A night in Atlanta airport

A flight delayed and the connecting flight missed, I had to choose between paying 50$ for a hotel for the night and staying back in the airport. I decided to experience the airport at night. I was not the only one who made that decision and it was some time before I could secure my two seats. An overweight check-in baggage led me to transfer some things including a towel to my bag, and that served as my blanket. I slept for 4 hours, had Breakfast at Atlanta bread company before 6am (possibly the earliest breakfast of my life), looked at all the stores in the lobby area and I checked in 2.5 hours in advance, to roam the concourses of the huge airport.

I am just beginning to realize the powers of the cell phone camera to document things.

It's been a week since I landed in Denver now, and have finished the first week of my internship at alpha cube designs inc. I am beginning to experience what it's like to be working. 9am-6pm, back home, some internet, eat and sleep is not exactly an exciting itinerary. Work should turn out to be exciting I guess, and then I'll be looking at Netflix to spice things a bit. Weekends are definitely things to look forward to.

San Francisco

My connecting flight from St.Louis to San Francisco, was delayed, and I wouldn't have made it in time to catch a bus to Santa Cruz, where I was planning to stay with a friend. So I called my cousin if he knew people in San Francisco, and got to stay with his friend in San Francisco for the night and the next day, during which I got to see San Francisco.

I took the bart train from Concord where my cousin's friend and his wife were staying, to the civic center near Downtown San Francisco. I walked around, till I reached the bay where I saw the bay bridge and from a distance the golden gate bridge covered in fog. The street bordering the bay is called Embarcadero street and it was my favourite part of what I saw. Public art, a farmer's market, the Fisherman's wharf, and views of the financial district, made it a very lively street. Two days before my visit, I was looking at the street as an example of good street design because of it's pedestrian friendliness, when working on our class project making a design plan to build a vibrant community for the Bloomington Entertainment and Arts District.

While the pavements of the streets in Downtown San Francisco looked inviting to walk, there weren't many people walking. I was expecting to see a lot of people in downtown, like in New York, but it was not so. On the flight, I was looking at their magazine, and it had an interview of a television star about her favourite places in New York, and it was her impression that New York was all about people, as you run into people all the time, while in California it's all about home, driving and work. I didn't see a lot of people either, my impression of California is also of wide streets, tall palm trees, sunny weather and little traffic. The whole place had a relaxed air to it.

After walking along Embarcadero street for a while, I hopped on to a cablecar, seeking to go to Chinatown. The cablecar driver let me ride free and dropped me off at a nearby place for buses to Chinatown. I took the bus, and as I didnt have the required change, the driver let me ride with just the change I had. The cablecars add charm to the streets, and some of them are historic. I thought San Francisco had a fine public transit system. In Chinatown, I strolled along for sometime, nothing caught my interest, except that the entire street had little sign of being in California, it seemed like China. I was expecting to find cheap food, but seven dollars only fetched me four springrolls. Maybe, I should have looked harder for cheaper restaurants. The financial district was closeby, so I walked to San Francisco's tallest building, the Transamerica Pyramid and made my way back to Embarcadero street, where I caught the train back to Concord.

All Pictures of San Francisco here.

ACM-CHI 2007

I was in San Jose to attend the ACM-CHI conference. We didn't make it to the next round of the student design competition, but two teams from IU did, and they were placed third and fourth in the top four. It was a good experience. I was a student volunteer too, and I was around for 20 hours wearing the red volunteer T-shirt, and trying to smile all the time. For most of the 20 hours, I was at the doors to the exhibit hall and it was a nice feeling when some people said they were seeing me everywhere. It was nice meeting other student volunteers from different universities and talking with them about their programs and interests.

The conference was for me more of a lesson in networking, than an eye-opener to HCI research. I did attend some talks and exhibits, but not a major part considering the other things I had to do. Bill Moggridge's opening talk about intuition in design was not new, as we had his just released book, which was the content of his talk, as a recommended book for one of our courses. I attended a session in location-aware computing, experience reports in ethnography, a special interest group on designing interfaces for pleasure, a panel about industrial vs. interaction design and bits and pieces of multiple sessions on the final day. The conference was definitely a lesson in networking, though I still need to improve quite a bit at it. I tried my best to meet people and start a conversation. My most memorable moment, was at the Cooper reception where they were releasing Alan Cooper's interaction design book, "About Face 3.0". I'd love to work at Cooper, and was trying my best to understand what it takes to work there. So I walked up to a lady, and asked her if she was an interaction designer at Cooper, she said calmly "I am the founder of Cooper". "This is a pleasure", I said excited. "Will you give me a job?", I said trying to joke, and she asked me where I was from, and the conversation followed. Sue Cooper was kind, and it was nice talking to her. My other main exercise in networking happened at the job fair, and I walked up to the booth of most companies I was interested in, and tried talking with them. I was nervous, and at the end, it took me a while to recollect who I'd given my resumes and business cards to, but it was good that I got to engage in that activity. I now talk more about myself, than I did when I was in India. I guess it took me time to realize that there was definitely a distinction between making yourself interesting and beating the drum about yourself.

On the day after the conference, some companies were organising tours to their offices. I was on the Google, Intuit, frog design, SAP tour. I missed the bus for the tour, and called up Intuit which was organising the tour, and decided to go there myself. So I didn't get to see Google. I went to the San Jose State University Library which had free internet access to plan my trip on the bus. The bus trip from San Jose to the nearest spot to Intuit was an hour and a half long. I had to change buses once, and realized that the second bus which was suggested to me by the bus planner of the Valley Transport Authority, had actually taken me away from the way I was to get to Intuit (which I saw courtesy google maps). The bus planner told me that I would have to walk for an estimated 18 mins to get to the place, but I was walking for over a half hour, when I finally got there. I had my suitcase in hand, and I was walking the streets like I was in an airport concourse, stopping on the way to look at the map on my computer, to see if I was heading in the right direction. It was a strange experience, as there were no people walking, only the cars on the road. Mountain view where Intuit is located, was pretty desolate, only a place with offices scattered around. So was Palo Alto, where we went to see frog design and SAP. Intuit showed us their usability labs, frog design gave a presentation about their recent projects, and SAP had demonstrations of their projects.

The week was pretty hectic, as I had work to finish from school, my duties as a volunteer, and some preparations for the competition. I only got to sleep less than 5 hours a day, so much that I slept 17 hours the first day after my return.

More pictures from CHI and San Jose here.

Twenty Two

Alright, I am another year older. Last week had been pretty dull, what with me being sick. I'm okay now, and the week ended in my birthday. My room mates and my neighbours made my day special by bringing me a cake to cut, and candles to blow. Thanks to them, and everybody who made it a point to wish me.

New Website

I now have my website at http://mypage.iu.edu/~balchenn/. You can see what I've been doing as a masters student in human computer interaction design in the Portfolio section. Do tell me what you think about the site!

A Telugu film at Berlin

Vanaja, a Telugu film directed by Rajnesh Domalpalli, won the best first feature award at Berlin film festival. He happens to be an engineer who did his bachelors in IIT Bombay, and a Masters from SUNY, SB, and he had written the film while studying film at Columbia University.

In recent times, Telugu film makers who've won acclaim happen to be engineers turned film makers. Sekhar Kammula, Nagesh Kukunoor for example. And Telugu film makers have been winning acclaim for first films. Sekhar Kammula and Mohankrishna I. won their best first feature national awards for their first films Dollar dreams and Grahanam, but thereafter haven't been noticed much. It remains to be seen if the Telugu film will move beyond Andhra Pradesh, the state where the language is most spoken. There is a film industry that produces mostly insipid fare, as the directors aren't very inspired, and all the producers are after is money. This new crop of film makers has the distinction of having an education in film, unlike the others who came up the ladder beginning as nobodies in the film industry.

Sekhar Kammula and Mohankrishna I. have moved into the industry, and while they have made only a few films to comment on, the films are only a minor improvement over the insipid films of the industry in terms of their content. There's of course the issue of money. Who would fund films that do not find an audience among the people who're willing to pay to watch insipid fare, but would not watch a more seriously made film, dismissing it as an "art film". The issue is about finding an audience, and I am sure there is one for serious films even in Andhra Pradesh, leave alone the entire world (and that's not very unreasonable given how videos find a worldwide audience on Youtube). What must be done is to make a viable business plan for such films, and more than that convince the people involved in producing the films that these "art films" can work financially.

Hairspray

Last week I went to see the Broadway Musical "Hairspray". I loved it. It was the first time I saw something like that, and was amazed at the quality of the production. The music was great too. The story was about how a Baltimore girl in the 60s who's overweight and has unfashionable hair, or not good looking in the conventional sense, goes on to win a TV dance show, and how that leads her on to another adventure. The characters were all based on stereotypes and might not have made the audience think, but make us laugh they sure did. With a two and a half hour duration, a break between and plenty of song dances, it was more like the films back in India.

Yay!

The shortlist of the ACM Computer Human Interaction Conference (CHI) Student Design Competition has been announced and in the top 12 teams, 5 teams are from our program. Our team made it too ! The next round of the competition would be at the conference in April in San Jose.

The problem was to design a solution to encourage people to use public transit. We took the social networking route, linking transport options to the networking site Facebook, allowing people who plan events on Facebook, to also plan their transportation options. On Facebook, a person's activities are made available for all his friends to see, and when they know that their friend is taking the bus, our argument was that they would be inclined to do so too. Our studies on college students here suggested that people don't take public transit because there is a notion that public transit is for those who can't afford a car or because they didn't like traveling with strangers. Our solution with social networking would allow friends to plan their transport together, thus solving the problem of traveling with strangers, and since everybody is aware of who's traveling by public transport, any wrong notions are removed.

The Snow!

About two weeks back, we finally got to see what sense there was in living through a -20 degrees centigrade temperature. It Snowed. Pictures here.

Winter '06

Central Park, New York.

I was visiting my cousin in Groton, Connecticut for the winter. We traveled to Fords, NJ from there as my cousin's mother was to catch a flight to India in Newark. That afforded me a trip to New York City, undoubtedly the high point of my sightseeing. On day one in NJ, my cousin and I drove to Queen's in New York where he had some work and we went to Manhattan later. We drove through the Manhattan streets, looking at the high rises from our car. A two hour drive and we were only able to see the Empire state building and Times square. Unsatisifed and determined to get on the subway and the free Staten Island Ferry that gives a glimpse of the statue of liberty, I set out next day alone and traveled by train from Fords, NJ to NYC. I decided that my itinerary would cover the Central park and the staten island ferry. As I walked down from the Penn station where I got down towards Central Park, other landmarks greeted me. New York is like one big exhibition, and walking the streets is a great experience. A picture story of my day in NYC is here.

At Groton, I was at home for the most part, catching up on telugu movies, eating and surprising my relatives waking up after noon. My cousin drove me one night to a casino called the Mohegan Sun in Mystic town. I fed 10 dollars to the machines there. Groton is a small seaside town, and I visited the shore. I went there on a day when the sun was up and the weather was nice, and given that I had only seen the sea twice before in my life, it was an engrossing experience. At Fords too I was for the most part at home, save for the trips to New york city and malls nearby. For new year's eve I was at the same place with my relatives. We watched the crowds at Times square on TV and cut a cake. For the record, it was the first time I wasn't at home in Hyderabad for New Year. Pictures of Groton and Fords here.

From Monday, it's back to classes and I'm looking forward to it.

End of Chapter One

It's the last week of my first semester studying in the US. I am visiting my cousin in Connecticut for the vacation. The semester was fun, I am not sure how much I learned about Human Computer Interaction Design, but living in another country is an education by itself and I think I've grown, working with people and making friends here. Not to forget that I've also taught. Once, teaching Linux commands, I got to the finger command, when the exerise was to use the command to find information about their neighbor. Unwittingly, I said "finger your neighbour", only to realise its other connotation when I heard giggles. Being a foreign Teaching assistant can lead to many of these situations, like somebody replying "It sucked" when asked about a previous assignment, and I having little clue how to respond to it.

Thanks to the teaching experience, and the numerous presentations in my own classes, I 've improved, so it seems, at speaking in public. On the first day, during orientation, we were asked about our greatest fears, and I said speaking in public. The professors are rather observant, and I had a couple of them tell me later I wasn't bad, friends have also told me that I've been improving. Needless to say, I like all the attention, and that's why I like this place the most, the people are nice and friendly. Surprisingly, I haven't felt very homesick, thanks to the people I've worked with and the Indian junta when I return home here. The timely hellos from friends back home in India, and weekly calls home ensured I felt good. It's interesting how I've improved at public speaking over the years. At school at an elocution competition: "Books are the ships on the ocean of life ... Books are the ships on the ocean of life ... Umm..", taking a sheet of paper out, "Books are a great source of knowledge", closing the sheet to realise I wasn't any good from the second line either, "Thank you". I then progressed, to finishing a speech without breaking off mid way, closing my eyes or looking away to ensure I wasn't intimidated by the crowd, the former working well at a competition for reciting Sanskrit slokas. I then progressed to the "superfast express", where I have my eyes open and looking at the crowd, but the speed of my voice expressed my desire to get out soon. Now, I am able to notice my speed and correct it to ensure I speak clearly. At school, my jitters would begin a week in advance. At IIIT, it would be a day in advance of the presentation, and here the jitters would begin just at the start of the presentation, my heart would begin to pound faster, but I would finish it making sure I made my point.

The projects were fun working as I was in great teams. The frequent parties organised by people from the class, once a Winter white party, where everybody's dressed in white, and eats and drinks only white things, once a christmas party, once a get-together at a friend's place or once a potluck party, ensured that the people in class knew each other well. Though, there still were some confusions about who was who, when one day everybody was asking me how I was doing and offering me candy, apparently I had fainted the day before. It was somebody else in class, but somebody thought my name was his, and everybody was talking about me. Oh well, Indian names can be confusing I guess. I am called Bala here. I have a feeling shorter calling names ensure better socialization. At IIIT, I would be adamant about being called Balakrishna, but haven't felt very close with people until they called me Balak or something similiar.

I was also involved as a photojournalist for the student newspaper, I got 7 photos published, averaging one a week, as I had planned to do. It was fun, and I'll be doing it again next semester. It was a quick semester, and it was fun. Hopefully, next semester would be even more fun.

The Films I'm Watching

About two weeks back, I got to watch a brilliant film, Alexander Sokurov's "The Russian Ark". It's brilliant on many levels, though the way it was made stands out: The director shot the whole film in a single shot of about 90 minutes. The film is about Russian history and culture, and showcases the Hermitage Museum in Russia to the world. In the different rooms of the museum, the director staged instances from 300 years of Russian History, and the steady camera operator moved from one room to another, where actors performed their parts. In the film, an invisible time traveler guides us through each of the rooms, accompanied by a French diplomat who had toured Russia at one time in the past.

To think that the film was pulled off in spite of these: the film had to be shot in one take as mentioned and since the museum could permit them only that single day when it would be shot there was little time for multiple tries, the steady camera operator was German, and a translator had to mediate between the director and him, 3000 actors performed their parts in the film, all original artifacts from the museum were used in the film and their safety had to be ensured, a minor acting error on the part of any of the actors or the steady camera operator would have ruined the film. Unbelievable.

The film was shot in the third take, the first two times the shooting having failed after about 10 minutes. Watching the film made me very hopeful, that you could pull off just about anything. The costumes on each of the actors were gorgeous, the acting splendid. Watching the film, I have become more interested in Eastern European cinema, my favourite director is Kryzstof Kieslowski, I love his "Blind Chance". This week I could get hold of a DVD box set of his films from our Library, I just finished "Camera Buff" and "A short story about Love", both have simple stories but such intimate portrayal filled with drama. The latter film inspired a Hindi film called "Ek Choti si love story" that became a scandal.

The amateur photojournalist

I have here the photographs of my first two published photographs, to try to recreate my feeling when I first saw them in the newspaper.

The first one: The main page!

The second one: Okay, I can do this!

I just finished my third photojournalism assignment, shooting at the Latino Culture Center's "Day of the Dead", a celebration to honor the dead. You can see the published photo here . It was the first time I was shooting people in the intimate: the first assignment I was shooting at the bus stop hidden from the people, the second assignment was about shooting a book, "Hoosier Heart".

I was apprehensive, as I was going to be shooting indoors at night, and I needed to get the exposure right besides getting closer to the people. I think cameras can help people overcome their shyness, as you have to get closer to the subjects you need to shoot, when they're people. Well, of course you could do it like you were observing a laboratory cockroach, detached, but that wouldn't get you the best photographs.

I think for me the exercise is proving worthy, I get free photography advice, I get paid for my published photographs, and I get to experience new situations and meet new people. Of course, my method is still coarse, I don't yet involve people in conversations, and that should be the next improvement.

Who Am I ?

Look Who's playing the fool.

Indiana Jones tries his hand at Beer Pong, thanks to his partner who can drink all the beer.

Pictures from a Halloween party. It was a surprise that I was doing it, because it's not what people would expect of me, or so I guess. If you also found it surprising, wait till you hear this: the day before, I was dancing. Dancing in a bar. Well, I wasn't drunk but I was dancing to music being played by a band called Polka Boys. Maybe it wasn't so much Dance as it was a shake of the legs. I was accompanying my friends, and it seemed odd that I was in a bar, with nothing to do as I don't drink, folding my hands and staring at the band. Eventually as each one of my friends swayed and began dancing to the music, I had to yield to the pressure. I had to find something to do after all.

You can see, characteristic of the people of my personality type, I am trying to defend myself. I don't consider dancing as bad or anything, but I never thought I'd be able to do it. I guess each of us holds a certain image of ourselves that is very difficult to even imagine being changed.

Change is inevitable, though, as they say. Being in a new situation like being in a different country presents an opportunity for change. You are no longer tied to your image, except by your own self, since there're a new set of people and a new set of circumstances. Nobody knows who you are like, so you could fake an entirely new personality, if you have enough courage.

I am still the person most people have known me as though!

Halloween Fun

Pumpkin Carving: mine! mine!



Jack 'O Lantern: Pretty neat, no ?



The rest!

A new activity

Today's issue of the Indiana Daily Student, IUB's student newspaper has my name on the front page. I've not been involved in any shady dealings, nor have I won a coveted prize. My first photo working as a photojournalist for the Indiana Daily Student, got published today. Little did I think that my photo would be worthy of being published that when my editor told me it was going to figure on P1, I was very excited, and when I found it to be the picture of the main story, at the top center of the main page, I was very very excited.

It was a picture for a story on a particular campus bus that students were complaining about. My job was to get a picture that showed students having to wait a long time, only to face a bus that was full (Buses have a capacity here, not like in India, where there practically is no limit on the number of people who can get into the bus). I stood at the bus stop waiting for that bus, a Canon EOS XT digital camera with a heavy lens hanging down my neck. I shot photos of people waiting and of the bus, standing at the bus stop. I also traveled in the bus to see if I can get a picture of people waiting, with the bus' front glass in the foreground, but handling the heavy camera on the moving bus proved troublesome, and didn't permit me to do much there. The photo that got published was one I took when a bus pulled in and people at the stop had to wait for people inside the bus to move back, creating space for these people to get in, and their body language suggested they were hoping they could get a place. You can see the picture here http://www.idsnews.com/news/story.php?id=38529&adid=news. The editor told me she chose the photo because of the look on the face of one of the students waiting.

It was a seemingly simple assignment, but getting a good picture takes effort, and depends on a moment happening. My editor advised me to take as many pictures as I could, optimally, finishing two memory cards of 512MB each. That can mean some hard work, but I guess it was very rewarding to see my photograph in the newspaper. Photojournalism is interesting to me because photojournalists get to experience new situations and new challenges with each new assignment, and that can be exciting. While I am elated about my first photograph, I know that publishing more photos will definitely need effort, and hopefully I can pull it off.

How's Life ?

I am now the owner of an Apple Laptop. A shiny, used 15 inch Apple Powerbook G4. I bought the laptop and a used apple iCam webcamera for USD 1040. A second hand laptop for a grand, you might ask, and before you look upon me with the same feeling you had when you read about my 800 USD loss on Air India, let me clarify that it also came with an apple care warranty plan for one more year. Besides, second hand powerbooks were selling for about USD 1200 on eBay, and that made it a good proposition. The lure of the apple, you might also say, these machines are so good looking that you want to possess one. Well, at least I fell for them.

It's been two weeks now, and life hasn't changed drastically after I got my laptop, but I get to watch some movies, borrowing DVDs from the main library, I am more accessible than I was before, and I don't have to stop at the Library on Mondays and Wednesdays after my class that ends at 9, to finish any work for the next day. And, I can't get lost, not that I do, but with IU's wireless network over every corner of the campus, google maps is always at hand. The wireless access allows people to work at just about any place, and I think it's a pretty sight, people lying down on the grass, working on their laptop or rea ding a book, with streams of water, and trees around. The leaves are changing colour, and the trees are part yellow, part orange and part green, making it all the more beautiful. The weather's changing though, the temperatures are falling, and soon there'll be nobody on the grass. Last week saw the night temperatures fall below zero.

This weekend I was occupied with correcting papers for the class I am a teaching assistant for and a take home mid-term exam for one of my own courses. Last weekend was interesting.

On Saturday evening, I had dinner with my Bloomington family, the Engels. An organisation called Bloomington Worldwide friendship ties up international students with local families to promote cultural exchange, and they matched me with the Engel family. The dinner was nice and consisted of Macaroni with cheese, a dish made with corn, boiled vegetables, Cranberry jelly, sweet tea and ice cream with peach pie for dessert. We had nice conversations about family life, food, climate and culture in our respective places. The Engels were very generous and I returned home with a dozen farm eggs and more helpings from the dishes we had for dinner. Ever since I landed here, I was concerned if I might be narrow minded and not make many friends here, thanks to BWF and all the group projects at school, I am becoming less worried about that.

On the afternoons of Saturday and Sunday, I went to see the Lotus Music Festival, that brings musicians from all over the world to Bloomington. On Saturday, it was Lotus in the park, and musicians performed and taught in music workshops at a local park. On Sunday, it was the World Spirit concert, and there were performances by people from Tibet, Canada, Brazil and India. The Indian group performed Bharatanatyam and Kuchipudi, Carnatic and Hindustani music, and a much applauded piece consisting of a fusion of the Tabla and an Afghanistani instrument.

The weather looks dampening, but activities in Bloomington abound as usual. The Asian association has plans for Deepawali, and maybe there'll be some excitement during the festival.

Lotus Festival in the Park

The Indian performances at the World Spirit Concert

Weekend Whining

Amartya Sen was at IU yesterday, and he talked about Identity and India. It was the first time I was breathing the same air a Nobel Laureate was breathing. That must do something to me, I guess. He read from a prepared lecture, and inspite of that, it was an entertaining one. When the brightness of the lights in the auditorium was increased, he joked, "I can see now that I am spreading enlightenment". During the QA session, when somebody asked him, if there were any books other than his own he would recommend somebody for getting an understanding of India, he said he didn't see his books in that light, and said he was surprised that his The Argumentative Indian was a bestseller, he then joked that the best complement he ever received for that book was last week, when his publisher Penguin, mailed him telling him that 15,000 pirated copies of that book were seized in Delhi. There were other witty comments spread through his talk.

Technology can fail you in very significant moments, it happened to me twice this week. At Sen's lecture, I wanted to get his picture, but my camera would display "low battery" when I could get a good view of him, and when I did get it to work, he wasn't visible. All I could manage are the photos shown here. On september 21 I wanted to call my mother for her birthday, and knowing that she would leave for college, I rushed home with a calling card and using my friend's phone called home. All I could hear was my father saying hello, when the call ended and a message said all the card's charge was consumed. To think that I had spent 5 dollars on it. The next morning I had my mother call me, so I could wish her. Pathetic.

I've been eating outside these days, as I have little time between group meetings and classes to go home and eat. A chicken sandwich combined with ice cream or a coke has been my staple diet last week. Not bad on the palate, but not too good for my wallet. I got my first cheque for my work as an assistant instructor, two days back. I still need to buy a laptop. I was expecting Apple to release a laptop with the newest Intel chip, but looks like they're going to take their time. I get to access the internet only when at college, and so it's been some time since I had my hellos returned from the other side of the planet.

It's getting cold. I am shivering as I write this, but I need to get used to the current temperature, as I hear that in the winter when it will snow, even with all the layers of clothing, it'll still be as cold as it is now.
It's 9.40 now, I better be heading home for Dinner. Lest you should worry about my wellbeing, I only used whining in the title to sound well with weekend. I am well.

A month in the US

Last night, we drove to Indianapolis to watch a 10 pm show of Bommarillu at the IMAX theatre in Washington Street, that makes it my first movie in the US. Listening to a lot of praise for that movie, I went in expecting a movie that well, deserved all that praise. The movie, was not bad, and especially for a director working within the parameters of the love story with disagreeing parents, it was a fine job. But, we have Prakash Raj realising his faults as a father for the 40th time, Dharmavarapu playing the not anymore funny college lecturer, a heroine who wears long flowing skirts everyday and can walk only in hops and jumps and a hero who keeps jumping into the air every 30 minutes. Cliches abound, like in most Telugu films. The film was enjoyable though for some of its moments, but it's not a film that will be remembered once its run is over. In spite of all it attempts to say about a father-son relationship, there isn't anything profound.

Life's getting to usual, with classes and assignments. My only complaint is that my weekends are occupied with group assignments. The classes have been fun. On the first day of our HCI class, the professor tore open a packet of ketchup from McDonald's and squeezed all the ketchup onto a sheet of paper, then he did the same again, then again, four packets in all, before he threw the sheet with all the sauce into the wastebasket. He then distributed chewing gum, band-aid and Tetley tea. By his own admission, his classes are "sometimes weird". In that class, we were marvelling at the good design of some products and criticising the bad design of others. As is evident, the professor really liked the design of the ketchup packet that would open only if you intended to open it. Each one of his classes begins with listening to a music composition, and trying to understand its design.

In another class on informatics, the professor talking about the notion of semantics, gives us the example of a metaphor that takes different meanings in different contexts. He chooses "banging on the hips", from a poem. He tells us how a catholic upbringing would give one the meaning of a dance where you bang on the sides and then about the other meaning of sexual intercourse, while actually making gestures to indicate the two. The examples are always full of life and he always talks self-deprecatingly about his family and his former job studying the effects of shampoo on hair.

I am getting to meet more people, and I am slowly reaching that stage when I will be beginning a conversation without being asked to repeat my first line. At the place I am staying, there're a lot of Indians, and it's beginning to feel like home when I get back. I am not sure, what kind of a person two years here will turn me into, I hope I will like the end-product.

At Home in Bloomington

Park Doral Apartments



Apartment 2610





My Room, I got the bed and the chair in a furniture giveaway.




A senior gave me the table for free, the Lamp cost me $12, the photo prints were free from yahoo pictures, other decorations, window blinds and a tube light cost me another 40$ in all. That means a furnished room under $50, not a bad thing at all.



I've been cooking. It did taste good!