Away but not Gone.

I haven't posted since August. Last semester was pretty occupied, this semester feels occupied, though I don't seem to be getting much done. I am looking for and applying to jobs, working on my final project and an independent study. Some random observations about recent times, to warm up to posting more.

I was in India in Dec-Jan for a month, and I guess I am still hung over from being there. The trip to India was a good time, meeting family and friends. Thirty days were gone very quickly. While I was there, I seemed to feel "empowered", it felt like I had the energy to change things there. From confusing airport procedures and less than friendly bank service to congested roads and poorly implemented traffic rules, there was an element of a lack of thinking on the part of people thinking about these services and procedures, and everything seemed like it could potentially be made better using good design. Or, maybe it was that inevitable foreign-returned-contempt-for-the-country. I didn't ask for bottled water though, so maybe I was an inch better.

I was at the Student Recreation and Sports Center (SRSC) at Indiana University yesterday, and jogged in the indoor track. I was at the SRSC to exercise for the very first time since I came to IU. While I was jogging, all I kept thinking was about what status message to have on Facebook and Gmail, "Balakrishna is wondering if the heavens are crying, he was at the SRSC exercising for the very first time", and then having somewhat of an obsessive compulsive tendency, I was refining that sentence while jogging additional rounds. "Does exercising sound good in that sentence, or should I say jogged?", "the heavens are crying, or should I say will start crying", "the heavens are crying? but it's been raining here in the last couple days, so should I say it's going to be sunny?". In the end, I didn't have a status message after all. Well, I have this post. I guess it's a human need to express oneself, or maybe I am narcissistic. It felt good after I ran, first, because I was doing something new and second, running seemed to lift my spirits.

Last week, I saw a six hour movie, called "The best of youth", it is among my favorites now. The film tracks a family over the years, their lives intertwined with historic events in Italy. It is a wonderful film that makes you feel good about life, family and friendship. The six hour duration seemed well justified, and the characters are memorable. The concept for the script, to intertwine a family's story with historic events in a place is so good, and possibly could be replicated to make good films based in other places. There haven't been well made period films in Telugu, not at least in the last ten years, and this could be a concept well suited to adapting.

I was just reading entries about me from the yearbook from IIIT, after looking at a friend's orkut profile that had a link to his yearbook entries. It felt nostalgic, and I always feel good reading those because most of them heap praise on me. There are a few of them that write that I am an anxious person, and a few that I needed to be more outgoing. I might have improved from that time on both fronts. Or at the least, I can fake kewlness.