Another long post

It has been so long since I wrote last, that I actually had to go to website to see what all I had written!

Some factual information first : I have returned the sofa-bed. It was too large for my room and the mattress was just too soft for my liking. I will get myself a regular single bed now (will stop looking for deals etc.) By the way, the sofa-beds are easier to buy and less expensive than the regular beds. I have also bought myself a laptop. Its a Dell 600m . I bought it for approximately $1010 as opposed to a listed price of $1399. Its more than a 25% discount and its supposed to be a really good, light-weight computer. It will be delivered early next week. I also opened myself a bank account. Next on the agenda are cell-phone and credit card. I will also get my first paycheck tomorrow :-)

So what has been happening this week ? Plenty ! I met my guide on Thursday. He is a cheerful young guy, but it seems that he is quite demanding. We spoke about the courses I will take this semester, and I am taking 3 super difficult course (2 of them at MIT and 1 at Harvard) I will also be starting on some research work . I identified my project. It is an interdisciplinary project involving Electrical Engg. and Biology. its about designing a Cell Sensor. A cell sensor basically identifies and separates certain cells from a mixture of cells (for eg RBCs from Blood). It has very very crucial applications in Biology . One thing that immediately comes to mind is treatment of Cancer. So it seems to be interesting. This semester, my professor and I will basically try to answer the question that whether we should actually take this project seriously, given our limited knowledge of Biology and chemistry. But, my holidays are coming to an end and I have a really difficult semester ahead.

On Friday, I had the international students orientation. It was like a lecture in Gegraphy. There were students from countries like Cyprux, Luxemburg, and Ghana studying even more fancy stuff like "Philosophy of Genetics" and "Middle east Studies". In the evening, there was a social hour for all international students. I met this Japanese guy there, who works for the Japanese foriegn service. He will be doing a masters in "Middle east studies" before being posted in Iraq !! Later that evening, I went out for dinner with a truly international group of people. There were 2 canadians, 2 danish, 1 australian and 1 englishman besides me. We went to an Indian restaurant here. Some of them ate a samosa with knife and fork! We spoke about various things (including Cricket!) and it was really enjoyable.

The weekend was kind of boring. On saturday evening, I went out with my room-mates to wathc this movie "Hero" . On Sunday, I met an old DBPC friend. Thats about it. Also tried to study a bit over the weekend.

Last evening, it was the Host dinner. It was a sit down dinner, i.e. we were served. We had been assigned specific seats and my host (the soft-spoken English guy) and I were seated besides these 2 snobbish Indian girls. The food was good and there was some nice music at the end.

Today was the official orientation for all students. It was at the historic .Sanders theatre, which is a beautiful wooden auditorium more than 130 yrs old. Nothing too special about the orientation. Thats about it. I have been meeting quite a lot of people, but have not made any good friends till now. I guess that will take some time. There are 2 other guys that my prof has admitted into his group this year - 1 from CMU and the other from Stanford. Both seem to be nice guys.

Today I cooked some amazing Aloo-Dum. It was my second big experiment (after Tamatar sabzi) and it tasted good too (a cook rarely dislikes his own concoctions!!) . Life is moving on fine. I think I will be able to come home toward the middle of August next year.

Good bye!