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Fall 2012: A semester in review

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. It was a a semester of foolishness, it was a semester of wisdom; of incredulity, of belief; of light and of darkness; of hope and of despair. Here's a review of what happened in the last 4 months.

I moved to the US of A.

I started a PhD at Cornell University.

I lost a friend to cancer. He was 22.

I made many new friends.

I'm convinced that +Nishant Totla is the singularly most annoying person in the world.

Apple sucks.

The Settlers of Catan rocks.

I entered a complicated relationship with a commitment of at least 4 years, if I'm lucky; 7 if I'm not.

I found an advisor. He has a certificate of excellence in his office, "for successfully intimidating the most students of the ECE batch of '05."

I started work on a project towards my PhD.

Two people I know were involved in near fatal car accidents, one on the east coast, and one on the west. Just means that we've got to be really careful, as drivers here just are not used to pedestrians on the road.

America is a crazy country. Processed, frozen foods are way cheaper than fresh counterparts.

Eating out has become a daily habit. My mum has gotten used to the idea.

I can now legally drive in the whole of the US of A.

As an aside, I feel that USA is a country run by lawyers. Car accidents are referred to as "crashes" to assign blame, and overtaking becomes "passing"; a right.

Filling up forms for the IRS is more complicated than deciphering a code from the International Obfuscated C Code Contest.

I still haven't gotten used to my room-mates' sense of humour.

My advisor wants me to write in American English, and that's really hard. And just wrong!

I worked on my first successful team project in years. The last project which was so successful was my first (and only) micro-mouse (Nibbles) with +Pritish Kamath and +Nishant Totla. EmoDetect, with +rishabh animesh, +Abhinandan Majumdar, and +Aayush Saxena was a fun thing to do. We still have an unclaimed dinner coupon from Prof. Thorsten Joachims for the best project poster.

I'm no longer crazy about Starbucks.

I have a lot of self control to stop myself from hurling a mouse into the screen of my work iMac, or typing in "sudo rm -rf /", and providing my password.

My first semester at Cornell with an A+ in all graded courses. Way better than my first semester at IITB.

This probably means that I did not spend enough time on research, which sucks.

Professors will be the same everywhere.

It's fun to be on an informal note with your advisor; but it's nice to not friend him on Facebook. Otherwise, Facebook will no longer be fun. :)

Facebook thinks that meeting +Abhinandan Majumdar is one of the important events in the past year. I'm not gay! I just haven't yet met that special someone.

Going back home can never be overrated. घर का खाना is awesome!

यह यादें किसी दिलो जानम के चले जाने पे याद आती है। You never miss something until it's too far away.

I'm going home!

Comments

  1. KM21 December 2012 at 07:31

    I hope you will have a safe trip( back) to India! As to the post above, it is really funny at some points and well written. For the rest- c'est la vie. And a good read as always... And I hope your tips and insights regarding the life in the 'US of A' come handy! Keep writing, cheers.

    ReplyDelete

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