clearing the backlog

I realize my enthusiasm for writing these daily diaries has already started fading. But here's the jist of what happened over the last few days.

Let me begin with the Harlalka's. They are a ver y open hearted couple - ne I instantly felt comfortable with. Bhaiya drove down and came to pick me up. He gave me a proper orientation about life here. Explained to me, the way I should spend money, the way I should stay being on a visa. He also brought to my notice a few things that I would like to buy. We chatted about Calcutta etc. Bhabhi was really nice too. I had a proper home lunch. In the evening Bhaiya took me out to show the malls. He took me to the Burlington mall. The place was quite swanky - as all public places here are. He showed me a gadget store - where human creativity just explodes. There was this binoculars with a built in digital moving camera. So one can actually shoot discovery channel type videos. Whats more - it was just $80! There were other very ingenious stuff too - like the stringless guitar and an ice-less ice bucket. Plenty of amazing ways to waste money! Then he showed me an Indian grocery store. This was quite an experience too. You get everything from Parachute naariyal oil to Lux soaps here - even Telephone brand Isabgol. They also kept videotapes of all saas-bahu type serials. So one can feel perfectly at home after a visit to the Indian store. Later that evening, I accompanied them to a party they were going to. After returning we were chatting till late into the night. One thing about the houses here - He lives in the suburbs and there are rules preventing small sized plots there. So every house has to have a garden. All houses have all the material comforts. His house was somewhat like mine when it came to bathroom and kitchen equipment etc. I visited 2 houses that evening and I realized that a middle class family here has a home which is a lot better equiped and a lot better decorated than what we manage in India.

Nothing really interesting happened the next day - except me establishing telephonic contact with my IITM-MIT friends. On Tuesday, I went to my future lab and met a grauate student in my guide's lab. We had lunch together at the Harvard Law School cafeteria and he showed me around the campus. I then went for a "Getting started in the US" session for international students. In the evening I went to MIT. They had planned a nice cooking session. The cooking was mostly done by Mythili and Soumya with me offering my two-pence worth advice here and there, and then rescuing the aloo ka sabzi. It was quite funny - Soumya got Vanilla flavoured curd instead of the normal stuff and the kadhi turned out be very sweet. But never mind. We all loved the food that we had cooked. Since there were 10 people invited to the dinner and cooking for 10 was something no one had ever done before, all sense of proportion was lost and it took the genius of Yours truly to get things back on course ;) . Well we then had our sumptuous feast complete with ice-cream as dessert and baadam halwa as starters. I reached home at around 11 pm and was quite tired.

Today was another busy day. After getting some confidence (and inferiority complex) after seeing those people cook yesterday, I was determined to do the same today. So I cooked rice and tomato curry for lunch. It came out well too. One of my roommates, who was leaving for Europe in the afternoon, and had a lot of last minute stuff to do, was really happy to get a hot meal without any effort.
My sofa-cum-bed arrived ($260 including delivery and fitting) and by the time the guy left, I was already late for my MIT lecture. I rushed and made it to the class just about 5 minutes late. The lecture was stimulating and I could feel the "level" of the professor. It was actually mindboggling - the pace of the lecture, the expectation from the students, everything. I actually answered a couple of questions that were directed to the class - so that made me happy. Couldnt believe that I was sitting in a lecture at MIT, the mecca of technology. I also found out that the EE-CS building in MIT is named after Ray Stata - the person I had felicitated at Shaastra this year (quite flattering). The harvard EE-CS building is named after Bill Gates' parents (just an aside).

In the evening, I went and met my student host. He is from England (studied at Camridge University) and we spoke about how things are in India, how they are in England and how they are in the US. He also reads a lot and we spoke about books too. We had dinner (at 6:30 !) and we enjoyed it thoroughly. He converted to vegetarianism 2 months back - in protest against the cruelty meted out to animals who are bred for the purpose of meat. He was a really soft-spoken guy. One general observation I make here is that people in the university are very very polite and courteous. Its quite a challenge to be equally courteous to them... but I'm trying (and hopefully succeeding).

Thats all for now. I am busy searching for some good cell-phone and lap-top deals. This country is crazy. There's always a way to get something cheaper than the usual price. You should go through the right channels. So information is literally wealth here and my room-mate Arun seems to be having a lot of it.