Stench and Sensibility

As interesting as this might sound, I finally got down to chucking my clothes into the automatic washing machine ....the old clothes strewn frivolously about my room are gone finally, and as one of roomies quips, we finally found out why our room had an affiliated stench to it ;-)

On to rosier things, the typical day in the life of Mr J.S., I shall go on to detail for you (with utmost sadistic pleasure )...topographical information is not really necessary, but take a look at maps.google.com for I.H. 35 at 32nd street in Austin ,if you feel up to it...

I cross the inter-state ( I live damned right next to the Interstate Highway 35 that runs through most of Texas), and notice the usual down-trodden folk asking for god-knows-what with sign boards making political and economic statements. (Remarkably enough, I once saw a 60 something man offering a woman a 10-dollar bill to take off with him...the sheer audacity of it all shocked me...I mean, I have heard of all this taking place in Kodambakkam in Chennai and all, but in broad daylight in Austin? Wasn't it too weird or is it just that I had'nt seen the world enough, I wondered...). Reading the signs they show while I wait for the crossing indicator to turn on is one of the more colourful portions of the sojourn to the university.

My walk past the interstate takes me to the neighbourhodd hospital, where I waited patiently for the Route 22 bus, which ought to ferry me onwards to the university campus ( I live kind of 15 mins by walk from my department; but am often in too much of a hurry or too bugged to foot it...). (A middle-aged nurse who works in the hospital looked at me one day and gave me a winning go-get-em smile...little did I realize then that I had not shaved for a week or so, and she probably took me for one of the recent dischargees from the hospital, I guess...)the never-on-time Capitalmetro bus comes in 20 mins late, effectively losing me $12.50 for being late from my wage-paying job at the university...aaarghh...

Reaching the department, I "manage" to bump into this huge desi junta perenially decking out at the graduate lounge( Seriously! they are always there...little india, perhaps one can call the place...) and the phully phaltoo discussions we tend to have wake me up fully to a state wherein on reaching my work desk, I can respond soberly to my employer's queries about what I plan to do to earn my pay for the day( I am too sleepy before 12 noon, all conversations and statements I make before are things I claim to be not accountable for...). The day rolls on with me "slacking off" at work till abt 2pm, when I head off to yet another lecture on distributed systems, to be followed by an even more interesting discussion on wireless networks .

5 O clock finally, and I am back at the graduate lounge not knowing what to do...I hang around for another hour or so, browsing the internet , and checking for elusive useful email, and finaly give up, and head home...I have too much work left, weighing on mind is just too many issues in life, thanks to the tons of things I agree/have to do academically... Juggling responsibilities is one thing; taking on too many responsibilities in a fashion that you know you will never be able to do justice to any of them is another thing altogether...As a consequence, life has started sucking badly; My graded test marks , which adequately reflect my apathy towards the subjects I am supposed to be interested in finally came in to round of an awesome day. I return home, and sleep off as soon as possible, dreaming of a good day some day...

Sigh...Life was so much easier in Chennai ( Back in India...as a famous personality states so eloquently)... I am fast losing focus, losing sight of that elusive dream of being independent, and being capable of enjoying the subtler aspects of life...Of having "arrived", rather than tending to do so...

Why am I here? At a place far far from home, where I need to actually fend for myself ?
.
.
.
I know not...

Please stop for the love of god!

If the periodicity of my blogs is something to go by, you must know how much time I have on my hands...

As I have just discovered, not doing anything is a blissful state one should aspire to reach....for one, I don't have to bother about achieving anything, nor do I have to deal with this constant swell of information that pulls me in....Drowning in large workloads is nothing new pour moi, but hey! this is as a near-death-experience as any that I have ever seen! Somebody should banish the scourge of studying computer algorithms, and as much as I hate saying this, I would not miss it one bit once this semester's toast! (Ah well, all's well that end's well I guess... I managed to eek out an RA from my prof for next semester, so that I don't have to be so parsimonious next semester!)

Algorithmic nightmares apart, life's going as it was when I got here, the big bad US of A, has not been too bad seriously...its nice to see water not stagnating around after a heavy downpour, people are pretty nice to each other, and I have not seen people being particularly heterophobic at all...I guess I have'nt been to the no-go areas in Austin yet( I hear the eastern portion of the town is quite rough). I have'nt seen too many policemen around, and believe it or not, that actually gives me a sense of security. Living right next to campus is one big advantage I guess, the decision I made to live so close, regardless of it not being on any of the main campus shuttle bus routes ( pronounced here as r'auts, not like the way we pronounce roots!), has not been a bad one, in retrospect, and dabbling in study now-and-then by traversing the roads to the university is easy enough on weekends. Campus Police ( they have a UTPD here!) are always on the beat, and the university as such rocks, and give rides back home if it gets dark!

Austin's a pretty scenic place ( Round Rock's supposed to be awesome, but have'nt been there yet), I've been to many places around the town, mostly during the first few weeks of the semester (I confess that I have'nt taken the time to look the place up more; as a consequence have not been to 6th street for a non-official purpose...a'int I mad??) One thing one notices about Austin is the copius presence of 'lover's spots'...in the summer, you can take a stroll through any park and notice arbit giggling and leaves crunching around behind bushes (remind's me a long forgotten incident in Ooty sometime back; alas promised someone that I can't utter it again... may be in one of my future blogs...). But I miss the warmth of Chennai...for someone who was almost forever in Chennai, the instant change in weather that one gets when the weather hits 'Winter'...it went to 1 degree C yesterday...Srivatsan made an entrance right at 5:30 am, pretty much a snowman ( Srivatsan's my roomie, for those in the dark).


My thoughts wander, and its tough to focus these days...Confused , I am, and since Home's where the heart is, I am currently homeless...(sigh!)

Keep warm, makkal!

Message to self: Will blog more, will blog for less sensible things.