Gifts!

As a goodbye gift, Heidi sent me two magazines of puzzles to occupy me on the airplane, a bag of Jelly Beans (I love them!) and some sleazy postcards… Well, cheesy at least! 😉 There’s also a mystery book wrapped up which I’m not supposed to open until my birthday!

Rebecca sent me the DVDs of the Lord of the Rings movies!! Simply awesome… I’ve watched them all again in my last week here. 🙂

Shivanee & Chhavi put up with me being cranky for almost a week, that’s also a cool gift. hehe! (They also fed me well :p)

Gauri drove me all the way to Chicago.. (I had to put up with her being cranky then 😉 )

*sniff* Thanks, you guys!

Going home…

I leave for India on a flight this afternoon out of Chicago.

After months of agonising (and not posting anything here either) I finally made the decision to leave grad school and go home to India. This was something I considered as far back as last summer, but a bunch of meetings over three days with the Director of Grad Studies at my dept. convinced me otherwise and he also told me to explore options with other depts. I did and found a dept. and a lab willing to take me in and that I was interested in.

A year of mostly no work but lots of interesting new things followed. Which also included me teaching in a classroom regularly and having a great deal of fun doing it too! But alas it was not to be. For sundry reasons I find myself deciding I’m better off out of grad school for a bit and looking for a job. I can’t stay in America unless I am in school, so I have to go home.

The 20th of this month was the last day I spent in East Lansing. I spent the day finishing up sundry chores and doing a little shopping. In the evening I met up with some friends at the Peanut Barrel. It was a happy-sad occassion. In fact I feel a bit sad writing about it now.

I got home later that night and had a ton of laundry to do. And of course pack my myriad books and comics for shipping the next day! I ended up not doing the packing and catching a few hours of sleep.

The 21st morning was spent in a frenzy of packing and sealing and clearing out my closets. My friend arrived to pick me up later and helped quite a bit. We spent ages at the post office trying to ship the books back to India and I think it was past 1pm when it was all done.

We drove to Chicago right after that. My friends in Chicago were annoyed since I promised them I would be in town by afternoon and they had great plans for the afternoon and evening. Taking me to the beach, out to a club, etc.

I have spent the past week, mostly just faffing around here, meeting people, taking walks in the evenings (Oak Park is a beautiful neighbourhood.) I also found a book sale and quickly snaffled up a copy of Steven Pinker’s “The Blank Slate” for just about $4.

Yesterday, I walked over to a local cinema and watched a sub-titled version of “Hero.” This is absolutely the best Chinese martial arts film I have ever seen.

Earlier this morning, I went to the post office and mailed off a box of my Groo comics and also my phone to A in Maryland… sigh, I’m going to miss that phone too! 🙁

Happy Birthday!!

This blog is 1 year old today! Yayy!!

/me throws streamers in the air

Much has happened in one year both to me and to this blog. The changes in the blog are quite evident. From the dowdy hard to navigate page it was last year, and rare updates, it has changed to the snazzy, still hard to navigate and still rare updates. 😉 Well the updating part I hope to change with a flurry of posts over the next few days and weeks. And those posts will explore a little of what has been happening in my life! To use a violent metaphor, I’ll be killing two birds with one stone. So there.

A little better

I’m feeling a little better than my cranky self at 4am yesterday. Not much, but a little. I never did go to sleep, I just went straight to school and kept working through the day, and I managed to catch up on a bit of work and that made me feel a lot better.

It also helped that I have a fairly sweet bunch of students and they noticed right off that I was frazzled and talked, laughed and joked with me through class to cheer me up. And this is despite the fact they had an exam today and were understandably frazzled themselves!

I napped for a really short while in the evening, but all that coffee from the morning seems to have lasted me through the day. Or maybe it’s some mysterious rays from my computer that keep me awake!! hehehe…

Not Happy…

… is what I am now.

My life sucks… FUBAR doesn’t even begin to describe it. And yet I put on this happy, everything is fine face. It’s stupid, stupid, stupid!

I shouldn’t even be writing this here, but hell, it’s 4am, I’m depressed and I need the release!

I’m falling behind with my work out of sheer laziness. I recognise the signs and symptoms, but inertia prevents me from doing anything. I need a good swift kick on my butt, but in the US, everyone is too damn PC to do that. I need my mom to twist my ears and give me a good talking to. I’m too embarrassed to call her up and tell her that!

Where is this going? Where am I going? I honestly don’t know. I’ve been happy-go-lucky, follow-the-default-path for too long now. Maybe I can still change, but it’s not happening now.

Why can’t someone pay me for doing the things I like to do? Fat chance of that happening, because the things I like to do are reading, watching movies and surfing the internet. And of course, writing inane blog entries.

Look at my reading list on the right. It hasn’t changed in over a month. Wanna know why? I keep finding more books to read and never finishing the ones I’ve started!! And I’m too lazy to change the list on AllConsuming.net.

It’s Thursday and I’ve already been waiting for the weekend for over a day now, when I can be lazy and not feel guilty. Am I self-destructive? I think so!

Oh, damn, it’s 4:20am… I’m due to teach a class at 11:30am. I end this here.