit to see the shops .... pizzas, mc donalds, coffee, ..... and promptly fell asleep on my hand baggage. I was even dreaming .......but I kept waking up and checking to see if there were suspicious people around. I thought the time would never come for boarding, there would be announcements and the lounge would empty out and then fill again with passengers for the next flight.
Finally 8:30 and I boarded the UA6558 which was to take me to Tucson. It was one of the cosiest flights I ever saw...a very small one and you had to bend so as not to hit the ceiling. But the plane was full of old people who stay in Tucson and my companion was one such lady who was back from California, having attended her grand-daughter's wedding. Even in the lounge there had been an old couple who had been returning to their home in Tucson. The old man kept forgetting where they were heading, and the old lady would keep reminding him. The compassion and companionship between them was amazing to watch and feel. They would hold hands and pat each other's palm from time to time.....and this relationship here is something which I find most touching here.

The weather was bad, andthe plane had to take a detour...the pilot kept pointing out the thunder storm, we could see the lightning in the sky. And something more that could be seen was more planes in the sky. This was the first time I saw another plane flying while being airborne .......it seemed like traffic in the air.
Then the plane touched down with a loud bump and jerk and we were taxiing slowly into the terminal. I moved to the gates where my room-mate to be Savitha, met me....I was wondering if they would have reached. We both got my luggage which followed on each other's heels. We loaded the baggage in an indian guy's car who had come with her and drove off towards what was to be my room and my home or house :).
The roads were deserted but wide and every lane had a sign on the right saying "This lane mist turn right". We crossed hotels ...large taj like ones only near the airport. After he drove into the garage of the apartments I would be staying at, we tugged and heaved my 64 kgs of luggage up a flight of steps into our house on the first floor of University Gardens apartments, #206. I met my room-mate Shalini, fed myself on some left-over rice and dal......and got upset becoz I could not contact my parents at home or office...
It was 10:30 p.m local time, 11.00 a.m at home. I tucked myself up in bed and went into a dreamless sleep. Except that the night was punctuated by the roar of the winds outside and shutters fluttering in the wind, and I kept waking up all night. But the next day would be a new day...and my first day in Tucson.

p.s: Happy Independence Day to home. Its 3:00 in the morning there at your place and you all are still sleeping so I guess I turn out to be the most patriotic of all. :)

Tuesday, August 09, 2005

USA....and me. Part1- In Singapore and Tokyo

It started out with getting an admit, then it was the visa.......then massive loads of packing and finally, a journey day. I still did not believe or could not make myself believe, I was leaving for USA. Its such a big thing in India to be actually off to the states....immediately you join the ranks of (as considered by people in India) some lucky few. Well, while saying goodbye to Hyderabad and Kolkata ..it sure didn't seem like I was one of the lucky few.
So it was with some salty tears and nervous steps that I began this journey.
The flight was Singapore airlines. Once in your seat, you were in a totally different world. There was a screen in front of you and a remote attached to the seat handle. There was a blanket and a pillow.... (and I remembered how Maa had been worried I would be cold because I had forgotten to pack a shawl). The magazines in front carried all the in-flight movies to be shown, ranging from Madagascar to Lilo and Stitch to ......Plus music channels with one hindi and also a channel which continuously monitored the flight progress and mapped the route.
Whoa.....where was I :)...
The flight attendants were very pretty and helpful, with an ever-friendly smile on their faces. I slept but towards the fag end of the flight...It landed in Singapore at 6:30 their time...around 4:30 our time. Once I stepped into the Changi terminal........that was it! I lost my senses and a smile lit my face as I looked around. Firstly there were these walk elevators....once you used them and came to the centre of the terminal, you were literally surrounded by all foreign shops.... from prada to gucci.... scents perfumes, electronic goods, food, diamonds, singapore kimonos, mobiles, pdas ...you name it ...they had it and you could have it too provided you had money. The terminal was amazing.......even after USA I still think, that place has no equals. On top of that, once I saw terminals with free internet and hardly any crowds milling around it...imagine my glee at mailing home from an airport....not to say blogging too.
The next flight was at 9:45 a.m singapore time. This was the headache one, over the Pacific and into LA. The last one had almost completely avoided flying over the Indian ocean. This one would not have been able to avoid the Pacific even if it tried. But the plane itself was disappointing...it seemed crowded and clustered with very little foot space or corridor space.... and even the ceiling seemed lower than the last one.
I was puzzling over how an 18 hour journey plane can be such when a 5 hour journey one was luxury. In the flight itself, I kept dozing off......my head falling in front...and the two people beside me must have thought I was drugged. I was nearly missing lunch but woke up just in time to order a turkey. If you are wondering how it tastes, I did not enjoy it much ...and the plate went back quite as much filled as it had come. But they do make it colorful....you have small cheese packets from australia, salads with red berries....ice-cream which I had to skip for my throat.
I had thought the flight was a direct one , it turned out that there was a stop in Tokyo. I was smiling to myself to think that for a non-globetrotter I would be covering three countries in a matter of 48 hours...wow!! I forgot the name of the Tokyo airport ...but it was clean ....people were extra helpful.... more than people in Singapore (I had gone around in circles looking for a help counter there.)
It was a half an hour wait for a transit pass and we boarded our plane again. The plane had been cleaned , a new pillow and blanket placed. The movie range and music had increased.....I had a japanese girl for a co-passenger and another japanese s/w professional beside her. I relaxed in my seat and promptly fell asleep.
There was hardly much to be seen from the plane....but the pilot pointed out Mt.Fujitsu. It was like a towering volcano mountain in a bed of clouds and it was amazing to see it dominate the small circular window-holes for quite sometime.
Next stop ...... LA. But I have to crash in today so I sign off here. By the way I will keep my time of posting as Indian time for today ...maybe change it when I actually get to the part about USA.

Sunday, August 07, 2005

From Singapore.....

This sure has to be a short post and it is sort of amazing to me that I can stand here and write ... guess where!
Right from the free internet at singapore airport. Its probably everything I had heard and more. For a change it is I who feels like a foreigner. Thats all I have time for now....ciao and off to LA.

A dollop of ice-cream....