The Return to a Semblance of Normality

Ahh...I feel at the top of the world!!

My sleep cycle has returned to normalcy, and I once again get up at 7am....I hope gone are the days of late night sessions involving pointless movie watching and chatting away....For some reason, I feel revived, 'le joi de vie' seems to have returned, quite inexplicably!

Amidst a dozen or so phone interviews with Apple, I had gone last week to a 'Smartphone Feedback Session', where I had to make arbitrary comments about the look and feel of Nokia's latest Symbian OS development tools...God knows why I am so lucky...I got a cool $50 and pizza lunch for basically nothing! I plan to go again today, and revel in expensive things in the weekend ( like perhaps a trip to one of the Indian Restaurants ?)

We had a large gathering Monday at the peaks of ACES ( 6th floor, where I have my cubicle ;-))...Jean-Philippe Martin ( a fellow graduate student at UT) terms it "Easy Mondays", but rather it was a rather tough experience for me...'C'est un tradition' as he would perhaps like to quip; It involves letting one dude from the 50-student strong Laboratory for Advanced Systems Research (LASR) to talk about his favorite topic (which typically is his work, a la research). I felt like a dumb moron at the meet, being the junior-most grad student of the bunch, and perhaps well-intimidated...Well I guess most of you know that feel!

The past week also saw perhaps what one could best term as unrestrained indulgence....A few of my drinking buddies ( I dont generally drink) got together, and we had quite a blast! We ended up watching 'Captain' Vijaykanth's revolutionary movies, and cracking inane jokes at each other...After a couple of hours of general dancing around, the girl who lived downstairs finally could not take it any more...She came up to my buddy's place, and gave us a good ol'-fashioned 'Intro', followed by a 'Whippin' ( as the natives here call it!)

To quote her exactly, " Hi , My name's ---------, I really love your music, and I really like parties. I have been to several parties on Saturday nights, but you know, the pictures are falling of their hooks in my house...So if you guys dont mind, can you like please stop the stomping around...Thanks."

To which the drunkard (MK) who opened the door said, 'Do you want to join us?'....
(junta feel: 'Ah well, at least she was good-looking!' ). I guess we better look for a new location for our (pseudo)drunken revelry....

I have a new fascination, with a song titled 'Aadat- the remix'...(its available on Megablast.us)...Can't get it out of my head, for some reason...

I guess the best that has happened to me since I have been here has been a Co-op/Intern interview call from Cisco...Finally I hope to get a networking internship!! I am crossing my fingers and praying that it works out...And I have to pay income tax soon! Wow, the knowledge of that made me feel like a grown-up....Guess can't stop old-age from catching up! I hope I can sneak under the tax radar, and actually get it all refunded...there is supposed to be an Indo-US tax treaty, whereing I am(i.e. all Indians working in the US) allowed a significantly higher standard deduction than other foreign nationals...I wish actually ever understand legal documents...Can't make head or tail of these things.

And apparently, Mardi Gras is next week, too...With New Orleans basically deserted, I guess maybe we'll be seeing some fun downtown...

Btw, I also heard of this awesome orkut-girl-hunting community called 'Tamil Helmets'..Check it out if you got an account and the time!

Till next time, astalavista!