While looking for a local doctor in our new hometown of Woodstock, IL, I came across this story of the "Last Doctor Standing", written by author R. Salvador Reyes, about his father in 2013. While Juliet is getting great care for her chronic conditions at all the local Northwestern Medicine (NM) facilities, she really wanted a personal-touch of a local doc who cares. Alas, that is becoming a rarity and this essay gives a behind-the-scenes look at how we got here as a country.

Growing up in India, we had a family doctor, "Dr. Patel". He treated our entire family at his clinic and sometimes even at our home. When he retired, his son took up the mantle and "Dr. Patel" continued to take care of our family. Knowing that there is someone nearby whom you can trust for any health issues, especially when the time comes to get a referral to a specialist, is so incredibly important. I miss that feeling of comfort.

On the flip side, both Naveen and Leela see the same Pediatrician and Leela absolutely adores her Dr. Pae. Any time she randomly coughs, she instantly gets excited and asks, "Go to Dr. Pae?" If we're lucky, Dr. Pae will stay at the local NM hospital for a long time. I wish she treated adults too!

While Juliet and I can see a general physician at NM anytime, it could be any one of the 4-6 different doctors. So although we get great care, it doesn't feel like seeing "Dr. Patel". Not sure how else I can explain this without sounding like an old man whining about the "good ol' days". I am inadvertently trying to recreate feelings from my childhood in the modern day, across the world. But I'm realizing that, as Sal wrote in his essay, "the small town family practitioner was a vital part of the social fabric," the keyword here might be 'was'. I might look for a Concierge medicine practice but not sure if that will suffice.

My parents just arrived from India last night and finally got to see the kids again after over two years! The last two years changed all of our lives so much and it feels great to be reunited as a family. I've been insanely busy last few months but hopefully now that they're here, I can get some free time to work on my projects, relax, and spend time with family.

I have vague early-childhood memories of my parents and their friends hooking up wired remote controllers to an old black & white TV in the early 80s to play pong. I never got to play it but soon after we got a handheld pinball video game that my sister and I loved, similar to this Nintendo. I was never good at it but it was fun. Few years later we borrowed a ZX Spectrum from a family friend for the summer and played JetPac. This was around the time PCs were becoming common in India and I got to try out the original Prince of Persia. My friends were playing Contra on NES but I never got into it.

Few years later we got our own PC, a brand new Intel 486 DX2 with 8MB RAM and 500MB Hard Disk, and over next few years my sister and I played so many games on it from Gods and Jazz Jackrabbit to Aladdin and Lion King. As I was still pretty bad at games, I discovered the wonders of Game Wizard, a background app that allowed me to freeze the number of lives I had so that even after my character died, I could play over and over again without losing. I made a few simple PC board games around mid 90s but didn't really go down the gamedev path. Then Wolf 3D, Doom, Need for Speed, and Terminal Velocity came out and my cheating apps didn't help.

After I started coding business systems in late 90s, I stopped playing games. In early 2000s, during my college years, I only finished one game, Splinter Cell because a good friend of mine, Chris, loved it and gave me tips. My favorite part of Splinter Cell was that I could save and load any time. So I would save right before I entered a room full of bad guys and keep loading the saved game until I managed to shoot them all without dying. I was terrible at it but I finished it without needed a modern Game Wizard cheat.

In 2005, I came across Falling Sand Game and loved it. It was more of a toy than a game but I'm fairly certain that when I decrypted the Java code and resized the tiny game to be full-screen, it launched the genre. I didn't write the game but I'm pretty sure I pushed the metaphorical "GO!" button and I think I also came up with the name itself. Other than this, I don't think I played any games until after I married Juliet and we tried Portal. It took us a few weeks but we loved solving the puzzles together and finished it after much effort. I listened to the Still Alive song from the game for months after. We tried Portal 2 a few years later but never completed it.

I rarely played games on my phone but Juliet tried a few ones like Candy Crush. Then my parents got me into a few word game apps but it was under 20-30mins per week. When Naveen turned 4, I installed Terraria on his Kindle and he started playing it. Couple of years ago I bought Oculus Quest and tried out Beat Saber and enjoyed it until our living room was once again overtaken by baby toys.

Last year we started playing a few games together on the Apple TV and during the initial lockdowns, Naveen and I got into Oceanhorn 2. We played it all summer and when the game was over, I was crushed because it was such a great experience just sitting in the living room with kids, looking for hidden treasures to collect on-screen. Thankfully for Naveen, he and Juliet started playing Sneaky Sasquatch soon after and I believe they are still exploring that game 9-10 months later today.

Earlier this year, I bought the new Xbox Series X and we all started playing games together again. We absolutely loved Call of the Sea and What Remains of Edith Finch. I finished Gears 5 on my own, with Naveen occasionally telling me to "go there" or "pick that up" from the sidelines, but the experience was nothing like when we played Oceanhorn because Gears is not really a kid-friendly game.

I haven't started a new game with Juliet yet but after trying out a LOT of different games, Naveen and I finally have a new game we love to explore together, Outer Worlds. It is a surprisingly feature-packed game with so much to explore, ton of player customization and upgrades, and great story-line and interactivity. Naveen uses his experience from Terraria and suggests how I should modify my gear, barter items, or select newly unlocked perks. We haven't finished it but we've explored a lot of the game already and can't wait to see where it goes.

Three decades after getting my hands on a video game, I am still terrible at them. I can barely fight an enemy boss without half a dozen attempts to save and reload. I often get lost and have to go into the same rooms and hallways repeatedly just to find my bearings. And despite all of it, I thoroughly enjoy playing video games, especially with family. I miss the days my sister and I would stay up all night just to get past one tricky level. Now I get to relive those exciting moments and nerve-racking emotions again with Naveen in every new game we try, and someday maybe with Leela.

Books, films, TV shows, and music each have their own place in my heart when I want to engage in passive entertainment. Board games and outdoors adventures are wonderful for active entertainment. But video games for me hit the perfect spot as a blend of both active and passive activity and best of all, since I am so bad at them, last for weeks and even months! And I think it is this prolonged participation in each particular game that leaves such deep, wonderful memories in my mind. Because when we're playing a new game, I am living in that world for a long time, unlike a 2-3 hour movie or a few evenings worth of reading a good book.

I have watched every Marvel and DC movie made in the last 20 years, most of them multiple times. Last summer we spent over 120 hours playing Oceanhorn. That's twice as long as all of these movies combined and then some. And best of all, I spent every single one of those hours engaging with Naveen, asking him why he wants to go there or pick that up, letting him come up with the winning strategy, working with him on his decision-making process. Sure, at the end of the day it's all just games but we needed the escape from reality when Juliet was alone in the hospital after her diagnosis of MS. And now while we await the results of her secondary, possible diagnosis of Myasthenia Gravis, I'm just glad that Juliet seems interested in playing Fallout 4 next.

Last week, we went to court to attend the final adoption hearing for our baby girl Leela. Due to the numerous state-wide cancellations in light of COVID-19, it turned out to be a private, memorable event. We met with our wonderful attorney, walked into the court as a complete family, baby Leela in arms, Naveen rocking a Super-Brother cape, and met the judge who heard our case. It was a brief 5-minute affair and at the end of it, the judge declared that Leela is now recognized by the State of Florida to be a part of our family in every single way that Naveen is. My parents were there with us to share the culmination of what I can only describe as a four-year journey towards becoming the family that Juliet and I dreamed of, so many years ago.

A couple of days after the court date, my parents were on the flight back to India, just in time before India imposed travel restrictions. This past Thursday I found myself alone at home with the two kids, looking up virtual museum tours. Juliet's been home last couple of days and I finally got some time to catch up on my projects.

Originally I had planned on taking the kids to museums, libraries, and nature parks every day after my parents left for India but now, I'm just staying home with the kids until the situation changes. I do worry about Juliet since she works in ENT/surgery and they're running out of protective gear at the hospital. But honestly, I am more proud of her than worried because right now, the world needs people like her to keep going into work and taking care of everyone.

Before kids, I always remarked that while I spend my days making things green and red in Excel, she's out there performing live-saving surgeries. Now I could say that while I spend my days playing lego and cuddling babies, she's out there fighting a global pandemic. 2020 has been an interesting year.

Leela turns four months old today! She's doing great and babbling a lot more now. She smiles, grasps objects, and sleeps soundly through the night. She's even doing something called bubbling, which Juliet says is a milestone. My parents have been here for two months, helping take care of both the kids. They're planning on going back to India in less than a month. Once they leave, I plan to be with the kids on weekdays and resume our daily museum and library outings.

Unless, of course, everything shuts down due to coronavirus. We're not panicking but we are being cautious. Best Floridian analogy I can think of is a hurricane that's already ravaged the Caribbean is slowly heading north. Maybe it misses us and fizzles out of the gulf or it's hunker down time. Only time will tell but best to keep our eyes and ears open (but not touch them without washing hands).

In preparation of my new home daycare routine, I've setup a computer desk with my dad's help, where I can work and watch the kids safely. A decade ago I had a desk with 5 vertical monitors, with a combined resolution of 5250×1680 pixels. My new system has three 4k monitors at 3840×2160 each which is nearly three times the pixels. The real difference is the computer needed to power it. Back in 2010, I had a beast of a PC with three graphics cards powering the five screens. Now I have a tiny Mac Mini mounted under my desk, completely invisible from the view. Additionally, all the cables are now neatly tucked away and I can adjust the desk's height as needed. I'm still waiting for some more parts but once it is all done, I will share some pictures.

The 24-hour news cycle could have unleashed an era of meticulous, nuance-driven news coverage but it gave us an echo chamber of soundbites. Imagine tuning in at 8am for public policy news, 12pm for local project updates, 4pm for geopolitical briefing, 8pm for fiscal analysis, and midnight-to-morning for a summary of global news in the past 24 hours. But instead we ended up with each hour starting with 6min of breaking news, then 12min of expression of shock, followed by 6min of reading of tweets and playback of soundbites, capped with 18min of yelling by disparate panelists. Throw in 18mins of ads and we got an hour of news. Repeat this 18 times a day with a different set of shouting faces and replay 6 of those hours between midnight and 6am and we have the global 24-hour news media format.

No matter the country, language, or channel, the format is essentially the same. You can't fault any specific entity for this because this is the natural order of any attention-seeking broadcast platform. Gravity makes all rocks fall down. 24-hour news cycle makes everyone repeat things 24 times a day. If they deviate from the norm, they lose viewers and shut down, reinforcing the format in the remaining networks.

Social media could have made all of TV news inconsequential. There is no specific air-time and the web doesn't end at 59 minutes. But it didn't fix any of TV's problems, but rather exacerbated them. Whereas TV started with experienced journalists repeating pre-approved talking points, social media gave a loudspeaker to anyone without any barriers. So whereas conflicts of interests sort-of mattered in the TV-era, nobody knows on the internet what biases someone has or which masters they serve. If it is in their interest to create outrage, they will create outrage. And boy have they championed the sport of creating outrage.

How we ended up here is relatively straight-forward. In a winner-take-all voting system, it is guaranteed that voters will end up aligning with one of two major parties. It doesn't matter how educated, rational, or compassionate the people are, if every voter can only select one person on a ballot, and whoever gets the most votes wins, it is absolutely certain that you will end up with two, diametrically opposed parties. And furthermore, over time the parties will continue to get further and further apart. If instead the voters could choose more than one candidate, preferably by ranking their choices in order of preference, then more than two parties can gain support and candidates who unite the people will win, instead of the most polarizing ones.

The same happens on the Internet when image macros, tweets, and 30-second muted video clips reduce the depth of an issue and leave you with only one of two choices - like/retweet/share or ignore. Remember ignoring is treated as dislike by social media algorithms so even if you think you are not making your opinion known, you are. When every bit of content online is judged on how much attention it receives, then only the most attention-grabbing content gets to the top. And there is nothing that gets more attention than something that causes us to fume in outrage and disbelief. How can X happen? I can't believe X said Y! Does nobody care about Z anymore?!

Our natural reaction to all of this is to exclaim that media is biased! Just like everyone has an accent but do not think they have an accent, all news is biased except the news you agree with. But biased isn't bad. Bias is natural. Our biases show where we come from, what values we espouse, what causes we are willing to stand up for. I am extremely biased in favor of legal immigration, interracial marriages, and having pets. Doesn't matter if it is suddenly proven that cats are destroying humanity or computer programmers from India will cause global meltdown in 2038. I'm not giving up my cats and I'm not voluntarily renouncing my US citizenship. I am biased and I stand by it. Biases aren't really a problem. The problem is our inability to recognize the bias in ourselves when we come across rage-inducing headlines and instantly give in to the rage.

I've been online for two decades now and not ONCE have I benefited from being instantly infuriated by something I read online. Not once has my life been better because of a visceral gut-reaction to an image stamped with some words by an anonymous troll. But I can't even count the number of times it has spoiled my mood, which most likely ruined a meal or a day trip. It doesn't matter if I was reading something true or false, important or trivial. All that mattered is that it instantly caused me to change how I felt, regardless of how my life was going normally. I could be having the best day with my family and friends and suddenly breaking news ruins the moment. Two days later it comes out that the original news while true is toothless because of some nuanced stipulation, and all of my rage subsides. The overly simplified news fed my pre-existing biases and caused me monetizable outrage. People made money from me being angry and frankly, I don't want to be a part of it.

So how do I de-bias the news I am consuming? One of the favorite things I learned in a Computer Science class years ago was how to use an unfair coin to simulate a fair coin toss. An unfair coin is any coin where the odds of landing on heads or tails is not exactly 50%, say if the coin is smoothed out on one side, causing it to be lighter and landing slightly more often. Flip a fair coin a trillion times and you would expect close to 500 billion heads and 500 billion tails. But flip an unfair coin i.e. a biased coin a trillion times, and you could get 430 billion heads and 570 billion tails. So how can you use an unfair coin in a fair way?

Just flip twice instead of once. If you get heads followed by tails, that's heads. If you get tails followed by heads, that's tails. If you get two heads or two tails, ignore the results and flip twice again. That's it. This method is proven to give you a fair, unbiased coin toss. Yes, you might have to flip the coin a lot of times in case you keep getting doubles initially - HH, TT, HH, TT, TT. But the first time you get either a HT or TH, you have a fair outcome.

Another trick I learned long ago that involved deciding the fair outcomes between two parties was about splitting a piece of cake into two. While both sides will fight to get the larger piece of the cake, there is a simple way to make it fair - flip a coin to let one party cut the cake into two and the other party gets to take either of the cut pieces. If the cutter tries to cheat and makes one slice much larger than the other, the picker can take the larger piece, leaving little for the cheating cutter. So it is in the best interest of the person cutting the piece of cake to make it as fair as possible.

To save me from outrage, I combine these two methods. First, regardless of how insane a news article seems, I wait 48 hours to decide. In two cycles of 24-hour news, the opposition will either properly refute or the original party will provide additional proof. I am willing to give the benefit of doubt to any side but I am not willing to give in to financially-motivated entities that profit from me to be offended. If something doesn't enrage me two days after I heard about it, then it wasn't worth being enraged two minutes after. Next, I mentally swap all proper-nouns in negative articles to people I like. If the article no longer antagonizes me with the names swapped, then I have proof of my hidden bias and no longer care about the original article.

This is not the proper strategy for journalists or media personalities with influence. They need to do what they believe is right. This strategy is like defensive driving for the Internet. I am not trying to solve the problem with the Internet. I just don't want it to corrupt my mind. Some motorists describe defensive driving as "driving as if everyone else on the road was drunk." I web-surf like everyone else is trying to indoctrinate me into their angry little cult. So far so good.

It started off as an elaborate April Fools' joke in March of 2019. I wanted to prank my friend so I wrote a simple script that used Google's new Duplex AI digital agent to call him at odd hours. The AI voice was "human" enough to fool almost anyone, interjecting pauses with "umm" and "aha", repeating the same thing using different words. Gone were the days of Prof. Hawking's monotone voice. My friend was now being nagged by a believable set of voices who were trying to book a scuba lesson in his non-existent swimming pool, buy his not-for-sale hair, and apply to his world-famous clown college! My script emailed me every hilarious interaction he had to put up with but by the sixth one, he started asking the bots if I was paying them to call him. On April 1st, I called him up and asked him to review some code I was having trouble with and waited until it dawned on him. I heard a series of loud cuss words followed by uproarious laughter.

"You know I totally believed it was real people," he said. "I mean the accents could use some improvement but I honestly believed someone was posting my number on Craigslist or something. I had no idea these were computer voices!"

Over the next few months, I got busy with life and forgot about the script until one evening I had to call my cable company. They had unexpectedly raised my monthly rate without increasing the Internet speed and I figured it was time they heard my true feelings. But I was on hold for so long, I realized that it wasn't worth my time or sanity. "Only a robot could hold patiently for 30 minutes and not get enraged at the poor customer service rep for an unexpected charge," I thought. Maybe it was frustration, maybe it was the prospect of another funny story, but I spent the night rewriting my April Fools' script to bargain with the cable company. The logs showed that it took about 3 tries before an agent at my cable company said "I totally understand you frustration. How about I revert back to your old price but you keep the new speed?" My pre-programmed script sighed "Ok, that will work I guess." I didn't want it to sound too happy lest they might think I was trying to pull a fast one over them.

I shared the story of lowering my cable bill with friends and family and they all wanted to try it out. I just needed them to send me their cable company name and account number. I already knew most of their home addresses. It took a few days but eventually I had a very detailed, realistic script written that could handle most of the top 10 cable companies and it could even change the tone when talking to supervisor. I analyzed the logs and the script worked right off the bat in 60% of the cases and took at most 3 attempts to get 95% success. I eventually created a simple online form for friends of friends to enter their cable company name and account number so I didn't have to manually type things out.

I woke up one morning with a billing alert from Google. Apparently I had used $150 worth of Duplex agent credits in one night! A quick peek at the site analytics told me things had gotten out of hand. Someone had posted my app to their Facebook page. So I did what any broke person who just got his 15 minutes of fame would do - I put a big banner on the page that said "Lower your cable bill by $10/mo" and put a $1 PayPal button under it. No privacy policy, no terms of service. Just gimme a buck and my robots will take care of your problems! It only cost me 10c/call so there was barely any risk. I figured maybe in a few months, the PayPal button will make me enough to offset the $150 I lost.

I woke up next morning with a $540 PayPal balance. Positive balance! Someone popular had mentioned my site on their podcast. By evening, it was $1400 and PayPal shut down my account thinking it was scam. Took all next day to get it unlocked. After a few days, I started getting calls from people saying Company X had started training their employees to ignore my script. So I spent a few hours increasing its vocabulary and fed it a few books on negotiation and customer service. That worked. First month sales were $24,000 and expenses were barely $500!

The next few months leading into January 2020 are a haze. I was receiving feedback and requests from people around the world at an overwhelming rate. I expanded the basic cable-company caller system to handle health insurance claims, Craigslist inquiries, and even added a business-ready module that could reschedule Outlook and Gmail appointments. But the one that went viral was the car purchase negotiator. You simply enter the car make/model and your zip code and my AI bots would look online and call up every dealership in a 100-mile radius. Then it would negotiate the best price, essentially making each dealer bid against the others in near real-time. Once the script reached optimal pricing, you would get an email summary and then could call the dealership to finalize the purchase. Only cost you $25 or if you joined the monthly Gold plan or higher, it was free.

Growth was good and rapid. Soon I had a team of talented coders, a horde of eager investors, and a following of lazy slackers who never wanted to make a phone call again. But replacing phone calls wasn't the end-of-line for us. We had stopped using Google's Duplex once Mozilla released their open-source AI agent framework Firefish, which could do a lot more than talk. It could intelligently fill out forms. So we added a premium "No Snails" service. All of your boring postal mail comes to us and we handle it. Late fees on car rental? We negotiate it down to near $0. Bill for a "free" service that keeps auto-charging you? We cancel it for you! $49/mo is not a lot to live a hassle-free life. The only mail in your mailbox is birthday cards and wedding invites. No more scary IRS bills. Our Platinum plan members got their tax issues resolved automatically.

Maybe it was the public's lack of technical understanding or their faith in our brand, but people stopped thinking of us as an algorithm company. As far as they were concerned we had a call-center full of 100,000 people fighting on their behalf. It was barely 10,000 cloud servers! By the time we needed a million servers, we had acquired ten million paying customers. We were still private, IPOs having lost their charm by the market failures in late 2020s. We wanted to do something special for our ten millionth customer and the folks in travel department came up with an ingenious solution - World Citizen plan.

We already had Full-Life management plans where we took care of almost every issue you could have from picking health insurance to finding the right job. But no matter what we did, everything was location dependent. Even if our system could help a Canadian citizen find a job in US and automatically handle the filling, mailing, and replying to all of the paperwork needed to get passport and work-visa, the person still had to go for an in-person interview for security reasons. What if we could negotiate some sort of deal between both US and Canada where citizens of either countries could bypass the interview as long as they met certain criteria? Well, since most of the politicians in both countries were already Full-Life management customers, it didn't take long for us to convince them to support our World Citizen plan. After all, we already knew our customers in more depth than any interview or background check could reveal.

As far as I was concerned, I had no interest in selling anyone's data or getting hacked. Sure we experienced the odd instance of run-of-the-mill corporate espionage but securing our systems remained our top internal goal. This helped sell the World Citizen plan to more than the North American politicians. Soon Europe, Africa, and India joined in. Beauty of the World Citizen plan was that since we managed the application and approval process on both side of member countries, our customer's didn't even have to proactively apply for a visa. Instead our travel department would suggest places for them to visit as soon as they became eligible for a visa.

It took a few years but we finally worked out the kinks in the visa-free travel process. Terrorism had always been the primary threat to visa-free travel and we found a unique solution, that our customers surprisingly didn't hate - bank with us. Once a customer moves 100% of their banking, investment, and credit accounts to our system, we could easily detect and prevent illicit activities. We weren't as interested in preventing crime as in having non-criminal customers. Shady financial stuff got you banned from our service permanently. And if you wanted to appeal, you would have to fill out the forms manually and make the calls personally. There was little incentive for criminals to join our service.

For the next decade or so, we continued to acquire more customers and around the time the ten billionth baby was born, we added our third billionth customer. Of these three billion paying customers, 400 million were on the World Citizens plan. We were essentially the fifth largest nation in the world albeit without sovereign borders, currency, or elected officials. We did have a flag though and although it wasn't planted on any planet or moon, it was quite popular among new customers.

Things seemed to be going well for us and our customers well into the mid-2040s but then things took a turn for the worse quite quickly. Our non-customers revolted globally and continued to do so with an unyielding frenzy. We all understood why but we didn't know what we could do that didn't further spread violence. They either made too little to afford our service or had history (criminal or objectionable as per our internal standards) that prevented them from signing up for even the Bronze plans. These folks rarely got approved for visas now that most of the UN countries had signed up to the World Citizens registry. They had a hard time beating our AI at finding decent jobs, dates, or even restaurant reservations. Our AI lawyers beat their AI-aided human lawyers in 90% of the cases and our banking system was better insured than most countries' reserve banks. In nutshell, if you were our customer, you did not have to worry about bureaucracy. Sure it cost you a bit more to get your kid enrolled in a prestigious school but you can be sure that once you set a $3500/mo budget, our system found the most optimal school that fit your budget, education goals, and even your morning commute. The school didn't have to update their enrollment process or website. Our system did everything like you as a human would have via phone, snail mail, and web, just at a thousandth of the cost and with nary a care.

As proud as we were of everything we did for our 3/10th of the human population, it wasn't great to be part of the other 7/10th. So after a few tumultuous years, on Jan 1st 2050, we made the entry-level plan free for everyone without a bad history. Bam! Five billion new users in a day! The rest were mostly kids under 13 or ineligible to sign up.

Looking back at my life, I am proud to say that I helped improve the world in my own unique way. No, I didn't cure cancer and didn't eradicate world hunger. I barely donated to charity beyond what my Full-Life Tax AI suggested. But I'd like to think that I made the world a better place because I got rid of stress and misery on a global scale. We are all but human. I never expected us flawed humans to always do the right thing and I could never convince politicians to fix the laws or update their convoluted processes. All I could do was write a few automated scripts to make living less bothersome. Who knew it could end up touching so many lives! And to think it all started as a joke online.

This will be a series of long blog entries because it is my attempt to put into words an idea that has been percolating in my head for more than a few years now. Ever since I figured out what newspapers were as a kid, I have attempted to soak up every bit of information I come across, in an attempt to build my grand unified theory of the human experience. Two decades ago I logged on to high-speed Internet for the first time, a whopping 64Kb/s fast track to the information superhighway, and got hooked. The Internet is amazing. But let's back up.

It took humanity one million years to learn how to control fire. It took another hundred thousand years for us to talk right. Then ten thousand years to grow food. Followed by a thousand years to figure out machines. Only took a hundred years to master human flight. Now we are ten years into the great experiment of connecting all of humanity via social networks. And we're barely a year into every tech company walking into our homes. My hypothesis is that we humans as a collective are not ready for this. As individuals we can fly space ships and prove conjectures but as a group, we are no more capable of accepting society-wide changes than our fire-phobic ancestors would have been a million years ago.

What led me to finally write my disjointed thoughts on this topic was a remark by Dr. Milewski in his first lecture on Category Theory. He posits that humans only know how to (1) break down complex problems into simpler problems and (2) solve simple problems. Every bridge every built, every CPU ever designed, every heart ever surgically replaced relied on our ability to break down complex problems into simpler problems and then solve these simple problems. But this is not the only possible way to solve problems. Some alien civilization could solve simple problems as a byproduct of solving multiple complex problems. They could solve complex problems directly without breaking them down into simpler problems. Or they could combine a bunch of simple and complex problems and have one large complex solution to them. But Dr. Milewski argues that we humans only know how to solve simple problems. You don't have to take this as gospel or even agree with it but this is the spark that got my brain-fire burning.

I've been programming professionally for well over two decades now. No matter how complicated the problem, coders like (and better than) me all over the world break it down into the smallest parts possible and then attack each unit independently. How do you get a computer to recognize your face? First level — break it down to image acquisition, image processing, and image recognition. Second level — break down each of these into sub-problems e.g. image recognition into detection, classification, and identification. Third level — image detection can be further divided into features like edge detection, corner detection, Hough transforms etc. Fourth level — edge detection can use first-order approaches like Canny and Sobel or second-order like differential or phase congruency. No matter what field of study we pick, from art and sociology to political science and medicine, beyond third or fourth level, things sound like gobbledygook to anyone outside of the field.

But Chirag, you say, the examples you gave just made things more complex at each level, not simpler! Alas, that's the problem with how our language evolved. The simpler terms are often assigned to the most complex things. Face detection is not simpler than phase congruency. Art is not simpler than avant-garde geometric abstraction. The more general a topic is, the more complex it is, because it is composed of a thousand nested sub-topics, like a tapestry made of textile, made of multi-colored threads, woven warp and weft with picks and piles. But unlike a beautiful piece of tapestry, which we can step back ten feet and marvel at in awe, there's no way for our brains to see the big picture of billions of cellphones feeding our deepest thoughts and emotions.

As a species, we have become quite adept at solving problems. Early on we realized that we had a problem with passing knowledge from one person to next. So we made up numbers and words. Then we realized we had a problem with passing knowledge from one generation to next. So we made up lore and epics, passed down orally. Then we realized we needed something permanent, so we started writing on stones, scribes, and parchment. A few thousand years of that and we realized that a room full of manuscripts isn't enough to pass down the ever increasing volume of information humanity was generating so we came up with fields of study, education system, libraries, and professional teachers. Your college may have just built a new student activity center with virtual reality games but at its core, education today is not much different from Taxila or Plato's Academy.

So great, we figured out a solid way to education the masses. What's the problem with that? There isn't. The way we break down the universe of knowledge into fields, and sub-fields, with different degrees each taking years, broken up into gradually advancing courses is fantastic! This is how we managed to cure diseases, build dams, and send rockets into space. Good job, humanity! The problem is that this only equips us to deal with the problems we had ten thousand years ago - health, economics, and politics. Any new problem we come across, we try to shoehorn it into one of our existing models of study. Sure, we come up with new fields like operations research and management science as we broaden our knowledge-base but all of these rely on the same education system we built thousands of years ago.

Again, what's the problem with that? The problem is that we are now left to solve collective problems using tools meant for individuals. The foundation of our economic, political, and health-care systems is that each individual human is independent in their decision-making and will make the rational choice for themselves. Money is a tool meant for individuals. Voting is a tool meant for individuals. Proper diet and exercise is a tool meant for individuals. It's not my business if you go broke shorting stocks, vote for a guy who wears a boot as a hat, or eat cheesecake for breakfast, you are a free human with the liberty to do as you damn well please. Better yet, we even have laws that protect me if your actions or in-actions have a negative side-effect on me. We have built our society to incentivize human independence in every imaginable way and speaking as an independent human, that's a beautiful thing.

But speaking as someone who has read the news at least once in the last few years, we have some issues. We have some major, unsolvable issues. I don't mean the staples of hunger, poverty, and war. We are actually tackling these at an unprecedented rate. And we're using the tools of individuals (education, money, technology, voting) to chip away at these problems. Go humans! I mean major issues that we barely recognize, let alone know how to solve. Take for instance tourism, or rather over-tourism. Policymakers around the world are trying to curb the ill-effects of over-tourism by restricting length of stays, limiting the number of people admitted to pristine sites, raising taxes, and creating new regulations to best manage the local tourism industry. At a glance, this doesn't seem any different than lawmakers trying to stop any other unwanted human activity like drugs, smoking, or loitering. Lawmakers gonna law-make! But let's flip things around and look at the demand for tourism instead.

Why are so many people going to Easter Island all of a sudden? It is certainly not the steady increase in world population. Analysts at Skift, a travel website, say it's because of bucket lists and perfect Instagram snaps. When Bucket List, the 2007 film starring Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman first came out, nobody could have predicted that it would lead to over-tourism in the Easter Islands. Sure, things like this have happened in the past for hundreds of years e.g. Dutch Tulip mania, but this is different. It's different because of the scale and the speed. Every well-off person on Instagram from India to West Indies wants to take that perfect shot under the big Jesus statue in Rio or push up against the Leaning Tower of Pisa. A hundred years ago, relatively few people knew about these places. Now they are must-see globe-trotter destinations, shared and retweeted a million times daily.

What's the big deal, you ask. Policies will be made, locals will adjust, and a sustainable level of tourism will be achieved over time. That's how our civilized world works and it's been doing so for a few thousand years. My problem isn't with the specific act of tourism. Tourism is great. More people should travel the world etc. etc. My problem is that a small photo with a caption can change our mind. My problem is that anyone can make that photo. My problem is that the photo can spread through a vast majority of humanity in mere moments. More people have seen Psy's Gangnam Style video in a few years than the entire population of Earth in 1950!

We have built our entire society on individualism. We now have methods to influence an ever-increasing number of individuals on a global scale. We can change a hundred million minds with a single photo in an instant! And we are all addicted to this steady stream of novelty that we call the Internet. We're on it. Our parents are on it. Our kids are on a slightly different flavor of it because what we use isn't exactly cool. But we're all consuming wholesome memes, outrage-fueled news, corporate astroturfing, rage-inducing CCTV footage, political propaganda, and outright nonsense all day. And most of the time, we have no idea who came up with it and why.

Our brains are addicted to new and we will accept anything that's new. Refresh, close, re-open, refresh. Sort-by-latest. Top-in-last-hour. Show me most viewed. I want to feel the pulse of the world. I want to be connected to my community, my town, my state, my country, my world. It's 2018 and I must form an opinion on every breaking news story. So let me drink from the fire-hose already!

This is the Internet now. The Internet and us. All of us. Yes, even you who deleted your Facebook or don't post on Twitter. You are with us now. Just because you get your fix from a different source doesn't mean you are not one of us. This is us.

In Part 2, I hope to write more about "The Internet" part and how we got here.

I am scheduled for a cervical disk fusion surgery tomorrow morning. My parents arrived yesterday from India to help take care of Naveen while I recover. Going to bed now so I can wake up early and get to the hospital with Juliet.

We had an amazing time in Kolkata, India last week celebrating my dad's 60th birthday. It was a very short but fun-filled trip and the memories we made will last a lifetime. Earlier this year my dad said that he wanted to come visit us in Florida for the summer but I wasn't too keen on that because that would mean he would be away from all of his friends and family on his 60th birthday. So instead I suggested that we have a party in India and invite everyone.

It took about 6 months of intense planning and organization (his favorite activities) and last week about 60 of his closest friends and family arrived at Sun City Resort in Mandarmoni for a weekend of fantastic food and fun activities. From private water-park hours to foot massages on the beach, he planned countless activities to entertain everyone from kids and young adults to my 85-year old grandmother. The only thing I didn't let him plan is the game show that my sister Roshni, my wife Juliet, and I put together for all the guests last Saturday evening.

Over the past 3-4 months, I developed a customizable game-show app that runs in any modern web browser, does not need internet access, and displays videos, gifs, and team score on a separate monitor that can be hooked up to a projector. During the main event, Juliet was controlling the app from a laptop while my sister and I were walking around the room with wireless mics, coordinating the games. The games could have easily been played without the app but having a big-screen that showed funny videos, played background music, and displayed team member names and scores enhanced the audience's experience. Kind of like how well-made PowerPoint presentation can improve a product demo.

We pitted our dad against our mom in a "Race to the Big 60" and played 7 rounds of games (6 of them made by Juliet, remainder by yours truly). During each round, 3-5 guests would randomly be selected to join my dad's team and similar number to my mom's. Then we would explain the rules, Juliet would start the timer, and the conference room would erupt into a pandemonium. I am so happy that every single guest excitedly got up to play and many were trying to influence the game play from the audience. While I would love to take credit for the extraordinary audience participation, looking back it is clear that the simple reason everyone was so excited to join in was because they love my dad and this was a celebration of his lifelong friendship, generosity, and genuine affection for everyone he has ever met.

Juliet and I spent a lot of time making each game and thinking about what we could add or remove to make it more exciting, not just for the players but also the audience. For instance, in the "Auditions for Indian Idol" game where 4 members of a team sing 20 songs out loud and their 5th team member standing 10 feet away has to identify the song, we gave all the members of the audience birthday noisemakers (whistles, horns etc.). What transpired during that game can only be described as raucous cacophony.

In the end, my mom's team won narrowly by 2 points. After the game, many of his friends took the mic and shared memories and stories about him. The most wonderful gift he received was from a friend's daughter-in-law Purvi - a beautiful album of family photos with handwritten notes by all of us. Juliet and I gave him a set of custom-etched Jenga blocks and asked the guests to write a few words on each block to remind them of their friendship and love when they play the game.

Beside the games and fun activities, this was a huge experience for us because it was Naveen's first trip to India and the first time I got to hold my sister's son Aayansh in my hands. And naturally, this was the first time Naveen and Aayansh met. There were lots of cute/funny incidents but my favorite is when Naveen woke up in the middle of the night and started to pat Aayansh's back just like I do when I try to put Naveen to sleep.

So much happened during the short time we were in India that it is impossible for me to write down everything. But the most important thing that happened is that my dad spent an exciting and memorable weekend with the people closest to him and I got to see him insanely happy.

Someday in the future when life feels unfair and unbearable, be it stress, sickness, or sorrow, I hope I read the words I am writing today. I wish to remind my distressed, distant self of not the most momentous days of my life but rather ones like today that were uneventful but warm, fleeting but nurturing. We spent the whole day at home, had nice home-cooked meals, took Naveen out to play in the backyard, cuddled our pets, briefly chatted with the neighbors, played a simple board game as a family of three, saw my buddy Arthur's new puppy on video-chat, watched a series of short comedy clips with Juliet, talked to my parents back in India, paid some bills, and finished up some work projects.

Nothing amazing or devastating happened today and that's the beauty of it. Days like today are the adult-equivalent of adolescent summer months that instantly fill us with fond nostalgia. As kids, boredom was the norm and so summer adventures were exciting. As a grownup, I expect to be perturbed every day and so days when nothing extraordinary, good or bad, happens are welcome. It doesn't matter if I am going to get a surprise refund or an unexpected bill, both mean I now have to deal with additional paperwork.

Dear Future Me: Our favorite days are like today when we simply exist and experience. You and I often forget what truly makes us happy and sometimes think that material success, fame, or even recognition matters to us. I want to remind you that the only thing that you and I really care about is spending time with people and creatures we love, preferably in nature. Maybe that is not always possible but remember, that is always the goal. No matter how you feel now, just remember that today happened. And even if seems impossible, it will happen again.

Tonight is a big night - it's the first time our son Naveen is sleeping in his crib in the nursery. He's already rolling and sitting up on his own and I'm fairly certain he will start crawling in a matter of weeks. My parents have continued to be amazing and we will all (including Naveen) miss them a lot when they go back to India later this month.

Once they leave, life changes for me. Instead of hiring a nanny or sending him to daycare immediately, I am going to be taking care of him during the day when Juliet is at work. I already do most of my work later in the evening when fewer users are online so I don't think my work schedule will be impacted much. But waking up early in the mornings when Juliet leaves for work is going to be hard. I am planning on having a good, fun routine for us and will hopefully stick to it until he's ready for daycare. As worried as I am about handling the new responsibility, I am tremendously excited about doing new activities with him every day. We have yet to go on the Pinellas Trail! Or the beach!

I don't plan on making this a daddy-blog - it's just a blog about my life and right now the focus is the baby. And I gotta admit, having a baby has changed me in ways I could not have imagined. Things that used to bother me to no end, are slowly becoming non-issues and sometimes even pleasant - like interruptions during programming. I used to hate it when someone interrupted me in the middle of work or activity. But if I hear the baby cry, I pay attention immediately - whether I just sat down to work or almost finished. Most of the time it only takes a few minutes to feed/change him so it is often a welcome break from hours of non-stop coding.

Another drastic change I've noticed is that I have nearly stopped procrastinating. All my life I've done things at the last moment and never expected to change because that's just who I was. But now? I jump on to every chore at the first chance I get - be it changing my life insurance policy or emptying the trash. I've been wondering why I suddenly feel obligated to do my chores without delay and I can't come up with a rational reason. It's just something that happened over the last few months without me realizing. And it feels wonderful :)

I still can't believe I'm a dad now. It's been over six weeks and both Juliet and I are getting back into the routine of normal life but every few hours we take a step back and go "Wow! We have a child now." My parents had me at a much younger age so it is a bit different to compare our becoming-a-parent experiences. When I was born, there was no robotic space-ship swing or constant health monitoring.

Throughout the pregnancy, delivery, and now Naveen's infancy, I haven't made any specific plans or goals about anything. Juliet's been taking charge of planning everything from his crib setup to feeding schedule. All I have done is made myself available to her and the baby 24/7, doing anything they need. While that sounds easy on the surface, it is anything but, especially because I've always been the take-charge kind of person myself. I have my own ideas and opinions on almost everything but from the moment we found out that Juliet was pregnant, I suddenly felt like my goal was to support and provide instead of plan and decide.

After the first few days of Naveen's birth we realized how critical sleep was for both of us. I need at least 6 hours of uninterrupted sleep. She needs about 8 hours but can handle waking up a couple of times. After a bit of trial and error, we ended up with a schedule that has worked for over a month now. She takes care of him from 6am-8pm and I take over after 8pm until 6am. She gets to sleep at least 8 hours in between and I get about 5-7 hours of sleep before I start getting tech support phone calls. It's not a perfect system nor is it sustainable in the long-term but it works for us, for now.

In a few weeks my parents will be here and Naveen will start sleeping longer than 3 hours at a stretch. So we'll come up with a new routine. Then just when we're all getting used to it, Juliet will go back to work. Then after a month of another new routine, my parents will return back to India. Then we might get a nanny. Or I might reduce my work-hours over the summer to take care of him myself. Then we might put him in day care. And all of this is just in the first six months of his life.

I can't even think beyond the next few weeks at this point. That's why I'm glad Juliet's taken charge. I'd rather not worry about every doctor's visit or baby development tracking. And I kind of like staying up all night in the living room with the lights dimmed while Naveen sleeps right next to or on me. I'm listening (via headphones at low volume) to nature and science documentaries playing on my iPad all night as I code away peacefully. Every few hours I take a small break to feed, change, and soothe him.

I was pretty concerned before he was born about my role in his early life. I was never worried about being a good role model and teacher once he starts walking and talking but I did not know how I'd be able to help out Juliet while he was still a baby. But surprisingly, everything just came naturally. I don't mean I innately know how to feed, bathe, or clothe a baby - Juliet had to show me all of that (multiple times). I mean it just felt natural to me that this is what I'm supposed to do.

Before he was born, I kept thinking that I will only feel like a real father once he starts playing with toys or climbing trees, so I just have to make it through the first few years and then the fun will start. And now, I don't even want this night to end because he's resting on my chest, snuggling like I am his entire world.

Today we found out that we're going to have a baby boy!!! Juliet is doing well and so is the future baby boy. We took my parents to dinner, along with our friends Rebecca and Carlos and revealed the baby's "blue" theme via a delicious cake.

While Juliet has been super cheerful all day, my parents and I are admittedly speechless. Juliet asked me why I didn't seem as excited as her and all I could say was that I don't know how to express a lifetime's worth of prospective happiness in a single day. I'm used to being happy about a toy here and a kitten there. How does one express the sheer infinite joy of everything that awaits us in a singular emotion?

My parents are staying with us for 6 weeks, then leaving for India, and returning back in January 2015. My grandma will be here in a month and stay with us for 2 weeks. I would love for her to return back in January with my parents but at her age, I don't know if 32 hours of travel each way is doable. Here's hoping she gets to meet her great-grandson someday soon. In the meantime, I'm going to make sure Juliet stays relaxed, stress-free, and healthy.

Last Saturday, my parents & uncle/aunt arrived in Tampa. This was the first time my parents have been to the US since I came here in July 2000. They're all on a 7-day cruise right now to Jamaica and Mexico and my parents will stay with us for a couple of months afterwards. This is the first time in 15 years that my parents will be present for my birthday. Also, we haven't spent this much time together except for the 45-day vacation I took to India in the summer 2002.

Apparently I had put my blog on hold back then because I was having too much fun in real life (and also because dial-up sucked in 2002). Now I wish I hadn't, as I only have vague memories of what we did over that month and a half. Good thing broadband is ubiquitous now. Even if we do mostly mundane stuff, I hope to write it down for posterity.

Since my parents left for the cruise within a day of arrival, we didn't get much time for activities. Those will happen in the upcoming weeks. Though I did manage to wedge in a fun airboat ride in the Everglades for everyone just before I dropped them off to the cruise terminal. And best of all, they got to see our home zoo with all of the critters.

What a busy weekend we had! Juliet and I are both halfway between introverted and extroverted. We love entertaining friends and family but we can only do that comfortably in small groups for a few hours at a time. We have been trying to plan a 50-60 people party at our house for three months now but have not made any progress yet. While we haven't been able to pick a date due to circumstances beyond our control (landscaping guys took too long, house projects got delayed because of damaged shipments etc.), I think even if everything was lined up perfectly, we would still be hesitant to get started because we're just not the big-party-for-no-reason kind of people.

In the meantime, we have been inviting all of our friends to come visit us any time they want. Coincidentally, a dozen folks visited us this weekend and it was awesome. It felt like Diwali back in India! My godson Jackson, his mom, and his cousin visited us Saturday morning so they could play with our home zoo. Then my buddy Brian came over for some serious table-tennis time, followed by Juliet's friend Karen and her three kids. Sunday morning my friend from Philadelphia Megan and her husband Chris dropped by to spend an idle day by the pool. In the evening, our friends Cary and Laura stopped by to bid us farewell before they move to Arizona this coming week.

Ten years and a week ago, I moved to Florida with the help of my buddy Arthur. For the past week, I have been trying to come up with something meaningful to write about the whole decade that passed by - words of wisdom, lessons learned, top 10 most embarrassing moments - anything to summarize the ten years of life I have built here. But now I realize that is pointless because it doesn't matter if I'm still driving the same car I bought in 2004 (I am!) or gained weight (15lbs/7kgs, mostly due to my awesome beard) or have lost friends or made new ones (who hasn't?). Life happens to all of us and while I made mistakes and learned or didn't learn from them, so did everyone else in their own respective lives. All I know is that ten years ago I was alone in the whole state of Florida and this weekend I couldn't find one minute of alone time to write this entry.

We went to my old college friend Michele's wedding this weekend and had a great time. I'll post the photos soon.

Right now, we're in the middle of a lot of house projects: reorganize garage, level backyard, setup goat area, fix up bathrooms, and lots of minor upgrades. As soon as the goat area is ready, I'll share the pics.

Life's pretty busy with a lot of different things lately. Other than coding projects that keep me up all night, I've been dealing with a lot of boring but important paperwork for insurance, health, travel, and financial planning. I calculated that we pay more for insurance than any other expense except for taxes. We have home hazard insurance, flood insurance, mortgage insurance, health insurance, term life insurance, accidental life insurance, disability insurance, professional liability insurance, and auto insurance. On top of that, we pay for cellphone insurance (which I've availed of twice already thanks to my recklessness), pet health plans, and travel insurance for every trip we take.

Speaking of travel, now that I'm a US Citizen, I have to apply for a visa to travel back home to India and the paperwork for that is surprisingly exhaustive. I'm hoping that my schedule will become a bit more relaxed over the next few months once I've dealt with all of these tasks. Until then, it's just one thing on top of another every day.

As of today, I am a naturalized citizen of the United States of America. I had my oath ceremony today in Tampa and was joined by my wife Juliet, her mother, and our close friend Carlos. Due to delays in mail delivery, we found out just two days ago that my oath ceremony was to be held today. I was looking forward to inviting more people to attend but the short notice put a kibosh on that idea. After the oath ceremony, we went to the Cheesecake Factory to celebrate. Then we came home, I took a four hour nap, ate some more cheesecake and Mac & Cheese, and watched The Simpsons for three hours straight. All in all, a pretty standard American day.

On a more serious note, I am looking forward to getting my first jury summons. While a vast number of people hate being summoned for jury duty, I love the idea that the common man still gets to play a role in the judicial system. I also registered to vote today, so now I'm responsible for 0.0000000000285714% of everything the US government does.

On an even more serious note, this was a day of mixed emotions for me. As jubilant and proud as I was to become an American today, I was also humbled by the thought that I will now have to surrender my Indian passport and renounce my Indian citizenship since the Indian Constitution does not recognize dual citizenship. My Indian passport has been one of my most prized possessions, literally a proof of my identity. I've used it to prove who I am at every US Visa and immigration interview, every driver's license renewal, every mortgage signing, and even when we applied for a marriage license. While I haven't traveled much internationally to miss the various visa stamps, I will miss the "Home" address of Calcutta (now called Kolkata) on the second page of my passport, where my parents still live. Even though I've been a Permanent Resident (greencard holder) in the US for many years now, my passport still said my "home" was in India.

The flip-side of this is that I will soon get a shiny new US passport, enabling us to travel to many more countries around the world with minimal restrictions. The only countries I have been to is India, Nepal, United States, Canada, and Mexico. Now Juliet will finally get a chance to feed more interesting animals around the world!

We got back home late last night after a two week vacation to celebrate our fifth wedding Anniversary. We went on a weeklong cruise to Alaska and then spent nearly a week in Seattle and neighboring areas. Here are the Alaska/Seattle photos.

I also finally uploaded the photos from our trip to India last year.

Little over three years ago, I took a long walk and came back determined to build KType - a tool to help people with speech disabilities. It took over a year of intense independent research and development but I finally released KType Pro in late 2011. I went to India in early 2012 and beta-tested it with the inspiration behind KType - my cousin Keval - who took mere minutes to start typing full words and sentences. Eight-months later, I released KType Free to help spread the word. Throughout the process, I received unbelievable amount of support from my wife, family, friends, and even complete strangers. Best of all, I regularly received words of encouragement from actual users and their families.

In October 2012, I was contacted by a brilliant researcher-turned-CEO, Alex Levy, whose company MyVoice develops "life-changing aids for people with speech and language disabilities." Over the years I met numerous developers, speech-therapy experts, and families of people with speech disabilities and I always had a difficult time explaining to them what KType really was. Yet from the very first minute of our conversation, it was clear to me that Alex truly understood what I was trying to do with KType and he could explain the app better than I ever could. Wasting no time, I flew up to Canada the next weekend to plan the future of KType and to attend my first Halloween party.

Since my return from Canada, I worked with Alex and his team on releasing the new version of KType. I am so happy to say that KType is now RocketKeys, part of the MyVoice family of apps, and available in the Apple App Store. Tomorrow, I'm driving up to Orlando, where Alex and his team are exhibiting RocketKeys at the Assistive Technology Industry Association 2013 Conference. From what Alex tells me, we have a very popular booth in a prime location, so I should be prepared to talk to attendees all day non-stop. I can't wait!

Three years ago when I decided to change my entire life around and take such a huge career, financial, and social risk, I asked my wife what her thoughts were. Without a blink, she replied "Do it." I told her to take some time to think clearly about it because it could mean lots of personal stress and financial difficulties. She immediately said "You'll figure it out. I'm not worried." For a while, I thought she was just being nice or didn't want to discourage me by saying anything negative but now I realize, she was just being honest. She truly did believe that I would figure it all out even though at that time, I had no experience in the assistive technology industry, had never built an Apple iPhone/iPad app, had never done multi-year independent research, had no experience in building prediction engines, and had absolutely no support from anyone in the field.

It took a few years but she was right, I slowly figured it all out. And she supported me the whole time in the most-likely-to-make-Chirag-succeed-way, by telling me that "it doesn't sound too difficult for you." There are two surefire ways to encourage someone: (1) tell them it is impossible (2) tell them it is trivial. The latter works better on me because when everyone tells me it is impossible, at least I have an excuse when I fail, like when I ran just 50 miles instead of the 100 miles that I signed up for. But when someone says it is too easy for me, my ego won't let me quit, no matter how difficult it really is.

I have no idea what the future holds but I know I couldn't have gotten here without my wife's support. Juliet, I love you and hope you're ready for my next big project after this :)

2013 is off to a pretty crappy start. It started with lots of computer issues and sleepless nights, followed by the tragic death of a brilliant hacker. Then while I was in the middle of a bureaucratic paperwork hell, I got the shocking news of the untimely death of a close family friend in India.

In situations like these, you can't help but reevaluate your life's priorities. Should you work hard and save for a better future or should you make the best of today because who knows what's going to happen tomorrow? Even if you believe that it should be a balanced mix of both short-term and long-term goals, should you give up some of your long-term principles to make your loved ones slightly happier in the short-term? The problem isn't that these are hard questions to answer. The problem is that no matter what answer you come up with, life has a way of shaking the foundations of all of your assumptions, bringing you back to square one all over again.

Philosophical musings of such existential nature essentially boil down to the eternal question, "What's the point of it all?" While the question is communal, the answer is deeply personal. A few years ago, I resolved to answer this question for myself with the stipulation that no matter what happens in life, my answer shouldn't have to change. After all, if there is a point to life, it can't change just because I gained weight or lost my savings. I pondered over what makes me happy, what makes me excited, and what motivates me the most. No matter what "purpose of my life" I came up with, it seemed temporary. "Computer programming?" Who knows what's going to happen in a decade. "Raising a family?" Certainly, but it seems too generic and more of a commandment than an ultimate purpose. "Be the best at X?" Seems too selfish and if I lose my ability to do X for any reason, not a long-term answer.

After thinking about this question for days on end, I finally came up with a very simple answer that initially seems vague and pretentious but in fact has stood the test of time quite well. My purpose in life is to help others. That's it. I'll join you in saying that on the surface, it reeks of platitude and sounds patronizing. But the more I live through good times and bad, the more my resolve to fulfill this purpose strengthens. And it answers the hardest questions in life so beautifully. What's the point of it all? To help others. How do I handle tragedies? By helping others. Why do bad things happen to good people? Who knows, let's help them first!

While I can say I have found my calling, I haven't found the best means to achieve it yet. I can't afford to make generous donations to charities and I'm not the kind of person who feeds the homeless in soup kitchens. There are a million people who are more passionate about helping others directly like that than I am. What I am passionate about is building tools to help others. KType was my first serious attempt at that but it is far from my last.

Every time I hear something that makes me sad and start to question the meaning of life, I tell myself that the answer for me, is to help others. It seems like a feedback loop of perverse incentives but the sadder I get, the more determined I become to help others. My newfound defense mechanism against problems without solutions (tragedies, trauma, grief) is not to look inward but around. I don't know if that is a good thing or not but so far it's working - instead of being morose, I'm learning to be more empathic.

With condolences to the family of the recently departed Sudhakar Bhai Sampat, I remain hopeful that his memories will live on for years to come.

Flying back to Florida tonight after spending an exciting, family-fun filled three weeks in India. Should be home in about 31-32 hours from now.

I had been pretty stressed with tons of projects over the past few weeks and finally got a chance to relax a bit over the Thanksgiving holiday. I ate a lot of delicious food, slept in late every morning, added finishing touches to KType source code, worked on a bunch of pending projects & reports, and watched two full seasons of Star Trek: The Next Generation.

I also did most of the shopping for our upcoming trip to India. I can't wait to see my family! It's only been a year and a half since I saw them but it feels like a decade. Just counting down the days now.

Last night I was telling Juliet about the stories of Vikram & Vaital that I grew up reading and watching on TV as a kid in India. Feeling that I didn't give her a good enough summary of the collection, I decided to look online and found something I didn't expect.

This is the part I knew: According to the stories, King Vikram promised a sorcerer that he would capture a vampire spirit, Vaital, who hangs from a tree in a desolate forest. Each time Vikram tries to capture the spirit, it tells a story that ends with a riddle. If the king knows the answer, he must answer and if he answers it correctly, the spirit would escape and return to his tree. If Vikram cannot answer the question correctly, the spirit consents to remain in captivity. King Vikram guessed the answer 24 times and the spirit flew away each time.

This is the part I learned today: On the twenty-fifth attempt, the spirit tells the story of a father and a son in the after-math of a devastating war. They find the queen and the princess alive in the chaos, and decide to take them home. In due time, the son marries the queen and the father marries the princess. Eventually, the son and the queen have a son, and the father and the princess have a daughter. The spirit asks what the relation between the two newborn children is. The question stumps Vikram. Satisfied, the spirit allows himself to be taken to the sorcerer.

In summary, the "I am my own grandpa" story is over a thousand years old and has roots in ancient Indian tales. And the Ray Stevens song based on the story is hilarious.

After over three years, I went grocery shopping all by myself today. Usually Juliet does all the shopping and sometimes I tag along but she's been pretty busy with work lately. Now that she is qualified to assist in surgeries at a number of local hospitals, she leaves the house by 6.30am and gets home after a long 10-12 hour shift. I'm keeping pretty busy myself with my research and consulting work but thankfully I'm not as busy as her. So I've started to become more of a house-husband and help her out with chores.

It's finally starting to feel like normal life now. I hope to visit India next year and have my cousin Keval try out the KType app. For the next year or so, I want to work with him and others like him to improve KType and make it more accessible. Only time will tell what happens after that.

Juliet and I want to start our own family in a year or two and we'll most certainly need a bigger house. I bought my 750 sq. ft. house six years ago as a single, care-free guy and never imagined that someday I'd get married and need more space! While it's a bit early for us to buy a house, we still spend hours on Zillow each week, fawning at all the pretty houses with lots of rooms and space. We want a 2,000 sq. ft. house with half an acre of land or more but in the area we live in, large plots of land almost always come with a huge 5,000 sq. ft. house. Unless there is a big reason to move, we'd rather stay in this area because the weather is great, the people are nice, and we like the relaxed pace of life.

I know it sounds lazy but our long-term plan is to organize our life and standard of living such that we don't have to have full-time jobs. We want to travel, raise a family, and spend time with our loved ones without having to work 40-60 hours per week. That means while we can technically afford a gorgeous Mediterranean-style waterfront villa, we have to resist the urge to sign our lives away to the God of Mortgage and the Deity of Bills and instead live below our means when it comes to big-ticket items - house, cars, gadgets.

For now, our hunt for a mid-sized house surrounded by lots of evergreen trees in a large plot of land continues. Here's hoping we find it within a couple of years.

Happy B'day Mom! Today is also the first anniversary of our Indian Wedding! I can't believe it's already a year since we went to India. I can't wait to go back. I'm pretty sure this time we'll go in the winter season so we can travel around the country comfortably.

Last night I got back from a short vacation to see our relatives in Houston, TX. Juliet and I drove a thousand miles to Texas last Thursday and stopped by New Orleans en route for some delicious beignets. Juliet flew back home on Monday and I drove back yesterday, rocking out to 90's music for 15 straight hours. In Houston, we met my dad's maternal cousins and their ever-so-boisterous kids. It was a great experience hanging out with them, especially since none of them had met Juliet before. In the mornings and afternoons, we chilled in the pool and in the evenings, we sat around the kitchen table snacking on Indian junk food and recollecting stories and experiences.

One of my favorite things in life is to hear people say nice things about others. I don't do drama and don't much care for negativity. It is very easy to spew petty complaints but it takes a big heart to genuinely appreciate and admit how wonderful others are. Like Thumper said in Bambi, "If you can't say something nice, don't say nothing at all." So I get teary-eyed whenever I hear people praise others. It was such a wonderful feeling to hear my relatives say things like how nice my mom is, how creative my sister is, or how lucky I am to have found a wife as sweet as Juliet. I live for days like this.

Now it's back to regular life. Juliet has been working as a surgical PA for a few weeks and is getting accustomed to her busy schedule. I have been making slow but steady progress with my research project over the past few months and now that Juliet is busy all day, I can kick things into overdrive and get some serious work done. I can't wait!

This 'blog entry is being written on a laptop that is physically in India while I am sitting on my sofa in US. I'm remotely logged into my mom's new laptop so I can customize it just for her. Her laptop was loaded with so much crapware that it was unusable. Despite having 2GB of RAM and a fast CPU it was crawling. I used Skype's screen-sharing option to see what she was seeing and got her to install TeamViewer.

Once we got TeamViewer working, I took over and for the past 4 hours have been removing crap from her laptop and installing some useful applications. TeamViewer doesn't require you to create an account or give out your email. Download software at both ends, enter the remote PC's ID & pin and you're good to go. I highly recommend it for fixing family PCs.

For some time now, I've been looking for a good way to build a system to help people with speech/neurological disabilities communicate better and tonight, I found it. After my cousin Keval from Mumbai got in an accident over six years ago, he lost his voice and motor skills. Over the years, he has gained some control over his right hand but it is not enough for him to type on a keyboard or use a mouse. It appeared from some videos that my sister sent me last year that he might be able to use a touchscreen to push digital buttons so I decided to look into developing a software/hardware system customized for him.

I created a rudimentary on-screen keyboard that helped guess what he was trying to type, a "smart" version of the T9 typing-mode on cellphones. I called it KType and it used Google's AutoSuggest feature to "guess" what the next word or phrase would be. That it was a good idea was confirmed when I recently ran across Google Scribe - a simple demo that works on the same principle (and uses the same Google data-source) as KType but offers a different user-interface.

I sat with Keval for many hours during my recent trip to India to try and figure out what kind of system would work for him. Last month, I met a friend's brother who has a neurological disorder that prevents him from speaking and makes motor control very difficult. I know I shouldn't extrapolate too much from just two people's requirements but I know that if I am able to make something that works for both, it will most certainly work for a hundred others, as there are many people who have problems speaking and using general-purpose electronic devices to communicate. With all of this in mind, I started to build a list of requirements for the hardware and software platforms that I will use for the next generation of KType.

The hardware I need to use will:

1. Be cheap and affordable: After all, health-care is expensive as it is. No need to make software that only runs on $10,000 machines. Maximum hardware cost: $1000, prefer to be: under $500, sweet-spot: sub $300.
2. Be available throughout the world: If not immediately, then within a year or two at most. No NASA rocket parts, only commodity hardware.
3. Have a touchscreen: It can be used as the primary input or as the configuration panel.
4. Have good audio out: Will be required for text-to-speech.
5. Be connected: Wireless required, Bluetooth highly desired.
6. Integrate with other devices: I may need the ability to integrate with joysticks, hardware push buttons, HDMI monitors, and other I/O devices.
7. Run on battery and for many hours: So the user can be mobile.
8. Easy to reset: 9 out of 10 errors should be fixable by turning the device off and on again.
9. Relatively easy to program: This is very important for me because I don't have five years to code patiently. I want to give a working KType device to Keval yesterday.

The software I need to use will:

1. Be free from licensing issues: I want everyone to use KType without any restrictions.
2. Work on multiple hardware devices: I want to write once, deploy anywhere. I am not building a high-performance, finely-optimized video game. I just want to make code that works and is stable, even if it's not "perfect".
3. Allow users to update to latest version: I don't want to manually upgrade all the devices. Ever.
4. Perform low-level hardware-functions is necessary: If I want to create a wireless network between my selected hardware device and a webcam, the end-user shouldn't have to deal with complex configuration. I want the ability to create an ad-hoc wireless network dynamically in code.
5. Exist today in usable form: I'm not going to wait for Apple, Google, Microsoft, or Adobe to release their latest and greatest SDK before I can start coding. I need to get started right away.
6. Be fast: While initially I'll do simple things like easy-to-use on-screen keyboard, I have plans to do some very CPU-intensive processing in the future. So I can't really develop in QBasic.
7. Have an extensive set of libraries: I don't want to reinvent the wheel. I want to use the most advanced wheel freely available today.
8. Not be a fad (i.e. be around for a while): I plan on working on KType for the foreseeable future. I can't start to code it in Erlang and find that the flavor of the day is Clojure or Ruby. Last thing I want to do is a complete rewrite. So the software platform I decide to use, better be around for a long time.

Having mulled these requirements over and over in my mind for the past few months, I was starting to get disappointed that I couldn't find a viable software/hardware solution. While the Apple iPad definitely met most of my hardware requirements, programming for it in Obj-C hardly fulfilled my software requirements. Finally tonight, I came across AirPlay - a software development system that will let me write code in C/C++ and run it on a variety of hardware devices, including the iPhone, iPad, and Android devices. Though AirPlay may not meet every single software requirement immediately, with the iPad expected to get some competition in the coming months from the likes of Samsung Galaxy Tab and Archos Tablets, I think making a cross-platform software that would work on any of these devices will be the best solution for me and my users.

I started to play around with AirPlay tonight and I'm definitely excited. My iPad is setup and ready to be programmed. Can't wait!

My grandfather (paternal) passed away about 8 hours ago. He was a very kind man and made friends everywhere he went. He helped anyone in need and always remembered to ask you about your family. He grew up in pre-Independence India and was the youngest of 11 siblings. My grandparents have been married for 55+ years, persevering through financial struggles, numerous family crises, and life & death traumas.

I just reviewed news from my dad that they cremated my grandfather and distributed his ashes in the Ganges. We've all known for a while that this day would come sooner or later and were mentally prepared to accept the fate. Even when the doctors had diagnosed him as brain-dead, it did not affect me; at least he was physically present in his bed in his room in his house in Kolkata, surrounded by his family. Maybe I was subconsciously hoping that he would wake up and get better. But now that he is physically no more, I can't stop crying.

As per the tradition, my family will be in mourning for the next 13 days.

July has been tough. My grandpa (Dad's dad in India) has been on life-support for almost a week now. He's 77 years old and has suffered from multiple strokes and diabetes for years now. The doctors issued a "Do not resuscitate" order for him yesterday. I talk to my family in India a couple of times a day but there has not been any change in his condition. There's not much to talk about. I'm so glad that Juliet and I met both my grandparents last month.

I've been pretty busy with work and things are only going to get tougher over the next 3-6 months. Juliet is working hard to graduate in December and in the meantime, I'm planning on paying off all of my student loans. I'm on the path to change my life such that starting 2011, I can concentrate on research. Not much else to say except wish me luck.

We went to the beach an hour ago. The water is warm yet soothing. I'm afraid the oil spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico is going to ruin the ecosystem here. A single hurricane that hits the Florida panhandle and pulls in the oil eastward, would be enough to destroy the hundreds of beaches, mangrove forests, and marine and plant life along the entire west coast of Florida for years to come. Here's hoping that doesn't happen.

I know it took forever but I finally uploaded the 600 pictures from our Indian Vacation & Wedding. It took me about 7 hours to go through thousands of photographs from many different cameras and I haven't even begun to check out the videos (there's probably 5-6 hours of HD video footage). I will also write a detailed log of our entire trip very soon. For now, it's time to watch the season finale of Breaking Bad.

We had an amazingly awesome time in India and just got back to our home in Florida. I'm so exhausted after the 44 hour journey back. I'm also kinda sick from the change in weather, temperature, food, and water. Hopefully I won't get any sicker. I will write more soon.

We are safe and sound in Mumbai. Thankfully our flight was pretty uneventful. There was a recent plane accident in south India and everyone is emailing me and Juliet asking for an update. Our flight landed in Mumbai at 9 pm last night and we had our big reception ceremony at noon today. I met 150 relatives and family friends, most of whom I hadn't seen in over a decade. It was great meeting everything. I'll upload pics once I get some time.

We're almost done packing. We fly to India tomorrow. So excited!

My family is from the village of Balasinor in Gujarat, India. When I visited Balasinor as a kid, my dad told me that archeologists had found dinosaur egg fossils in the village. Now decades later, archeologists are calling Balasinor India's Jurassic Park. I should update the Wiki page for it to reflect the news.

This past weekend I went kayaking and camping with a group of other kayakers in the Chassahowitzka National Park. We kayaked a total of 22 miles over two days and camped out on different uninhabited islands. Check out the pics here.

I am typing this from my new iPad that I purchased for my parents. It is pretty slick and easy to use. Thankfully they will no longer have to worry about viruses and spyware. If I like using this myself then I will buy a 3G-enabled version once I come back from India. Our trip is less then a month away and I can't wait.

I just got back from kayaking with Juliet at Chassahowitzka. Last week I went kayaking around Dunedin Spoil Islands, Three Rooker Bar, and Honeymoon Island. Tomorrow I'm going to Caladesi Island. It's finally beautiful weather and I don't want to stay a minute indoors. We had a really rainy, gloomy winter this year and I have been dying to go kayaking for months now.

I did get a little sunburn from 8 unplanned hours in the sun last weekend but it's all ok now. Next weekend, my friend Arthur from New Jersey is visiting us and we plan on going kayaking too. And I'm going kayaking/camping with a bunch of other local kayakers on April 23. It will be a 35-mile kayak trail over three days and we will camp out in different places along the way. I'm pretty excited about it. Tonight, we're going to a comedy club with Sandra and Matt.

Meanwhile, my parents are planning our Indian-style wedding in India. We're so excited. Less than 45 days before we fly off to India!

I came across this article about Hindu pilgrims celebrating a Muslim warrior in Kerela. The article talks about how Hindus visit various temples and also a specific mosque as part of the pilgrimage. Most people outside of India don't know how much Indians truly respect and accept the religions of others in day to day life. Despite the frequent news stories of religious-hate-fueled riots, most Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, Christians, and Jains all coexist very peacefully. It doesn't matter if you are a Sikh or not, you get used to saying "Sat Sri Akal" whenever you come across an elderly Sikh person. You say "Eid Mubarak" to Muslims on their holy days. You say "Merry Christmas" (not happy holidays) to a Christian and you learn to say "Jai Jinendra" to Jains.

It is understood that everyone has a religion and you are not only supposed to tolerate it but accept and respect it. Sayings like "Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Isai; Aapas mein hai bhai-bhai" (Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Christians are brothers) are taught to children from early age. The truth is, teaching people to respect others' religions reinforces one's belief that their own religion has to be equally respected. On the other hand, atheists get no respect in India. "Nastik" meaning atheist is considered a dirty word. It is ok to be any religion, just not no religion.

The tiles are done! The entire house looks so much better now. I'll try to post some pictures soon. If you are in the St. Petersburg / Tampa Bay area and need tiles or flooring done at a very good price, call up Michael from MCG & Associates. Mike's entire crew was awesome and did a fantastic job.

In addition to getting new tiles, we rearranged almost every room and gave away a lot of my old furniture. The baker's rack, kitchen table + chairs, kitty post, a small sofa, and tons of smaller things are now gone. This makes the house more spacious and now we can have a guest bed setup in the office room. Now we have to get all the rooms except the bedroom painted, the bathroom renovated, and give away a lot more stuff (old clothes, computer equipment etc.)

Last few weeks I've been so busy with school and this week is no different. I still have three more weeks to go before the semester is over. Since we're going to India in May-June, I don't think I'll be able to take summer classes. So in my free time, I think I'll work on some software projects that I have been thinking of for a while. I'll share more once I get started.

So someone in Gujarat, India posted a groom-seeking-bride matrimonial ad for a "Chirag Mehta" in a local newspaper and incorrectly put my gmail.com as the contact address. For the past two weeks, I've been getting photos of single Indian women with marriage proposals in my mailbox. Juliet isn't happy.

I am 39,000 feet high up in a plane connected to the Internet. I couldn't wait to get online so I could write a few words about my race and I'm glad American Airlines has Wi-Fi now. As my track sheet says, I stopped after running 50 miles out of the 100 miles that I signed up for. After four months of intense training and considerable preparation, I ended up with a DNF - Did Not Finish. Ever since I ran my first mile in April, I had been dreading the acronym DNF. To me that sounded like failure and lack of preparation. Till the day before the race, I was terrified of ending up with an embarrassing DNF - oh the shame! And then I ran 50 miles for about 24 hours in 10,000 feet altitude and 35F temperature through mountains, jungles, and canyons paved with loose rocks, tree roots, and extremely steep slopes.

One of the greatest feelings in your life is completely and absolutely surprising yourself about your own abilities. The fear of DNF is gone and replaced by the sheer excitement of what I was able to accomplish when the odds were so severely stacked up against me. I live at sea-level in Florida, run on absolutely flat, paved, marked trail in 100F temperature with high humidity. The Grand Teton Race trail was the complete opposite and I was in no way prepared for such rocky trails and high altitude. I knew I was not training appropriately but till I actually saw the mountain trails in person, I had no idea how unprepared I was. But I couldn't give up. I was here to run an ultramarathon and I was not going to stop until I did. After 50 miles (80 kms), my feet couldn't take it anymore and I happily DNF'ed.

I have blisters on all of my ten toes, both heels, and sides of both feet. This sounds bad but the best thing is that other than my soles, I have absolutely no fatigue, muscle pain, or weakness in my entire body. This makes me extremely excited because that means my body can take 50 miles and a lot more without any engine troubles - I just need better tires. I was glad to feel completely healthy (except for my feet) because that means my exercise regimen in Florida was good. During the race I managed my food, electrolyte, and fluid intake well, I was in full control over my mind and actions, and even after 24 hours, I could have kept going.

I know I did not get a medal for finishing this time but I got more than enough encouragement to keep on running from the tons of wonderful athletes, ultramarathoners, volunteers, and race organizers. They pushed me throughout the course and kept my spirits and energy high. My friend Arthur was my pacer and flew up from NJ to make sure I kept moving forward and helped me with everything from gear, nutrition, and medical assistance. At the same time, my friend Vishal in India, Tamara in NJ, my boss Eric in Florida, and my parents and sister in India kept tracking my progress and sending me encouraging words. My family, friends, and coworkers encouraged me before, during, and after the race and that is more than I can ever ask for.

The one person who probably suffered more than me during my entire training was Juliet. For the past four months, I refused to do anything fun on Friday nights because I had to wake up early on Saturdays. Every Saturday morning I would go out running and leave her alone at home with all of the house and pet chores. Every Sunday I would sit around and be lazy so I could "recover from my long run." She encouraged me to keep training no matter how little progress I seemed to make early on. She bought most of my gear, set up the food and drinks for my runs, and even came out a few times to train with me on some of my shorter runs. And during my race, every time I returned to the base aid station after a loop, Arthur would tell me Juliet called up and said she sends me her love.

After the race, everyone asked me what my next ultra will be. Ultrarunners are serious addicts! They made lots of suggestions, especially races that I can train for while living in Florida. I would absolutely love to do more races but I don't know if I can anytime soon because of the huge time and money commitment that even short races take up. I'm taking a break from running for at least a week or two so my feet can heal up. After that, who knows. I want to get back into kayaking again and probably build something fun like our aviary in the backyard. My school starts tomorrow and I have a pretty big project at work that I need to concentrate on. I don't know how the other ultramarathoners do it but it is definitely not easy to train for one race after other. One thing I know for certain is that I loved the wonderful experience I had during this race and would most definitely do something like this again in the future when I have ample time to train. Thanks everyone for the love and support. Next time I'll bring home a medal.

Yesterday, I ran the longest distance I ever have in my entire life - 35 miles (56 kms) in a little under 11 hours. To train for the 100 mile Grand Teton Ultramarathon in September, I have been running 20+ miles every Saturday for over a month now. Most people I know run considerably faster than me though they can only run 3-10 miles at most. While millions of people run marathons each year, very few run distances beyond 50 miles. Ultrarunning, or running further than the 26.2 miles of a marathon, is a whole different experience and requires a unique set of training, capabilities, and strategies. Since many of my friends and family have been asking me about the experience, I'll post an FAQ of everything I've learned in the past few months.

Q: Um, why are you trying to run ONE HUNDRED MILES?!

Because I suck at running. In fact, I run so slow that last weekend during a 3.3 mile Adventure Run, I finished 321st out of 331 runners. I was slower than 97% of the Marine Corps Marathon finishers in 2004 and the fastest mile I've ever ran was a little over 10 minutes. Most people who can run a mile, can run it in under 8 minutes easily. I can't. However, just because you suck at something doesn't mean you give up. Instead, you do it as much as you can. So while I can't run faster, I try to run further. Three months ago when I thought about running 100 miles, it seemed like an impossible goal and it seems even harder today because now I actually know how difficult it is to run for half a day non-stop. I want to run because I feel it's something I just can't do and wasn't made to do. Proving myself wrong is my favorite hobby. Running, kayaking, or sailing are just the means.

Q: Can anyone run 100 miles? Don't you need to be in peak physical condition to run that far?

If you can run 10 miles, you can run 10 miles, 10 times. However, you can only run 100 miles if you train right. You don't have to be in great physical condition and I'll be the first one to confess that I'm not. You do have to spend a lot of hours actually running though. Most people don't have that kind of time, energy, or desire.

Q: Do you think you will run 100 miles successfully?

I don't know. I try not to think about the result. I believe there are three steps to every bold ambition. First, is to have the drive and courage to dream big. Second, is preparation - putting in the time and effort to reach the goal. And third is the result - crossing the finishing line. No matter what the goal, we have control over the first two. I signed up for a 100 mile race and I am putting myself through the gruelling training. I don't know if I will finish or not because anything can happen before or during the race. I want to start the race knowing that I prepared to the best of my abilities.

Q: How long will you take to run 100 miles?

As per the race rules, the 100 miles must be completed within a span of 36 hours. That's a pace of 2.8 miles per hour or 21 minutes per mile. I am hoping to finish in about 30 hours, with an average of 18 minutes per mile. I don't intend to sleep and hopefully will not stop for more than a few minutes per aid station. My comfortable long-distance pace is 15 minutes per mile so an upper limit of 18 minutes per mile is quite conservative.

Q: How does a person run non-stop for so long?

Running for 30+ hours non-stop means your body has to be able to do its normal functions without any interruptions. So breathing, digesting, growing hair and beard, healing wounds, fighting diseases and allergies, everything must go on continuously the whole time. The goal for me is to make my body feel relaxed like it is sitting on the sofa watching TV the whole time I am running up and down mountains. And there is only one way to do that - run long distances without stressing my body out and get my body used to it. If I am exhausted after running 25 miles, I cannot run the other 75 miles easily. But if I ran 25 miles as if it was just a minor jog, I will be much more capable of running another 25 and then another 25.

Marathon runners train very differently than ultramarathoners. They aim for speed and strength. They push their body to the limit from the first mile right until they cross the finishing line. Ultramarathoners are in no hurry to get anywhere. The saying goes that "the secret to running an ultramarathon is to start slow and then slow down." Often many good marathoners fail to finish ultras because they push themselves too hard early on.

I am incapable of running fast so I don't have much of a problem with this. I just have to make sure I don't slow down too much. I jog at a speed that feels natural and comfortable to me though it's such a slow pace that people walk right past me! However, it is a pace that I have learned to maintain. I can keep moving at that pace as if I am sitting on the sofa watching TV. When most people want to get in shape and start running, they try to run too fast too soon and end up getting side stitch (sharp pain on the sides) or worse, injure themselves. The trick is to just run slower and further. You will burn a lot more calories if you can run three more miles a day than run 10% faster.

Q: How fit are you?

Not that fit. At 5'8" tall, currently weighing 177 lbs (80 kgs), I am technically overweight with a BMI of 27. I still have a relatively high body-fat ratio (18%) and don't look muscular or skinny. I am just like your average computer programmer in every shape and form.

I did lose about 15 lbs (7 kgs) in the first two months of training but haven't lost any weight since. I actually gain a few pounds every weekend because I like to eat a lot during my long runs. I can't bench-press much nor can I lift a lot of weight. Truth be told, I don't act, look, or feel like a guy who just ran 35 miles.

Q: So then how did you run 35 miles?

By not stopping when I wanted to and stopping when I had to. Ultrarunning is 99% mental and 1% MENTAL. The body is never in control and the mind must never lose control. I had been mentally preparing myself for a 40 mile run for over two weeks. I expected to run 40 miles in 12 hours after running 20 miles in 6 hours multiple times. This is the same pace I expect to maintain for my race. From the first mile early yesterday morning till the last mile at sunset, I kept a running inventory of all of my body parts and the condition they were in. It's like a video game where you keep an eye on all your soldiers, ammo, and equipment and make sure they are all taken care of for optimal performance.

Just because my feet hurt, doesn't mean I stop. Barely into the second mile, my left foot sent a message to the brain, "I'm in pain! Stop!" Had my brain listened to it, I would have run a total of 1.2 miles yesterday. Instead, my brain ran an analysis on the left foot's real-time condition and came to the conclusion that though the left foot is indeed in pain, it is stable, not on the verge of breakdown, and in no way severely in pain. So I kept running.

Over the course of the next 23 miles (8 hours), the temperature (feels like) rose from 83F (28C) to over 108F (42C) with humidity hovering at 65%. My feet, legs, arms, shoulders were all in pain but it was bearable. However, my brain decided it was too hot to continue at a good pace in this heat so I went home and relaxed for two hours in the shade. Once the temperature outside fell, I ran another 12 miles in 3 hours. At the slow pace I was going right before I stopped, I couldn't have completed 12 miles in 5 hours. My body was completely cool with pushing forward but my brain thought better. Stopping actually made me go faster. Had it not been for the high temperature earlier in the day, I could have easily gone 40 miles non-stop but there is no point in running 40 this week in blistering weather and being sick for the next month because of it.

Q: All of the above sounds horrible! Will your race be like this?

Trust me, the above felt much more horrible in person. Hopefully, the race will be quite different. I live in Florida at an altitude of 20 feet and this has been an excruciatingly hot summer. The race is in the Grand Teton area in Wyoming at 8,000 feet altitude with average daytime high of 70F (21C) and nighttime low of 40F (4C). Instead of this heat, I will actually be bundling up for most of the run. However, that also means running with more gear and dealing with low-oxygen at high altitudes.

I am planning to arrive at the race venue 4-5 days ahead of the race so my body can get acclimated to the altitude. After I donated blood a month ago, I had a first-hand experience of trying to run with 20% lower oxygen in my bloodstream. It's not going to be easy but I think I can manage, especially if I can stand to run in 108F heat. The other challenge is that the race will go up mountain peaks and down canyons while Florida is pretty flat. That's where gym training helps. I've been doing Stair Master and Elliptical machines at the gym for 2-3 hour durations at moderate speed to build my leg muscles up. Also I cross a lot of pedestrian bridges during my long runs and that gives me some training with steep inclines.

In reality, nothing can prepare me for the race as well as training on the actual race course. Since I work and live in Florida and Wyoming is a four-hour flight away from me, I just have to do whatever I can.

Q: What do you eat/drink these days? What about during the runs?

I have a pretty healthy vegetarian diet and have started to eat a little more protein than I am used to. I've been a vegetarian since birth in India and don't see any reason to change. I eat lots of fresh vegetables and fruits, drink tons of V8 V-Fusion, and avoid fatty or high-carb foods. Unlike runners who bulk up on high-carb foods right before a marathon, ultrarunners eat steadily throughout the runs.

Yesterday, I ate two foot-long veggie sub-sandwiches over the course of 11 hours. I eat one Powerbar Gel every 30-45 minutes. I drink water constantly (one sip every 15-60 seconds). I have a hydration pack that I fill up with Gatorade and sip it every 2-3 minutes. Sometimes I feel like I run solely to justify my hedonistic appetite for sugar. Of course, eating and drinking so much also means I have to take more bathroom breaks than normal but that is a good thing because it is clear evidence that my body is functioning properly and not shutting down or falling into starvation mode.

Q: Aren't you afraid of collapsing from heat strokes or worse?

Of course, I'm worried about heat strokes and thousands of other things that can go wrong during a long run. That's why I constantly check my heart rate, temperature, vision, balance, breathing, sweat-rate/salt-loss, fluid-intake, and skin irritation. One of the key lessons I have learned from my training is that nearly every bad condition is avoidable if detected early enough. A stitch in time saves nine is nowhere truer than in endurance activities like ultra-races.

If I so much as feel a pinch in any of my toes, I stop, adjust my shoes, socks, and insoles till everything feels right, and then continue. The mindset during a marathon is to continue non-stop at any cost. That's great when you have to run for another 2-3 hours but completely breaks down when you have 28 hours to go. It was actually pretty tough for me to change my mind about this because I constantly feel like I am slowing down my pace if I stop. Turns out, over the course of 11 hours, I only stopped for about 14 minutes total for the various adjustments to my shoes, socks, hydration pack, shorts, hat, headband, and water bottle. Failing to adjust any of these could have caused me to lose balance and fall, get blisters or skin abrasions, or in case of hat, headband, and water bottle, get a heat-stroke and pass out.

The most fun I had yesterday was stopping at every mile or so, filling up my bottle at a water fountain, and drenching my entire body in cool water over and over. It took only about 45-60 seconds but I gained that by running considerably faster. As a side-benefit, I avoided heat strokes and didn't collapse from exhaustion.

Q: Does the kind of gear you have matter? Won't any pair of shoes and water-bottle do?

The right gear is extremely critical! Every little piece of gear on your body will rub up against your skin constantly and drive you crazy. On some of my runs, I have desperately longed for a piece of string or rubber-band so I could keep some part of my shoe lace or hydration pack strap from moving in an annoying way. Whatever you choose, it has to be extremely comfortable and durable. This doesn't mean I spent $500 for a water-bottle but it does mean that I tried four $7 bottles till I found one that I liked and that worked well. Same with shoes, headband, and I'm afraid hydration pack. The one I have leaked during my run, causing a liter of Gatorade to flow down my shirt, shorts, and feet into my shoes and socks, making my blisters worse. I didn't even realize it till I got home for my break because my entire body was drenched by water and sweat. These are the kind of things that happen 7.5 hours into a run.

Q: Other than your long runs, what else do you need to do?

I have a pretty busy work week and have classes/homework couple of weeknights so my exercise regimen during the week isn't too intense. I try to mix in different activities to make sure I don't just exercise my feet. I swim an hour or two a week and train on Stair Master and Elliptical. I don't like running on the treadmill and prefer to train my calves, glutes, hamstrings, and quads with targeted exercises. I do some weight training with low weights and sets of 100-300 lifts. I also stretch a lot on days I feel too lazy to go to the gym. And at least twice a week I go running in the morning for 2-6 miles. The funny thing is that my long runs have trained me so well that I can recover from two hours of Stair Master within minutes.

Q: What does your wife have to say about all of this?

She knew I was a determined guy with odd ambitions before she married me so she has learned to just live with all of this. She fully supports me in all of my goals, as non-conventional they may be. She is in medical school to be a PA and studies take up most of her weekend hours. I use the same hours to train for my long runs so it works out quite well. She also makes my life much easier by buying most of my running gear and supplies for me. Oh and she picks me up when I decide that 108F is too hot to run and I'm four miles away from home. I don't think I give her enough credit for it but she's extremely supportive of my training though she keeps mentioning every now and then that I'm stupid for putting myself through this mess. Due to her school schedule, I doubt she'll be able to come to Wyoming for my race but if my weekend runs are any indication, I know I will be thinking of her every mile (mostly hoping that she'll come pick me up and take me home already.)

I'm so tired from a long-drive back from St. Augustine. Past ten days have been quite exciting. My family from New Jersey visited us and we spent three days traveling around Florida. We went kayaking in Silver Springs, indoor skydiving in Orlando, and gaming in Ybor City, Tampa. After they flew back to Jersey, Juliet and I have been taking little trips locally. Yesterday we went to Orlando to see her grandma and I decided to surprise her with a mini-vacation in St. Augustine as it was only an hour away from Orlando.

We spent the entire morning today walking around the old fort and the historic village of St. Augustine. I bought her a cute little pearl ring and we had some delicious chocolate fudge. After some yummy Mexican food we drove back home. Instead of going through the busy interstate highways, I picked smaller country roads that cut through forests and quaint old towns. It only took half an hour extra to get home but the scenery was most certainly worth it.

Neither Juliet nor I had school this past week so we were able to watch movies every other night. Star Trek is awesome, Angels & Demons is ok, and Meet The Robinsons is decent. Now it's back to busy life. Her school starts tomorrow and mine the week after. Work's keeping me busy and I have a couple of personal projects that I want to get back into. Often when I'm driving to work or school, I think of the days when I used to write longer 'blog entries. While I miss those days, I wouldn't trade wonderful days like today for anything in the world (except maybe a trip to India to see my family). It's good night for me and back to running tomorrow.

Yesterday our super-helpful immigration lawyer in Tampa filed the paperwork for my US residency. It took months to get all the documents in order but finally it's done. It will be months before I get a travel permit to go to India. Till then, it's life as usual. School's going well, work is pretty exciting, and Juliet and I are planning on a small backyard project over the next few weeks. I think the biggest news of all is that I've decided that I want to get a haircut today after work.

We had a lot of fun last week when I took Thursday and Friday off from work. Early in the morning on Thursday, we went to the lawyer's office in Tampa to sign the documents. Then after a quick lunch at Cicis, Juliet took me on a surprise canoe trip down the Hillsborough River. It was such a gorgeous day too. We went to Busch Gardens after that and saw tons of birds and animals. We spent over an hour in the aviary with lories and lorikeets. She went on two rollarcoasters and I accompanied her on one. I find my fear of heights getting worse as I grow older. We had dinner at a nice sushi place near my work and then for the first time in months, I went shopping with Juliet and bought her a pretty pair of shoes for school.

Next up, we went to see Slumdog Millionaire and immediately after that, caught the midnight premiere of Watchmen. That was a long day from 9am till 4am. Rest of the weekend we took walks on the beach and relaxed around our house watching tons of movies on cable or chilling in the backyard on the hammock. That's when we both got antsy and decided that our backyard needs a special something. Once our little project is done, I will write more about it.

I have school projects to work on all weekend and then some. I haven't had a real vacation in a long time (no, wedding in Yellowstone doesn't count as a vacation and driving to NJ/NY in winter doesn't count either) so it felt good to just take things slow for a few days. I think I'm going to take a few more Fridays off while the weather is still nice. Till then, it's life as usual.

Tonight I worked on my business school project while the Oscar ceremonies were on. I set my DVR to record the whole show and went back to working on my assignment nonchalantly. It was only when my dad called me from India and exclaimed "Jai Ho!" that I realized that my favorite musician A. R. Rahman had won the Oscars for the best original score and the best original song for Slumdog Millionaire. I said "That's so awesome" to my dad and went back to studying. Maybe I was just stressed about the project or maybe it was something else but I felt quite uneasy after that phone call. That was quite a stereotypical American hipster response coming from me, as if I have become so unfazed by media, splendor, and glitter that Oscars are passé and winning awards is dull.

Once I completed my assignment, I watched the entire Oscar ceremony in about an hour, with the gratuitous use of the fast-forward button. In true Oscar-audience fashion, I laughed and I cried, I cheered and I clapped. When it was over, I went online to read more about the Oscars and hear what others were saying. I often do that after major events, just to feel like I'm part of a global community at 1 am. To my dismay, other than the big media outlets like CNN and BBC, none of the sites I frequent cared much about the Oscars. One or two even mocked them and the winners. It was the consequent feeling of cognitive dissonance that prompted me to stay up well past my bedtime and write my thoughts down.

Americans just don't get the American Dream. They read about it in books and think it is a house in the 'burbs with a white picket-fence and a big dog. They think immigrants from all over the world come here just to buy a big house and watch the Super Bowl. I know this is what they think because I've been living here for the past eight years and by all accounts I'm living proof of having achieved it. But that's not what THE American Dream is. The American Dream that millions upon millions of people around the world aspire to achieve someday is not a mediocre life of relative stability with a two-car garage and automated bill payment.

The American Dream is being born as the youngest of eight children, failing medical entrance exam, dropping out of law college, joining film institute against family's wishes, and fourteen long years later winning a god-damned Oscar in front of the whole world. The American Dream is not the glory but the never ending struggle that one must go through while everyone around you has become complacent and already accepted the status quo as their fate. The American Dream is daring to dream that despite the millions before you who tried and failed, you have something within you that sets you apart and ever-so-slightly shifts the odds in your favor.

The saddest part about the American Dream is that for most people, it stops the moment they set foot in the country. I vividly recall my first flight to the US. I was nervous but determined. As the plane reached cruising altitude, I managed to calm my emotions down. After all, I had just bid my family, friends, and home for twenty years good bye. I told myself that I will make my parents proud and my friends will someday say "he used to sit right here next to me in class." I did not have a specific goal in mind and especially did not care about money or riches. As boring as it sounds, I just wanted to be "somebody." I just wanted my piece of the American Dream.

Eight years later, here I am. I've assimilated quite well. I have a gorgeous loving wife, lots of pets, a wonderful job, a nice house, two cars, and for the first time in my life, a real savings account. Having all of my wishes come true wasn't the American Dream. Arguing with my dad for two years to let me come to the US against his wishes, was. Having my sister determine the fate of my life because my dad asked her if I should be allowed to go to the US, was. Living alone for six of the past eight years and managing to remain optimistic about my future life, was. And yet, I haven't struggled even one-percent as much as most of the other immigrants who come here. By most standards, I've had it pretty easy. My American Dream delivered above and beyond my expectations. For most, it doesn't. It stops being a dream when the bills pile up and discrimination begins. The only glint of hope is that the kids will have a better shot at life someday.

I don't care to watch the Oscars because Meryl Streep has been nominated for the fifteenth time. I watch them because I want to see a grown man cry like a baby when he realizes that this very moment is the culmination of forty years of hard work. I watch them because I want to see lives changed and careers validated. There are no triumphant awards for programming web services or coding warehouse systems. Watching others get rewarded for their hard work is the closest that I can get to feeling like there is still some fairness in this world; that tireless efforts are eventually rewarded and perseverance pays off in the end. Watching others achieve their dreams helps me keep my dreams alive, however incomparable they might be.

The American Dream is not about money, fame, or power but about beating the insurmountable odds. The American Dream is never accepting that the best part is already over. The American Dream is achieving it and starting it all over again.

Juliet and I are in my aunt's house in North Brunswick, NJ right now. We left Florida on Friday December 19th at 10am and went to see her grandma in Deltona, FL. After that we drove to Atlanta, GA to see my friend Heather and her boyfriend Sean. We saw the famed Bodies exhibition and another very unique but eye-opening exhibition, Dialog in the Dark. I highly recommend both of these, especially the latter. We drove to Alexandria, VA from Atlanta to see my cousin Purvi and her husband Allen. We went to the Botanical Gardens in Washington DC and had some surprisingly wonderful Ethiopian food. We drove next to Philadelphia, PA and chilled with my friend Megan and her husband Chris for a few hours. It was pretty good to see her again after over two years. Finally we drove to North Brunswick, NJ and got to my aunt's house on 11pm on Sunday, December 21st almost perfectly as planned.

Earlier today we went to a local shopping center for a few hours and then went to a pub in New Brunswick, close to Rutgers University. There we had a few drinks with my friends Tamara, Syed, and Arthur. It was great seeing them after a long time and finally we topped off the evening with some truly greasy food from the infamous Grease Trucks on College Avenue.

Of course, the best part of the last few days is just seeing and talking to all of my friends and family whom I don't get to see on a regular basis though we do keep in touch online or over the phone. I'd say the best thing in life is spending time with loved ones and there's no better way to do it than drive 1,500 miles across the country and making it actually happen. By the way, it is 1,500 miles or 2,900 kilometers from the north Indian city of Srinagar to Kanyakumari, the southern tip of India. Next up on our list is New York City, Queens, Maryland, and whatever else may tickle our fancy. It is pretty exhausting but meeting everyone makes up for the tiredness. We still have another 1,500 miles to get back to Florida so we're going to need all of the energy we can get.

We are officially married! Here's pics of Mr. and Mrs. Chirag Mehta and the ceremony. It's late but we have to start calling everyone now and share the good news. Thanks to Tay's stepmom Lottie for organizing the sweet-little ceremony, dinner, and signing the marriage license as the official notary. And my friend Sandra and Lottie's friend Loretta for being the witnesses. I REALLY wish my entire family could be here. It's ok though because we will go to India and have another sweet little wedding/reception there. That would be the third wedding. Our second wedding is this Sunday in Yellowstone. What can I say... I'm Indian - weddings are a big deal to us. Instead of a three-day wedding, we're just planning on getting married three times. Maybe we'll go to Jersey in December and get married there too. Haha, just kidding!

These were my vows to Juliet:

Juliet, you gave up everything you had, just to be with me. You showed me what sacrifice, honesty, and love truly mean. Because of you, I dare to dream of a life full of love, trust, and meals that don't taste like burnt super-glue. We've broken every rule of dating, moving-in, engagement, meeting-the-parents, and now, of getting married. You taught me that together, we can make our own path and do the right thing even when the odds are stacked against us. From this day on, I promise to be the best friend you seek, the stable rock you want, and the true love you deserve.

I think all the problems of my life would be solved if human teleportation became a reality. The only thing about my life that isn't awesome is that nearly every person I love and cherish, is far away from me. Some people are a few hours away, some are across the country, and some are across the world. Often I have dreams wherein distances don't matter. So I could be having lunch with my friends in New Jersey and then walk into my room in India to say something to my mom and then walk out to my aunt's backyard in Utah. I woke up yesterday morning, forgetting that SXSW is over, and almost group-texted "Where's everyone, let's get lunch..." Everyone's too damned far.

It's 2008. My big database system at work went live today and I have never been more overworked in my life - and yes this includes four years of honors college with three jobs , two majors and a Math minor. The fact that every single person was able to use the new system to do their jobs without any major problems is sign enough that my non-traditional, over-ambitious strategy of "doing-everything-myself-and-my-way" worked. As with any large system, there will be issues to deal with on a regular basis but from all I can see, the system works exactly as I had planned. There is a lot more to be done in the coming months.

My entire family (including uncle, aunt, and cousins from New Jersey) is in India right now, touring the temples and palaces in the state of Rajasthan. My dad asked me to explain what exactly I was accomplishing in life living 10,000 miles away from everyone who loves me, spending Christmas and New-Years alone at work. I tried to sound cheerful and optimistic but it wasn't easy. Launching this system successfully was a personal goal, not a mere to-do-list for work. Now that I've done it and moreover, now that I know I can do it, the challenge is gone. It's exciting to climb Everest but I wouldn't want to shovel it after every snow-storm.

With not much left to motivate me now, it was hard to argue with dad. I could be making the same amount of money doing much less work in India and with the dollar continuously declining, probably even more there comparatively. So what am I doing here? I don't know. But know I'm ready to get back on my kayak soon with 21 vacation days for 2008.

People have out-of-body experiences. Hallucinogenics and spirits give you out-of-mind experiences. I just had an out-of-place experience. As I stood in the parking lot at Toyota, waiting for my car to get the 35,000 mile service, a feeling of unanticipated displacement overtook me. The weather felt like Mumbai whilst the brightness compelled me to believe I was in the snow covered mountains of Utah. The couple from Lebanon bickering over auto-parts expenses reminded me of Premchand's tales from the heart of rural India while the tattooed Asian guy in a tow-truck resembled a frame from a Jet Li flick. I was there, inside my mind and body, but I wasn't sure where "there" was.

Maybe I shouldn't have stayed up late last night; certainly this is due to my uneven sleep schedule. I walked inside the waiting room hoping for the feeling to subside. Instead, I started to notice obvious things to such a detached extent that they became peculiarities to be mused over. An elderly couple exchanged a few words among themselves and the only thing that I could think of was "We used to be two separate individuals minding our own business. One day we decided to hang around each other more often. It felt good so we signed official documents to make sure we hang around each other even more. Now we consult with each other about every single thing regardless of its long-term impact and importance. Sometimes we wish we had picked someone else to hang around with but too bad we signed those documents."

A service rep. walked up to an amusingly rotund woman to let her know that her car was ready for pick-up. He commented that her screaming little boy was so well-behaved. All I heard was "This is the path I have chosen in life. I end up here on a Saturday, telling morbidly corpulent women that their noisy rascals are anything but. Why? Because if I don't get three more A+ service check marks on my customer satisfaction survey forms this month then I will have to find another place to carry on this shtick. I should have been a boat captain."

The voice on the speakers announced "Mr. Mayta, your car is ready." B+ on the pronunciation. I picked up my car and left.

I'm filling out the application for the Masters of Science in Innovation Management program at University of Tampa, starting September 2008. It's a long process and I have to get many documents in order before I submit the application. I ran across my old file of school report cards (all the way from nursery to high school) and it's pretty interesting to read what my teachers and mentors said when I was a little kid in India. Here are some of the more interesting random bits I found:

• Jun 25, 1984 - Nursery: "Intelligent, but careless." A in Reading and Parts of the body, E (average) in Drawing and Coloring and Hand Work.
• Dec 23, 1986 - Pre-Primary III: "Punctuality - often comes late. Went to zoo and enjoyed himself. Behavior - tends to be mischievous at times." A in Spelling, C in Hand Writing (thank god for computers!).
• Jun 6, 1988 - 2nd Grade: "Very intelligent child; very exact, perfect and quick in his work; very cooperative and helpful to others; handwriting needs improvement." 50/50 in Number Work.
• Apr 28, 1990 - 3rd Grade: "Grasping power is very good, tends to be careless, speech training required." Won 1st prize in Three-legged Race. A in Spelling, Science, General Knowledge, and Number Work.
• Apr 15, 1991 - 4th Grade: "Intelligent but tends to be selfish and not friendly or helpful." Punctuality: C, Perseverance: A.
• Apr 17, 1993 - 6th Grade: "Sincere and obedient boy; Class Rank - 1st; Result - Satisfactory" (I don't think my class teacher liked me much.)
• May 12, 1994 - 7th Grade: "Outstanding in Volleyball; Class Rank - 1st." Weight: 51kgs / 112 lbs.
• Apr 21, 1995 - 8th Grade: "Promising student; takes interest in all games but must try to excel in one; good in rifle shooting; sober and well behaved boy." Height: 5'8 (same as today).
• May 15 1997 - 10th Grade: "Can do better; work harder; improve the quality of answers." Highest score in Language: 185/300, Social Studies: 159/200. Poor in Math: 59/100 (stupid Algebra!)

After 10th grade, personalized report cards gave way to computer printouts of standardized test results with percentile scores. TOEFL: 99%-ile, SAT: 95%-ile, GRE: 80%-ile, 4 years of college GPA: 3.9. If my work gave out report cards with little notes, I think it would still say: "Punctuality - always comes late. Takes long lunches. Must stop wearing free T-shirts and torn jeans to meetings with prospective business partners."

I also have to update my resume for the Masters application. Here's hoping I make the cut.

People that know me well, know well enough that I am completely devoid of any beliefs, faith, superstitions, and paranormal inclinations. I don't believe in ESP, ghosts, mythical creatures, or UFOs. I don't "believe" in science, rather I have a good foundation in scientific theory and principles with a pretty decent understanding of the universe we live in. I don't claim to know or understand everything and so even if I don't know what caused the Big Bang, I'm perfectly fine with my lack of scientific explanation for it. Regardless of all of this, my entire past week has been pretty damn weird.

I woke up last weekend and sent this to Tay online: "I had a dream that I was vacationing in Gujarat (a state in India) in the Gir Forest lodge house, surrounded by tigers and lions. My family was there, so were you, Anthony..." I didn't get into detail since he was leaving but the dream wasn't about the lions attacking us. They were trying to get inside the lodge to get away from something. Two days later, I came across this tragic article online: "Five Lions electrocuted by poachers in India." I hadn't seen any documentaries about Gir in a long time. I hadn't watched any Animal Planet or Discovery shows about big cats nor read any Nature articles. This was completely out of the blue. Color me spooked.

The rest of the week was full of little coincidences, too many to list. Today turned out to be yet another unusual day. I don't know what's in the air but for some reason, I was treated extremely nicely when I went to the grocery store, deli, and then later at a Chinese food place. I know everyone has days when people seem extra nice (or extra mean) but I'm talking double free food from a fast-food chain run by Pepsi. People were so nice today that I kept wondering if something was wrong with me.

A few minutes ago, I finished my food and started reviewing the stats for Chime.TV. I was about to lament that the growth is not accelerating at the expected pace when I popped open a fortune cookie to find these words: "They will be grateful that you cared enough to make it."

Like I said, I don't believe in anything. I don't believe I am here for a purpose, I don't believe everything happens for a reason. I do know that I have managed to overcome some pretty tough hurdles with support from my loved ones and a ton of luck. Lots of strange things happen in my life that I can't seem to explain. However, the fact that I don't understand why something happens, doesn't mean I am going to believe it happened because of some mystical miraculous reason. Life is just plain weird.

I'm not a big fan of productivity advice and lifestyle tips so when I casually glanced at the headline "The seven habits of highly subversive people" on reddit, I expected nothing more than a rehash of every other "Work Smart" Top 10 list. I imagine it was my disdain for this genre of articles that caused me to misread "subversive" as "productive." Now that I read the article without any preconceived notions, I can't help but pontificate about my own personal and lifestyle habits.

I'm not certain how this change came about in my personality but over the last couple of years, I have stopped buying things unless I absolutely need them. I don't go "shopping" anymore and don't order t-shirts, gifts, or cool gadgets online. I have no new collectible items to adorn my showcase and the only products I buy regularly are food and household items. I haven't even bought new clothes in years (sadly, it's starting to show.)

However, I realize now that contrary to my claim just half a year ago, I am not a bad consumer; I just spend my money differently. I've minimized buying things and maximized buying experiences. Instead of $250 to get a better cellphone, I got $150 wind-surfing lessons. Rather than spend $600 on a bigger TV, I'm spending $50/month so I can chat with my family in India every day on my drive to work for 25 minutes. The only major purchase I've made this year is a $2500 server/workstation to code Chime.TV on but that's strictly a development decision and given the expected four-year life of the PC, quite economical in the long run.

I remember asking my dad to take me to Fancy Market in Kolkata, India so he could buy cool wristwatches for me. It was a lot of fun to find a unique designs before others discovered them. Since then, a significant change in my thought process has occurred. You know how you love that one shirt or that book or that wristwatch or your lovely car? I don't. I barely care about objects anymore. My car is a mechanical device with a simple purpose to transport me around and requires regular maintenance. My computer is replaceable as long as the backups are current and my wristwatch costs $9. Stuff is merely stuff. And I refuse to allow my purchases to represent my inner-self.

I know this sounds pretty Fight-Club-esque and maybe I am going through the same disconnect with reality, after already having procured every minor item I thought would make me happier and not finding the satisfaction. It might also be that I have realized I don't have what it takes to afford a $12m house with heated pools and tennis courts and hence have opted to get out of the rat race altogether. Or my minimalism somehow makes me feel superior to the mass consumers out there and is just an elitist act to maintain my smugness. Or maybe I've woken up one morning to a fire in my apartment and realized that in times of life and death, the stuff you so gleefully bought is what gets in your way as you try to save your loved ones.

I often get caught up in long debates with my environmentally-conscious friends who think that I am single-handedly killing the planet because I am vehemently against most methods of recycling, use paper plates instead of washing dishes, and think purchasing carbon offsets is completely idiotic. While I can defend my position at length on all those issues, I would much rather explain that the best way to be green, save the planet, and be environmentally conscious, is to BUY LESS STUFF. Live in a smaller house with a bigger yard. Drive the smallest car you can manage with. Don't throw away things unless they break - upgrading for the sake of upgrading is sickeningly wasteful.

Learn to manage with less. Instead of a $600 GPS, buy a $15 Atlas. I did, and discovered that Okefenokee was only four hours away. You don't need a 650 DVD movie collection. You don't need a 32-piece set of steak knives. And despite your intellectual ambitions, you don't need a 3,200 book library. Manage with less, manage with alternatives, and manage with compromises. And with the money you saved by not buying the entire audio CD collection of Songs from the 80's, take Salsa & Merengue lessons.

I'm not the first person to say all of this either. Eradicating materialism has been the tenet of many a religion like Buddhism and Jainism. However, it's pretty difficult to give up all the things you're used to and care about. I can't give up computers and I rather fancy my kayak. Loving your pair of black shoes isn't going to destroy Earth so keep on dancing. All I'm saying is don't get in the cycle of desiring more objects, getting a more strenuous job to afford those objects, and then realizing you need more objects because your new peers have them, and working 70 hour weeks to afford these objects that you didn't even know you needed, only to find out that while you're working and buying and working and spending, you imprisoned yourself in a cage of debt, stress, and complete lack of direction.

So I say be less productive, less materialistic, and less successful and be more adventurous, more leisurely, and more content.

It's raining like cats 'n dogs in Kolkata, India and so my sister queued up tons of monsoon songs for our Indian viewers in Chime.TV Music: Hindi channel.

The first time I sat in a canoe and tried to steer it across a river, I nearly ran aground. I wanted to go straight but I kept over-correcting and so instead of slight left, I'd turn the canoe 90-degrees to the left. It was difficult for me because a kayak, while more strenuous than a canoe, is much easier to keep straight. It was only after much exasperation did I realize the simple Newtonian physics in play here - the bigger the boat, the longer it takes to turn, but once it begins to turn, it's much more difficult to change direction. If you may pardon the pun, nothing really "ground"-breaking here.

The problem is that it takes about 4-5 seconds for the canoe to change direction once you start paddling. If all you needed were two or three strokes to straighten the canoe but seeing nothing happen for 4-5 seconds, you kept paddling harder, the canoe will not only turn, it will turn much more than you intended. And now seeing it turn too much, you start paddling on the other side and keep paddling till you can see the canoe turn. Too late, now it's going to swing all the way in the opposite direction. You just can't seem to keep it going straight.

Often when I'm reading news stories, I notice how much this simple rule of momentum applies to the world in general. Most people want things to go straight and steady with only a few misguided outliers that want everything to go either far left or far right. Yet we see everywhere people trying to skew things too much to one side or the other. Why can't people realize that if they keep moving to one side, they will indeed end up at an extremity that nobody really wants? Same reason I kept running the canoe aground - I couldn't feel the slight nudges and kept thrashing till I could actually see the canoe turn. Too late.

Anytime you see something in the news about citizen's rights being abused, journalists silenced, or failed economic and academic policies being implemented and wonder why everyone can't see where this is going, it's because the system is too big to instantly react and gives no immediate visual feedback to the one's manning the rudder. By the time the system actually reacts, people are already jumping overboard. We think the world today moves at dizzying speeds and sure, in most communication-oriented aspects, it does. However, society, economy, education, politics, and all things global take years to truly show their new direction. The key is to finely hone your feelers and sense when things are brimming under the surface.

Take for instance the gradual devaluation of the dollar. Nobody I interact with on a daily basis, cares one bit about it. After all, except for gasoline, things still cost nearly the same as they did five years ago and inflation rate is within the traditional bounds. Nothing has changed. Right? In 2002, I sent about $500 to my family in India. That was nearly Indian Rs. 25,000. Recently I sent $600 and it was less than Rs. 24,500. You may say the 16% devaluation in US currency over the last five years doesn't mean much to anyone, except for a few people like me.

Brimming under the surface, is the slowly increasing US debt to the rest of the world. Nobody cares about the debt because nobody sees any direct effects. By the time you see the effects though, it would be too late. If things don't start changing soon, then within the next two decades the Euro will have replaced USD as the preferred international currency of trade, the USD will be devalued to the point where imports cost drastically more, import shortages will create underground markets for knock-offs and counterfeits, insufficient supply will cause surge in prices bringing in 1930's era scarcity in this land of plenty, lack of international faith in US stocks will "correct" the stock market resulting in massive layoffs, and economic recession will finally solve the pesky immigration problem.

This above is, of course, just far-fetched fear-mongering from yours truly and I'm hoping it never happens. However, my feelers have yet to sense the boat change course and get on the path straight ahead. Most people though, are blissfully unaware and apathetic. It's ok. They have the luxury to be apathetic. For now.

I am at work right now, on hold with Dell, trying to renew the warranty on some servers we purchased last year. I can easily whine about how awful the overall support nightmare is, having talked to over twelve people in the last two hours. But right now, I want to sadly talk about something that has been bugging me for years now - the pitiful tone and the lamenting language of the average Indian call center employee.

Having lived in India for the first twenty years of me life, I am well-aware of the social constructs, language barriers, and job market woes. So I have nothing but utter respect for the hundreds of thousands of hard-working, honest call center employees. I have a few friends in Delhi that work for outsourcing firms and many of these kids are brilliant. I am hurt every time I hear anyone stereotyping and insulting them online and offline, just for being different and hard to comprehend. I had a strong Indian-accent when I first came here and I still have problems being understood sometimes. Being packed in a cubicle with 3 others, stuck on a phone with irate customers for ten hours a day is not an easy way to feed your kids. So I understand how difficult things can be.

However, what drives me crazy is the pathetic "Sorry Sir," "Thank you very much Sir," "Please wait Sir" language that these folks are forced to use. It makes me ashamed to think that my people, even after sixty years of Independence from the British, still have to portray a public image of servitude, inferiority, and desperation when interacting with non-Indians.

The blame lies not with the workers. It lies with the management, often-times Indian, that enforces these scripted rituals of verbal enslavement. The employees maybe humble yet proud Indians but since their paycheck relies on them using these "Sir, Sorry Sir, Please Sir" interjections, they have to behave like dismal Third-World outcasts. What angers me the most is that these are well-educated, highly-skilled, respected people forced to behave like servants for some mythical foreigner 8,000 miles away. When I interact with people here in US, this is they behavior they expect of me. I'm sorry but if anyone expects me to be a sorry little Indian boy, you can bet they'll be my personal dartboard for a long, long time.

If you have ever called customer support and have been frustrated because it is hard to understand the person at the other end, realize that they have the same problem understanding you. All I can say is speak clearly and respectfully. It's not their fault your cellphone battery doesn't charge. What right do you have to insult a complete stranger solely because they sound different? You certainly wouldn't pull that on a cop with a different accent, so why are these hard-working individuals fair game for insolence? If you truly want to retaliate against the company, stop buying their crappy phones.

Now if this message ever reaches a call center employee, I have just one single request for you. Please Sir/Ma'am, be proud of yourself Sir, and boldly refuse to use the Sorry lines that your Respected Boss Sir Kindly Requested you to use Sir, Thank You Sir.

I'm here, just working on my computer stuff like crazy. I'll probably be this busy for another month or two at least. I talked to my friend Vishal in India and found out that he's engaged!!! Congrats Vishal :)

It's been over a month and my kitchen tiles are still broken.

Things not to do when you're in India: List of faux pas. I'm smiling while reading the list because it never occurred to me how much of this is so embedded in me that I do it without realizing. Nobody's allowed to enter my house with their shoes on. If my feet ever touch books or money, I stop for a second as if apologizing to the gods above. I still open all the gifts I get in private. I feel VERY odd opening them up in front of the person that just gave it to me. However, since I'm left-hand I usually don't think twice about any of the left-handed faux pas. Here's two I can think of:

• The appropriate response to "Thank You" is not "You're welcome" but rather "Mention Not." Similarly, it is perfectly normal to respond to "How are you?" with "I'm fine" unlike in the Western Countries where "I'm fine" is usually said sarcastically.
• Use of subtle sarcasm should be avoided initially since the barriers of language and cultural differences often make the humor harder to detect and your host may end up interpreting the words as displeasure or even insult.

I recommend that if you're going to visit India anytime soon and have never been there before, you read the entire list.

Ever since I came to US, I've always wondered why the Americans call the main sofa room the "living room." In India, we just refer to it as the "hall." Additionally, I encountered the "family room" and the "great room" during my four years in NJ. While the American living room doesn't have a television or an entertainment system if the house has a family room or better yet, a great room, the purpose and setting of these rooms is pretty much the same as the Indian "hall."

Nevertheless, the term family room made logical sense to me since the family would often gather around in this room after meals to watch TV or play boardgames. In case the room was huge, it was apt to call it the "great" room. Yet why call something the living room? It's not like there's another room called the dead room that people need to differentiate against.

Actually there is, rather, was. It was called the "parlour" and "in the late nineteenth century, the body of a member of the household who had recently deceased would be laid out in the parlour while funeral preparations were made." In modern homes, the parlour has been replaced by the living room "as a result of a twentieth-century effort by architects and builders to strip the parlour of its burial and mourning associations." Now one wonders, what made the architects scratch off the centuries old tradition of parlour from their blueprints?

I have a simple method to determine the cause of seemingly unexplainable societal movements - look for the industry that would benefit from the drastic change. In this case, Penn & Teller helped me out with their Death. Inc. episode. That industry is funeral homes. Funeral homes were not so common two centuries ago because every house had a parlour and only the ones without parlours would avail of their funeral services. So obviously, over the course of a few decades, the funeral home owners persuaded the builders to wipe out the parlour and replace it with something else. It was only a matter of time till some marketing genuis came up with the term "living room" to replace the parlour.

Enough history lessons. I'm gonna go watch TV in my living room now :)

On the surface, this has been a relatively normal week for me, with the usual deal of work, bills, home, chores etc. Nothing really out of the ordinary. Well almost nothing. The two read-but-unreplied emails waiting in my mailbox, sent by the two strongest humans I personally know - my dad and my uncle, keep staring at me every time I check my email, as if mutely yelling at me to hit 'reply' and type away something beautiful and worthy of their dignity. Alas, it's not easy.

My dad sent me an email last week telling me he missed me. It was so loving and sincere that when I showed it to a friend of mine, she wanted him to adopt her. Few days later, his brother, my Paresh uncle, emailed me to tell me how my cousin Keval is slowly getting better. While mentioning that he was pleased to read my views about life on my 'blog, my uncle wrote about his thoughts on life, knowledge, and relationships. It didn't occur to me until now that while millions of people live their entire lives without even saying "hello" to their parents and elders, I take for granted all the support and love in the world that I get from my family without even asking for it once. And then when someone tells me they love me or miss me, I find it extremely difficult to respond to them. Woody Allen's America does that to you.

I wouldn't even have begun writing this 'blog entry tonight had I not clicked on this video of father & son unknowingly. Team Hoyt is a father-son team of Dick & Rick Hoyt, "from Massachusetts who together compete just about continuously in marathon races. And if they're not in a marathon they are in a triathlon - that daunting, almost superhuman, combination of 26.2 miles of running, 112 miles of bicycling, and 2.4 miles of swimming. Together they have climbed mountains, and once trekked 3,735 miles across America." It sounds like typical father-son adventurous duo till you realize the son, Rick, can't walk or talk. The father pushes, carries, lifts, and pulls him from the start till the end. Every year at the Boston Marathon, this team gets the loudest, most-cheerful standing ovation. I know this particular video has some typical-cheesy music but that didn't stop me from sobbing for 4 minutes and 14 seconds, and then again for 4:14 when I hit replay. Last time I was in India, Google Videos weren't accessible from there. I think it's a good thing because I don't think either my dad or uncle will be able to control their tears if they saw this video. I mean it made me so weak in the knees that I decided to shed my fake outer-shell of "I'm so awesome and my life is so great" and admit that I sobbed and cried uncontrollably when I saw the video.

Like my dad always says, I rarely propose concrete well thought-out arguments on my 'blog entries, and usually ramble aimlessly. Today is no different. Yet, almost always, I have underlying themes. I guess tonight, it's the latent energy to persevere. By latent energy, I mean the hidden strength that these two stalwarts in my family seem to possess since birth. Ever since I was a kid, they were the two strong brothers I could always look up to for help, advice, and guidance. To me, they were and are now more than ever, the resolute pillars of persistence. In my eyes, nothing has changed, rather they both have shown time and again that they're getting wiser and more down-to-Earth by the day.

But in their eyes, something has changed. They now think of me as a mature grown-up man that they can share their views with, as equals, instead of just teaching me like I'm a student and they're teachers. That is something new to me. Suddenly, I'm seeing them in light I've never expected, as real humans with strengths AND weaknesses. While my dad and his elder brother have always tried to be my best friends, I'm new to this aspect of theirs - the side in which they stop being perfect figures of authority and become my friends with unhindered emotions and honest feelings - no pretense of being the bigger man.

But I'm so used to them being the head, the father-figure, the authority, that this closeness is leaving me speechless. The weirdness is of course that I feel completely comfortable in writing about it here in public, I guess, because I am so used to being honest and open here. Writing becomes difficult as soon as I have a specific audience.

On my 'blog, I write for everyone and no one. I write for me and for you. But in an email or phone conversation, I have to talk direct with one person and then depending on who that person is, it's either casual or formal, easy or difficult. For now, it's a new experience for me to get to know my dad and uncle on a man-to-man level. It sounds so generic and mundane when it happens to other people but like my uncle said, "as you go in deeper into life, you will open new horizons of knowledge and see different parameters of relationships."

First thing I do every morning as soon as I wake up is read my emails. Now a lot of people say that is a bad thing to do but it helps me instantly transition from the sleepy state to alert/awake state. And somedays, there's some good news in an email or two that jump starts my day with a smile.

My Paresh Uncle from Mumbai, India has emailed me a couple of times in the last week or so to tell me that my favorite 'blog reader/critic is back! His son, my cousin Keval, has been recovering slowly but steadily for over two years now. Lately, my uncle has been showing Keval the pictures I've taken while travelling around. We don't know yet if Keval likes the nature pictures. If he does, I'm going to take my kayak and camera around everywhere from now on.

As I write this, my little devil kitties are jumping and fighting all around the house. They chase each other, one of them grabs the other and pins them down, then the grabbed-one escapes, and the cycle starts all over again. I've seen their playful antics tens of thousands of times and am still amused by it each time. For now, it's time to hit the shower and get to work. I'm working on some exciting stuff!

Reading something online, I was reminded of a horror movie I saw as a kid in India. It was probably the first horror movie I saw completely. Took a few minutes but I finally found it's name: Demons. Oh the good times...

Happy B'day Daddddddy!!!!!!!

I've been trying to call India all day. No dice :( Once again my parents are going to think I forgot their b'day. It is technically impossible for me to forget anyone's b'day because I got 2 different reminder software/emails for each important occassion. Urgh.

Congrats to my cousin Kunal on his wedding! Can't believe I'm the only one left single among all my cousins now.

So I just realized all my friends are going out of the country on vacations. Arthur's out for two weeks in Poland. Michele's in Ireland for two weeks. Lanie's leaving soon for over a month in Europe. Avni's touring India for over a month. July's gonna be pretty damn boring as I won't have anyone to talk to. Oh well, least the kids will always want to play with me :)

It's good to be a beach bum. I wallowed in the ocean for over an hour today, warm water, gentle breeze, and good company. Chilled with my friend Gem who drove up from Manatee County. We laid out in the sun (technically in the shade under my beach umbrella) for a while, drinking soda, and talking about different things. I love talking to people that actually have something to say beyond what People and Cosmo tell them to. Gem moved to Florida from New Orleans last year after Hurricane Katrina. While I talked about Katrina as a national disaster last year, I never thought I'd actually meet someone directly affected by it.

It was human nature and common sense for me to think that every single person who went through Katrina would be deeply affected by it. It was, however, a big mistake on my part to automatically assume that every single person affected, would be devastated by it. She moved here while every single person she knew scattered all over the country. It's hard enough losing a friend or two, so one would think that a change this big would destroy a person's sanity. I don't recall her exact words but she said something along the lines of "Change is not a big deal when everything changes."

In a twisted way, that is so true. If you have a strict routine and even a minor step changes, you get disturbed and have to undo the change or try hard to adapt to it. Yet when the routine no longer exists or changes to drastically you cannot change it, you have to create a new routine or evolve to embrace the new. In a way, my move from India to New Jersey and then from NJ to Florida is kinda like that. Things changed so drastically I barely had time to realize how much impact the new surroundings were having on me.

Well, for dinner, we had some Pad Thai at Thai AM-2 restaurant on the beach, though I missed the taste of Siam Garden in downtown St. Pete. I can't wait to go there again sometime. Just relaxing now watching Comedy Central with Giga passed out on my lap.

Just got back from my friend Megan's wedding in Pennsylvania! CONGRATS MEGS AND CHRIS!!!!! Such an eventful and packed weekend that I am still not over the excitement. First of all, this was my first time ever seeing Megan in person and yet we felt like we'd been friends forever. Well, technically we have; known her online via Fark.com for over five years now. Chris turned out to be even cooler and much more fun than I thought. I mean I didn't know much about him to expect anything. I kept thinking he reminded me very strongly of someone famous and then it hit me... Abhishek Bachchan - famous Indian actor. I mean it's weird to be reminded of movie stars when you meet real people but the resemblance, especially the walk and body language, was uncanny. Megan was definitely the life of the entire party... laughing and dancing every other minute.

The party for me started at the Tampa Airport on Friday afternoon. Having gone to work early on Friday and leaving early, I was already tired by the time I passed through the dreadded airport security. I sit down at this Mexican food place and ask the waiter for the biggest margarita and the biggest bowl of nachos they have. Next thing I know I'm in Philadelphia. I freshened up at my hotel (which did NOT look as polished as the picture makes it out to be) and decided to take a walk around Center City, Philadelphia. I took a few pictures and just kept noticing the little unique identity marks of the city. I noticed rows of houses sharing common walls, kinda like San Fran, but with buckets of flowers hanging from the front windows.

At 9:30pm, I finally got to meet Megan! First time I see her in person and she's looking gorgeous in a bridal dress. It's kinda cooler than meeting someone at Walmart. Also met her friend Wade & Lisa, and of course, the groom Chris. We had wine and vodka, talked for a few hours, and parted ways. Next morning, i.e. Saturday, I had some continental breakfast, Meg/Chris picked me up, and we drove to Chris' Aunt Kathy's house in the middle of the beautiful rolling hills of Pennsylvania Country. Quite possibly one of the most beautiful landscaping I've ever seen in my life with waterfall, and all sorts of trees and plants, which of course is easily explained by the fact that Chris' uncle, Tom, runs a landscaping business. Oh and their neighbors had ostriches. Yes, OSTRICHES!

I met their families as they slowly arrived and we started setting up the tables under the big (30ft x 60ft) tent in the backyard. Good thing everything was pretty much setup by the time we got there and all we had to do was put up the lights and set up the bar. Gee, I wonder who took it upon himself to make sure the bar was setup right :-P Around 4pm, the guests started pouring in. The most relaxing aspect of this party was the attire - casual - jeans 'n shirt! It was more like a big bar-b-que party than some formal wedding occasion. As the sun set, it started getting cold, and Tom got his son Luke to build a HUGE campfire. I think the fire lasted from 8pm to 3am! And I made sure it kept me warm - I mean I've so gotten used to the warm Florida weather now...

As the evening progressed, most of the older guests left, leaving us kids behind. The music was on, the fire was warm, and the drinksa' floweth. I made my special California Sunset mixed drink for Chris and got two more orders for it. As I tell everyone, I'm a computer guy by mind but a bartender by heart. Around midnight, we setup our tents under the big tent - to keep us warm and protected from the harsh winds. Oh yeah, I took a tent on the plane! It was hilarious because the airport people kept looking at me funny when they saw I'm getting on a plane so I can camp out.

Sunday morning was the familiar post-party lazy-wake up chore. Got up, folded my tent, and showed all my mad sleeping-bag folding trickzzz to Megan & Chris. We had some pancakes for breakfast, packed up our stuff, said good-bye to the twenty new people I met, and drove to Chris' grandfather's house. And that is where I think I saw the most memorable country-side - in the little town of Embreeville Mill near the historic Brandywine River. I don't know much about American history but from what I learnt, every other house in this area was built sometime in 1700's and Chris' ancestors owned acres and acres of land. They were one of the first few canners in the country - canned the mushrooms that rural Pennsylvania is so famous for. It kinda reminds me of my ancestors in India because my grandparents and their parents grew up in the same family house in the village that their parents did. It doesn't matter where in the world you were three hundred years ago, life wasn't too different.

As I walked around Chris' grandpa's house, I noticed the exterior walls were TWO FEET THICK! Chris' dad (harbor-master of Longboat Key Marina in Sarasota, FL and the only other Floridian) said it took four years to actually build this house sometime in 1770's. The construction was rock-solid and the design was rustic yet timeless. The cold-as-ice wine-cellar was probably my favorite part of the house. We saw wild goats right outside their front-door and I was told by everyone to NEVER mess with a male goat - as if that was on my list of 50-things I wanna do or something :)

One of the guests at the wedding was Richard Chalfont, a famous painter. I talked to him at the party and later learnt his gift to the newly-wed couple was a beautiful painting of houses previously owned by Chris' family. Pretty amazing stuff.

After about an hour or so, we left to drop me off at a nearby train-station so I could get to the airport on time. Neat thing how the Philly airport is so well-connected to the local trains. Didn't have a problem at all. But man... the good-bye to Meg & Chris was sad... I told them normally this is the moment I say "alright guys, see you next weekend..." or "give me a call if you wanna hang out sometime..." but I doubt that's possible. It's amazing how close I felt to them as friends, even though it was my first time seeing both of them. Anyways, my train arrived on time, I got to the airport on time, and landed at Tampa after two flights, almost on time. I won't say the return trip was uneventful because there were far too many annoying people, unbearable noises, and frustrating incidents for it to be uneventful. However, I'm home now, safe and sound, and more excited than ever to get back to work tomorrow after my mini-weekend-get-away-to-Philly.

I had a kickass time with Taylor this weekend. We went to eat at random places, went to bars, played pool, went to Univ. of Florida campus, chilled all Saturday at a coffee place playing Scrabble, watched Greg the Bunny episodes for hours, drove around the city of Gainesville stopping at junk yards and antique places, and also did some brainstorming about computers and technology. The drive to Gainesville from St. Pete and back was gorgeous too. The weather's beautiful, and I-75 is actually nice for an Interstate Highway. Takes only about two hours each way.

When I got home, Tera jumped into my lap and rubbed her head all over my face and neck. Then Giga walked over from my livin room, put his head on my foot, and started purring. All in all a great weekend. And next weekend's gonna be amazingly fun too - going to visit my soon-to-be-married-friend Megan in Philly! Can't wait!

So far this year, I've been to India (for my sister's wedding), Houston - Texas, Plant City - Florida Strawberry Festival, kayaking in Fort De Soto, camping in Lake Okeechobee, and now Gainesville. On my plate for the upcoming months is Philadelphia - Pennsylvania, Raleigh - North Carolina, Savannah - Georgia, Chattanooga - Tennessee, and Seattle - Washington. Let's see which ones I get to actually visit.

I also want to drive down to beaches in South Florida. Only problem is that I don't know anyone down there. I guess it's time I made some new friends :)

While chatting online today, Tay mentioned something about inspiration. A lot of people love to be inspired. After all, nothing pumps more energy into your youthful ambitious bloodstream than the words of a "successful" achiever in your field. You can see what the pro has accomplished and as a rising star you want to get there faster and shine brighter. Or maybe you're not the alpha-male type. You just want to encapsulate yourself in the glowing warmth of inspiration and ascend towards the apex with a Buddhist sense of omniscient calm. After all, if they did it, so can you! And they said that repeatedly in their hour long self-realization speeches.

If you haven't figured it out yet, I don't like to be inspired. I'm not saying inspiration is good or bad, just saying if given the choice, I prefer not to be inspired. Just like wealth, hardwork, and genius, inspiration appears to be a very good measure of the potentiality of success. Clearly a person inspired to change the world has more chance of achieving that than someone who cares not one bit and has no inspiration to leave a mark on the planet. Just like how everyone who is rich is successful, how every person who works hard always wins, and how every genius is recognized for his or her intellect by the masses. Right? No, you say? I guess then inspiration isn't that good of a barometer either, is it?

Other than a momentary appreciation of self-worth and an inflated sense of personal capabilities, inspiration doesn't really do much, especially in the long term. Great, so you just watched an amazing play or read a touching autobiography. Or you went to see a famous CEO talk about how he grew his company from his garage to over 100 countries in under five years. Wow! Nobody can deny that such growth is anything short of impressive. But is it inspirational? Will you go home and realize "if he can do it, so can I?!"

Like this sarcastic Despair poster says, "If a pretty poster and a cute saying are all it takes to motivate you, you probably have a very easy job. The kind robots will be doing soon." Inspiration is just motivation to dream big. Shame on you if you did not automatically think you could turn your 5-person company to a 500-people multi-national and instead needed some guy to come in for an hour and teach you how to dream.

If going to a 30-minute seminar on financial planning inspires me to change my lifestyle entirely, I'd say I'm ashamed of how I was spending and planning money before. I should've realized it on my own that I was bad with finances instead of having someone tell me I've been wrong all my life in just half-an-hour. What I AM in favor of, is of course, education. If going to this financial planning seminar taught me how to better plan my retirement, more power to me. But if I need to go to a "Retirement-Planning Info-Meet" to realize that hey, someday I'm going to be 65 and I just might need money for food, then well, I'm a pretty stupid person to begin with.

Most people get inspired from momentary experiences. A speech, a book, a movie, a play. While I love change and always welcome something small changing my entire outlook on everything, I think if an intro-book about bio-genetics is all I need to inspire me to give up computers forever and take up bio-genetics as my new career path, then wow, where was I last ten years while the Human Genome Project sequenced the DNA?

Maybe, people will not feel the need to be inspired if they just keep their eyes open and see what's happening every single day. In today's world, you only get inspired if [a] some amazingly major breakthrough occurs (very very rarely) or [b] you have been living in a cave for years (most probably) and just realized that you can draw pictures on back of business cards and actually make money selling them!

I guess I feel the need to not be inspired for two reasons. Firstly, as I hinted above, the state of being inspired isn't very productive. There is a state of feeling excited and ambitious that IS indeed productive. If I realize I can connect my old and new database systems using a simple tool, I am not inspired, I'm simply excited and well, feeling quite ambitious about accurate data migration, because now I know I can. When I was inspired, I wanted to make the world a better place by writing an email client that worked in different Indian languages; currently nobody I know uses this software that took me months to code. When I was not-inspired, but rather just indifferent and in need of a small simple music player, I wrote one within days that well, just played music; over 2 million downloads in last six years and counting. Inspiration, big dreams, and castles in the sky haven't made me famous yet. Creating tools that make others' lives easy, help me though.

Secondly, and primarily, I like to dream my own dreams and I like to dream big. You cannot quite possibly insert your dreams into my head and somehow show me that I didn't dream big enough. That is just not possible. I've already thought of every single thing that I can quite possibly do as a human, rather as a super human. I've calculated what I need physically, mentally, and financially to climb Mt. Everest and definitely looked into forming my own Antarctic sub-station. I've thought about giving up everything I have so I can save the baby seals and I've considered spending my life travelling throug the villages of India teaching young and old about computers, math, and science. However, I'm not rushing to start work on my online digital-life-management suite or take up International Relationships to get a seat on a UN sub-committee for Economic Development of South-East Asia.

I guess you can call me uninspired and unmotivated. After all, I could potentially be doing any of the above yet I'm spending my spare time filling a big hole in my backyard every day so it stops looking like the surface of Mars. Lack of inspiration alright. I believe short of a few physical/mental limitations, pretty much anyone can do anything. Inspiration is basically you realizing that "HEY! I can do it too!" Well guess what? I've already realized that I can do anything I have my mind set on. And so can you! The sooner you realize that, the better it is. Inspiration is just a stage you have to go through to come to the best part of your life - actually doing things that you really want to do! Creating, molding, finishing. Above all, choosing. I choose to fix my backyard myself instead of helping cute little kitties at the pet shelter get their vaccines and medicines.

Right now, you too could be doing any particular thing from a selection of thousands of things that you have been inspired to do - writing songs, sketching meadows and hills, planning marketing campaigns to overthrow your competition, or joining a sports club. But instead, you chose to be here and read my blog. Why? Not because you've never had the inspiration to do something bigger, better, and nobler. But rather because given your particular situation in life, reading this 'blog entry is something you want to do. Inspiration can only tell you what you can potentially do. Freewill and choice is what actually determines what you do in life.

None of these inspiration-arousing speakers were talking about being inspired when they were struggling like you and I. They did not do whatever they did solely because someone inspired them or because they wanted to change the world. They did it and then realized, "Hey, maybe I can help inspire others to change the world like I did." I'm not the one to doubt anyone's intentions but it's like saying, "Hey! Now that I have completed this one particular crossword, let me give you all the words that I used so you can try to jam them into your own unique crossword puzzle and see if you can solve it." Then you go home all inspired because now you have words like seamlessness, fluidity, and ideation that you try to jam into every open row and column. Not gonna work. Get a dictionary and you'll have every word. The only way to win is to figure out which words you need, not which word you can force in.

In short, don't do something because you're blindly inspired to do it. Do it because that is the thing you want to do the most out of a list of million other things you can potentially do. And if that leads to success, more power to you. If it doesn't lead to success, at least you did something you wanted to do of your own volition.

This one's for you Tay. Took it outside a restaurant in Kolkata, India in January - proof that I didn't make the phrase up :)

Yesterday totally kicked ass. My friend Avni picked me up at around 11am and we went to the Houston Museum of Natural Science. We watched an hour-long IMax documentary titled "The Mystery of the Nile" (or was it the Monsters of the Nile?). The film was about a group of researchers who, for the first time in the world, successfully sailed from the source of the Blue Nile to the Mediterranean Sea in about 114 days.

Next up was the butterfly/rainforest display where you could walk through three levels of indoors rainforest environment, surrounded by the most colorful butterflies you've ever seen. One even landed on me! I think there's pictures but who cares about pictures when you're having a good time. We got a little hungry after that so she took me to Maggiano's in The Galleria area for lunch. We drove through downtown (and saw the Enron buildings!) then back to the museum for another IMax movie - Roar, story of wild Kalahari lions. After that we hung around the museum and saw a lot of interesting collections.

I had dinner with my cousin/uncle Rajan Bhai and his wife. We just chilled and talked about India and later called my dad and mom too. Went to bed around midnight and just woke up a bit ago. It is pretty damn cold here. I can't wait till it gets nice and warm in Florida, so I can finally go out into the ocean.

Hurricane season isn't here yet but that doesn't mean the rains will stop. It rained in my city so bad today that the roof of a major store caved in with many people under it. Good thing nobody got seriously hurt. I was very anxious about my home as the roof above my Florida room (sun room) needs fixing. I got home and discovered that it leaked a little but nothing major. I received my new mailbox but I doubt the rain's gonna clear by tomorrow for me to set it up. I'm so excited about it though - it's my first slightly big project in my house!

At work we kept getting major power fluctuations and I had to turn off all the computers and electronic devices. So I didn't get much computer work done today and instead used the time to organize my office. After we moved in early January, my priority was to get everyone else up and running. Then right afterwards, I went to India for two weeks so my office was still unorganized. Finally today I set things straight, opened all the boxes, located all my computer stuff, and put them in my desk/shelves/drawers. Anyways, the joke of the day is that I've never been so tired by NOT working all day :)

My friends came over tonight. First, Lanie came over and instantly both my kitties ran up to her, after all she took care of them for two weeks. She is absolutely the nicest "kitty-sitter" I could've ever found. She even left me a cute little 'welcome-home' greeting card with drawings of my kitties along with an X-mas sock with the phrase "I love my cat..." We sat down for about an hour and I showed all the pictures and videos I shot in India during my sister's wedding. An hour after Lanie left, my friend Liz came over with Dave, Josh, and Jessie. We chilled for a few and I showed Liz the pics & videos too. Now they all just left and I'm gonna relax for a few before going to bed.

Tomorrow, work starts. And I couldn't be more impatient - I want to get back to work so much :)

I'm back home in Florida! The entire journey from Kolkata, India to Tampa, Florida took over 40 hours but the good thing is that I got enough sleep and am not too tired. Now I'm cleaning my house, doing the laundry etc. And petting my kitties.

Word of the day: Hectic! Fifteen more guests flew in today. The guest houses are now being occupied and we have twenty or so guests coming in tomorrow by train. My dad has tabulated the arrival dates, room allocation etc. for all the guests so it's quite well organized. My Alpesh Mama (mom's cousin) will be coming in too! It's been years since I saw him.

Yesterday we didn't do much except go out for dinner to a Rajasthani Restaurant: Teej. The decoration was simply unbelievable. All the walls and ceilings were finely hand-painted - took them six months to complete the paint job! The food was exactly what I was craving for - tasty, spicy, and very filling! It was so heavy that today I'm not gonna eat anything, maybe fruits at most.

Tomorrow is the first official day of ceremonies - Grah-Shanti in the morning and Zara Hat Ke Quiz Show & Dance Floor in the evening. My dad's working so hard it makes me wonder where he's getting all his energy from. As for me, it's very different than what I was once used to. He had trained me to organize activities & events, deal with different types of guests, salesmen, workers, and of course put forth the best show possible. Now though, I feel quite incapable of executing everything up to his standards. I think the synchronicity of event planning and execution between him and myself peaked about six years ago when we organized the Yagna. Ever since I moved to US, I've slowly lost my people-skills, I guess because I'm no longer working daily in the market face-to-face with all sorts of people.

Ok back to present. My dad & cousin are setting aside the gifts for tomorrow. Every time a guest arrives from outside the city of Kolkata, they get presented with real leather wallets and purses with their names etched in golden ink. The initial few guests also received flower bouquets. As my dad is getting the gifts ready, I'm making multiple copies of the important phone numbers list - from the cell#s of all the six chauffeurs to the contact numbers for the five venues, guest houses etc. I didn't really expect my little sister's wedding to be on such a huge scale. So it's quite overwhelming.

One thing I realized amongst all this chaos (especially when you sleep in a different bed every night and shower in a different bathroom each morning) is that little things you never thought much about previously, now make you feel at "home." Like the Woody's HeadWax Web that I've been using for months now (no, this isn't paid product placement, I just LOVE it that much). Or the familiar menu system of any Nokia cellphone that I use in US, also extremely popular here in India. Little things like this, make me feel comfortable when so many unfamiliar things happen at the same time.

In addition to all the fun things, a lot of things obviously happen that make me go what the $^$#%?! For instance, I don't know or remember many of the guests that are arriving because I probably met them when I was 12, but they know everything about me. So of course, they force me to play the guess-game. You know, they come up to me in front of five people and asked "Guess who am I?" And I stare at the 70-yr old grandma point-blank and do my best to not say "Laquisha?" It's tough holding back sarcasm and substituting it with respect when you know for sure that they know you're not gonna recognize them and are doing it just to make you feel embarrassed in public. Of course, it's just harmless fun but sometimes I really want to speak my mind. But then I have to stop myself because I'm not in Florida right now. And in India, you NEVER speak your mind to elders, especially if they're older than your parents.

Lunch time now, fruits for me. I really can't eat any more Indian food. I want milk and cereal!

[Indian Standard Time] - Hello from Kolkata, India! My flights from US to India were pretty smooth and much more relaxed than last time. Highly recommend Continental Airlines. It's been only a few hours but I'm already overcome with so many different emotions and feelings. It's very bizzare. A lot of the things that seem so different to me here today were natural to me just a few years ago. For instance the stray dogs on the streets and highways that cross traffic across lanes as carefully as any human. I'm sure I'll get used to everything within a day or two but initially it feels so unique. Like the little warm face towels they give you in the domestic flights here. Ha. Well I'm glad I'm here safe with all my lugage, without any troubles.

Just a few days till I fly to India!

I am glad that I'm not flying Air India when I go to my sister's wedding in January. These people had a 45-hour delay and it's all over the news. Earlier this year I had to endure pretty much the same situation with over 48-hour delay on my flight back to Tampa.As one passenger joked about this recent debacle, "Air India is going to give out infrequent flier miles."

Here's an interesting benefit of living by yourself: You own your time. It's past 3am and I just cooked enough dinner to last me 2-3 days. It's a mix of chick peas, black beans, green & red pepper, jalapenos, green beans, and mushrooms; tasted pretty good actually.

I was really tired when I got home after work today and passed out on my bed while still in my jeans. Woke up around 11pm and can't sleep anymore. I figured I'd do something interesting so I cooked while watching South Park. The kitties are being their playful selves as usual. Rest all's going well. Just counting days till I go to India for my sister's wedding! I'm soooo excited :)

A Tribute to my Kandivali Dada: I just received the unfortunate news that my mom's father, Navnitlal Modi (Kandivali Dada) passed away earlier today. He was over 74yrs old and had been of weak health for a while. Lately it had gotten worse and he was admitted to the hospital a few days ago. However, before he passed away, he blessed my cousin Khushboo and her new groom Nirav on the occasion of their marriage ceremony. And he was present when my cousin Kunal was engaged to be married. His four sons and one daughter (my mom) loved him dearly and had been with him throughout his long, eventful life.

I remember my summer vacation days as a naughty little scoundrel causing trouble every moment when I stayed with my mother's side of the family in the Kandivali suburbs of Mumbai, India. After his wife (my mom's mom) passed away due to cancer in early 1990's, I saw Dadaji as the quintessential Indian Sage. With his decades and decades of experiences living around the Indian sub-continent, Dadaji could discuss and debate on just about every topic one could imagine, from politics to science, from religion to mysticism. While I loved him as a kid, I began to fully appreciate his wisdom as I turned into a confused teenager.

It would be wrong of me to say that just one person influenced me primarily as I was growing up. Whatever I am today is a result of many many people who love me and still want to bring out the best in me by doing their little bit. I consider my Kandivali Dada to be among the respected few that I had the honor of learning from, in addition to of course, my parents. I have learnt so many things about life, so many little lessons that make me who I am, that I cannot thank my family enough. And add to that list my friends, my dad's friends (seriously! all of his awesome friends & their families), my boss Eric & his entire family, my past and current coworkers, and the numerous school teachers (like Mr. Sesh from RKC) that I had the fortune of learning from in the past two and a half decades.

The odd thing about learning lessons of life is that you don't always learn what people are trying to teach you. Kandivali Dadaji tried to teach me about astrology, alternative health/medicines, and ancient Vedic texts. I never learnt anything about that. Frankly, being a student of science, I couldn't swallow half the theories that astrology is based on. So inadvertently he taught me, one of my strongest skill today: critical analysis. Many times I would feel bad that I just spent four hours debating with him the ridiculousness of non-conventional forms of treatments like Electropathy. He would patiently explain his theories to me and give me a chance to counter them with my arguments. As a 15-yr old kid it was great because here I was, learning about the world, but in my own way. I was being given a chance to learn and believe what I wanted to.

It doesn't matter which part of the world you're in, most of the kids are forced to accept staunch orthodox beliefs and live up to pre-conceived notions of what's right and what's not, with no valid explanations or a chance to argue otherwise. If your parents think you need religion, you have no choice but to believe in God, Allah, or Krishna. If your grandparents think caste-system or racism is perfectly acceptable, you will grow up to be proud to hate others not like you. If everyone else around you tells you that men should go out and earn money while women stay at home and bear children, that's what you end up believing in. It doesn't even have to be this extreme. If the people you respect and look up to as a teenager tell you that lying every now and then to save your own face is perfectly normal, then guess what, you're gonna have issues with being honest. While I realize that every person is free to choose whatever they want to believe it, most of the kids just stick to trusting whatever they're taught during the early years of their life. Of course, exceptions exist but the norm is that you don't get much choice to pick your own beliefs.

Thankfully, I was given the chance to be an exception. And my Kandivali Dadaji was one of the few who supported my criticism and encouraged my curiousity. It would be so much easier to pay tribute to the man had he been a simple one-dimensional personality. I wish I could just say that "he was great fun to be with and brought my lots of candy." But I can't. For like the saying goes, he didn't just give me a free meal, he taught me how to fish. No matter how hard I try to remember him as the awesome grandpa who gave me free-stuff, I can't. My earliest memories of him have been overwritten by the long debates we had sitting cross-legged on the floor, in front of a little mandir and his wife's photo. With some people, you remember the hundreds of little incidents. But with some people, it's just one clear memory, so strong that, that is pretty much how you're going to remember them forever.

It's very easy to talk about someone that helped you at a bad time. In fact it feels so comforting to pay homage to someone who took direct actions to improve your immediate life situtation. However, it's not as easy to thank someone when the words they spoke six years ago suddenly impact the way you think of life today.

He was a very kind and disciplined man. He loved his children and grandchildren. I can't even imagine what my little cousins Ria & Yashika in Kandivali must feel right now. During the last few years of his life, I know both the kids had become very fond of him. And today I feel lucky and privileged to have known him not just as a loved-kid but more so as a growing up teenager who had too many unanswered questions.

I'm really out of words right now as his death didn't really come as a surprise to anyone in our family. We all knew his health was failing and it was only a matter of time before he left us. I guess I myself had come to a closure this April when I visited him. I was sad that I didn't spend more than a few hours with him but seeing how weak he was, I couldn't really expect him to talk for more than an hour or two anyway. Not knowing when I would be back in India, I pretty much bid my last adieu. I was kinda hoping that I would see him once more when I go back to India in January '06 but oh well...

He had a long, fruitful life. While I want to mourn his death, I also want to celebrate his life. Good bye Dadaji. Farewell.

Disclaimer: It saddens me to write this 'blog entry because I know my family will read it and won't like many parts of it. Sorry but you won't be able to use this 'blog entry to show off my success to everyone. I haven't run a marathon today and I haven't written any software this week that'll change the Internet. But it makes me happy to write this because I think it's time for a reality check for myself and for everyone that I love.

The Game: It's a little game I call Big Picture vs. Small Picture. This is not about truth vs. false. In this game everything is true for only true facts are admissible. I can testify that nothing in the following statements is even remotely false. So let's get started.

The Small Picture: Even though I have a great job in US, I hardly have any savings. I can't send any monetary gifts back home to India for my only sister's wedding in January 2006, even though my cousin in UK pretty much paid for his sister's wedding and more. In fact, I spend more money on my cats than I send back to India. Any time my relatives in US ask me to come visit them for holidays, I decline saying I'm saving up to buy tickets to India for my sister's wedding. I admit to them that if I don't save each month, I won't be able to pay for the India trip. Whenever someone suggests that I get arranged married like my sister, one of my first excuses is that I can't afford to marry. Word gets around and now, I'm officially broke in the eyes of my family & relatives.

I wasn't always "broke". In fact, three years ago back in college, I was supposed to be doing pretty well with my high-paying student job. Just earlier this year when I went to India I was even seen as what you might say... "rich!" But for some reason, not anymore.

Immediate Analysis: If you just look at the small picture, and it is in fact quite true, clearly then it would seem that I must be bad at managing money and/or I don't care enough about my family in India to chip in for even a small part of my loving sister's wedding expenses. Somewhere in the last few months I went from being pretty "well off" to living "paycheck to paycheck" and since I am in full control of my fiscal habits, I'm the one to blame. Thankfully, my parents are very understanding and have never demanded anything from me. Never ever. For this and more, I love them more than any son can. Nevertheless, it appears to all that I'm reckless and failing. Hmm. Let's look at this scenario from a different altitude.

The Big Picture: In this round, we forget all the pesky details of day-to-day life and think BIG. A little over five years ago I came to US with a dream... the ever-so-romanticized American Dream. After years of reluctance, my dad finally, at the behest of my lovely sis, told me to go forth and conquer the world. I'm sure he didn't expect me to wage military wars on the entire world, but instead wished me best of luck to achieve everything I wanted in my life. I flew in to the magical land of the United States of America all cheery-eyed and dreamy. My mom and grandma were glad that their kid was finally going to get good higher education - after all who doesn't want an esteemed PhD dork in their family?

I spent four years in Rutgers New Jersey, half of them living with my aunt and uncle who still do their best to support me whenever they can. Two bachelor degrees with highest honors later, I moved to sunny Florida for a once-in-a-lifetime chance to head the IT department of a small-but-rapidly-growing company. Now that I was finally living on my own, I could do things I've always wanted! A three-pc home-network? Check. True bachelor-style bean bags? Check. Cute little pets that my sister and I have wanted since childhood? Check! Everything's great. I go to India in April '05 and everyone is happy for me. I'm a success!

I notice real-estate prices in my area go through the roof, especially the properties near the Gulf. It's either buy now or be priced out of the housing market for decades. Having realized that without physical assets, creditors in US don't care about you at all, I pooled all my resources together for the big buy. In two short months, I bought a cute little house near the beach. Now next year when I try to consolidate my three variable-interest (eeek) student loans, banks will not reject me outright because I shall be in possession of the revered home equity.

Immediate Analysis: Big dreams necessitate disciplined efforts and uncompromising patience. It took some time but it appears to anyone that I've managed to fulfill quite a number of academic, economic, and personal goals. Overall, things are great if you ask me. No bad marriage, no expulsion from college, no criminal charges, no pending lawsuits, no housing troubles, no bad debts, no employment issues, and no chronic illnesses. I'm crossing my fingers and hoping things stay just as good. I'm one lucky son of a gun. So... if everything is this peachy, what's with the pesky details I mentioned in the small picture above? It's all about the proper focus.

a. Focus - Adjustable: You need a telescope to look at distant planets. You need an electron microscope to research how to better fabricate the carbon-nanotube fibers that strengthen the structure of the spacecraft that will get you to these distant planets. Notice the complexities between the two sentences. Dreaming, big-picture satellite viewing is simple. Even though it requires planning, experience, and wisdom, it won't get your hands messy. On the other hand, doing it, living in the nitty-gritties of actually implementing something is a dirty job. We dream in big screen but alas we live in the small picture. And the day you stop adjusting your focus is when you're stuck living a life you cannot take control of.

Very often, people, including yours truly, get so entrenched in one view, that they fail to see things for what they really are. While immediate events have immediate consequences, they also have long-term effects. How we handle situations in the short term impacts what will happen in the long term. My dad once told me that intelligence is the measure of how long does it take a person to walk into a room and understand everything that went on, is going on, and will go on. I propose a corollary that intelligence is the measure of how long it takes a person to switch from small picture to big picture and vice versa. What does this have to do with me you ask? Let's see.

b. Focus - Sticky: The problem with changing focus is that it doesn't want to change. We don't like to see things differently than we already do. It goes outside our comfort zone. You can get a new pair of running shoes today but it's so much more comfortable to spend that money on junk food and sit back & watch TV all evening instead of months of persistent training for a marathon. Notwithstanding my trifling excuses, I can buy a plane ticket to anywhere in the US today and have a great time with my family & relatives. It is so much better than putting $150/month extra towards the principal on my home mortgage. I used to be so free with my money; back in college when my primary goal was getting a degree. But I have to constantly get into the big picture view and remind myself that now I'm in the hardwork and struggle phase of life - these are the years I need to be saving up for the next phase of my life - graduate studies.

Selective Sacrifices: Nobody's saying that I need to give up on enjoying my life in order to maybe some day achieve my ambitions. If you saw me at the BBQ party at my house this weekend, you'd very well know I'm not giving up on any fun. However, I have given up on the extravagant lifestyle that I so lavishly savored during my pre-mortgage era. No more $500 impulse shopping bills and no more $100 on martinis. Just like no more cheese and pizzas till my health is back to my doctor's approved standards.

You cannot sacrifice today for tomorrow and you cannot spend everything today and have nothing for tomorrow. It's a delicate balance between the two and the sooner a person realizes this, the better. For me, a house is an investment. I was more than happy living in the 100 sq.ft. bunker in New Jersey. I don't need a mansion to keep me happy. To me, my house means that instead of spending and giving away like the young grasshoppa, I'm saving like the ant. Adhering to ancient wisdom is a GOODâ„¢ thing.

Consequences for me: It's great that I have a house because when I decide to go for my PhD years from now and devote 5-6 years of my life to science, I will have a pool of savings I can rely on, without having to worry about food and next month's rent. Many people pursue PhDs right after their Bachelors, mostly living like poor college students throughout the course. I didn't want to. I wanted a break between BSc and PhD. I want real-world experience. I want to know that some day my research and inventions will actually make a difference. Hence, I'm glad to have a job where I face production scenarios every single day that demand novel theoretical solutions.

I've said this over a hundred times already that if I cared about money, I'd be selling plastic granules in Kolkata right now. It is a very respectful trade and many people I know back home live happily every after with their families by engaging in wholesale businesses. However, it is just... NOT ME. I'm a student of science, always was, always will be. Till the day I died I would regret the 8-10 hours a day I spent trading because that is not what I wanted to do. My problem is that while I can remind myself this on a regular basis, everyone around me forgets it. Then I get compared to my cousin in UK, whom I love dearly, but have entirely different ambitions in life from. His noble ambition, from my personal knowledge, was to provide the best standard of living for his family. He woke up each day knowing that he needs to make ends meet for his family and that it is up to him now. He is my personal hero because on an absolute scale, what he does requires a lot more dedication and perseverance than what I do.

Consequences for my family: If my parents wanted the same thing from me as my cousin, they would have made it very clear from day one that my aim in life should be to send $x to India every single month. But they didn't. They told me to get the best education I could and fulfill all of my dreams. They supported me throughout and I'm happy that they did. Yet, every now and then, people question if they did the right thing, if I am doing the right thing, if I still love my own family, if Brazil is going to win the next World Cup Soccer. People question, people talk, people raise unfounded doubts, and above all, people make mountains out of mole hills. That's what people do. And that is when things go sour. And that is why I feel so compelled to write a pretty revealing personal 'blog entry like this one to make things perfectly clear.

I feel like I've always been lucid and honest to my family and relatives, in fact, to pretty much everyone that asks me a question upfront. I never lie about serious issues though I may lie about how many girls I've kissed ;)

Honest Ramblings: I feel excited to tell my family every other day that OMG I LOVE YOU. There is nobody else in the world I love more than you guys. If something unfortunate happened tomorrow and my family needed anything, I would take the next flight to India to help out (after notifying my work of course; not gonna run away boss man! Don't worry). But I wonder, since when did I become a BAD son? I thought I was doing everything right in life - in the big picture sense. I never said I was perfect and I was pretty much pathetic during the months of August-October this year when I was down with god knows every illness known to pirates in the 1700s.

Penultimate Moanings & Whinings: It's no surprise that a single person living alone, far away from all family and friends, will get pretty down and depressive when faced with prolonged chronic illnesses that prohibit all forms of social interactions. In English, that means hell ya, I was sick, alone, and did I mention sick?! Of course, I was sad and weak. I couldn't even hang out with my friends! I'd have to be pretty crazy in the head to actually enjoy any of that. Worst of all, I spent all my savings on medical bills and ended up breaking my promise to my sister that I'll do my best to send her a small gift soon. I'm sad that I broke a promise but I'm crushed that people treat me like it's my fault that I had all these medical expenses. Ok... so I don't have an extra $1000 lying around anymore. Does that mean I'm a loser or a weak person altogether and need support from every person who walks by just to hold myself together in life? HELL NO!

The Winner: Life's a game. It's a balancing act - between truth and false, good and evil, right and wrong, big picture and small picture. Who's the winner in the match Big Picture vs. Small Picture? Neither side exactly. Only the ones who can juggle the two fluently will "win" the so-called game of life.

Sometimes, people stop juggling. If the people who love me the most, don't stand back and take a look but instead suspect my intentions, capabilities, and strength, it's gonna be an uphill climb. I can never stop loving them but I'm kind of disheartened that the ones closest to me assumed that I've somehow forgotten what's important. I don't think at this age and stage in life I have to give any explanations on why I spent $300 treating my cat's bleeding foot. I don't expect anyone to understand WHY I like my cats, but I do expect them to not to criticize me for the day to day decisions I make in my life.

It comes down to the classic "I'm old enough" debate now. I'm old enough to know what I'm doing so please stop judging, taunting, and sneaking in remarks about what I do or not do. If I'm about to make a major decision, I will always ask the people I look up to. For instance, I had a long chat with my dad late last year about buying a house. Taking his advice, I didn't buy a house then. However, I revisited the issue a few months later when my situation had changed and ended up buying a house that I realize is an even better fit for me. I'm not saying I made absolutely the most perfect decision ever (man... my roof still needs repairs). I just like to think that I made the most sensible decision given the circumstances and stood firmly by it after weighing in the positive and negative consequences. The positive consequences being that I'll build equity that will help me later in life and the negative being that I won't have lot of free money lying around every month anymore.

If you've read this far then it's only natural that I thank you for paying attention and listening to what I had to say. Know in your heart that I love you more than anything in the world and that I will do anything possible when the need be. But if there is no crisis, then why not let me pursue my dreams and have some fun on the way? And for flying spaghetti monster's sake, stop worrying about me! I'm doing pretty damn well.

PS: Please send me money. I've been eating cat food for two weeks and have no money to feed myself or my cats now.

PPS: Just kidding about the cat food. I'm still a vegetarian :)

PPPS: Don't forget the money!

I think this is the first time in my life that the "Law" is actually working in my favor (so far so good). My car's windshield cracked pretty badly from a falling branch at work today. I drove it home but it's not that safe to keep driving around with a windshield that can collapse anytime. I called up my insurance company and they're gonna fix it tomorrow between 8am-12pm. Hopefully I won't miss much work. Well Hurricane Wilma passed over us without much damage. It was just bad-luck that my windshield cracked. It's the end of October and hurricane season ends on November 30th. However since we have a cold front coming, I don't think there's gonna be any hurricanes in the next week or so.

The funniest part was listening to the weather today. Weather-folks are known for never being too strong and never being absolutely precise. I was kinda amused to hear the weatherman on radio say: "Chances of rain today: 100%. Chances of rain tomorrow: 0%."

Anyways, had some food Indian food today at India-Grill down on Central Ave. with my friend Lanie. She's fun to chill with but because she's busy working on nights and weekends, our schedules seldom match. Lunch works though because both of us are free and my work is near her house. I'm just glad that so many people in Florida love Indian food :)

When I came here five years ago, I had to learn the "American" word for pretty much everything. Mostly it was something trivial like it's called a "Trash Can" here and not a "Dust Bin."

One phrase that got me a lot of weird looks was "Long Distance." Everytime I wanted to make a Long Distance phone call on someone's phone/cellphone, and asked them about it, they would give me some VERY WEIRD LOOKS! Most just said "WHAT THE #$%#" and went back to doing whatever they were doing.

I remember this one incident back in Jersey when I was on the campus bus and needed to make an urgent Long Distance call to a family member in Texas. I asked the girl sitting next to me if I could borrow her cell and she smiled and said "Sure" as she handed it to me. I politely asked her if she has Long Distance and she said "WHAT THE HELL YOU FREAK?!!!" and snatched back the phone. It was a long bus ride that day.

Of course, I wasn't really using the exact phrase "Long Distance" but another substitute that I thought meant "Long Distance." You see, in India, for "Long Distance" phone calls, we use the term "Subscriber Trunk Dialling," or the acronym STD. Incidentally, STD stands for Sexually Transmitted Disease in US. Oops!

No wonder the girl snatched back her cell when I asked her "Do you have STD?"

I love this satellite picture of the Earth centered on India - my new background.

What an amazing evening. Went to Eric, my boss's house for dinner with him and his wife Amy. Also got to see his lil daughter Katie; she's definitely growing up fast! Had some really good pasta with vegetables and for dessert had fresh fruit salad. This whole eating healthy thing is working out pretty good for me. I lost 4lbs already in less than 10 days and I'm eating all the food I want! Oh and the best part of the night was that Eric and Amy absolutely LOVED the gifts my dad got for them from India!

I think I might have another equally good news: Last night I put an offer on one house near the beach (only TWO miles!) that I really liked and today the sellers came back with a counteroffer agreeing to pretty much everything I wanted, except they want $2,000 more than I offered. If this was a $10,000 house then $2,000 is a big difference but when the price of the house is $142,000, a mere $2,000 more isn't that bad. Of course, I haven't confirmed their offer yet and will take my time tomorrow to decide the specifics of the deal but it looks like I just might have a good house.

Another thing that needs to be done before the deal is finalized is a thorough house and termite inspection in addition to a home appraisal. I will have to pay some professionals to do all of that for me and hopefully it will work out well. At least my offer didn't get rejected instantly :) Let's see how this story develops...

You know what I'm sick of? Family/relatives/friends who treat me solely like a free computer help desk! Sure, I know computers and work with them and don't mind offering important advice every now and then, but if the only time you EVER call me is when you need computer help, guess what... stop calling/emailing/IM'ing me because I don't want to hear about your broken software or hardware - especially since when you bought your crappy computer, I advised you against it and asked you to go get a good Dell with 24/7/365 tech support but you chose to save $50 instead. I AM NOT YOUR FREE HELPDESK. MOVE ON! Or maybe, once in a while, drop in and ask me how my life is going or if my trip to India was good or not. I DO NOT WANT TO TEACH YOU HOW TO BACKUP YOUR DVD DRIVES FOR THE SIXTH TIME.

Let me be clear. If I am a part of your family/friendship then I will do my best to help you out in any way I can - be it computers, helping you paint your apartment, or helping you move to your new house. I am not a bad lazy person. If you need help, feel free to call me anytime. But if 100% of your communication ONLY pertains to asking for computer help and never once have you asked me about my day, family, job, kitties, or what's new in my life, then PLEASE STOP IT. I DO NOT WANT TO TALK TO YOU EVER AGAIN. And I don't care how closely related you are to me. Thanks. That will be all.

I was sooooooooo tired last night when my plane landed at the Newark NJ airport. I was absolutely stressed and out of my mind. Turns out my connecting flight to Tampa FL leaves on Sunday 3pm instead of Saturday 1am. Air India gave me two days free stay at the airport Holiday Inn but I came to my aunt's house instead. So now, I get to see my family and friends here in Jersey for free! Gotta go now and chill with the family :)

I'm at a cybercafe in the Mumbai/Bombay Airport where access to the net is pretty cheap Rs. 60/hour ($1.25/hour). It's quite fast too - hope my dad could get a connection like this at home. It'll take some time but I'm sure they'll get it. Once my home in Calcutta/Kolkata has broadband connection then I can use something like Vonage to call them everyday at local phone charges and not international. Can't wait till that day.

So my flight was delayed as I expected. Had it been on time, I'd be in the plane already. Now I fly off at 11:20am. I checked in all my luggage and will hopefully disembark at the Newark, NJ Airport at 8:25pm tonight via Paris. Kinda sucks that I don't get to check out the Paris airport as the plane just sits on the runway for refuelling. My plane lands at 8:25pm and my connecting flight departs at 8:10pm. So unless I pull off some James Bond 007 moves and transfer from one plane to another mid-air, I'm definitely going to miss my connecting flights to Tampa via Atlanta. AirIndia here in Mumbai said that since it's their fault that the flight's being delayed, they will make sure that I get a decent accomodation and proper connecting flights to my destination.

For some stupendous reason there is no flight from Newark NJ to Tampa FL airports after 10pm tonight till 8am tomorrow. I was ready to get on a 11pm flight if available but they could only reserve me for two 8am flights. My reservation isn't confirmed either but hopefully by the time I'm in Newark tonight, they'll have it partially figured out. The journey that was supposed to take less than 24 hours is now gonna be longer than 36 hours but I'll get to sleep in a hotel overnight in NJ now.

I'll call my aunt/uncle in NJ to see if they wanna visit but I wonder if they can make it all the way to Newark airport on such a short notice. Anyways, I'll prolly be so tired after two long flights and the immigration checks etc. that I'll want to sleep till 6am tomorrow. I have my US Visa on my passport and I'm crossing my fingers that there are no problems.

I had a great time here with my family after almost three years of separation. Now I'm ready to face the new challenges at my work and career. While it's great living in US, there is one major drawback - you slowly forget everything you aspired to be; India reinforces your primal aspirations. Life in US is like slowly dissolving in a warm feel-good quicksand of acid - you don't know you're melting away molecule-by-molecule. India is a quick slap on the back that reminds you that you need to hold your breath, flap your arms, and get the hell out of the quicksand. In other words, before I left India for the US, I had a very keen interest in furthering my academic career and studying till my hair is grey. After getting a job, getting a car, finding a nice apartment, the fire within slowly dies down. One becomes lax about fulfilling the original dreams.

And just one 15-day trip to India drilled the whole academic-career thing back into my head. And not just the academic, the desire to work harder and smarter is stronger now more than ever. I want to make the systems my company needs and I want to make them smart, robust (I know, cliched), and scalable (I know, very much cliched). I want to be twice or thrice as productive as I was in the last few months. Hell I was barely productive in the last two weeks before I left for India because I was soooooooooooo stressed out about the outcome of my visa interview. But thankfully, I got the visa and now I have to accomplish what I desperately need to. There's new ideas to be thought of, there's new systems to be created, and there's a lot more effort to be put into every segment of my life.

One thing I would have regretted had I not got my visa is that I did not travel enough. I sit at home on weekends doing minor chores or idling away in front of the TV when I could be out, seeing the country. Seeing the world's not an easy thing on an Indian passport but I can damn well go around the US at least once a month. Off the top of my head, I need to go to Boston, Washington, NY, California, Vegas, and once again to Salt Lake City. I have a friend or two in each of these places that I need to visit. I think now I'll try to save up each month and look out for specials and cheap tickets online from Tampa to all of these places and god knows where else - after all there's a Fark party somewhere every weekend.

Having the thoughts about India vs. US fresh in my mind, I want to write a long 'blog entry or essay about the differences and similarities in the economy, culture, and the social environment in both the places. I know, there's probably a thousand books on this subject but I bet each of them mentions that every Indian has an elephant/cow/snake in his house and every couple in US fights till they divorce. Both are gross generalizations though hold some amount of truth. Indians do worship the cow and Americans do divorce a lot more than rest of the world. But we don't have a family cow in Kolkata and over 75% of my US friends' parents are still together or were very close till one of them passed away. What I mean by the differences are minor but relevant things on how they see the same events/things differently - divorce is a sad event in US but it's a traumatic and often life-ending event in India. Divorcees get to remarry in US but rarely in India. At restaurants, 5% is a big tip in India and 15% is a small or mediocre one in US.

And yet, the people are the same. My friends in US love me as much as the ones in India. That is something I find very hard to believe. I still can't believe my friends Vishal & Chetan stood out in the rain/sun for hours in 2000 when I first went to the US Consulate in Kolkata to get my student visa. And I still can't believe Arthur drove all the way from NJ to FL with me to help me settle down in Florida with almost all of my luggage from NJ. People amaze me sometimes.

Oh and on a closing note, CONGRATSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS to my sister for her TV Interview on Tazaa TV Kolkata last week! I don't know why she kept attributing her success and knowledge to me - I didn't teach her anything - she learnt it all herself! And yet on TV she kept saying I was her idol and taught her everything. I'd say the major credit goes to my parents and only partially to me.

This has been another awesome week here in India. Went to see my mom's family yesterday and spent some time talking to my cousin Keval before that. I'm returning to US tomorrow but my flight's been delayed. Now instead of reaching Tampa at 1am on Saturday April 23rd, I'm gonna reach at 1pm - a twelve hour delay! Urgh... But otherwise, everything's great and I'm having such a wonderful time here with my family.

Giga's pretty much back in his good old healthy shape. He runs around freely and plays with Tera all day. Took both the kitties to the pet hospital before I give them off to Linda. She'll take care of them during my vacation to India. I got just a few hours with the kitties now so I'm gonna go play with them.

Anyways, Jessica has been awesome lately. She came over to my apartment at lunch so that she could take care of Giga! She was here all day. I took Giga to the hospital again so that the doctor could tie a new bandage on his foot. Turns out, last night after I brought him home, he shaked his foot off so hard the tiny bandage come off. Since I didn't want him biting his stitches, I tore off a new sock and tightened it around his foot using medical tape. It worked and he was ok for the day but stuff like that can lead to infections. So I went to the docs again.

Jessica bought some gauze and medical tape for him in case I need to bandage him in the middle of the night :) She rocks. Now Giga's being a good boy and is just resting near me. Tera's her usual playful self. Hopefully, Giga will recover over the weekend so that by the time I leave for India, I can give two healthy kitties to Linda.

I got Giga from the animal hospital. He's got a bandage now and keeps trying to shake it off. The doctor gave him sedatives, stitched his toe, and gave him anti-biotics. Hopefully that should be good enough. Gonna go on Tuesday again to verify that everything is alright. Need to make 100% sure that both kitties are in perfect health before I give them to Linda during my India vacation.

Anyways, looks like minor annoyances keep popping up. My left eye is itching very badly again. All day it was itching slightly but now it's hurting like hell. I put in the eye drops and hopefully it'll be ok soon but little stuff like this just make me go nuts. Oh well...

Things are good otherwise. Same old life. Work, kitties, sleep etc. Can't complain, especially since the weather here is gorgeous.

I'm real worried right now. I got home and Giga's left toe on his left back foot was bleeding. His claw/nail was ripped off :( He keeps licking his foot. My baby's in real pain right now. If it doesn't improve by tomorrow I'm taking him to a vet.

Anyways, went shopping with Brian today. Got a lot of stuff for India. Had a decent weekend - watched TV with Jessica, went out to see Taylor's dad Gill and his band. Things are pretty good.

But Giga is crying right now so I'm gonna go take care of him. Even Tera is licking his foot.

It has been a long time since I had an awfully bad day, so I guess it was about time. Today started like any other day - wake up, play with kitties, talk to my family in India (yes, I pretty much call them every morning now). But then things took a turn for the unexplainable. Having a tough/rough day at work (when computers/systems break down) is different from having a day filled with angst and bickering.

Of course, nothing beats a day without problems but if I have to choose between computer issues and human resource issues, I'd rather have my servers crash on me every month - because I know that I can fix and at worst, replace them. Can't do much about people except shrug and move on. But I don't really understand people sometimes. I'd like to think that I'm a very logical person and I guess that's why I fail to comprehend why people behave so irrationally. Who knows maybe in their eyes, I'm the irrational one whose actions just don't add up.

So after a long day at work, I get home and find out that my kitties have absolutely trashed my living room. They somehow managed to get to the kitchen drawer I keep paper towels in and strewed tiny bits of paper towel all over my carpet, sofa, chairs, and even under the coffee table. Took me 30 minutes to clean it all up.

But how can I blame my precious kitties? It's just paper after all and they didn't do any physical damage. They haven't damaged even ONE thing in my apartment ever! Every once in a while, they'll chew on bits of paper or aluminum foil but that's about it. They splash a little water out of their bowl but only because they're clumsy. They are absolutely the sweetest kitties in the world. I think it's time I gave them some nice kitty treats :)

*Sigh* Yes, today was what I'd consider a bad day until about 5 minutes ago when Tera jumped into my lap as I was typing this 'blog entry and started kneading 'n purring. Life is good. Once in a while, the equilibrium is disturbed by external forces but things balance out soon enough. Especially when the purr machines kick into action.

So my kitties figured out that poking a hole into my airbed can be a lot of fun. It was kinda cute though. I think Giga popped a hole and then both of them crowded around it as trying to figure out how to fix it. Of course, I tried to patch the hole but my bed deflated anyway after a while. I certainly won't buy a new airbed but I think I do need to get a bedroom furniture set soon. Maybe next month.

Gotta buy my tickets to India soon. I plan to go around 8th April and return around 20-21st April.

Wow so much to say. First of all, my mother had a successful surgery to remove the metal-plate from her arm. She is healing well now. It was a year ago yesterday that Keval got into the accident in Goa. One year in coma... And what's amazing and heart-rendering is how much his parents are doing for him.

So on Thursday Jan 13th, my friends Arthur and Michele flew in from Jersey to Tampa. I waited at the airport, eating some good TGIFriday's when they landed. I got a call from Jessica that she was in O'Briens with her friend Terasita. So I took Arthur and Michele directly to the pub. Had a few drinks and then got back home to introduce them to my awesome kitties.

Woke up late next morning and went to Olive Garden for lunch. Next up, the Salvador Dali museum, followed by the Skyway Bridge. Had dinner at the Original Hooters later that night and went to bed early because we had to leave early for Disney the next morning.

Drove to Orlando the next morning and was at the doorsteps of Disneyworld's Magic Kingdom. After some ticket/reservation troubles, we went in. It was awesome! We took a lot of pictures and even one of me with Donald Duck :) Went on tons of rides and rollercoasters. Michele was chicken so she barely went on any fast rides. Arthur and I basically went on everything Magic Kingdom had to offer.

We got a decent 3 bed apartment for the night and didn't get to sleep much since we had to leave early for Epcot the next morning. Again at Epcot, we had some annoying ticket problems. Take my advice: DO NOT BOOK your Disney tickets through www.disney.com or their Walk Disney Travel Company. They SUCK monkey rumps!

So Epcot was a lot of fun too. We went on Test Track and Mission Space early on. Then spent some time at The Living Sea watching Dolphins poop and do stunts underwater. Next up, the World Showcase. Basically Disney has created 10+ countries themed sections that people can walk through to see what life is like in those countries. From Canada to Morocco they have a wide selection. I was kinda mad India is not there. But anyways, had a lot of fun touring that. Best of all was the Acrobats show in 'China' with 5-12 year old little kids jumping on top of each other and doing some amazing stunts. Loved every minute of it and glad that we didn't miss it.

After Epcot, we drove home and just sat in my living room, talking and watching stuff on TV. At 4am, I dropped them off at the Tampa airport. Work on Monday was a big blur to me since I was so exhausted. All in all, it was a great mini-vacation - my second in two weeks! And it was with two people I care so much about.

Anyways, I'm gonna head off to bed now. Long day ahead tomorrow. Lotsa cool things at work to do.

I normally don't criticize movies but today I have to admit, I saw the worst movie I've seen in years - Alexander. It was very slow, too long (3 hours), and it completely screwed the history. The movie showed the Persian princess asking for forgiveness from Alexander. He asked her how she should be treated to which she replied "As I am." Later on he fought with "some king" from India and retreated back to Macedonia. In truth, it was the King Porus of India who told Alexander to treat him "Like a King." Urgh. The movie didn't even mention his name. I hate it when stupid movies change WELL-KNOWN undisputed facts of history for weird reason.

Anyways, it's Thanksgiving so I have no work till Monday! It's partyyyyyy time :)

Sometimes with great happiness comes great sorrow. I just received some awful news. My Divyesh Mama (mom's cousin) passed away last night from heart attack at the age of 46. He was the one who inspired me to get into the science field ever since I was a little boy. He bought me my most favorite game of all time - Brick-o-built, or as I still call it, my Red Game. He took me to science museums everytime I went to Bombay. He took me to his engineering work sites and showed me how he worked. And now he's no more. So many people close to me passed away or met with accident since I last went to India.

This is one tragedy on my family after another. From my cousin Keval's accident to my great-grandma's death to now my Mama's sudden death. Life is so delicate. We all forget that. And we all take it for granted. I am so sad right now. I guess that's why I got kittens. I am all alone in this land with nobody to hug when something like this hits me. At least now I have Giga and Tera. Good night.

Here I am in Virginia with my cuzin Purvi and her fiance Allen. Tomorrow is the big race. My friend Vishal emailed me to wish me best of luck. I miss him so much. This is your time to send me the last few best of luck wishes :)

Cool Stuff: If you wish to track my progress during the race, go to Marathon Tracking Page, enter your email, make up a password, and then enter my name: Mehta / Chirag. Then enter your email address (or if you're within US, your cellphone number) and you will be sent a message everytime I cross a timing point - about every 3miles/5kms. You can go to the tracking page right now to set it up and make sure you check the 'Test Now' box to give the system a test run.

Plans for today: Not much. Just gonna go to the Marathon Center (or whatever it's called) to pickup my runner's packet. Lotsa rest and some healthy food later in the night. That's about it. It feels good to be here, seeing Purvi after a while. Especially after the sad sad news my dad gave me last night. My great-grandmother passed away yesterday in Balasinor (my village-town) in Gujarat, India. She lived a very properous happy long life and as per the Indian custom, when someone lives such a fruitful life and passes away, instead of mourning their death, we celebrate their live achievements.

Last time I saw her was over two years ago. Everytime she would see me, she'd mention how she thinks of me as the most successful and talented person in our entire family. According to her, I was the incarnation of alpha-male with every good quality that a person could have. I regret the fact that I haven't called her in a long time and now it's too late. But she lived a long eventful life and saw her great-grand child, Nikita, get married to a wonderful man, Mehul. And that's what makes me smile everytime I think about her. I wish I can be so lucky so as to see my great-grandkids settle down.

I gotta take a shower now and get some food. Then we're off to get our packets :) I am sooooooooo excited right now. And come on, click on the little 'contact' button on the left and send me an email already!

No matter what good things I say about my job, something happens right after that tops it all. So after taking me to lunch for my birthday, today my boss and buddies Brian 'n Scott at work, decided to take me out to dinner. We went to this cute little restaurant in downtown St. Petes near the ocean-front. It was a British-India style restaurant with a wide variety of dishes on the menu. For me, it was Chana Masala. For them it was Chicken Tikka, Pasta, Salad, and Chicken Burger. We talked and chilled for about two hours and topped it off with yummy deserts - Chocolate Volcano for me :)

One of the reasons I love this job is not just the atmosphere but the real work itself. Right now I have to setup our inventory with barcodes. So here's the plan. We purchased Symbol PPT 8846 barcode scanner. It's runs WinCE 4.1 on Pocket PC x86 hardware. This tiny little device has a built in scanner, wireless ethernet card, and support for Microsoft .Net Compact Framework. It used to be that if anyone wanted to program devices like barcode scanners, remote controls etc., they would need to interface directly at the low hardware levels with the devices. Not so anymore. I can write full-fledged Visual Basic.Net or Visual C# applications that will run in the tiny 32mb ram scanner and perform all the required functions smoothly.

So basically I'm gonna have to program it in VB.Net to talk to our internal web server running WAMP (Windows, Apache, MySQL, PHP) over 802.11b network using XML. Here's what will happen: Anytime the scanner scans a barcode, it is sent to the web server that process the input and sends back an XML document which will be parsed by my VB.Net software and displayed to the user for further input. So basically, I can walk around with the device and scan random barcodes of all our inventory and simply enter the physical quantity of stock and all the computer systems will be automatically updated. This is by far one of the coolest things I've ever worked with. I can barely sleep at night because I'm thinking about what I want to program the next morning. Eight hours of coding a day is simply not enough. I want more!

This is going to be a very different 'blog entry than usual. For the first time in four years I'm regretting my decision to come to the United States of America. This isn't something that has been nagging me for weeks or months. This isn't something that is troubling me a lot. But it is something that I think differentiates what I think of myself and what people see me as. Right now everyone who knows me, thinks I am on the way to 'success,' whatever success is. They see me as standing on my own two feet, set in life with respect to career and education, and on my way to making it big. I'm not denying the fact that in four years I got two BS degrees, worked 3 different jobs, found an apartment and a car, and settled down in Florida. What I disagree with, is everyone's definition of "set-in-life."

Four years ago when I left India, I had the love of my family and friends right next to me 24/7. I had a pretty good job at my dad's friend's company (Rajda) and if I had stuck there, I'd prolly be "set" by now. Or maybe not. Who knows. But anyways, in this last four years, while I've gained a lot of material things, I've also lost a lot of important things. Right now I'm living in the middle of nowhere and know nobody. No family, no friends, no love. It's as if I suddenly woke up and everybody I knew had disappeared. I walk out of my house and I just see rows and rows of strangers. I smile at them and our interaction often ends after they smile back.

My work life is great. I can't believe I actually found such a homely loving company to work at. I think that has been my experience since I came to US. I find the greatest people to work with, those who truly appreciate my efforts, skills, and experience, while on the other hand, my social life has been full of disappointment and worst-nightmares-coming-true. When I finally made a bunch of great friends in Jersey, I moved on to Florida where I'm back to zero.

What I HATE right now is everyone from Jersey telling me to go out and make new friends. How exactly am I supposed to do that? It was easy in college, you just make friends talking in class or living in dorms. It's absolutely different out in the real world. I can't just walk upto a bunch of people and expect them to befriend me. So ya, things get kinda lonely on weekend here. I dunno why I'm so angry right now. I think it's most probably because I couldn't go running today.

So anyways, back to regretting coming to US. Yes I'm having doubts right now. Why? Because in four years, nothing has improved, rather gotten worse. I'm alone, single, and far away from everyone who loves me. Don't email me saying I should deal with it because I chose to take this step. I already know that everything I did, I did it consciously and with enough forethought. But what I'm realizing now, is that I over-estimated my capacity to deal with loneliness. I thought I blossom in solitude. Turns out, after a while being alone 24/7 gets kinda crazy.

Picture this, I came into my apartment at 6pm on Friday. Next time I get to go out of my apartment is 8am Monday. In that duration, I've seen no people. There's nothing to do when it's raining so bad outside. I'm literally house-arrested and it's one of the worst feelings ever. My dad's probably smiling right now, thinking I told you to stay in India. Maybe he really was right. America is a great country and I have nothing to say against it. But right now, I'm holding on to a shattered American Dream. I'm probably decades away from money, power, fame, and love. Isn't that what constitutes the American Dream? Somewhere in the middle of all this, is lost my desire to further my education. Maybe that's what is bothering me so much. I love the working man's life, the routine, the schedules, the meetings, but I also miss the learning, the new people, the well-versed teachers.

I know this 'blog entry is all over the place and I'm probably not thinking straight right now. But I dunno what to make of all this. Is this really what I came to US for? Sure, I have a great place to live, but I had it 4 years ago too. Sure I have a nice car, but I had it when I turned 18. So I work in a great place, hell I loved Rajda a lot too. I never complained. So why exactly did I leave India... I don't know... Somebody please remind me why I am here...

Maybe I'm just very homesick right now. It's been over two years since I saw my family. I think it's just that. I miss them a lot and there's nobody here to make me forget about them. Before I start crying I must end this 'blog right away.

I've realized that often times I "find" myself while I do the most mundane chores. I was just ironing my work clothes, listening to songs on the radio, when suddenly something hit me. For a moment I was in sync with the world and the universe. As boring as ironing is, for a flick second I pressed the perfect crease and knew everything is going alright.

Why do I wonder if everything is going alright or not? I don't know. I guess I'm still confused about my life long goals. I told my boss that one of my goals was to keep learning throughout my life. I guess that goal will be fulfilled in time but in the meantime, I wonder if I'm going on the right track. Right now I have everything new - new job, new apartment, new car, new soocer cleats... but is this what I really want? I don't know. From the point of view of others I most probably have it "set" but I personally don't know. I love my work and try to spend as much time and energy as I can doing my bit to turn our company into a major success. But other than that, where am I going...

For some reason I don't feel like making new softwares and personal websites anymore. I guess it's cuz that's what I do at work for 8-9 hrs a day. What I do enjoy lately is cooking real simple stuff - from boiling potatoes to making pasta. I'm a miserably bad cook but I still find it pleasing to come home after a long day at work and cook up small meal. My running is going so-so. Last week was great but this week after the soccer practice on Monday, I've been too sore to run. This morning I ran 1.5 miles in 16 minutes. At 6:30 tonight I'm going to play some more soccer with Brian.

All in all, this is my life. Wake up, go to work, run/soccer, cook, chat with friends from Jersey, go to bed. Rinse, repeat. Weekends are slightly more relaxed. Yesterday I swam in the pool while I did my laundry. Then went to Walmart for some groceries (mostly fruits and vegetables). I guess I'm as settled as I could've been in just over a month.

But I do miss home. Hell I don't even know where is home - India or Jersey because I miss both equally. I don't think I'll make as many friends here in Florida as I made in Jersey simply because that was a college environment. But I'm hopeful. I met a buncha nice folks already, from Brian and Scott at work to Lynn, Heather, Ursula, and Dan. Who knows, someday I might even meet that special someone.

Till then I know what I have to do... You guessed it right - iron my frigging clothes! I still have 5 pants and 12 shorts to iron. So I better get back to it...

Since nothing's interesting going in my life, let's discuss the life of a friend who is making it big: Sunny! He has made it into Bollywood as Akshay Kapoor! I remember the times we studied Meteorology together and checked out hot chics. Now he's on the verge of success with the movie Popcorn Khao Mast Ho Jao. I don't know what people in India think of him but I hope it's all good. Here's wishing best of luck to a very good friend!

Happy B'day Daddy!!!!! Well it's July 10th 12am in India already :)

A lot of last times happened in a very short span of time today. Last time I saw Rutgers. Last time I saw Tamara, Doug, Tine, Elaine, and Ed. Last time I saw Chris and Tim. And the last time I saw Michele :( I had lunch with her and we just chilled for a bit after that, talking about god knows what. I'm going to miss her a lot. I'm going to miss everything a lot.

Last night I saw Becky for the last time. She almost cried when I didn't give her a good enough hug. I remember how similar things happened when I left India four years ago. Last time I walked into my room and last time I went to my dad's office. Of course, I can visit any of these places and people again, but it'll never be the same.

Tonight I'm going to drop off my aunt at the airport and pack my stuff into Arthur's car. Tomorrow early morning we leave for Atlanta. We'll sleep over at his cousin's house and then drive to St. Petersburg the next morning. This is going to be one rough weekend, physically and emotionally. My current mood is nostalgic and sad but I'm sure as soon as we hit the road, it'll change to ecstatic and apprehensive.

Here's hoping to the last ever 'blog entry from New Jersey!!! Bubye New Brunswick! You were so good to me. Thank you everyone.

Henceforth, I am officially a graduate of Rutgers University, New Brunswick. Today was my graduation ceremony. I graduated with the highest honors in Computer Science and Economics and was awarded one of six Honors Scholars distinctions. My aunt, uncle, cousins Sneh and Sagar were there to see me finally achieve what I've been working hard at for four long years. My buddy Arthur graduated with me too! Neeeeeeeew Brunswick!!!!! Home of the Scarrrrrrrrlet Knights!!!!!! By God we did it man. We did it :)

Nobody in this world could have topped my success today, except my sweet little cousin Sneh. She participated in the Miss India NJ/PA/DE competition and she won the Runner's Up title! Her answer to the judge's question was frankly 100 times better than I could have ever come up with in such spontaneous circumstances. Congrats Sneh!!!

So here I am, all set to visit my Kaushik Mama (Uncle) in Queens, NY tomorrow. Haven't seen them for months now. I most definitely want to meet them once before I move to Florida.

Quote for the day: "My party and alliance may have lost but India has won," Indian PM Mr Vajpayee. In an address on national television he said he accepted the verdict and said it was a demonstration of India's strong democractic roots.

Waking up early morning and 'blogging seems too comfortable. I don't have to think about what I want to write or wonder if I really have the time for it. Yes I do. It's 7:15am and my world is just waking up so I have enough time. I hope I go to bed early everynight to wake up this time everyday. At least I had a night of peaceful sleep. Weird (but not bad) dreams though. Also the exam yesterday was quite bad. Let's see where my grades end up.

The main thing going on right now is my Florida trip. One of my clients asked me to work for him and he wants to sponsor me with a work permit etc. He has a small but growing company and is in the process of selecting his management team. If I join, I am hopefully going to become the CTO (Chief Technology Officer) when the company makes it big. After seeing his enthusiasm and hopefulness, I feel working independently for a small firm in Florida is better than slaving away under a behemoth in NYC. And to say the least, the beaches are hot! I am flying down to Florida on 9th April and returning back on 11th. I'll stay over at my buddy Taylor's place and we'll go to Universal Studios, time-permitting. The all-day interview will be on April 10th and if things go well, I will be joining them in early 2005.

If I do move to Florida, a lot of major changes will happen in my life. First of all, I'll be alone for the second time in my life. Here in Jersey I always have my family. The only three people I somewhat know in Florida (via the Web) are Tay, Derek, and my client. My non-work plans are pretty big once I'm there. Eventually I intend to live somewhere between work and University of Florida. I will try to get into a CS Grad program at UF and wi'll be driving 100's of miles each day from home to work and school. But within two years I should get my Masters. Also I might go for an MBA as it will definitely help out with my work. The time I will have for myself will be the weekends when I will take my car (of course) and drive all over everywhere. That is the thing I'm most excited about - freedom from a suffocating existence of being stuck in just one place (hint: 4 years in New Brunswick, New Jersey).

While Chime will never die, things will most probably slow down on the web-front, especially since I will be working for my largest client so that part of work will be moved into my 9-5 schedule. Best of all, once I get my work permit/visa, I can become the legal owner of Chime Softwares Ltd., instead of my aunt. As always, if things work out as planned, I could be making more than enough within two years and will be able to tell my dad to take a break even BEFORE July 10th 2007 (his predetermined date of retirement).

Another thing that'll happen is that I would be able to go to India at least twice a year! I could end up being one of those rich successful young entreprenuers! But then again, the 9-5 job I'm seeking isn't all that glamorous though it's in the glamour industry - making tanning products. Who said Indians can't do EVERYTHING! It'll be quite funny if I'm the only Indian guy in all of their gatherings. Everybody's gonna be like: What's HE doing here! He already HAS the perfect tan :) Go Desis!

Anyways, it will be a slow, slightly routine-ridden job I think but I hope to make it unböring somehow. I'll try NOT to postpone my graduate studies because everyone knows once you get on to the career path, it's impossilbe to get back into studies. So I'll make sure that doesn't happen to me. I want my PhD eventually as always.

I don't know where life's gonna take me next but I'm sure it'll be somewhere good. It might get lonely but then I'm always good at making new friends and since I'll have the time, I'll find some fun activities to do. Only bad thing about Florida is the heat. But I'll manage. Or not. But I'll deal I'm sure. Who knows, once I have a home, car, and a good job, I might want to settle down too! Nothing's sure though except that if I get this job, my 'blog entries will be slightly more interesting.

I just had a hiccup. Somebody must be thinking of me in India.

I just had a beautiful dream. I was in India at Keval's apartment and we were all talking while Keval was resting in bed in the other room. I just walked across the room and caught a glance at Keval. He was sitting in his bed praying to God. He turned his head at me, smiled, and then went back to sleep. He didn't say anything but the look on his face said that he's soon going to be back! Even if none of my own dreams, goals, wishes ever come true, I hope this dream comes true. You should have seen the smile on his face... I love you bro and we all miss you very much.

This entry is devoted to all my silent readers. Slowly and steadily, my 'blog is attracting readers from all over the world; just got an email from a sweet young lady from Singapore. I started this site (back when 'blogs had to be hand-coded) to basically write down what was on my mind from day to day and share it with my family and friends back in India. Turns out my friends here also found it interesting and now I find welcome strangers who send me an email every other day telling me how they agree or disagree with something I wrote. Some email me just to give a compliment or two.

To everyone who reads this 'blog: Thank you very much! I may not ever win The Bloggies but I've already won my share of cherished well-wishers. And trust me that's all that matters. No seriously. I swear. Trust me on this one! OK FINE! I admit. A bloggie would be cool. Even a nomination! Though I don't know what category? The cutest Indian ;)? Ha!

I guess the only thing I'd like to tell you is that my 'blog is just about as honest I can be to the outside world. While nobody wants to admit it, I think there are different levels of honesty - among friends, between couples, among co-workers, with the whole world, and within yourself. Most people's definition of honesty is restricted to just one of these. So if your definition of honesty means being as honest as if you are talking to yourself, then my whole 'blog is a big lie. Certainly, I can never tell EVERYTHING I think of or tell. There are incidents in everyone's life that nobody wants to talk about and for the most part, maybe they shouldn't unless the moment is right and can benefit both parties. Hence on my 'blog, I choose not to divulge past misexperiences unless there is something to be gleaned from.

Now if you think honest means being as honest as you are to your friends and family, then I think I come pretty close. I've never talked badly about anyone I know on my blog but this doesn't mean I don't hate anyone. There are people I absolutely despise but I don't think they deserve my time and attention; their faces shall fade away with time yet the lessons they inadvertently taught me will stay fresh in my mind forever.

So what's my definition of honesty? It is a measure of the distance between what you tell yourself and what you tell the world. For no average human is that distance zero. Honesty is the best policy they say. An old proverb says, "The first step toward greatness is to be honest." So what is the definition of greatness? While I'm sure it's hard to define and comprises of honesty, good deeds, morality etc., let us just look at the honesty part for now.

By my definition, Honesty = 1 / (Yourself - World). So the more the distance between yourself and the world, the lower your score of honesty and as the truth-level between yourself and world comes closer, your honesty score rises. Since greatness depends on honesty, when honesty rises so does greatness. Now here's my theory. I said above that for no average human is the distance zero. What if the distance is zero for someone then? Are they average? No, they are...

Greatness = Honesty + ... = 1 / (Yourself - World) + ... = 1 / 0 + ... = Infinity + ... = Infinity = Mahatma.

It's no wonder that he is known as the father of the Indian nation. While I'll never be able to make my 'blog as honest as his life, I do try to be natural and let inspiration take over my keyboard from time to time, instead of pretending to write pseudo-interesting flashy 'blog entries. When I don't feel like talking, I don't. When I want to discuss my laundry, I do. And anytime I hear from a stranger from Singapore, I drag on and on about honesty and what-not :) I give importance to honesty on my blog so much, because I am very easily influenced as you can probably tell. So while any small incident can prompt a long-drawn entry or a short-curt post, I do have to stop and think for a moment whether this is me doing the entry or someone trying to get me to. Often times in life we do things we just "think" we are doing but instead are just following unspoken orders. And once you get on the track, it's too late to go back.

But then sometimes there's no time to stop and think. Like right now. I have three exams tomorrow and I have absolutely no time to stop and think about anything. So I absolutely MUST get back to studying and leave 'blogging for another day.

This is one of the million reasons why I love India.

I was searching for something online and chanced upon this mega-wedding in Lucknow, India. Seems like the son of Sahara India corporation is getting married and for some reason every celebrity, VIP, politician is there. Hell even Bill Clinton was supposed to be there but couldn't make it! And that was followed by 101 couples tying knots in a group ceremony. I don't think I will ever even remotely understand our Indian fascination of big weddings.

Personally I hate ten days of ceremonies and events, even though almost EVERYONE I know loves them. I don't know when, where, and how I will get married, but I do know that it won't be as flashy as every other wedding. Well that is as long as my bride-to-be is ok with that. Haha. I think that's the real reason guys go along with these weddings. Because of the girls. Tomorrow every girl I know is going to beat me up for saying everything that follows, but oh well, bring it on! Girls love flashy weddings. And diamonds and gold and silver - but NOT because they are expensive, but because they're ooooooooh sooooo shiny! The guys just want to get over with it as painlessly as possible. I'm sure I make a gross generalized statement on behalf of all guys when I say this, but come on, which guy in here doesn't agree with me on this one: Men don't care about the little ribbons around every glass and chocolates wrapped in cute little silver foils. So why do men go through it?

Maybe the elusive "love" really makes a man blind. Maybe he thinks this will make the girl stop nagging him. Or maybe, just maybe, he realizes that the beautiful girl he wishes to marry absolutely deserves the grandest of the weddings for she is truly the love of his life and the bane of his existence. I don't know if that will ever happen to me. I'm not bitter or jaded; just not as naive as I was a few years ago.

I think you have to be at one of the three stages in life to decide that "Ok this is the woman I want to hear scream my name in hell-raising fury everytime I forget to put down the toilet seat." The first stage, as I said before, is of naivete, between the ages of post-puberty and early adulthood. This is when you are 19 and in "love" for the first time. You have met a pretty damsel with enchanting eyes and want to spend every silly second of your life with her though you barely know her last name. I have no qualms in admitting that I have felt like this before. And not just once, many many times. Now if only polygamy were allowed I'd be one happy chap. But alas it is not, so I must wait until I hit the second or the third stage.

The second stage is when you are moving from your late twenties into your early thirties. You have had a series of relationships and a fair share of thankful and regrettable breakups. You have seen everything the feminine gender has to offer and yet for some reason you choose not to stick to any of them. Then your best friend's kid goes into grade-school and gets an A in crayon-painting. You remember how great it felt two decades ago when you got that A in spelling class too. And that's when it hits you. You don't have too much time to spare if you plan on having a family of your own. Sure, for years you laughed it off as something suckers with no ambitions do but now that your job is stable (and boring), that marriage thing sure sounds sweet.

If you're in India, you'd get your parents to start searching a nice bride for you. Since you are 31, you aren't exactly going to meet a pretty 20 year old. You'll end up saying 'yes' to whoever is available. On the other hand, if you're an expendable sprocket at some mega-corp in New York City, you go back into your closet to find that blackbook and see if any of the homely girls you once liked are still single. Chances are they're not. And that's when you decide to get married to whoever says 'yes' first. In either case, the marriage will be however she wants it - flashy, extravagant, ostentatious - in other words, expensive. Well what else do you expect? You were too busy being a free little bird when you had the chance to propose to that nice girl but didn't since you thought she was too clingy. Now you don't have a choice my brother.

And then there's the third stage. This is more like the thirteenth hour that strikes once a blue moon. Not everyone enters the magical third stage for it is shrouded by mystical clouds of bad dates, stalking ex's, hopeless setups, and shameful hookups; visible only to ones truly in love. This is when you have known someone for half a decade but feel like it has been forever. You never really loved her as madly as that hot chic from choir but you never really lived your life without her either. She knows how many Advils you take everytime you have a headache. You know how many hours it means everytime she says "just two more minutes." Both of you know what the other likes in their subs and sandwiches and both of you know everyone in the other's family. Being good friends, you spent a lot of time together but never really thought about being a couple, since neither of you is a fantasy of the other. When all of a sudden, one day, love happens. Out of the blue and unexpectedly spontaneous. It doesn't make sense! You are friends not lovers. This is so wrong. But it feels so right. You are not made for each other yet you cannot be without each other. But this isn't love. Love is supposed to be all natural and at first sight. Love is supposed to be tingly with butterflies-in-tummy. Love is supposed to be what they show in the movies and car commercials and beer ads. Or is it?

I don't think I can say what it is at this moment. Maybe some day I will. I hope when I get married, it is in the mysterious third stage and not the dreaded second; chances of the naive first stage are pretty much nil. Till then, I'll just take whatever life has to offer me.

For the first time in my life I wish I was a doctor. Keval's dad, Paresh Uncle called me up and said if I were a doctor, he would instantly call me to India otherwise it's better that I just stay here and pray for Keval's recovery. It hurts to be here so far away but I'm going to do whatever he says.

I try to divert my mind and think about other things but it's kinda hard to watch a movie when you know your cousin is half-way around the world attached to an artificial lung.

My cuzin Keval who got into a major motorbike accident yesterday in Goa, India is right now in Mumbai. His condition is now worse than we previously thought. After a second brain surgery to fix the blood clotting from the first operation, he is in an extremely critical state right now. We are all praying. Guess that's all we can do right now. But I trust him, he's a very strong kid - hell the strongest in the whole family. He must pull through.

My cuzin Keval from Bombay is right now in a hospital in Goa. At about 3:30 PM Indian Standard Time today he had a severe accident while riding a motorcycle. He suffered injury to brain and eyes. After a successful brain surgery, doctors say he is in critical condition for the next 48 hours. My whole family is extremely worried at this moment. I don't have a brother but he's closer to me than a real brother. I got news that things are better now and that I shouldn't worry. As always, my dad said "Don't worry. God is with us." I'm sorry but I can't stop worrying. I am considering flying off to India in case the situation doesn't get better in a day or two.

I love you Keval. And I have faith that you will recover fully vey soon.

Jello (or Jelly in India) never tasted soooooooo good. God knows after how long I made jello. Probably 7-8 years. But the funniest part is, I don't have a fridge. I simply bought a $1 jello packet, poured it into a bowl of warm water and put the bowl (with a plate on top for cover) in a tiny little window in my bunker. Fast forward four hours and we have the most perfect jello ever! Temperature of normal freezers is about 5F and that of fridges is 35F. It's 2F outside right now. Of course the jello is well set :)

It's little things like these which make life fun. Well little things and 930GB of hard drives :-P

I haven't 'blogged in a while mainly because nothing interesting has happened. Last night I went to bed hoping that something blog-worthy happens today, so that I can write about it and share with everyone. After all Taylor nominated me for Bloggies 2004 Best Kept Secret Weblog award. Thanks a LOT Tay! So I just had to blog something big.

As they say, be careful what you wish for; you may get it. I guess at 9:15 am this morning I did. I got an international call from her. Not a lot of people know her. Probably two of my friends in India and almost nobody here. I never hide anything from my family but I guess 'her' name just never came up. If I ever had a crush on a girl, my sister would be the first to know. If I wanted some advice on how to approach so-and-so's daughter, I would ask my dad first. If the girl didn't want to go to a movie with me, my mom would tell me not to worry because there'll always be someone else (by the way this was when I was 14-15, so enough with the momma's boy jokes).

But I never told anyone about 'her' even though I know I liked her from the day I saw her in my college in Calcutta. I think now I know why; because she was never a crush or a random hot chic I run across every other day at some coffee shop. I clearly remember walking into an already stuffed classroom in the first week of college. The girls were seated on the left half while the boys were on the right. I looked for a space on the boys half but it was too crowded. I walked towards the back of the class, found half a row empty on the girl's side, thought screw-it, and just took a seat. I looked on my left and there she was yapping away non-stop. I looked at her, she looked at me, her friends looked at me, the guys on the other side looked at me, and everybody laughed. It was quite possibly the most embarrassing moment of my college life and I didn't really give a damn.

Next day though the class was half empty, I went and sat next to her and her posse. They poked a few harmless jokes at me - something about me getting a sex-op - but I think she knew by then that I was a good guy. Within a couple of days, I knew all her friends well and we went to the juice center down Ray Street. I remember telling my dad about my trip to the juice center with a bunch of girls and him warning me to be careful of some street gang of full of jealous guys. Ya we have those in Calcutta. I don't think I knew then that she was going to be an important anonymous person in my life. But then again we never really know anything. Your best friend today could become your sworn enemy tomorrow and the person you didn't say 'Hi' to on the elevator could be donating blood to save your thankless soul.

What makes me feel the guiltiest is that I did not go see her the summer before last when I was in India. I made the stupid mistake of thinking "I'll call her tomorrow" too many times and when I did call her, she had already left the city and had gone to see her relatives in a different state. I joked about this to my best friends, saying how she really likes me but I'm not sure if she's worth my time. I pretended in front of them that I was too cool for her. So I didn't bother to see her then. And I didn't really give much thought when she started crying to me on the phone one night that summer, saying that I should really just take a flight and come see her. Her parents really wanted to see me, her uncle even talked to me on the phone and wished to meet me in person. I told her "sorry but I can't" when in truth, I just didn't want to. I didn't want to, because I still hadn't realized she was more than a nagging friend that I was treating her like.

I know had I gone up to see her that June in 2002, I would probably be engaged to her by now. Maybe I would be making plans for her to come here and stay with me while I complete my education. It would be very difficult but I know we would make it through. But I was too "cool" to accept a little hardship in my comfortable existence. I wanted things to be easy and my way. So I told her sorry dear I can't do it. And she kept telling me to keep trying and find a way. But I just ignored her. Oh I loved talking to her on the phone but just didn't want her to screw up my so well laid-out life plans. And so while trying to make my own selfish life perfect and in-sync with my future plans, I basically f***ed up things with someone who loves me so truly.

She got engaged today. She just told me I was one of the first people she called. And she's getting married in the first week of February to some guy she doesn't know and doesn't care about. She said she doesn't even like his name. I always thought those movie scenes where people laugh while they are really crying were bullshit. I mean either you cry or you laugh, you can't do both. Now I know you can, because that's exactly she was doing. She wanted me to congratulate her and said that I, being such a "good friend", should be happy about the news. I have never hated myself so much in my entire life. Here is a gorgeous intelligent girl who loved me so much and even today, didn't blame me for my inactions and here I am, not paying any attention to her because she didn't "fit" into my visions of how my life should be. I always liked her a lot too. She is everything I would want for a girlfriend/wife, except that she is 10,000 miles away and I have a PhD to obtain.

This is exactly what happens when you take some people for granted in your life. I always thought oh she'll be there when I come back to India all successful and well-educated. And if I'm not successful, she wouldn't want me anyway. I couldn't be more wrong. She just wanted me, as I was the day I met her. In every romantic film ever made, they call this person "the one." People always tell me, don't worry, there'll always be someone else. Or she's not worth it man. Or don't screw up your life plans for some girl. I know everyone is right in their own context. But what about the ones I've wronged. How can I forgive myself for playing, flirting, and cooing with her all these years though I wasn't going to ever commit. Or at least not till I became the "educated" man I wanted to be.

If she is reading this, she'll prolly hate me for the rest of her life. I guess I deserve it. Sorry. I hope you can forget me. I know I can't forget you but I really wish you congratulations on your engagement and hope that you move on. Best of luck in all your life's endeavors and hope your marriage is peaceful and ever lasting.

I've written a few 'blog entries in which I made fun of myself or proved how stupid/boring/weird/dumb I am. But I don't remember ever writing something that showed how much of a sick selfish person I really am. Well I guess there's a first time for everything. Right now I hate myself and don't tell me I shouldn't. I know what I've done for the past 4 years is despicable. So ya, I got my wish. I got a "beautiful" reason to write a long blog entry. Maybe I should get some goddamned award now to make me feel even shallower.

So you'd like to know more about India... A good compilation on literature and films pertaining to information and insight about the real India.

The Hindu God - Lord Ram was born on Jan. 10, 5114 B.C. While I can't deny or accept the claims of these guys, I'd love to see some concrete evidence. That would be super cool. However a few MAJOR discrepancies, like the creation date of the recently NASA-discovered man-made bridge across the Palk Strait connecting India to Sri Lanka. The author says it was around the time Ram invaded Lanka whereas NASA research says about 1,700,000 years ago (which would have been the 'Treta Yug'). Since I am a pretty firm believer in evolution and the fact that human beings in their current form have only been here for a few hundred thousand years, I am certain there was no man-made bridges made 1.7 million years ago. While it's always fun to connect mythology to archeology, it's even more fun when the connections are based on believable facts and some solid proofs.

And I have made it into a book! Well, technically Chime Softwares was mentioned in the book PC Annoyances three times, for Hot Chime, AjooBlast, and TrayPlay. I bought two copies, one for me, and one to send home to India :) I feel all giddy.

Had a good night's sleep last night. Headache's gone. It's just the stress. Eh.

Well today didn't really turn out to be such a fun day after all. Busy with work and studies. Gotta get back to more homework. Wish I had time to post lotsa interesting links. At least one good thing I found out - I can send text messages (sms) to my sister's cell in India. That way I have someone to bug while I'm stuck in a boring class.

The Indian Prime Minister is the Number 8 Technology Agenda Setter. #1 is Steve Jobs from Apple and Bill Gates is #2. And the author of the SoBig virus is #42! I guess that's because this is not the list of the most powerful people, but rather that of the people who will influence the future the most. In that case, I think Narayana Murthy has more say in IT in India than the Indian PM.

Just talked to my family in India again. Miss them so much :( My sis is online right now, telling me that my best friend Vishal was talking to her about my b'day. I miss him. And Chetan.

Mason was talking about (more like showing off trust me) his high school's website. Then I remembered my dad's friend Kishan Uncle was also helping develop my high school's website in India. I did a google search and look what I found: BGES High School, Calcutta, India. And my what cool virtual tours they have (Kishan Uncle helped set them up too!). Oh here's the official site for my old college. Good colors, decent design, bad fonts and textual layout.

"And guess what the average age is in the [Indian IT] industry? Just 26 and a half! These 26/27-year-olds have changed the world's perception of India. It's not just a country of snake-charmers; it's a country against which protectionist walls have to be erected. Of course, we can also charm snakes." - Arun Shourie: Listen to the new India. Thanks Keval!

The 2003 IgNobel winner for Peace is Lal Bihari the Dead, from UP, India.

A few popups, but oh my this is soooooooo funny - Safety Charts from India with captions like: "Apparently when someone catches fire, the best course of action to take is to roll them up into a giant cigar."

I had a really weird dream this morning. Somehow I could take a local underground train/subway to go from Rutgers to my house in India. I don't really recall the dream now but it's surprising how/why/when I dream. Everytime I put my pillow facing the door, I oversleep, wake up groggy, tired, and have nightmares. Last few days I've been sleeping the other way and have pleasant dreams. I'm sleeping the other way simply because I lean against the wall next to the door while reading a book. So here's what I wanna find out. Am I dreaming good because I sleep in one direction OR because I read a book at night. I'm kinda thinking it's the latter however I did not read anything few days ago and still had nice dreams.

I'm gonna be 23 in a few weeks and I'm still so very affected by dreams. I should've grown out of it by now. But hey, I had a happy dream, I put on some good ol' Indian music (Maine Pyaar Kiya songs), took a shower, and came to my work - thus beginning an awesome day. And of course, now I go online and read CNN to find out that how you sleep says a lot about your personality. Of course. once again I have to be different (zara hat ke!) and turns out I am among the 6.5% of freefallers: "The freefall, flat on the tummy with the hands at the sides of the head, is the most unusual position. Only 6.5 percent of people prefer it..."

So yesterday I was a little worried about Hurricane Isabel. Now, I am HELL-OF-A-LOT worried! See the two pictures here: satellite relief map and predicted path. While the center is still quiet far from NJ, it can easily veer towards us and if it does, things are gonna get very very wet. While everyone in college wants a Friday off, I'm just hoping my bunker doesn't get flooded. Maybe I'm overreacting, cuz I know my landlord has a decent sump pump but still, this is my first hurricane and I am NOT looking forward to it. Why am I so scared? Let's just say the hurricane storm itself is bigger than all of Texas! That's like 1/5th the size of India probably. And I don't want the bunker to turn into the jacuzzi. Oh well, gotta get back to work.

It's been a long time since I blogged. So what am I upto. Studies, work, select friends, and books. Ah books. Growing up, I used to devour the books my dad read, mostly works by Jeffrey Archer, Sidney Sheldon, and John Grisham. After I discovered computer manuals, help files, and FAQs, my interest in books dwindled. Last semester I took a class that got me interested in books again - Trauma & Literature; albeit a very different genre of books. This weekend I completed a book I'd been reading for over 2 months, Everyone's Burning by Ian Speigelman. Now I'm reading Andre Dubus' House of Sand and Fog.

This being the senior/final year, most of my friends are busy with their classes/homework so it's hard to hang out with them. Moreover, I have evening and night classes and work during the day. While it's great for me, since I get enough free time for studies, work, sleep, and just relaxing, it's hard to meet up with people and chill. I see Arthur every other day, just to chill, since he has a lot of free time in-between his classes. He gave me a ride to my aunt's house to pick up some of my client's mail. Then we went to an Indian food store and I bought some maggi for him. One by one I'll get all my friends addicted to it. And while my friends are gonna get fat eating Maggi, I have healthy lunches - today I had some good Chinese fried rice with tofu and vegetables. Since I have enough money to buy me mostly any food on/around campus, I have to be really careful with what I eat, especially if I get sick, there is nobody to take care of me on a daily basis. So I watch what I eat, but then people start thinking I'm on a diet. Look what Kathleen just said online with regards to my memory and eating habits: "You're an elephant with an underweight disorder. I'm calling you my anorexic elephant friend." But then just 2 hours ago I was with Cher eating some yummmmmmy french vanilla icecream, though only a single scoop.

I knew food would become a slightly bigger part of my life once I started living alone and well it has. I care a bit more about what I eat, when I eat, and how much I eat. But I never though cleaning would become anymore important. It is. I dust my room every other day and clean my bathroom once a week. What's my point? I'm turning 23 in 2 weeks, and finally I'm acting like one. No more excess drinking, eating, sleeping, working. No extremes - I'm becoming 'Fair and Balanced'. Hehe.

Anyways, my studies going on good. I have homework due tomorrow, on Wednesday, and on Monday. I already did the stuff for next Monday! Well simply cuz it's computer graphics and something that I absolutely love. Homework for tomorrow and Wednesday is pretty interesting too - mostly programming with a few question/answers. Nobody likes to do homework, but this is the first time I don't absolutely hate doing my homework - mainly cuz it's not repetitive or boring, rather interesting and creative. And as usual, my work's going awesome. I got one website to complete as soon as possible and got a new project for my university that I just started this morning.

Everything's going decent in my life right now, EXCEPT the weather. It's September and raining here as if it's the monsoons. Now I have nothing against rains, in fact love them. However I live 10 feet below the earth in well-sheltered bunker. I can survive a nuclear blast but I don't think I can easily survive Ms. Isabel - a Category 5 hurricane that could hit the US East Coast quite hard in a week or so. If by some misfortune the Raritan River in New Brunswick floods all the way to Easton Avenue (my home), I have no idea what I'll do. I'll probably move all my stuff (and trust me I have a LOT of stuff) out to the first floor of our house but it'll be a lot of work. So I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

It's two years already. Still gives me shivers thinking about the day. I was almost ready to go to college and my aunt was in the kitchen finishing up stuff. I never turned on the TV in the mornings, simply cuz there was never enough time to watch anything. But for some reason, I just turned on ABC 7. There was some gibberish of news and all of a sudden breaking news with footage of first tower! I couldn't really believe it. I instantly called my aunt to verify if this is the WTC or something else. She was shocked too, but it looked more like a tiny plane accident. She went on to get ready for work and in front of my eyes, a 2nd plane hit the other tower and ABC went blank; their broadcast antenna was on the 2nd tower. That's when I knew it was an act of terrorism. The name 'Osama' and 'Al Qaeda' instantly came to my mind, reminiscent of 1993 attacks.

We informed my uncle about the attacks and a few of our neighbors. I still went to college, even studied the 2nd class: 'Statistics I' and only after the class, was it announced that Rutgers was closed for the day. And the twin towers had collapsed! That bit was just unbelievable. How can two 110 storey buildings fall cuz of some tiny planes? It was later that I found out the planes were 747 commercial jet liners. It was an eerie ride in the bus. All the students just shocked and not knowing what to say. I mentioned the name 'Osama' and 'Al Qaeda' as prime suspects but nobody knew who they were. I said they were involved in 1993 attacks on WTC too, though I heard of them wreaking worse havocs in the state of Kashmir in India. I took the bus, reached my aunt's store, drove back home in her car, and spent the whole day on Fark. The next day I signed up for a fark account. Before that I was just a lurker. That day showed me what an online community really is. I also recorded some WTC videos, put them online and submitted to Fark, esp. for people in countries where TV stations were censoring the videos. That was the least I could do. It's 2 years past now. My life's pretty much the same. Yet the mention of WTC gives me the creeps everytime.

The last place I want to read about the Gateway of India is on a CNN's frontpage story. 46 people dead and 161 injured; 100 detonators found near Nasik. Selfish as it sounds, I really hope nobody I know was injured.

One of my best friends in India is gonna be a father - Chetan & Shradha are expecting a baby sometime in 2003-end or early 2004. He's just one year elder to me, actually more like 6 months. And he's gonna be a father. Wow. I don't know what to say, except Congrats Bro! As much as I'm trying to digest this great news, I'm just overcome by emotions. Wow. My buddy, a father. Wow.

More interesting thing I found out about the Diamond article - the Choksi family: "One such group - headed by the Choksi family - bought a $35,000 batch of preliminary Gemesis research stones last year and is currently selling them in India at a 10 to 20 percent profit." I'm pretty sure they are refering to Ruchi's family. She's my cuzin Purvi's best friend and I've met her a lot of times. I know they're extremely rich and in the diamond business. I gotta verify this fact though. Sweet nevertheless.

Here's some news to scare my family in India. The President of my University, Dr. Richard McCormick was robbed and beaten outside a liquor store, just a block or two away from where I live. Let me repeat, the PRESIDENT OF MY UNIVERSITY. Thankfully there was a student nearby who unknowingly helped the Prez. Lately, there has been increased rate of crime on Easton Av. (where I live), Wyckoff Street, Senior Street and Bartlett Street. These are all tiny streets most Rutgers students walk down from day to day. Not to sound hysterical but last month a girl was raped just 5-6 houses down my street. Thankfully I live in a basement with double door entry and no breakable windows.

It's not been the safest campus to be in lately. Every other night all Rutgers students get an email from the head of the Rutgers Police Dept. warning about new criminals on the lookout. It's like a weekly news. I seriously hope it's a summer-vacation thing and once there's 8,000 students around the campus all the time, crime goes down. So ya, here's a "Hello I love you" call to my family. Don't worry. All the muggers want is the money I don't have in my wallet. Can't take what I don't got. With that, it's sleep time.

India's having e-voting!

Here are 10 best things about US and to keep things in balance, here are 911 things to hate about US. While I don't agree with either of the lists 100%, out of the 10 best things, the following really hit a nerve:

"In America the destiny of the young is not given to them but created by them.: Not long ago, I asked myself, "What would my life have been like if I had never come to the United States?" If I had remained in India, I would probably have lived my whole life within a five-mile radius of where I was born. I would undoubtedly have married a woman of my identical religious and socioeconomic background. I would almost certainly have become a medical doctor, or an engineer, or a computer programmer. I would have socialized entirely within my ethic community. I would have a whole set of opinions that could be predicted in advance; indeed, they would not be very different from what my father believed, or his father before him. In sum, my destiny would to a large degree have been given to me." - Dinesh D'Souza

To the average reader, he is just another minstrel singing patriotic songs about the US for the upcoming 4th of July weekend. But delve a bit deeper and you realize that even though the Indian-born author only talks good about US, the article seems to be his way of justifying the burning question within himself (and everyone like him, including me) - why did he leave India and his family to come to the US? I used to think that once I've been here long enough, the guilt of leaving my family, friends, and all that I loved, for a better future in US, will vanish. It's far from the truth. While I have adjusted pretty well to the American life, every once in a while the question begs an answer - is money, career, education, name, fame (insert materialistic goals here) really worth leaving what God gave you?

Sometimes I think yes, sometimes I think no. I used to think well I'll get the answer the day I make my first billion. Now I think I'll never get the answer - frankly because this isn't a question/answer, it's an irresolvable conflict. On one hand I could have been happily married by now in India but in truth I will prolly be single for many more years to come. On the other hand, I wasn't satisfied by the education, computer-projects, and business contacts there, but am more than satisfied with everything here. So ya, the confusion and conflict remains. In the meantime, I go out and see Cigir after a LONG time :)

After over three years I've finally made a software that makes me want to jump and shout in pride and I realize that my dad, mom, and sister are not here to see it. Since it's a software that plays music over the Internet and the dialup is pretty slow in India, they can't see it in action. Anyways, ladies and gentlemen, AjooBlast (download exe) is here! It's one of the most kick-ass softwares that I've ever designed. Took me a LOT of coding and a LOT of staying-up-all-night. But within days of me dreaming of a proggie like this, I managed to create version 1.0 :) Here's what it does - at home, you can run it in the server mode and select which folders to share. Go to your office and then run it in the player mode, enter the ip address of the server and just click 'Connect'! That's it. You can then browse through your big huge music collection @ home right from your work!

You can set a password on your server so that only you can access your music. You can give it to your friends and they can listen to your songs. Best of all, you can browse through your friends music collections while they go through yours. I connected with a couple of friends and went over their mp3s. God some people listen to CRAZY music. Hehe. Anyways, I talked to the editor of PC World magazine and he loved the software. He's writing a book about the Annoyances on PC's and hold your breath... but THREE of my softwares are featured in it - TrayPlay, HotChime, and now AjooBlast! I'm thinking of making a Pro version of AjooBlast and selling it for $5 per license. Who knows, if 2000 people buy it, I can buy me a car :) I haven't sold a software yet - only websites. So let's see how it goes.

I'm feeling extremely excited right now - considering how EVERYONE who has seen AjooBlast has been amazed. Here's a screenshot just for you to ogle at. I think I should go to bed now. It's past 3...

Behold and shiver! The Swedberg family site is up and live. It's my *cute-little-blonde-girl* Tamara's family website :) It's hard to believe it's her first all-flash site. She's extremely creative and though she doesn't code 'n script a lot, she's quite nifty with her animation ideas. Just click on 'Devon' and then wait for the fire-truck to emerge and then click on it; you'll see what I mean. A lot of people tell me that I'm creative cuz I make all these websites but I refuse to believe them. As far as I know, I'm 1% creative, 99% methodological + hardworking. Tamara on the other hand, fits my definition of creative. Give her a little paper and a box of crayons, and she'll make a museum! Give me a little paper and a box of crayons, and I'll complain about the lack of infrastructure. If you remember, she's the same creative genius who made me the awesome StrongBad B'day card :) Oh and if you click on 'Tamara' for some reason I'm in there too! Notice the hat on this old pic. She calls me the Professor, though I didn't do any edumacating!

Phew at least it's the good kinda professor. Back in India, I remember my buddies Chetan & Vishal started calling me Professor after watching the movie 'Sangharsh' - a Hindi (according to some morons, poor) remake of the original Hollywood film The Silence of The Lambs. Hannibal Lector's part was played by Akshay Kumar - The Professor. So in other words, according to my buddies, I had the personality of Hannibal Lector! I don't think ANYONE right now can tell me that I am like that anymore. Phew, at least I changed.

Just got back to my bunker after a nice weekend with family. We were supposed to go to Great Adventure 6 Flags on Saturday but cancelled it due to rains. Last night we went to Chichi's and today had lunch @ Moghals. Total awesome food. I'm sooooo stuffed right now I can't even eat for the next few weeks! J/k

Oh and I just woke up my mom and wished her Happy B'day! Well it's already June 2nd in India :) So here's another big HAPPYYYYYYYY BIRTHDAAAAAYYYYYYYYYYYY MOM shout-out to the coolest mom in the world!!!!! I miss her... And what's uncool is that my dad's on a business trip to Delhi and away from her. Oh well... at least my lil sister is there :) Ahhhhhh last year this time I was in India, having sooo much fun.

Google has finally launched India-News section :)

I just gave the BEST EXAM EVER! As far as I know, I got all the five questions perfectly correct - Econometrics rulez! I'm taking Advanced Econometrics in Fall '03, though it's not gonna be as easy as this. Anyways, I'm in a REALLY good mood right now. Gotta study for Physics tonight. Hopefully it'll be good too.

Anyways, there's a LOTTA good movies coming out this summer. One of the movies I really wanna see is Finding Nemo. Actually it's a cartoon, but still. I love Pixar products :) God I sound like a 7 year old. Actually Cigir told me the other day that she thought I was younger than her. Like I was 20-21 or something. Hehe. It's funny to me cuz back in India, everyone said I looked 25 or somethin! So looks like I've got younger with time. Hehe.

I missed last week's StrongBad email cuz of my exams etc. Imagine my surprise when I saw it this morning, just before the third episode of Teen Girl Squad, and found StrongBad's head being replaced by Casio VL-Tone VL-1 - playing the demo music. We have one of those at my home in India!!! And it plays the cheesy blips-kinda music that I used to loooooove. Here's a short clip, here's the real demo. and here's the pic:

I called India today. Talked to everybody for almost an hour! I miss home a lot.

Here's a really good article about India & China competing in the Cold War II. Pretty well researched and unbiased. One of those 'makes you wonder' kinda articles.

Oh by the way (cuz that's EXACTLY how Prof. Paczkowski, my Econometrics teacher, says it), I talked to him today about my senior honors thesis program, and he said he's interested in becoming my advisor as soon as I present a good research topic to him! Wow that 'hard' search to find a good advisor, took me exactly... umm... 10 minutes? LOL. I'm gonna see him in his office on Wednesday to discuss everything. I'm already getting the highest grades in Econ right now :) So that's a good thing. Let's see how it goes. Hopefully I'll be doing some spiffy research on some important economic topic next year. I really need to get into the honors program for Econ, since I can use it for my University College Honors program. Bah bah! Don't ask me why I am doing allllll these honors courses and double majors and minors and blah blah blah... I just am! You know why? Cuz when I was a student in RKC (boarding school in India), and they charged us Rs. 25 for a special dinner, I made sure I'd eat Rs 75 worth of food AT LEAST! So if I'm paying $14,000 a year to Rutgers, I'm gonna get my $42,000 worth of education! Period.

I've always have a problem with static electricity ever since I came to US. It never happened in India, so I guess it's the carpetted floors here. Every now and then, most likely when it's too dry out here, I touch metallic objects like door knobs, water coolers etc. and get mild electric shocks. Also if I touch people, they get shocked too! Finally, after reading this Straight Dope article, I found out how to prevent the static shocks from hurting me. All I gotta do is touch metallic objects while holding another metallic object, like a coin or a key. Eh no biggie! Much better than getting shocked in the tongue while trying to drink water!!!

So there's this new reality show on TV - War on Iraq. In fact it's so popular that it's also on the radio, internet, and pretty much everywhere I wander. Oh well, so US attacked Iraq last night and Iraq's pretty much screwed now. While I'm no fan of Bush (or Gore either), I must admit I'm kinda fascinated by his strongheadedness. Right after 9/11 he decided he wanted to bomb Saddam. Guess he finally got the chance now.

One thing that I really like is how Bush gave Saddam 2-day ultimatum. This is politics. Even the smallest/slightest change takes years and decades. Middle-East peace process has been going on for years and years. Clinton cooled down the heat between Palestine & Israel, but as soon as he left, they began to fight again. India-Pakistan have been fighting over Kashmir for over half a century now without any resolution. But it took Bush less than 3 years to pretty much wipe out Al-Qaeda and Iraq! While I fully agree there has been a lot of civilian casualities, I'm kinda surprised to see in this war, there is so much concern for the loss of Iraqi lives. US seems to be trying it's best to attack only the Iraqi leaders/military and not the citizen. Never in the history of the world has an invading country cared more for the lives of the invaded.

A lot of people are against war, especially in US. Sure, of course they are. Because when they wake up in the morning, their biggest worry is which cereal do they want for breakfast, and not whether will Saddam will order his troops to poison their families. One of my housemates is half-Iraqi who been to Iraq a couple of times. I was talking to her the other day and she said the average Iraqi hates Saddam as much as the average Afghan hated the Taliban. And they would more than welcome a regime change right about now.

However, the war isn't as clear cut as it appears (well duh!). There's more than enough oil in Iraq to fuel Bush and Cheney's bank accounts for generations to come. But do I really care if the oil prices go up/down or if Bush makes a few hundred million more? Nah! I'd rather see Iraq turn into a free country without a corrupt dictatorship. Sure, it'll never be US or Germany, but at least it'll be better than what it is right now.

Some of my friends were worried about Iraqis attacking US with chemical and biotech weapons. Of course, that's a real threat and since we can't do anything about it, just might as well go on living our lives without worrying too much about it. If it's gonna happen, it'll happen.

I wrote the above 'blog and just realized that it's funny how I could relate to the same stuff growing up as Kat did. I mean I was brought up in India for the first 20 years of my life! And yet we saw the same He-man cartoons, My Little Pony show, Thundercats, and god knows what else... I had the same toys too... Sometimes I wonder how I never felt weird settling down in US, after all it's a whole new country with a total dif. lifestyle. I guess cuz I was already exposed to most of it as I was growing up. But then I'm luckier cuz Kat and Taylor don't know about Chacha Chaudhary and Gayab Aaya. I wonder if even my sister remembers Gayab Aaya...

From this quiz:

Q6. Which is India’s first cartoon character?
Ans. "Gayab" and the serial was "Gayab Aaya". It was about a ghost called "Gayab" who was like "Casper".

Hello from Salt Lake City, Utah! This has been one eventful day. I started at Newark, New Jersey at 6 am, then flew to Cincinnati, Ohio. There I had a nice pretzel with nacho cheese @ the airport and continued to Las Vegas, Nevada. En route, the pilot decided to be nice and took us on a 10 minute tour of the Grand Canyon! While I'm sure it's 10000 times more better in closeup, the view from the tiny little airplane window was breathtaking nevertheless. Once @ Vegas, I got to see a few casinos from the airport lobby, like the Stratosphere, MGM Grand, and Mandalay Bay etc. From there, I flew to Salt Lake City, Utah - my final destination.

I'm sure you're wondering why I took such a weird route (that took over 9 hours!) Well I bought my tickets a bit too late and this weird long route was the only thing I could afford. If I wanted a direct flight from Jersey to Utah, it would have cost me over twice the price I paid. Plus it was all fun. I got to be in 4 states in one day! Hehe.

Anyways, I'm here @ my grandma's sister's house. She's pretty young actually (about as old as my dad) and her daughters (technically my aunts) are same age as me. It's been a few months since I last saw Purvi & Priya (at Sneh's Sweet 16) and so I was pretty excited to meet them. Well, we had a nice lunch and then just relaxed for a few hours. And later in the evening, Purvi and I went and rented some ski equipment for me! Tomorrow I'm going skiing!!!!! While I'm excited, I'm still not sure what it's all about. So more updates on skiing AFTER I do it. Oh and I got an email from my dad cautioning me not to ski! Hehe. You know what that means! I HAVE to ski now 100%! Haha.

Along with ski equipment, we also got two movies tonight: Mallrats (upon Priya's request) and Monsoon Wedding (Purvi & I hadn't seen it). First we saw Mallrats and it was a pretty fun movie. In fact so much fun that I was not at all interested in seeing the other movie, because I knew it wasn't a laugh-out-loud comedy. But then since we had nothing else to do, we decided to see Monsoon Wedding after all, and well, let me just say that it is one of the most thought-provoking films I've seen in months, probably years.

Here is my interpretation of Monsoon Wedding: If you want to know as much about India and us Indians in as little time as possible, then just go to Blockbuster and rent this movie. While I am not an avid supporter of the high-profile pseudo-artistic foreign-film-festival-fodder Indian movies made by pretentious directors who prefer to portray modern India as a backward, uncultured, and crime-ridden confused country rather than a slowly but steadily developing nation, I have to admit that this movie totally negates any preconceptions (rather misconceptions) I had about it. This movie very honestly and truly depicts everything that happens on every street corner in India every day. From the ostentatious marriages in rich families to the poor "event manager's" simplistic romantic saga, the movie attempts to give a magnified view of how life goes on in a country chiseled by customs, traditions, class divisions between the rich and the not-so-rich, and the strong bonds that somehow integrate every family unit. India is not just about Taj Mahal, elephants, snake-charmers, hunger, beggars, Kama Sutra, Computer Software engineers, or cheap skilled labor. It's about the people, and this film successfully draws a vivid portrait of my huge one-billion strong Indian national family.

I can't believe I'm saying this, but thanks Mira Nair and keep up the good work. While a few of her past films failed to impress me, this one succeeded. Maybe, because this is her first movie that I have seen outside of India. But I didn't see this movie with the eyes of a foreigner. I saw the movie, as if trying to remember and reminisce, the first 20 years of my life back home. I am glad I haven't forgotten what India is. And I'm glad that there is a movie like this to remind me in case I forget.

Four words of advice: GO RENT THIS MOVIE NOW! Ok, it's five words, but still, you get the point... it's worth it!

Woke up @ 10 this morning :) Well classes start @ 1:10 pm, so why should I wake up any earlier. Hehe. Then I called Chetan and talked to him for 24 minutes! Well 24 minutes cuz thatz how long the phone card lasts when calling Calcutta, India. Hehe. Damn I miss everyone @ Calcutta... esp. Chetan & Vishal. And here I am in the Livinston Computer Lab.

If I didn't have such a bad headache right now, today would probably be the best day of my life. I woke up kinda late (cuz of all the late phone chats last night), got dressed, went to work, collected my paycheck, and went to my Physics class. And guess what happened during the class? I got a call on my cell and a voicemail from the car salesman I talked to on Saturday. I quickly left the classroom and called him up and he said, "Congrats Chirag! Your lease was approved! You can come get your car anytime!" And I was speechless. I know I should've said something like 'Thanks', 'Wow' or 'OH MY GOD!!!!!!!!!' But instead I think my exact words were 'YIPEOSR SPLOIERKASPW SODTRIDF PEROQJKGOR!!!!!!!' Hehe. DAAAAAMN!!!!!! My first car ever! With my own hard-earned money and on my own credit line, WITHOUT any co-applicants... I feel all proud of myself right now. Heh.

Ok so last night, I called up EVERYONE in India and talked to them for 30 mins! I soooooooo miss everyone :( On 24th my whole big family celebrated my grandpa-ma's 50th and my Paresh Uncle & Rita Aunty's 25th wedding anniversary! EVERYONE was there! Except me :( Oh well... it's not that bad. I guess I'm having fun here all alone... But I miss everyone! I really do.

So after the phone call, I got all weird and felt soooooo homesick. So I decided to call my friend Jacqueline. I called her up and we talked for TWO hours non-stop! I never talk more than 10 minutes to anyone normally, cuz I'd rather talk to them face-2-face instead. But she lives kinda far away. So only thing I can do is call her up in the middle of the night! Ah the pleasures of free long distance and unlimited nights/weekends on cellphones. And she's soooooo much fun to talk to and listen to. It's interesting, how both of us actually think along the same lines a lot of times. Hehe. Dammit! Why can't she go to Rutgers!

I had such a good day today. I woke up late, cleaned my room, bathroom, cleaned the kitchen, and then went to work. At 4 pm, my friend Vu came online and asked me if I was still shopping for a car. Instantly, we decided to go out and look for a good deal for myself. First we went to the local Hyundai dealer and checked out an Accent. But I wasn't impressed - it was clunky, made too much sound, and felt like I was driving a 1990 Tercel or something!

Next stop - Open Road Honda. We walked in and a salesman came upto us to help out. The coolest coincidence was that my buddy Vu knew his daughter! And then they started talking to each other in Vietnamese. And they even had the same lastname! So the salesman got all happy and started showing us all the best deals he could find. Finally I picked out a silver Honda Civic LX - 2002 model. It is fully loaded with power everything (steering, windows, doors, mirrors), metal alloy wheels, front-side-airbags, and an awesome 6-CD changer! I haggled over the price for a long time and we finally settled at a monthly payment of $200 for 36 months to lease the car (not buy). That is I pay $200 a month for 3 years and then give them the car back. Well I already pay around $100-120 a month on taxi, so $200 would not be hard at all, and in fact it will make my life sooo much easier and better!

So I put down a refundable reservation of $100 on the car and submitted all my credit-info. On Monday, the guy will let me know if I have been approved for the lease or not. And if I am, then once my uncle comes back from India, I can show him the car, and if he approves, I can just drive the car home :) And hopefully my monthly insurance costs will not rise a lot. I'm pretty excited about this whole car thing... Finally... after two and half years... you know...

Well so after the car-shopping with Vu, I went to Chichi's with Michele... mmmmmm Texas Nachos... I could not finish the whole thing and ended up bringing almost half the plate home in a package! Yay! Free food for tomorrow. Hehe. And Mich has been sooo nice lately... I'm glad I got a few good friends :)

Oh well, it's real late now and I gotta go to work tomorrow. So I should hit the sack right now. Good night world!

And the local time in India is... 12:55 am. Actually I just went to WalMart and bought myself a couple of 'important' things, like a new two-time zone watch (that tells me the time in US & India), a 12-pack of Diet Coke, and some good Energizer rechargable batteries.

On my way to work, I turned on radio to good ol' NJ 101.5fm and heard a wonderful old song by Billy Joel - Piano Man. Really good song.

Back to my Saturday job on campus. Things are getting pretty busy in the house - everybody's packing for the vacation to India! I'm feeling like I'm gonna miss out soooooo much :(

It's been a pretty long time since I wrote a nice sweet 'blog entry. And it's been even longer since I admitted my flaws & mistakes. Tonight I do just that. This 'blog entry... for my mom.

Today was a pretty long day... I cleaned my room & bathroom, drove my cuzins around all day, did all my homework, and finally settled down to finish off my website work. I think I was almost done with this site when my mom came online. Ahh... It had been weeks since I last talked to her. The sad thing is, whenever she comes online, I'm mostly busy doing my homework @ 1 am, and so I can't really talk to her. But tonight fortunately, I had all the time for some good mother-son chattin'.

Well I found out my sister is on the way to a nice vacation to Singapore, Bangkok, and Pataya with all her friends from college. W00t! I need a vacation! I need a vacation! Well, come Winter break and I'll get one. Hehe. Anyways, things are all mostly fine back home, the only worrying news is my grandpa's health. Fortunately the docs are saying everything will be fine soon, so it's all good.

Ok now lemme get back to my mom. I think about her a lot... actually at least once daily - right after I have my lunch. You see when I went to India over the summer, my mom packed me a BIG box of Mentos, in fact so many, that I can keep eating 1 per day for the next 2 years! Ya so every afternoon, right after I chug down a yummy sub-sandwich, I think of my mom and how much I miss her. I'm really really really close to her, and I know that she misses me a lot too.

Tonight, before she came online, I was feeling kinda tired in my head, from all the work, studies and the overall drudgery of my daily life. My mood wasn't too good either. And if you've been reading my 'blog lately, you'll see how I've been mostly tired and boring in the past few weeks. I'll admit it; I kept blaming everything on studies, and too much work, and that I kept making stupid excuses that I have no time for this and no time for that. And day by day, I was getting more and more sick of everyday life.

But then she came on and told me she's worried because I'm working so hard and studying too much. She said that most parents are worried that their child is not studying enuf or not working hard enuf, but she is worried that I'm over-working and over-studying! And then she said she missed me and wanted me to have FUN in my life and not just over-exert myself everywhere. Ahhhhhhhhhhhh. I felt soooo good, realizing how much she cared about me.

My friend Jacquelin said, "it's cool how your parents are like, wired to your brain sometimes and know exactly when to email/call and say something that makes you feel good." That's soooo true! I really needed that chat tonight, to make me realize that no matter how much I think my studies and work are important, there's still one more thing important than all that and that is the quality of my life. I mean isn't that the ultimate aim? Living a happy, fun life? And here I am, doing everything possible to achieve something that's so far way, while giving deplorably stupid excuses for not enjoying my life! Damn! I have been soooo dumb. Thank you Mom! I know it sounds like a typical movie cliche, but you've shown me the light!

Now I'm not saying that right away I'm gonna stop all my work and stop studying! I'm just saying that from now on, I stop making stupid excuses and complaints about how tired I am and how much work/study I still have to do. And above all, I'm gonna go make myself some time to actually HAVE FUN with my family and friends! Enuf with this lots of studies and too much work crap! Chirag needs to have some serious fun! Now where's my little black book... gotta call up on that cutey from that class I took last semester... hehehe...

(PS: I love you Mummy. You're the sweetest, loveliest, kindest, and most caring mother in the whole wide world! Trust me! I KNOW I'm 100% right!)

Before I hit the books, just wanted to talk about one of the things on my mind at the moment: World! What the hell is happening lately? From bombs to more bombs! Last year, despite the Sept. 11 events, I did not think that terrorism had reached a global scale, well mainly because it wasn't happening everywhere. I can't really say that now. Either the incidents of bombings and mass killings have actually risen sharply or CNN and BBC have got really good @ their jobs. Whatever be the case, I do agree there's one big threat to everyone - Saddam. While there are millions who support him, millions who think he's not a threat, and millions who think military action by US is not a solution, I, for once, am glad that there are still intelligent people who are able to assess Saddam's powers analytically, and are cautioning us to be wary of them.

While it'd be stupid to say that any form of warfare could be 100% good, the positives on attacking & denuke-fying Iraq, and removing Saddam from the 'throne' are definitely greater than the loss of lives. Why you say? Well simply because Saddam is buying uranium like crazy, and trust me he's NOT making a nuclear power plant in Iraq. Sure, India and Pakistan have been playing with nukes recently too, but it's different in Iraq's case - mainly because Saddam is a propaganda factory. (If you really want to see how much of BS this guy can make up, check out this music video - real video format. It's scary. Trust me.)

India and Pakistan have a beautiful bone of contention among them, while Saddam has nothing. He's armed, he's cornered, and he's ready to attack anytime. The main thing is, he's going for very low-tech weapons of mass-destruction, meaning he's not empowering himself to the new technology like India & Pakistan, but rather, doing whatever it takes to cause fear and quite possibly a mass genocide.

So yeah, like Oprah, I feel that military action to once and for all get rid of Saddam is the only option right now. Hey, even though the US didn't accomplish much in it's War on Terror in Afghanistan, at least it got rid of the Taliban and made the Afghani life bearable. I remember as a young boy in India, for my Hindi class, I had to read the story Kabuliwala written by nobel-laureate Rabindra Nath Tagore. From that day on, I had a mental picture of the common Afghanis, as being kind, giving, and generous. Too bad I grew up to see how some religious fanatics like Taliban hijacked the freedom of the common man, and how badly these honest people were tortured.

Today is the 133rd birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi. Here is a very good site describing the life of the 'Father of India'.

Scary News: Last month I found out that there's a big cavity in my left upper molar. So today I got the cavity cleaned and temporarily filled. Cost me $85 for a 3D X-ray and one filling! Urgh. Damn dentists are expensive. But the good thing is, the dentist is right next to our store, and she's really nice and actually charged me just 50% of what her usual rates are! So instead of $85, if I went to someone else, I'd have been charged $150-200. Of course, if I was in India, it would've cost a tenth of it. Oh well. Let's hope I don't have to get a root-canal. Urgh, icky stuff. The good thing is, I'm not in any pain or anything; fortunately I got this cavity patched up in time.

Happy Teacher's Day to all my past teachers in India.

Happy B'day Michele!

I am always scared of days like these. You know, the days that start perfectly great & lovely and then you suddenly get all sad cuz you miss someone really really really bad. Yeah, it's just one of those days... I miss my dad. Talked to him last night, but for only 2-3 mins. It's odd how both of us were out of words to say. I know he misses me a lot, but I also think he does not realize how much I miss him too. Just cuz my life's going good @ the moment, and I'm earnin' my own bread, doesn't mean that his little boy's grown up. Hehe. It's funny, all day I pretend to be all grown up, but as soon as I think of my dad, I turn 10.

So I was sittin' in the bus this morning on my way to work, and all I could think of, were 4523817 random sweet memories from the past two decades. It's funny how every incident flashes in front of your eyes and suddenly takes you right there, as if it just happened. I don't even know if anyone remembers this, but I remember looong ago when I was a weee little kid. I used to be the best cricket bat breaker! Yeah, I said breaker, cuz no matter how many bats my dad bought for me, I'd find some ingenious way to damage them! Everytime I broke a bat, I used to be soooooo scared. I don't even remember if my dad ever got mad @ me for breakin' bats. But I do remember that everytime I broke a bat, I'd get a new one within 2 days. Of course, eventually I realized cricket wasn't my cup of tea; I switched to soccer :)

I dunno why I thought of this while sittin' in the bus. I also dunno why I got all nostalgic about what was quite possibly the worst homecoming in the history of the world - my first vacation from my boarding school, around October 1990. I remember I got down from the train, I saw my dad right in front of me, and he could not recognize me! I had lost 10-15lbs in the past 3 months, became taller, darker, skinnier, and had got a military haircut, no wonder he couldn't recognize me. So I shouted, "Hi Daddy..." and it took him a few secs. to realize it was me actually! Hehe. I guess this morning I thought about this incident, because I was thinkin' about it just as I was gettin' down from my plane in Calcutta in June this year. Here I was, my 2nd big homecoming... from US to India after 2 years. And then it hit me, I had turned 10 again. As I was walking down the airport, I felt exactly like I felt 12 years ago... just one emotion... happiness, because I was back with my family again. And when I saw how many people had come to receive me @ the airport, I was shocked! 26 people!!! I felt sooooo loved.

Ok back to present. As I said, I'm scared of days like these. You know, the days that start perfectly great & lovely and then you suddenly get all sad cuz you miss someone really really really bad. Yeah, it's just one of those days... I miss my mom too... and my grandma & grandpa... and my sister...

Today is Rakshabandhan, and on this day in India, "an amulet known as a Raksha or Rakhi, is tied round the wrist of brothers by the sisters to protect them from evils during the coming year." I miss my lil sis... I wish I was there with her right now. And I have to tell her something: I know I was strict with you in Bombay and scolded you not to cry right before I left India. I'm sorry, but there's no way I can ever see tears in your eyes. I know it'd have been a lovely melodramatic and traditional soap-opera episode if you had cried and I had given you a hug and made you stop crying, but trust me, I'm not brave enuf to see you cry. Sorry. Better luck next life; maybe you'll get a mentally-stronger bro who's more emotionally stable :) Hehe.

Yeah so this is why I hate days like these. Days when everything is just perfect, and yet doesn't feel so. Days when the gravity increases ten-fold, and everything just feels so much more heavy. Days when you wish to talk to someone, but they're not there. Days when I end up writing looong 'blogs, because I have so much to share yet so little to say.

WOW! The more I talk about this movie, the less it seems... It's beyond doubt a great movie. Before seeing this movie, I was kinda apprehensive that the movie might be a big flop but thank god it isn't. I dunno how good/bad it is doing in the theatres in India but it looks like it should be a big hit.

Guess I'll call it a night now. Days are kinda short when you work full-time. I wake up, go to work, come back home, water the lawn a bit, have dinner, and go to bed. Life's decent. Can't wait till college starts though.

Song for the night: "She hates me" - Puddle of Mudd (Oh this is just a song I like... has no reference to anyone or anything going on in my life)

I just got back from New Brunswick Train Station - had gone there to drop off Purvi. Ah today was yet another peaceful day. Didn't do much except play tennis and clean the garage. In tennis it was Sneh & Purvi vs. Sagar and me. Guess who won? Hehe. Sagar 'n Me! Don't ask me how, 'cuz both the girls practice often and neither of us guys ever plays tennis. I think I might start playing more (as soon as it gets a little colder cuz it's damn hot 'n humid these days). Tomorrow's gonna be 95-100F! That's hotter than Mumbai and Calcutta!

I just repartitioned my hard drives and was checking out all the stuff I brought from my sis and cuzin's hard drives in India. There's soooooo much stuff I have to organize now... ahhhhhh. Anyways back to work tomorrow :) I like my work. So me look forward to it.

Oh my god... I'm SUCH a shopaholic! Purvi (my cuz from NYC) came here last night and we spent all of today @ Franklin Mills mall in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It's about an hour's drive from our house and oh my god the clothes and shoes are sooooooooo cheap there! I just returned from India and am shocked to find that a lot the stuff in this mall's actually cheaper! I got sooooooo many clothes (3 long sleeve t-shirts, 2 winter jackets, 1 half sleeve t-shirt, and 1 sleeveless t-shirt) and a really really good pair of original Aldo shoes. For dinner we had some good pizza from 'Famous Pizza.' And now we go down and play some poker/pool...

God I don't even remember what day is today! Time's passing pretty quickly. In a flash my 45 day vacation to India was over... Ahhh. Anyways good news is I started my new job today :) They let me choose my own pc from 12-13 ones just strewed around. I chose a P4 with 256mb ram. I think that's enuf for the boring database stuff I'll be doing. I got a 17" monitor and a neat mouse. That's pretty much it for today. I met all the people who work there and just chilled out (and got paid for it! Haha).

The 'blog is on hold till mid-July. Sorry for the inconvenience but I have LOTS of fun stuff to do in India before I come back to the US. Cya soon...

My last 'blog entry before leaving for India... Not much to say, other than the fact that I am very very excited @ the moment. Wish my luck guys... :)

It's past midnight and I've just decided to mirror my harddisk drive. I mean, since I am going to India, I'll copy EVERYTHING from my current hard disk on to a new one and take everything with me! Thus I can continue to work on my software, websites, emails etc. without any problems :) I pray that I don't get any major hardware errors...

Within 40 hours I leave for India and I haven't even started packing!!! Of course there's not much to pack, but still...

I think I know what I'm going to do in India - Sleep, eat, and watch TV :) Oh and I might want to finish off Ajooba (scroll down). I feel sooooo lazy right now...

It's nice to know that some of my friends actually know the real me:

Navish: So when are you going to India?
Chirag: This Sunday - May 26th... can't wait buddy...
Navish: How u gonna last without a computer at your disposal 24/7 ?
Chirag: LOL... I have a computer @ my home in India...
Chirag: Slower net :-( but I will survive
Navish: lol....this is like Survior for ya man
Chirag: LOLOL *falls on the floor laughing*

I'm sure that this article about Muslims in India has a very strong message and is probably written after a lot of careful unbiased thinking, but somehow I just don't get it. Call me stupid, but it just doesn't make sense to me and I can't understand what the author is trying to say here. Why can't authors learn that when a person is trying to read a newspaper (online or offline) the language should be simple and clear? As I said before, I'm sure the author knows what she's saying; now if only I knew what she's saying too...

Happy Family News: My cuzin Keval from Bombay, managed to get an all-paid full-scholarship-type admission into one of India's biggest engineering colleges: K. J. Somaiya College of Engineering. Congrats bro! Oh well, smile all you can for the moment cuz in the end you'll end up studying god-knows what even more!

Anyways, today was the last day of college! Yay! Now I have exams on 9, 12, and 14 May. Then I am a free bird :) Tonight, tomorrow, and day after I study for Linear Algebra... then it's Calculus and then Computer. Oh Calculus... reminds me... today was prolly the last class I'll ever have with Kathleen, Vicky, and Jim. And most prolly Steve too. Jim and Vicky were with me for 2 terms and Kath had been for three! In fact she's the first person I met after transferring to Rutgers New Brunswick in Jan 2001. I've already missed Ross and Steph a hell lot throughout this term. And on top of it I'm now gonna miss all the bad Calculus jokes I made and all the fake laughter from my 'friends'. Haha... Ah... it's the end of an era... Next term I have 5 interesting classes... I'll meet more new people... but first... We all gotta get through the damned final exams!

Of course summer's going to be heaven! I think I've begun to hallucinate a lot lately. I keep thinking I am already @ home in Calcutta! Hehehe... This morning I woke up dreaming that I was in my room back home... then realized I was here in US... oh well, I love being in both places! Hehehe... I know one thing for sure, as soon as I reach India, I'll miss New Jersey. I've begun to love this place...

In the comp. lab right now. Today's the last day of college. Yay! Of course there's three days of exams coming up, but it's all good. I've a doctor's appointment on Wednesday to get all those damn injections before I leave for India. I don't want to fall sick you know... hehe.

If you are my sister, cousin, relative, or any girl I know well in India, smile... I'm gonna bring you lots of neat stuff :) I just came back from the Revlon Corporate Store at Edison and I bought a whole lot of things for everyone! Now I know it's not 'manly' of me (rather kinda gay) to admit that I actually went to a Revlon store shopping for lipsticks, mascara, lip-gloss, nail polish and god knows what else, but well... it's all for the people I love... so smile :) Hope the guys will ignore this incident. Haha.

This harassment by Toronto Airport customs of one of India's most famous and prolific actors: Kamal Hassan is pathetic, saddening, scary, and depressing. What are they doing in the name of 'fake' security!!! I can only imagine what they'll do to me when I go to India this summer. When I think about it deeper, I feel like taking some sweet revenge on these customs ppl. Maybe when they strip search me, they'll find me wearing interesting undergarments courtesy of Vicky's confedential clothes! Haha. God I'd love to get back @ these customs morons... I can't ever Ever EVER EVER forgive them for what they did to me in India on the day I left... urghhhh.... bad bad memories... not a good way to start your day!

Anyways I have a long day ahead of me, lots of important stuff to do :)

Good News: I finally got a decent permanent job on campus :) The pay is pretty good ($20/hr) and I get my own office, a super-fast server, and hopefully I'll be able to buy my own car soon :) The job's pretty complicated and I now have a LOT of responsibilities. I'll be working 20 hours a week during school days and 40-50 hours during vacations. They want me to start right away but well I have a lot of stuff to complete. The job starts as soon as I come back from India (prolly July-end or 1st August). I'm pretty excited @ the moment since I get to work on the main Rutgers internal databases and all cool classified stuff! I can't tell you exactly what I'm doing because if I tell you, I have to 'terminate' you. Haha. Today was a pretty good day for job hunters I guess. Kath got her old summer internship job back too. And my friend Chris from computer class also got a job! Hehehe...

Here's some pics from yesterday taken by my new Fuji FinePix 2600z (Arstechnica review). This baby cost me $279.99 + tax. But then I also got 64mb Smart Media card on top of it and bought a 3-year warranty for $50! God I'm spending waaaay too much money. But it's worth it. And of course, I bought TWO of these, not just one. One for myself and one for my sister :) But she doesn't get the warranty cuz you know, it's kinda hard to send a camera back to US for repairs from India. LOL. Anyways, the original pics were in much higher res, but I scaled them down for my photo gallery.

(Warning: This is my longest 'blog entry EVER): OHHHHHHH MYYYYYYY GODDDDDDD!!!!!!! Today was probably the most surprisingly exciting day of my life EVER! If you're not Indian, there's a very high probability you will not understand my excitement. But if you are, then you probably won't believe me! Naya Andaz is one of US's biggest dance competitions for Indians. This year the chief guest was one of India's most famous choreographer Farah Khan! Also her brother Sajid Khan (scroll down a bit) was there too. (Sushmita Sen was supposed to come too but had schedule problems, so she could not make it.)

As I said earlier, I was handling the projector, live-video feeds, and of course the computer presentations that included the individual interviews of all the choreographers. Tough work but not impossible. Right from the start, I could literally feel the adrenalin in my body... I have a MASSIVE stage/backstage excitement content just like my dad. From 11 am today I was at the State Theater of NJ and only returned home to get dressed before the real show. I realized today how much I have always loved being a part of big shows like these and how great the feeling is when everything is working fine and well coordinated. One thing I have to admit, the theater team (sound, video, lights, backstage) provided by the State Theater itself has got to be one of the best in the country, if not the world. I've worked with tens of crews in the past but there was just so much perfection in each and everything these guys did, that it's beyond belief. Daddy, you would LOVE to work with them! Trust me. The light-man knew when the sound man would lower the volume and so he would fade out the lights at the same time, while the video-guy slowly zoomed out in sync. I mean, it was a symphony! Of course we were all on head-sets and communicated live to discusss what was supposed to happen next. The funny thing is, there were two shows going on, one on the stage, and the other off-stage in the headsets! It was soooo funny, the light man Craig would constantly curse the video guy's mom! LOL. I was laughing throughout the show...

Some not good news: My aunt's both groups: Sagar's Koi Kahe and Sneh's Mera Mahi, did not win :( I am pretty sad for it and I know Sneh is not gonna feel well for the next couple of days, since she had put all her mind, body, brains, efforts, energy, EVERYTHING into both the dances. My aunt also was disheartened but she's a fighter and understands well how fierce the competition was. I mean just getting one group in a competition like Naya Andaz is impossible, and my aunt had two groups! Funny thing is, just ONE year ago she did not even have dance students, and now she has her own Dance School : Aakar School of Dance with over 20-25 regular kids! So what if we lost Naya Andaz... things can only go up from here...

I am hereby thankful to Bill Gates for not crashing or killing my computer while the show was going on. Trust me there was ONLY one thing I was afraid of and that is a 10x12 foot Blue Screen of Death that the whole audience would see and laugh at! Thank god EVERYTHING went fine without ANY (not even ONE) problems! This is a major miracle in itself. Anyways, my main job was to display a video clip before every song and although seems a small little thingie, there's a lot of work involved. As soon as my last video was done, I went backstage hoping they'd announce my name so that I would come on stage to show off! Haha. And they did! Piraan, the main guy for Naya Andaz called me specially on the stage in front of thousands of people and made them give me a big hand because of the 'great computer projection work'! God I was in heaven. At that moment I was thinking, things cannot get any better! Boy was I wrong...

As I was about to pack up my computers/monitors/s-video outputters/blah-blah stuff-equipment, Piraan told me to come to the 'after party.' I was like... err... I don't want to, cuz what's the point of sitting in one corner of the table feeling all unimportant while the big-guys sit next to the chief guests and talk about the latest projects and industry gossip? So I said no but he insisted and thank god I said yes. I drove over to Akbar's restaurant on Route 1 and walked in at the same time as Piraan, Farah Khan, Sajid Khan, and oh yeah, that Kusum hottie from Kyonki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi. I forgot to mention, she was the main hostess/M.C. of the show. Believe it or not, just cuz I had an all-access pass, EVERY YOUNG/OLD lady who saw me, literally begged me to take them backstage to meet Kusum. I was like... uh... no... sorry! But it's just weird. I've heard she's a big star in the TV serial, but since I've never seen it, I'm not too impressed by her, except that she's damn hot and almost as tall as me (or maybe taller). The irony is, we were talking backstage for like 10-15 mins and I was the one who was getting bored! Hahaha. Seriously! I don't like her personality a lot, so what can I say... I'm not interested. HOWEVER, I am a big fan of Farah Khan and have always liked her more than Saroj Khan or anyone else. So being at Akbar's with Farah Khan seemed like a good thing.

So guess what happens when I arrive at Akbar and everyone starts getting seated? All chairs are taken EXCEPT one and that was right next to Farah Khan! And guess who got to sit right next to Farah Khan for dinner? Yours truly... :) Yups! I was next to Farah and her bro Sajid was next to her. So, I actually had a great dinner conversation with the two, and not just sit in a far-distant corner smiling stupidly! Here's a little excerpt:

Sajid Khan: You know, although smoking is bad for health, it's pretty much the same as living in a polluted city, like Calcutta. Hey Chirag, you look thin! What happened? You started smoking?
Chirag: No, I come from Calcutta!
Everyone: HAHAHAHA.

Anyways, I had a really neat chat with Farah and in the end, obviously, we exchanged numbers :) The thing is, she doesn't have a website and is looking for someone to get her started with it. And what a coincidence! I am a web designer!!! Haha. At first I thought she's just another celebrity who will forget me after 2 hours, but she herself kept telling me over and over again to give her a call as soon as I'm in Bombay! And Sajid told me about his beach house in Juhu... and that we could get together definitely this summer and work out the web site stuff. Both of them want one each! Now this might be my big break into the industry. If I can do their site nicely, I can get a lot of other cool clients! Who knows.

For now, I am just walking 3 feet above the ground. I mean I just had dinner sitting right next to India's Filmfare Award winning choreographer and her brother who hosts one of the best game shows at the moment! And all I wanted this morning was my computer to not crash... That's all I was hoping for... and I got this... god sometimes life can be soooooo weirdly good.

It's 3:55 am right now and I have SOOOOOOOO much work/study to do tomorrow. Actually Farah asked me, "So Chirag you study full time in college, are doing computer and economics major, and YET you find time to do all these computer presenations. That is REALLY COOL" And I said, "You just choreographed Amitabh Bachchan, Shahrukh Khan and Hrithik Roshan in K3G! How cool is THAT?"

Yeah this is prolly the longest 'blog I've ever written and if I actually see them again in Bombay this summer, then there's one more bigger blog coming up! Haha. Well I really don't care if for 'filmi' reasons I don't get to ever see them again or they don't reply to my calls or something, but I am just damn glad that things worked out beyond my wildest dreams today and that is enuf to get me through the next few weeks of hard work :)

OOOOOH MY GOD! Guess who woke me up this morning? My soon-to-be brother-in-law from India on an international long-distance call! My eldest cuzin Nikita is getting engaged to Mehul soon and the marriage will be in July! And guess what? I'm gonna be there!!!!! WOOOOHOOOOOOOO!!!

On a slightly pacified note, I have Calc3 exam today and I'm scared as hell. Yesterday whole day/night I was w/ Kath and we studied non-stop but I still don't feel all confident :( I hope I don't do as bad as my linear exams in this one.

I just found out my front-door neighbor is building a 24 foot swimming pool in his backyard!!!!!!! Woohoo!!! And we're really good friends with him too! Hope it's ready by the time I come back from India. Hehehe.

Have 3 classes @ college today - will prolly get my Linear exam paper back - I don't think I'll get more than 85/100 in this one. I really did bad :( But it's ok, I'm not too worried about my grades anymore. As long as I get B+ and A, I'm good. Hehe.

I like this Times Of India article about India - Politics and Free Markets... Well there's hope... Things are improving...

In the lab right now. Today started as suuuuuch a beautiful day, but then I think it's already too hot for me outside right now :( The temperature is about 70F (21C) ! I'm good upto 65F (18C) but beyond that I start panting... LOL... Tomorrow's gonna be 52F (11C)... not bad... I can easily survive that :) But how the HELL will I survive the 90-100F (32-38C) temperatures when I go back to India this summer??? Oh my god... LOL... Hopefully I'll just stay @ home in a nice AC room talking to my mom, sis, and grandma :) Ahhhhhhh...

They say that Hyderabad is the cheapest city in India to live in and Calcutta (or Kolkata) is the 7th costliest. Bombay (or Mumbai) of course is the costliest. Uh... so what's new that this study found? Hehehe...

Oh my god!!!! They caught Osama in India!!!

Cool News: Internet Telephony legalized in India. Thankfully it's not an April's fool joke.

Woohoo! I drove @ 70mph on the NJ Turnpike!!! Ok, so I admit that's not the coolest thing in the world... but so what? Before today I had never gone above 60mph ever so this was pretty neat... hehe... Just to scare the hell out of everyone in India... 70mph = approx. 112 km/hr. I remember driving my car in Calcutta two years ago at about 90 km/hr and the car was almost coming apart! It was scary... hehehe... Well I went to pick up Sneh from the airport since she'd gone to Salt Lake City, Utah for the weekend. I love driving... especially FAST :) Hehehe... One thing's sure... once my get my own car... I'm def. going on a looooong drive somewhere... a real road trip...

Ah... Yet another fun day. I didn't 'accomplish' anything at all! Kinda relaxed all day to prepare myself for the loooong weeks ahead. I have sooo much stuff to do!

I made myself a nice techno-fast-music cd for when I work out. I listened to the cd when I drove to campus - Kath's apartment this afternoon. But she wasn't there so I just chilled out with Vicky for a couple of hours. Then I had to attend an International Student's meeting on Busch campus and when that was over, I came back to her apartment and Astrid was there too. She's such a sweety! We started talking bout her research paper and the topic changed slowly to Mahatma Gandhi. I felt sooo proud today talking to her about the man considered the 'Father of the Nation' (in India). She knew a few things about him, but I think I said enuf to make her interested enuf to read more about his philosophy and idealogy. Oh then me and Astrid tried to fight about politics but as I said, she's such a sweety that she can't even fight! Haha... (I know she's gonna kill me for saying this out loud here! HAHA)...

Then Astrid left and it was me and Vicky again. She's a really great person to talk to. I have a number of friends whom I talk to on a normal basis, but I just don't feel as relaxed or comfortable with anyone, as when I'm talking to Vic. It's pretty cool. Oh and she's going on a cruise next week to Cancun! The lucky girl! So we talked bout her vacation and what she's gonna do there. Actually, now that I think bout how annoying I was, she prolly hates me by now - cuz everytime she started talking bout something, I'd interrupt and start my own off-topic story! Haha... Ya, I still have that bad habit of 'talking'! LOL.

Song for the day: "Mea Culpa" by Enigma

For once, I'm not writing my 'blog in the middle of the night while trying to avoid homework or something! Phew. I'm @ my work right now, almost done with the main stuff, so just chilling. What's really weird is that lately I haven't come across any interesting websites. Whoa! What is this world coming to?

Anyways I got my tickets for my vacation to India this summer: May 26th to July 13th - KLM (with 4 hours in Amsterdam!).

Thought for the day: "Do beer commercials in Austrilia teach you: How to speak American?"

Impatient Rant of the day: "Is it spring-break already ??? !!!"

I have to admit, I haven't been updating this 'blog regularly and also not doing it whole-heartedly. The simple reason is time... rather the lack thereof. I have just toooo much studies to do. Everyday I wake up @ 7 am and goto bed at 2-4 am! I hardly sleep anymore! Don't ask me where the time goes... between the long commutes to campus and the 5 hours I have to be on campus before my classes start (cuz I don't have a ride), I end up wasting half of my day doing pretty much nothing. So I just study or goto the library or computer lab and read stuff online. Ahhh. I've got to get a car soon or else my studies will start going bad... Even a used car will do for the moment... Once I get back from India, I can go ahead and buy a nice new car, but there are two whole months of college left! I'm open for advice... (and donations! hehe)...

I can't believe I was sooooo busy yesterday that I didn't even find time to write this 'blog. So I finally bought my tickets to India this summer: May 26th I leave Newark for Bombay and July 13th I leave Bombay to return to Newark. It's gonna be fun! Finally! I can't wait... but oh well... there's 3 months more! :(

About my trip to India... I asked my agent to book plane tickets from Newark to Mumbai/Bombay and back. I'll leave Newark on 26th May and depart from Bombay on 13th July. That gives me about 45 days in India, 30-35 in Calcutta and the rest in Bombay. Hope that's enuf! In April, I'll probably start doing my shopping (mostly candy). One good news is, I have already found job on campus that I will start as soon as I return from India. So it's all good. And tonight I might hang out or go clubbin' with my buddy Sunny. Let's see... it all depends on how much tired I am and how much work I still have...

Pretty neat day today. I got myself this nice cell phone (finally!). It's a pretty basic phone w/ basic features. Nothing that great about it, except that I don't have to pay a monthly bill on it... it's a prepaid cashcard phone, good for me.

Also I got my paycheck today and some scholarship money. It was cold to use an ATM machine for the first time!!! Yes I mean COLD and not COOL... I'm sure it was about 20F outside when I was trying to punch in all the weird keys in the ATM machine just so that I could deposit the checks. By the time I was done... my fingers were frozen and I couldn't even start the car... brrrrr...

That brings me to 'car'... I've decided I really need a car once I come back from India (yup! me going home this summer... more on that in the next few days). I'm still considering whether I should buy a good quality used car or a cheapo new car... budget is $10-12k... let's see.. any contributions anyone? Haha... I'm trying to get a permanent job on campus and once that is guaranteed I'll definitely buy meself me own car :) hehehe...

I'm sooo full now. My aunt makes such good food that I end up eating a bit too much. Hehehe...

Today was a pretty good day @ college. First I met my international adviser regarding some work-related issues and then I went to see my friend Astrid @ Cook Campus Center since she works at The Coffee Cove. By god she's soooo nice and sooooo much fun to talk to. Too bad I don't drink coffee anymore... I'm sure I could've got a large cup for the price of a medium! Haha...

Now most of you don't know this, but I used to drink coffee back when I was in India, but only when I took a nap in the afternoon and my mom made coffee for me when I woke up so that I'd be fresh by the time my dad came home. You see my dad didn't like the fact that I'd be home doing nothing and just sleeping. Hehehehe. So if I ever slept, then after having some of my mom's coffee... I'd be all awake and act as if I was doing some important work all day. Haha. Ok Daddy! You caught me now. LOL.

After my classes I got the car from our store and went shopping. I wanted to buy a good workout bench and had seen one for a good price in a K-Mart catalogue... but the one I wanted was sold out :( Anyways, I think tomorrow I'll get this Body By Jake EX-155 Standard Weight Bench from the nearby Modells store. Looks pretty neat to me! Here is a bigger pic of the same.

Ok, time to go and study now! Cya...

I just got 5 cd's that my sis sent me from India. Woohoo! Some of the best songs, videos, graphics are in them! I didn't get much time to check out everything in detail, but so far the neatest thing is Govinda's appearance in 'Lift Karade.' I didn't know that he guest-starred in it! And tomorrow, once I feel fresh and good, we'll all see my dad's film/documentary/directorial-masterpiece/magnum-opus together. Thereafter I'll give my expert advice and criticism on it too. Hehehe...

Now only if I knew why "Salma Pe Dil Aa Gaya" song was in there too...

Check out all the chics who won @ the Femina Miss India 2002 contest. Mmmm... Sacrilicious...

Projects like these make me proud to be an Indian: Bellandur village e-Governance project. This is the story of a small village in India, which after installing just one simple PC and some free software from Compusol Software India, has solved hundreds of problems of the local public, from issuing birth certificates, to preparing tax sheets and water bills. For this project, Compusol received recognition by United Nations. The software's not that big or complicated or costly. It's the thought and effort that counts. And trust me... someday Chime Softwares will do something like this... someday...

This is the weirdest thing I've seen in weeks: Baby with monkey-like tail, born in India. It does not need any more explanation!

I just discovered that I'm a PB : Pravasi Bharatiya or in other words, an NRI : Non-Resident Indian since I've been out of India for more than 6 months. Hehe. Call me PB! Soon I'll go back home... ahhhh... May.. June.. alas too far away...

How imminent is the India-Pakistan war? This article says the war could brake out as soon as Thursday, January 3, 2002.

More Indian Stuff: Indian geologist's have discovered fossilised rain drops that are more than a BILLION YEARS OLD! Go India!!!!!! Read this BBC News article for more details.

I don't have enuf words to thank my friend Vicky! She got me three really cool newspapers from UK: The Guardian, The Sun and The Daily Telegraph. Well as some of you already know, I have this little hobby, that I collect newspapers from all the countries of the world. So far I have newspapers from Japan, Netherlands, India, Puerto Rico, US, UK, Trinidad etc. This is like a lfe-long hobby and someday I will have one newspaper each from almost every country in the world! :)

Finally I get some peace and quiet. Lemme begin with yesterday @ NYC. At 12 noon, we went to the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art. The best thing I saw there was 'Tradional Gems of India from the Mughal Era." From there we took a nice walk through the beautiful Central Park to the American Museum of Natural History.After that we had dinner @ a small little place called Chilli's. And then came 'Aida'; my first Broadway musical. It was one of the most wonderful and moving experience I have ever had and to put the mega granduer of the show in words would be a crime. If you ever come to NYC, make it a point to spend a little money and see Aida. It is wonderful. And the The Palace Theater (where Aida is currently playing) is just sooooo beautiful.

But the bestest thing about the musical was that after the show I went upto the musical director and asked for her autograph. The lady was sooo nice that she gave my her autograph, talked to me for a few minutes, asked me about my college, music class and everything! I didn't know people in showbiz were actually nice! Well I have to write a paper for my music class and I'm sure gonna write about Aida.

After Aida came movie time! We rented two really silly movies: Road Trip and Legally Blonde, and watched them till 3 am. I woke up @ 7 am today (yes, 4 hours of sleep) and came back to New Jersey. Of course there were a lot of funny, silly, exciting, hilarious, stupid, interesting, and cool things that happened in NYC in the last 3 days, but then you'll have to come here and talk to me to know it all :)