Falling into a regular pattern

Well, life seems to be falling into a regular pattern now. Just the same old stuff. I dont want to describe what I cooked for dinner last night, because it is not a novelty anymore. Nothing "exciting" happens each and every day, as was the case initially.

I also realise that I complete one month in Boston today. Wow ! I dont believe it...it seems like 10 days ! Life is really hectic now, and days pass by in the wink of an eye. Its nice to be busy for 2 reasons - a) it means I am utilising my time well and b) i dont miss anyone much. Tin, Shreya you people actually miss me more than I miss you. I dont know if I'm being insensitive here.

Last week, I had my first proper project meeting with my professor. We discussed ideas for more than an hour. After that, we had our group meeting. Every Thursday, all the VLSI group people (profs, grad students and undergrad students) get together for an hour and someone talks about his/her research. Last Thursday being the first group meeting, we just introduced ourselves to each other. I also got allocated a corner of my own in the lab - called my office. Its a well equiped cubicle. At some point of time, I'll take some snaps and post them on a website.

On Saturday I went for a Sarod concert by Ustad Amjad Ali Khan at MIT. The concert was very good, though towards the end I got the feeling that its stretching on forever. I also met an old IITM friend who had come down from Brown University for the concert. All these days, I had been doing my "mattress research" too and finally I concluded it by buying one on Sunday. Sunday evening I went to my host student's home for dinner. He had prepared a full 3 course meal! It was a nice enjoyable evening where I got to meet a lot of students. He shares a house with 8 other Harvard grad students. In the course of our conversation, he informed me that while signing the lease, he had noticed that the date of construction of the house was 1892 ! Well, it looks no different from outside or inside than any other house that I know of. This has made me curious about the age of my building. It maybe 100 years old too !! Anyways, I am digressing. I was planning to invite Marcus (my host) for dinner too, but after seeing the effort he had put into the dinner, I decided to wait for a couple of months and hone my cooking skills before I invite him.

The whole of this week has been quite uneventful. There's tons of work to be done and thats where my days go. I realise that graduate student life is basically studying, cooking, eating and sleeping. But I hope to have more time at hand in the future semesters. This semester my choice of courses has made things especially hard. But I'm not complaining. I'm learning a lot of cool stuff, and in a way like never before. In the IIT system, or rather the Indian system, the performance in an examination determined the grade. Here none of the 3 courses have a final exam ! 1 doesnt even have a mid-term. The grading is on the basis of assignments. So the system forces us to be regular in our work. Also the work ethics are different. We discuss the assignments before submitting them, but only after we have genuinely tried them. Its OK to ask someone if you dont know how to do a problem. So there's a lot of real learning happening. At IIT, there was nothing stopping us from learning, but we could always do well in an exam even without learning much. There were certain courses at IIT where I would put in effort to learn the material - in others, I would just work towards getting a good grade. Here one implies the other.

I'm really looking forward to this weekend. One of my IIT friends is coming from Atlanta. I havent met this guy in more than a year now !!