Woaaah! Finally got some breathing time to sit and write my
blog. Graduate life!! Things have begun so quickly and I’m surged into the
current of research in such a way that there was hardly any time to think about
anything else or give myself that “slow start” cushion. Days and nights are
just passing by. Every day there are these small tasks that need to be done
which if carried over to the next day could turn out to be a BIG problem. Everything
spoken to everyone, every little detail, needs to noted, carefully calculated and
made sure that it fits your schedule. Any task be it personal or professional
needs to be done with royal time management. Well it’s more like doing
professional work and then accommodating the personal chores within howsoever
less free time you get.
Returning to Purdue has been great. Being an intern here has
helped a lot to get me adjusted to everything so very quickly that I have hardly
wasted any time figuring out the way of life here. Starting with my apartment I
guess I have made an excellent choice this time especially when the name of the
apartment complex is a French one ;) Beau Jardin Apartments is a very well
connected complex to Purdue with Payless supermarket right next to it and all
the junk food chains around the supermarket. Basically you can never go hungry there. Also,
some of the most important roads like the Northwestern Avenue and Salisbury Street
are cutting across this area which makes the busses easily available. It’s
great to have 2 apartment-mates, one being the brother of my batchmate from IIT
Guwahati and the other is his friend with whom I met for the first time and
realized he is too paranoid about insects in the house apparently from his past
experiences. This led him to give me a lengthy explanation about how things are
to be kept in the house and how I am supposed to wash off everything in the
kitchen ASAP. It was quite interesting and funny as I was remembering my mom
just a week ago giving me the same instructions whilst I am living in the
States. Nevertheless, we landed up having a good conversation and I realized he
has a healthy way of life so I just expressed my wish of being healthy too and
most probably join the gym. It all went well.
Being to Europe for an exchange semester and then returning
to IIT Guwahati and then to Pune and then flying to US was really tiring.
Everything just went very fast. I had left all my scholarship in the European
bank as I was waiting for one last payment and then I had asked the banker to
transfer it to my US account. France did not fail to disappoint me one last
time. The banker did not transfer the money which resulted in me being a pauper
in the States with hardly any cash to buy even food. Luckily some good friends
in US and in France facilitated the process and I received my wire after a
week. With the account decent, I finally went to the supermarket and by now I was used
to the huge markets with infinite useless options for infinite useless things.
I saw ice creams of course and decided to buy two tubs of them ( What? They are
just for 5$ here!! ) It was death by chocolate of course and I went back home
and was relaxing during the weekend coolly enjoying the taste of USA when my
roommate (the paranoid one) came and asked me for a taste of the ice cream. Very
happily I shared the tub and he approach the tub with his spoon looked into it
and just smashed the tub on the kitchen table looked at me and started
laughing. This is by far the weirdest scene that has happened with me. I looked
at him bewildered and stunned and of course I asked him “Whaaaaaaaaaaaat?!!” He
looked at me, still trying to control his laugh and told me, “I thought you were
worried about your health and all.” I had absolutely no clue what he meant by
that and I was like “Yeah, of course I am” to which he very amusingly expressed
that finishing half a tub of ice cream in a day is gonna take me very close to
my aims, just hypothetically. In that very moment a gush of embarrassment,
horror and sadness engulfed me. I can never forget that moment. It was that day
I had decided to turn that wish into a reality and actually do something about
my health and live a healthier life. A lot of past experiences in my life have given me enough reason to believe that health is the biggest priority however
nothing ever pushed me that hard to actually go and do something about it. That
moment. That very laugh was and is a very strong motivation for me to continue
gymming and I am glad that since then I have hardly been eating junk food or
unhealthy stuff. My food intake and eating habits have changed drastically
coming here and I am so very thankful to Mr. Lalit for this. He is like the
Dark Knight roommate. Not the one you need but the one you deserve. :P My other
roommate is as cool as a cucumber. Well, he is a PhD student. ‘Nuff said! I am
glad I was able to find three other really amazing set of people in Beau Jardin
–Shitty, Aalu and Pahrool who are becoming really good friends with time. The
Lake Michigan trip organized by the ISS at Purdue kick started a series of
events which led to finding friends like John, Shitty, Aalu, Parul, Akancha, Alper,
Diogo, Felipe etc.
Regarding my lab and my research group, I am super happy and
excited to be a part of DELP which is such a dynamic design group at Purdue. Some
faces are familiar and some are new. Everyone seems to have blended really
well. Working on interesting topics like game theory, economics, design
innovation and getting to know more about cryptography, 3D printing, crowd
sourcing etc. There is so much to learn and so much to read and so less time.
Things are going well. Super hectic but so so so glad to be doing something
worthwhile. As for now, 6 days to go for the next stipend and then party wohhuu
;) Cheers!
