CHAPTER 20- THINGS I OVERLOOKED (GUEST WRITER WANTED)

CHAPTER 20- THINGS I OVERLOOKED (GUEST WRITER WANTED)

Initially, I planned to write in this post, all the stuff that I had missed writing about in my previous 19 posts and were pointed out to be by comments from people or stuff I remembered later. But, seeing how big the previous posts have been, it would be an onerous task for me to go through all the posts again and all its comments and write a huge post. And so I am chucking this post...
UNLESS.....
........
ONE OF THE GUYS WHO WERE WITH ME AND WENT THROUGH WHAT I WENT THROUGH (JB, MS, AZ 'n JD) WANT TO WRITE THIS POST.
So guys, if any of you are jobless enough to fill up this space, you re totally welcome. It would be good to have a guest writer in the final post in the series too.

SIGNING OFF,
AJAY

CHAPTER 19- SOME GOOD NEWS, NOSTALGIA AT BERKELEY AND THE END OF THE TRIP

CHAPTER 19- SOME GOOD NEWS, NOSTALGIA AT BERKELEY AND THE END OF THE TRIP

It was in the middle of the quarter that I got an amazing piece of news- my first admit for grad school- at UC Davis. I had got a rejects from a couple of big guns I had applied to, Princeton, UC San Diego and so I was quite anxious about whether I would get any admits. And I had ambitiously put in my application for a Phd at UC Davis, which is generally more selective than a masters.

One evening, when I was shopping, Varun called me and told me that he had got a mail from UC Davis for the Phd that he had also applied to. I was happy for him, but was sure mine wouldn’t have come as his profile was way better than mine and it is only fair that he gets his admit before mine. I went home and checked my mail to find nothing new, and as rejects always come a few days after the admits, I thought my aspirations at UCD was over.

Then after an hour of brooding, I suddenly got a hunch that I should check my spam, and voila, there was a message from the UCD CS dept. I opened the mail and realized this was an admit letter. I was stunned. I didn’t really believe it until JB read it for me and confirmed that it was indeed an admit to the Phd. I was relieved more than anything else. I knew that I, at least,, had a choice to decide what I wanted to do for my career when it is time. I spent a couple of hours on the phone letting people close to me know about it and then went to bed and got up a different man, with no pressure on me.

I enjoyed the rest of the quarter without too many qualms even if some minor glitches came in the way as I knew I had the big fish. And so, now that I had that choice between working in India and pursuing my Phd in UC Davis and pursuing my masters in either UC Irvine or Oregon state university, I decided in favor of UC Davis and so am back here and quite happy.

I also squeezed in a trip to Berkeley towards the end of the quarter, for a day mainly to meet my cousin who studies at UC Berkeley and collect some stuff my mom had given for me through him, as he had come from India only a couple of weeks ago. Varun accompanied me for that, and we took a shuttle which runs between UCD and UCB early in the morning. In an hour, we entered Berkeley and saw it was a wonderful scenic place.

We got down and decided to explore the town first. We went into a bookstore, which had the largest collection of old books I have ever seen or imagined. I doubt if a museum would have such a collection. There were many rare and coveted ones, some quite controversial and therefore unpredictable. We spoke to the owner, an old man of 90 years and he told us that he had spent all his life collecting these and he even knew what books he had and which shelves it was on. Remarkable, considering that there were at least a 100000 books there. We went around the shelves and some were so old that in a few years from now the paper may start disintegrating. The whole smell of the place and the history associated with it really impressed avid book enthusiasts like me and Varun.

We then walked further in the town to get to a street, which was like mini- India. There were at least 20 restaurants, 5 saree and Indian clothing shops, lots of Indian supermarkets etc. We felt so much at home. So nostalgic.

It had been months since we had proper Indian food, and so with no worry about the prices, we ate thrice that day. The chole bature in the morning, the biriyani in the afternoon and the chaat in the evening may well be my happiest meals in my life considering how much I had missed such food and I got an opportunity to have it unexpectedly. I licked my plate clean each time, not even leaving any work for the dishwashers.

Then we walked further and further and explored the whole town. We must have walked about 10 miles there and went to parts of the town to which my cousin later disclosed he hasn’t been to in his 6 months of dwelling there. We also did some shopping at a place to fulfil the second of the two places I had aimed to visit while coming to the US (I had visited the first with JD and D-dub in Sacramento). After all this and many a buck spent, I met my cousin and took the evening shuttle back to Davis.

Soon, it was the end of the quarter and we were done with our exams. I was rather disappointed at how the course on visualization I had taken, turned out for me, but I was at a stage where I was starting to get homesick and the fact that I was going back home in a few days cheered me up loads and kept me going. Soon it was time to pack and we had to vacate our apartment a couple of days before our flight because the GSP people insisted and so the five of us spent about 15 hours each over a course of two days to clean the whole apartment, including the carpets and walls and shelves and toilets and get it ready for presentation. Though we did a commendable job, it wasn’t good enough for a certain suddenly hostile GSP staff.

So slightly upset, we said goodbye to #116, our wonderful home for the past 7 months which has given us many memories to cherish and went with our luggage to Dwarak’s place, where we were going to be put up till we left for our flight. We had a lot of fun there, especially playing FIFA 09 on his Xbox. Thanks for being a great host, D-dub.

Cherishing those memories, we left for the San Francisco airport on the morning of the 26^rd of March, bidding farewell to Dwarak and boarded our flight.

At the Hong Kong airport, on the transit, we had to wait in queue for boarding the next flight and we realized that people were pushing past us to get to the door first while we were socially giving way like a person in Davis would. We realized we were back in the big bad world of again and we needed to get back to our selfish selves to survive in this competitive Asian world. And so with no further delay, we blended into the crowd pushing other out of our way. It was a good feeling to feel right doing that in some ways. It took us some time, after a couple of embarrassing situations to realize we shouldn’t be commenting about our co-passengers in tamil as it is quite probable that they may understand the language. It was going to take some time getting used to some things in India again. But I was looking forward to it.

We arrived at the Chennai airport with no glitches and after checking out my luggage, bid farewell to the others for now and was delighted to see my parents after a very long time. We had a lot to talk about. And a lot to not talk about too :D . Only then I realized how much I had been missing them. All this time while I had been in Davis, I had I never felt homesick which I guess is due to my good fortune that I had such good friends there. I thank you all, who have influenced my life, in any way, as I like how it has turned out till now.

Epilogue:

It was a great feeling to be back in India but not so great a feeling to be back in SRM as far as academics were concerned. It sucked to be back in the system where you cannot question anything and take things at face value and memorize stuff instead of understanding it conceptually to get marks in “exams”. I had to unlearn the system of learning I experienced in Davis and get back to the degradatory folds of the SRM education system. Worse, I had to put up with the politics and all the other crap that was dished out to us. But now that I have come past all that, and passed out successfully after graduation, I can say I have no regrets and I can look forward to what’s coming.

P.S: this started as a blog post which I thought I could complete in a couple of thousand words and publish at once, but as it went on I realized I had so much to say. So I decided to type it all as I remember it, omitting no non-sensitive important detail, with no worries about the size. I am quite shocked to see that THIS is the 31645^th word that I am typing and the 19^th blog post that I am posting . And I shall end it here!!!

THE END!!!

THAT'S ALL FOLKS!!!

CHAPTER 18- AT THE RUSSELL PETERS SHOW

CHAPTER 18- AT THE RUSSELL PETERS SHOW

The other time I went to Sacramento was something I will remember all my life, as will the others who were with me. It was the Russell Peters show. Russell is quite an icon among today’s youth, especially Indian youth and it was no exception with me and the others. To get an opportunity to see him live in action would be a dream come true. He is quite easily the most popular stand-up comedian today. It helps that his main target audience are Indians and Chinese and so being popular among Indians and Chinese is like being popular among more than half the world.

You need to be broad minded to take his jokes in the right sense. Some people consider him racist, but the other way of looking at it is he is talks about what people brand “racism” as such a normal thing in life that it doesn’t become taboo anymore. Agreed…he does go overboard sometimes, but his general philosophies are so outrageously simple that you sometimes wonder if everyone in the world was like him, there would be no practices like racism. I have totally loved most of his jokes and his points of view and tolerated the very few I found offensive but I would like to assert that I hated the stuff he was babbling about physically-challenged people in his latest show “Red brown and white”. He went totally overboard there. Anyway… I wanted to make that point somehow, hence the deviation.

We were all really excited that he was coming to Sacramento for a show and got tickets at once. We all felt it would be a great experience if we could meet him and MS took the initiative of mailing Russell’s manager on the website that we were a bunch of loyal Russell fans, who had come all the way from India to get an opportunity to meet him and if it were possible to say a hi to him before the show. He got an instant reply, asking him for our details and asking us to come half an hour in advance to meet Russell. We were really surprised at how easy that was.

So we were really excited when it was D-day. It was almost all of the Blue flamez this time. Almost. Except AZ, who couldn’t make it (because he had to save to buy shoes? :D). [This gives me the opportunity to make an important point. All the 9 of us “Blue flamez” have never been at the same place at the same time. Ever. Due to one reason or the other, someone does not make it. Guys… pity we couldn’t do anything about it in India too, so it’s going to remain this way for quite some time I guess].

So it was JB, JD, MS, Varun, Dwarak, Mahesh, Sahithi and I who made it there finally. We arrived well on time and entered the place. It was actually a comedy club. And a very historic one where famous comedians like Chris Rock had made their first few shows. It was more of a restaurant-club place, where there were tables all around what looked to be a small stage. It wouldn’t accommodate more than 200 people at a time. The smaller the audience, the greater the probability of each one of us to be royally raped by Russell’s jokes on us. So we were even more excited.

Then Russell walked in coolly, dressed in casuals, his walk evident of his self-confidence. He went backstage and soon we were called by a few volunteers backstage. That was the moment we were waiting for. We walked into the room where he was perched on a table and on seeing the 8 of us enter the room, he smiled sarcastically and said “Wow… I see a bunch of malnutritioned people. You must be from…. India”. Hmm… I looked around and noticed MS especially and Varun didn’t exactly look malnutritioned but didn’t make the point. We talked with him for a minute or two and told him we are huge fans and have watched most of his shows. He was as friendly as a person who had known us all our lives. He then signed autographs for us with our names on it, and as he wrote each name, he found some way to make fun of it. I introduced myself as AJ (syllable), as I would to Americans who would find it easier to pronounce and he asked me “you must have an Indian name. Is it Ajay by any chance? :D “. He split up Jagadish's name as Jug-dish and said he was quite a dish. He showed mock surprise that a boy’s name started with Jeya when JB introduced himself. After all this, we took a priceless picture with him, arm in arm. I was totally overwhelmed to be standing with Russell Peter’s hands over my shoulder. Finally, it was time for the show to begin and we left to sit at our tables but I couldn’t resist telling him “We had a fun-tastic time” with a typical Indian accent (will make sense to those who have watched his “Red brown and white” show) and he seemed quite overwhelmed for the first time and smiled.

The show began and what a show it was too. I went with very high expectations. That it was going to be really funny. But I was wrong. It was much more than that. It was totally hilarious. Two hours of continuous laughter. There wasn’t a dull moment. My throat and mouth was hoarse after having laughed that much at a stretch. I thought all stand up comedians always have a theme and a line of proceeding and they would deviate and improvise to make it look instantaneous. I expected it to be a show where he would crack some of his popular jokes like “Somebody gonna get a hurt real bad” and the stuff about how funny Indian names were etc, and had even refreshed my memory with the popular ones by watching this videos before the show so that I would be able to catch the joke in advance, but I was off cue. It was totally totally instantaneous. Not one joke was from his previous shows.

He started off pretty lamely by coming on stage and looking around and saying “Oh man. I just dunno where to start. I seem to have exhausted all my jokes in my previous shows. I have no clue what I am going to be speaking in the next couple of hours. So if I am without any ideas for most of the show, do excuse me”. After a minute of silent babbling he started off with “Hmm…why don’t I start off with that Indian guy sitting there with a turban?”, pointing to a sardar in the audience. From there he went table to table in random order and made sure everyone present that night was embarrassed in some way or the other. There is no way that the jokes could have been made up before the show as it was all improvised reactionary humor. And it was so good that there was never a dull moment.

His imitations of the Indian accent got the biggest applause though, as he sounded so funny doing it. He embarrassed a lot of people that night including a waitress in a low top who was serving a guy at the table something saying “Hey you….guy over there to whom the well-endowed blonde waitress is bending to give you a good view…tip her generously else she might not accompany you home tonight”. I didn’t know who turned redder…the guy at the table or the waitress. There were many such jokes through the night which kept the audience hooked. It is so amazing how this guy could talk instantaneous nonsense for two hours and it still seemed hilarious.

We wanted the show to go on forever but alas… all things come to an end…and so did this after a couple of hours of entertainment. We waved him goodbye and thanked him for having made our day and a lot more days ahead and took a taxi back to Davis.

(TO BE CONTINUED...)

CHAPTER 17- WWE AND NBA LIVE IN SACRAMENTO

CHAPTER 17- WWE AND NBA LIVE IN SACRAMENTO

I also went to Sacramento a couple of times again that quarter, to watch some sporting and entertainment events. First was the WWE RAW event at the Arco arena. I haven’t really been a big WWE follower and I had always found the whole setup quite silly. But I was curious about it nonetheless. I was interested in seeing the event live, to understand why a lot of people were total WWE fanatics. Also we would all have a lot of fun.

A visibly excited MS and AZ, Dwarak, Jakki, JB and I set out that evening and got into the arena and found the atmosphere electric. There were about 10000 people there and each one was screaming on top of his/her voice. I also got into the mood and started screaming random stuff, though I didn’t even know all the wrestlers names and their ‘history’. Most of the superstars were there including Cena, Edge, Orton, Jericho, Kane, Mysterio.

To see them wrestle looked totally artificial, I must say. Some wrestlers started falling and reacting even before their opponent's punch landed on them. I noticed one such anomaly when Jericho hit Cena and chuckled, only to be greeted by a dirty stare from a couple of bouncer-like guys, who could’ve thrown me all the way into the ring from the stands, with one hand. They were Cena fans and probably thought I had chuckled to express my happiness seeing Cena get beaten. I decided to keep my thoughts to myself after that if I wanted to return home in one piece.

In another match, the self-proclaimed world’s strongest man, Mark Henry (he was huuuuge…must have been some 2000 kgs and about 7 feet tall) was beating up Mysterio and a pint size kid (he was one third my height) of about 10 sitting beside me, stood up on his seat and screamed “Henry…you bas****…you leave him alone or I ll come and throw you out of the ring”. I didn’t know how to react. Henry could’ve pushed him two rows back with his little finger. But from his voice, I could see he meant every word of it. That’s how passion transcends barriers like age and size. Though it was a good enjoyable one time experience, now that the curiosity is fulfilled, I wouldn’t pay to watch another WWE event again.

Another time, I went for an NBA match at the Arco arena. I badly wanted to watch the Lakers play in Sacramento as I am a lakers supporter but they weren’t to come until after I left for India. So I decided to watch the team where one of my favorite players, Lebron James plays- Cleveland Cavaliers. The cavaliers were to come to Sacramento to play against the Sacramento Kings, who are nowadays called only the Kings nowadays as they are an potential embarrassment to the capital city if they carry its name. They were last in the western conference, and by a large margin. The cavaliers were comfortably on top of the eastern conference table and if they got a win here, they would be through to the playoffs. It was also an important game for Lebron personally because he had been in the form of his life lately and had got 3 triple-doubles back to back. Were he to get one more, he would be the first player in the NBA ever to do that.

I had to go solo, as the others weren’t really interested in basketball. Without a second thought, I bravely took the yolobus and changed twice to get there to the Arco arena, having just directions from Google maps and with no idea how I was going to get back after the match as it would be late. It didn’t matter at that time. All that mattered was seeing Lebron in action.

So, asking a lot of people on the way for directions and advice, I finally got to the arco arena and took my seat. It was a really exciting atmosphere, with a full house of about 15000 people. I talked to a few people before the match and everyone was just wondering by how many points the Kings would get thrashed and not about the result.

It was one hell of a game though. It started on totally unexpected lines, with the kings getting a 15 point lead at the end of the first quarter. At halftime, they managed to increase the lead further to about 25 points. Everyone was stunned, from the players of both teams, to every person in the crowd. The Kings were growing in confidence and the crowd was cheering louder too sensing something special here. After all it had been 7 games since the Kings had won a match and to win against the best team of the eastern conference with the best player in the world, it would be special indeed.

I was discussing the game with the girl beside me and said it looked like it’s going to be a comfortable win for the Kings, she looked at me with a twinkle in the eye and asked me if that was the first time to a kings game. I told her it was so and she said that explains why I do not know about the Kings. She told me “Mark my words. The kings can really perform miracles no other team can. Like losing from this position”. I was like “No way. 25 points is too much of a lead to make up”.

The game got underway again and the kings left off where they started. They were playing like they were possessed, banking on the now-excited crowd's backing and also the DJ’s music. Yes that’s one thing I noticed which was really unique about the NBA. They have a DJ and play with the music on. That also works to the advantage of the home team, as the DJ plays adrenaline pumping music when the home team has the ball and droning music when the away team does. I guess the sounds you hear affect your tempo and rhythm. So it’s better for the away players to wear earplugs while travelling.

Towards the end of the fourth quarter, the cavaliers went on a 12-2 run, thanks to a few three pointers by Lebron. So with the momentum with the cavaliers but a 15 point lead with the kings, the 3^rd quarter ended. I still thought it was way too much to make up in the second quarter, unless the kings play real real badly and go on something like a 0-15 streak.

And that’s exactly what happened. Suddenly, where there were ferocious warriors battling for the kings, there seemed to be clueless amateurs ball watching as Lebron and co started steamrolling their way to the basket. With 30 seconds to go, Lebron hit a 3 pointer to make his tally go to 40 and draw the cavaliers level. The kings messed up their final shot at the basket, with a bad pass which was intercepted and it was end of time. The score was tied 102-102.

I was shocked at how the kings had thrown it away and got a “see…I told you” look from the girl beside me. In the overtime, as expected, it was the cavaliers all the way and they won the game with a 10 point lead. To have been 25 up at halftime and lose a game by ten points, I have to say no other team could do that. Hail the kings for the miracles they can perform. Lebron ended with 56 points and some of the best three pointers and dribbles and tricks and dunks and alley-oops I have ever witnessed. I was lucky to have been there.

I looked down at my watch and it was 10 pm. I was totally panicked as the last yolobus to Davis would be at 1030 in downtown. I ran out of the stadium, pushing the already dejected Kings fans, hearing their trailing curses, but not registering in my state of panic. Thankfully, I got a cab as soon as I went outside and asked him to go as fast as he could to downtown. He told me we just might make it in time, if the traffic wasn’t too heavy. Luckily it wasn’t and we reached at 1020. I gave the driver a generous tip and got down relieved and waited at the deserted bus stop.

I remembered the last time I was in Sacramento and realized what a foolhardy thing it was to have come all the way here on my own relying only on public transport. I thanked my stars when the bus came and I got onto it and I was finally in known territory. I came home happy with my day’s adventure but knowing I shouldn’t act so brave and take such risks.

CHAPTER 16- LAKE TAHOE- SKIING AND SOME SCENERY GAZING

CHAPTER 16- LAKE TAHOE- SKIING AND SOME SCENERY GAZING

It was in the middle of the quarter that we decided we ought to the one other place we had been wanting to go every since we came to Davis- Lake Tahoe. It was a frozen lake just 80 miles north of Davis, which was very scenic and had ski resorts and the best time to see it was December to February and so we decided it was now or never. The 5 of us who were interested in going (JB, Dwarak, Varun, Jakki and I) rented a car and started very early in the morning, heavily dressed for the cold. I was really excited as it was the first time I was going to see and feel and even ski in snow.

We had driven for about an hour and there was still no sight of snow. We could feel the wind chilling a bit but considering we had another 30 miles only to our destination, which was to be snow covered mountains and a frozen lake, it was bizarre that we hadn’t caught sight of any snow. After double-checking if we were on the right track, we continued on and noticed that the wind had chilled suddenly and another two minutes of driving led us to our first sight of snow. It was beautiful to see white flakes on the black tar on the road ahead of us.

Another two minutes of driving…and voila…we couldn’t see any color other than white all around us. All the greenery and earth had been covered with snow. It was a majestic sight to look around you and see only white. Soon the road began climbing and we realized we were on the snow capped mountains now. After sometime we could see the ground below, all covered in beautiful white.

We reached our first destination, the ski resort in a few minutes from then, and got down from the car and wore every layer of clothing we had brought with us. We needed it. I stepped into the snow for the first time in my life and it was initially a weird feeling. It was about 5 inches deep and it was pretty difficult to walk initially. It was similar to walking on sand on a beach, only this was a good 3 inches thicker. We went into the resort and collected our gear. It was a huge struggle to wear the snow boots. They were humungously heavy. Each boot must have weighed at least 5 kgs(whatever that is in lbs- I am still used to the SI system). It was such a struggle to walk with that. We were handicapped the whole way from the gear closet to the open, as our movement was restricted by these boots and we were also carrying other stuff like the skiing rods. After losing balance countless times and bumping into loads of people, we finally got out into the open and the sight dazzled us. Literally. Everything in front of us was vulgarly white. There was so much white light reflected by the snow all around us that we had to close our eyes and open them gradually to get accustomed to it. It was like waking up from sleep and the first thing you look at is the sun. No wonder serious skiers wear goggles.

Once our eyes got accustomed to the light, we looked around to see lots of snow covered hills of all heights and of all steepness around us. There were at least 500 people skiing in that resort at that time. We wore the skis on our boots and we realized we were even more paralyzed that before. It was impossible to lift our legs and walk. And it was impossible to move uphill with the skis which dug into the snow. And we were too scared to go downhill, as we didn’t know how to control it. And so we stayed put, watching other people, including kids as young as 6-7 years ski down the steepest slopes. We felt retarded.

Finally the ski instructor came down to us and our crash course in skiing started. There is so much technique involved in skiing, some quite difficult to master. Your legs need to be bent at the right angle to have proper control when you ski downhill. And your feet should be relaxed. When you want to stop, you have to do what is called the pizza formation with your legs, where you join the thumbs of both your toes and maintain a 30 degree angle. Not more, not less. You do one of these things wrong, and you ll end up falling, as we realized the hard way. When you want to turn right while skiing, you need to wiggle the toes of your right foot and for turning left, your left foot. There was so much concentration necessary.

The initial lessons were quite easy but when we went to do the real thing, we realized how hard it was. Concentration and relaxation is preceded by instinct when you are racing downhill and so you often end up doing one thing wrong and that is enough to make you do a somersault and fall a few yards away, head down and feet up. The worst thing was not the fall. It was the recovery from it. It was really hard to get back up on your feet, with such heavy boots and skis which give you no control. And once you get back up, if you don’t get your feet into the pizza formation, you are likely to plummet downhill again and fall.

I must have fallen at least a hundred times (no juxaggeration) and it is a wonder that I had no bones broken. Each fall propelled me to try more and fall again, after attaining a greater velocity. The longest I managed to stay on my feet was for about 20 seconds down a 60 degree inclined hill and I remember that achievement not for the good amount of time I managed to maintain balance but for the fall I had at a 40 kmph speed I must have attained. I tried to steer right, for which I had to wiggle the toes of my right foot alone and being the symmetry freak (guys who know me will understand this), I couldnt get myself to do that and so I wiggled the toes of both my feet simultaneously and as they say, the rest is history. I must have been at least 5 seconds in the air (which is a long time) and landed at least 20 metres from the point I started flying. Ouch. It sure hurt! It is funny how snow flakes, which are on its own so soft, combine to form a lump of snow which is as hard as stone (and seems harder as your body is numb in the cold). It is analogous to how, in a situation where one individual may be ineffective in performing a task, a team of individuals can accomplish the same task. In that way, the snow teamed up to give amateur skiers like me a ‘hard’ time. Pun intended.

But finally after 4-5 hrs of skiing, I think I got the hang of it and I could keep myself on my feet over a whole downhill path. Dwarak got really good at it though, almost looked like a pro towards the end. Varun didn’t really take to the snow as he would to a guitar and hence was branded ‘grandma’ by the ski instructor (:P). Knowing that our bodies would be aching all over but not even able to feel it because of the numbness due to the cold, we called it a day and returned our gear and warmed ourselves. Only then we started feeling the pain from all the bones which had taken a beating. It was like coming back from a dentist after a tooth extraction and feeling the pain after the anesthetic wears off.

We then drove to the lake, which was about 20 miles from there. I got down from the car and I was greeted by what was the most beautiful sight I have ever taken into my eyes. This was what would be justifiable usage of the often overused expression ‘picture-perfect’. Imagine this scenery. You are standing on snow. Right in front of you is a vast expanse of a frozen lake, where the ice forms a single sheet which reflects light at you like a mirror. In front of the lake which seems to stretch forever are mountains. Snow capped ones, where the snow on their peaks makes them look like a vanilla cream garnished dessert. Behind them, you can see the sky, in its purest blue. And behind that, the sun peaking out of the mountains completes the picture. It was breathtakingly beautiful. You could stare at that one scenery all day. It was so hypnotizing.

We played around on the banks making a snowman and taking pictures and then decided it was time to leave.

Rather reluctantly, we went to our car and drove back home. It had been one hell of a day. The aftermath was also hell, but in a different way. The next three days, we couldn’t move a muscle as an effect of all the beating our bones had taken while skiing. But it was worth every bit of that pain.

(TO BE CONTINUED...)

CHAPTER 15- ACADEMICALLY SPEAKING IN WINTER

CHAPTER 15- ACADEMICALLY SPEAKING IN WINTER

The quarter started and it started on a bad note academically, as I was not able to enroll in two courses I had asked for, due to the preference to local UCD students. I had to change my plans and had to reshuffle courses but I was happy with what I got finally. I took up Algorithm analysis under Martel, Probability under Matloff and Visualization under Nelson Max.

I really enjoyed algorithm analysis a lot and did well in that course and learned so much with a wonderful prof like Martel. We would sit down with our algo books on the mornings of the days we would have to turn in the assignments and still finish it on time (though we had to use the cyber-shot once to finish off an assignment… don’t expect me to elaborate on this again). I had a lot of company for this course with JD, MS, Varun and JB taking it, apart from my other apartment mate Allen (to whom I am indebted to for reasons obvious to those concerned) from Hong Kong, who had moved in to replace our former roommate, who had to vacate due to incompatibility issues. The five of us used to discuss across the table and completed the first assignment a week in advance of the turn in date; we discussed the second one on the previous day of turning in; the third one we discussed on the morning we had to turn it in; the fourth one- don’t even ask. So it was like any other course where a motivation-duration graph would be hyperbolic in nature.

I also had a lot of fun in the course watching Jag doze off during the class (which was early in the morning…9 am…which is early for winter) with Martel lecturing and snoring a couple of times right at the moment Martel pauses for breath, such that the snore penetrates all through the class and all the attention including Martel’s is focuses on the bench the sound came from and eyeing an embarrassed JB with disdain with JD sleeping beside him happily oblivious to all this. On JB’s advice, Jag decided to be physically absent to the class from then on, thereby sleeping happily at home, instead of physically turning up and mentally being in ZZZland. Though he attended not even one class mentally, Jug got the best grade among all of us. Good for you, mate!

Probability was a course I was forced into taking because of not getting a course I wanted, but it turned out to be a really interesting course where I would learn to apply math in a lot of places in CS and it was taught by the rather dry but immensely knowledgeable Prof. Matloff. I found the course pretty easy as it was theoretical math for most part but lost interest in it towards the end and messed up the final, in what would have otherwise been a perfect course. I had Varun for company on this one and I teamed up with him and an insanely bright guy, Spencer for doing the assignments, which we really did wonderfully. I might have got a perfect grade had I finished the course well but then, I am not complaining.

Visualization was one course I had been looking forward to for a long time. Especially because it was under Dr. Nelson Max, one of the most respected names in the field of graphics thanks to the 40 years he has spent in being one of the pioneers developing the field to make it become what it is now. The papers he has published, and their importance and number of citations easily answer to how successful he has been as a researcher. But it does not testify as to how successful he was as a teacher. I had to find this out the hard way. I will simply state that his style of teaching did not really suit my way of understanding and hence didn’t really enjoy his classes. The field of visualization itself wasn’t too interesting to me. It all seemed too abstract and random to be able to represent data any way we wanted by forming our own representation so that we would understand it in the future. A lot of its aspects seemed beyond me. I do not know if I started disliking the subject because of the teacher or disliking the teacher because of the subject. Either way, I did not enjoy those classes too much and that got reflected in my final grade. This was one course I regret having taken up at UCD. But anyway, having learned it the hard way, I won’t repeat the mistake again and I now know what to stay off now that I am back for grad school. It’s good that I learned it now rather than during grad school when I’ve got more to lose.

I also audited a couple of classes for fun. It is the unique flexibility of the system that allows us to just walk into any random class and sit there and participate in the lecture, not giving the exams or writing the assignments. This system allowed me to audit a course on special relativity initially. I went for the first class, and on talking to some students in that class who were all physics majors, I found that they were of the opinion that I was wasting my time auditing that class as I wouldn’t understand a thing as it required a lot of prerequisites that they had done in their three years as physics majors, in which I had no background. Quite dejected, I thought I’ll sit in that one class as I made the effort to come all the way. Once the class started, I was as surprised as the others to discover that I was among 3 people in the class of 20, who were able to follow the discussion and raise a few points about what we were discussing. I guess the amount of general reading up on stuff like relativity was responsible for that. Quite jubilant, I went out of that class with a grin. But I couldn’t attend that class too often as it was an 8 am class and it was worse than being strung up by thumbs to get up at 6 am in winter to make it to a class, which was not even going to give me a grade.

I also audited John Owens’ graduate course on Graphics architecture regularly and I discovered there was so much to explore in the realm of hardware in graphics, which I had looked at from the software point of view. He was a really good teacher and his classes were really merry and interesting. Varun was also totally into the class and so we kept coaxing the other to attend it even if he was in the mood to give it a skip. Hence we ended up attending most of the classes and learning a lot.

All of us SRM ppl hung out a lot more this quarter. Last time we were all in small closed groups but this time we all met up a lot more. We had a couple of get-togethers where we all met up and had a lot of fun. There was a lot more partying this quarter for me and a couple of sleepovers at Mahi and Deepak’s apartment, which was a lot of fun. Whenever I think of Mahi, the first thing I get reminded of is what he did in the gardens of the Capitol building, the office of the governor of California, the terminator Arnold Schwarzenegger. Sorry folks… can’t elaborate further. MS’s b’day also came around that time and we celebrated it with a good cake but the most memorable thing about that b’day was the b’day bumps he got. (any comments, MS?)

It was around this time that the budding rapper in da house, JD and the music composer, D-dub (provided he has his mac) started taking their rap seriously. They decided to compose a rap song in memory of the Blue flamez and it was amazing fun to see them at work. It was always amazing to see Dwarak shout at someone and JD got a lot of that during their composing sessions, when Dwarak wasn’t too happy with something. Dwarak came up with lots of amazing tunes but it took JD too long to give him the lyrics and so it never took off. AZ was a real natural though at writing instantaneous but really impressive lyrics but he wasn’t a natural singer. JD and D-Dub have continued their work a little after coming to Chennai though and it seemed to be shaping up quite decently. I must say I thought they would’ve come out with the final rap by now but alas no results yet! Guys- if you‘re reading this, we’re still waiting eagerly for it. So get your eyes off this monitor and go make some music.

(TO BE CONTINUED...)

CHAPTER 14- NEW YEAR AT SACRAMENTO AND IM SOCCER

CHAPTER 14- NEW YEAR AT SACRAMENTO AND IM SOCCER

New Year was round the corner and we decided we shouldn’t stay put in Davis for that; else it would be as lame as Christmas was. After some discussion, we scrapped plans of going to San Francisco because we had to cut our expenditure as much as possible because of the stupendous amount we had spent in the last few days. So we decided to go to Sacramento instead. After all, it’s the capital of the state of California; there’s got to be some celebration. After some looking up on the net, we found out that there were celebrations with fireworks in Old Sacramento near the bridge.

AZ was also back from Seattle, so the 6 of us (Varun, MS, Jaggy, JB, Dwarak and I) sent off to Sacramento on the Yolobus in the evening of the 31^st. There were a lot of people there, and there were lots of things to see. The whole area had a festive atmosphere about it. Many stalls had been put up, and there were performances by flame throwers, belly-dancers, musicians who were playing everything from blues to rock and it kept us busy for hours. It was soon close to midnight and there were fireworks at 11 pm, which were really grand. It lasted for about ten minutes and it reminded us of diwali, only without the noise associated with it. The sky was lit by the merry fireworks.

We learned that there was a ball drop at midnight in downtown Sac, a mile or so from here and so we set out to watch that. The streets were crowded. Really crowded. It reminded me of Ranganathan street in Chennai. It was a mixture of all types of people, of all color and all sections of the society. People were shoving the person next to them without any botheration. There were also a lot of racist taunts being thrown freely. I guess it’s the crowd syndrome. When you are in a crowd, you are not conscious of your actions because you know a whole bunch of people are going to be held responsible for your individual actions too. So you can be a lot freer since the attention is not on the individual. The same bunch of people who were there that night, taunting and shoving people, might be dignified business magnates or goody-two-shoes students in the day, but that night they were each just a nobody but as a group a part of a crowd. And so they let themselves loose. We witnessed a girl being molested by a gang of people in the crowd, without anyone being able to do anything about it and quite a few scuffles between gangs of people. We wondered what we had gotten ourselves into and worried if we would get to see the New Year at all.

Thankfully we got through pretty safe and managed to squeeze into a place where we could see the ball drop a few metres away. 10..9....5...3..2..1.. and there were choruses of happy new year all around us. We were wished by numerous people thrice as big and strong as us and shook our hands, and we nervously shook them and greeted them back. We managed to ease out of the crowd and get to a free street and thanked our stars for coming out in one piece. We called a cab as it was too late for the yolobus to ply to Davis and we waited for an hour nervously on the now-deserted street, eyeing suspiciously every shady looking guy walking in our direction. The cab came at last and we got home at about 2 am.

The next morning, we got to know from the news update that about 5 people had been killed in independent incidents by drunk or lunatic people, in the mood to do something a bit too exciting in the New Year. We were relieved we weren’t one of those five poor souls at the wrong place at the wrong time.

[From this point, my style of blogging is going to change. I am not necessarily going in chronological order. When I bring up a subject, I am going to breeze through the winter quarter with everything related to that subject. I had to do this to make it crisp and end this ever-continuing story… We have come to the 14th part and just half of the trip is over. I promised to end it in 20, and so I will]

The winter quarter was about to start in a couple of days, and we decided it was time we had more fun this time as this may be the last one in Davis. We decided to use the Activities and Recreation Centre (ARC) more often to play one of the loads of sports it has facilities for. The ARC is one of the highlights of UCD, housing an indoor soccer stadium, about 20 badminton courts, about 10 squash courts, a basketball stadium, a rock climbing zone, a few tennis courts, some baseball pitches, a running track among others. I was quite surprised why we hadn’t used it much last quarter and I realized we were too busy chatting or lounging around at home that we didn’t have the time to come here. For the first half of the quarter, I was a regular there, playing soccer with the whole gang or badminton most often with Varun and sometimes one of the girls, and squash a few times. We played soccer at the Hutchinson stadium in the evening and made some friends with some other UCD soccer enthusiasts.

We also decided it would be a lot of fun if we signed up for the intramural soccer tournament, where we would compete against other teams professionally in the soccer stadium. We were pretty upbeat, as we felt Americans can’t even play football (yeah they can play soccer but hey that’s a different name) and so we may have a good chance of going all the way. Little did we know what we were in for. So we registered our team “Blue flamez”, with AZ as our captain, me, JB, JD, MS, Varun, Dwarak, Deepak, Hyun (our Korean roomie) and a couple of his friends Yun San and Leister.

In the trials, we discovered Deepak’s talent as a goalie and amazing willingness and enthusiasm to work hard to improve as a keeper, which is the most important for a player and so he became our star goalie, though Dwarak seemed as good if not better than him at it. At the end of the day, it’s the passion for the game and how much each one enjoys it that counts. Mahesh was a semi-pro as he had played a lot of competitive soccer at the school level in Kerala. With these soccer training sessions, Mahi and Goalie (Deepak) started hang out with us more often.

So that left our team of 12, with just three professional players- AZ, who had been playing all his life and was a great overall player; Mahi, who had played at competitive levels and was very good with the ball; Leister, who had played the IMs before and was a consistent player with great tackling abilities with great energy levels and the rest, amateurs- Yun San, who was quite talented with the ball but quite raw; Hyun, who didn’t have much skill with the ball but had amazing strength and stamina thanks to the 3 years he spent in the Korean army; me, whose mind was as good as a pro’s due to the amount of football I watch and quickness on my feet coupled with good anticipation but with not much on-field experience and also with atrociously poor stamina levels which renders all good qualities of a footballer useless by not letting him play much; JB, with great footballing knowledge and great judgment and anticipation but again no experience on the field; Dwarak, with great power in his legs which were capable of unleashing ferocious shots but had chicken legs and he got injured as often as Owen Hargreaves does after his move to Man Utd; JD, who had amazing pace and will-power but lacked composure and tried a trick too many when he had the ball; MS who was strong and graceful but lacked the speed and acceleration needed in football due to his rather…er…footballish shape (:D); Varun, who wasnt the swiftest and most nimble-footed at soccer but was a fierce competitor nonetheless and Deepak, who hadn’t watched or played much football and wasn’t even aware of some of its intricate rules but his amazing enthusiasm to learn and improve neutralized his shortcomings. That wasn’t a title winning team by any stretch of the imagination, but we felt we could improve if we all peak at the right time and practiced often and hope the Americans are as bad at soccer as we thought they were.

JB, AZ and I spent a lot of time during the quarter, discussing about the formations we should employ and who should play where and what kind of game we should play. We took it pretty seriously right through the quarter and the enthusiasm didn’t dwindle amidst our heavy academic workloads. We let out all our frustrations in other aspects of UCD life on the soccer. But the results of the matches weren’t really as rosy as we expected.

We found that lots of Asians, Africans, Europeans and worst of all, many South Americans including Brazilians and Argentines, played for each team in the league. Many of these players could play for any professional Indian club; that’s how good they were. Even the Americans who played were really good in some aspect or the other. Teams which didn’t have passing or understanding had strong guys who played physical games (Russians were the most notorious) and could unleash powerful shots from far. Teams which had nimble players with quick feet and skill (mostly Brazilians) passed and wriggled their way into the goal with the ball.

We went with the frame of mind that we’ll do well as the opponents will be Americans who can’t play much and we were punished for that by a royal thrashing from the first team we encountered, whose passing blinded us and we all were in the same end of the pitch at a particular time. We had no coordination going and we couldn’t really get one strategy working for us and we were humiliated that match.

But then we regrouped after that and never underestimated our opponents from then on and we played much better and even enjoyed successes in the way but most importantly had a lot of fun. We would look forward to Wednesday’s game and for Friday’s training sessions all week and also the dinner at Sam’s with a free drink the girl who ran the place gave us for visiting every week, after the session. I also invested in a lot of gear including knee braces, shin pads, ankle guards, tube socks, bandages for the one too many injuries I had but the fun we had was worth the money and blood spent.

(TO BE CONTINUED...)

CHAPTER 13- SIX FLAGS AND AN ADDITION TO OUR GANG

Well... sorry for taking forever to publish. Got too busy, thanks to the rigorousness of the UC Davis quarter. :( I am going to post the remaining parts of the blog within the next week, so that I can start chronicling and posting my experiences this time, in a new series of posts...

CHAPTER 13- SIX FLAGS AND AN ADDITION TO OUR GANG

Physically and mentally charged, we spent the rest of the holidays mostly in Davis. Christmas was rather quiet, taking into account what we expected, but then there were hardly any people in Davis as UCD was not functioning and Davis minus UCD seemed to leave only a few like us here. As the holidays were coming to an end, we decided we should go somewhere else and we decided we should pay Six Flags a visit.

Six flags is a theme park, with some of the most high-thrill roller-coasters in the world. Dwarak (hence referred to by his popular nickname D-dub) was also interested in coming and we rented a muscular SUV this time and the five of us, D-dub, MS, JD, JB and I started in the morning. We reached in an hour and there was no problem finding the place as we could see its really tall roller-coasters from miles away. We had done our homework and learned there were 4 high thrill rides and we decided we should do all the 4 first before going on the medium thrill ones. We realized how much of a flop our plan would be only after going there.

We went on the Medusa first, the longest rollercoaster there lasting close to 4 minutes and one of the longest in the world too. And it was really fast too, with so many twists and turns and 360s and inversions that at the end of it, I didn’t realize when I was travelling straight and when I was upside-down. At the end of the ride, I was as physically exhausted as a runner would be at the end of a marathon. And that was just one ride. We had three more equally if not more exhilarating rides according to our plan before we took a break. We knew it would not be possible.

We walked dazedly to the next ride. This was the Kong. It was a short-ride and its course was not half as scary as the Medusa. But it was easily the scariest rollercoaster I have ever been on. Purely because of psychological reasons. There was no cart and no track on this one, customary on all roller-coasters. There were individual chairs hanging out from a platform suspended in the air, with a thin wire. We were strapped onto these seats, which looked like wooden armchairs. Then the ride started and the platform on which our seats and consequently our lives were suspended, started moving. As it picked up speed and height, I realized how scary this was going to be the moment I looked down. I could see my legs dangling in mid-air a hundred metres above the ground, with nothing to break the fall if I were to slip out of my seat. On a normal ride, you wouldn’t get such a view of your dangling legs as there would be a floor to the cart you are sitting in. Also there would be plenty of people sitting by you, and if you were to crash and die, it might be a little comforting that you will have some company when you find your way to heaven/hell (personally I do not believe in the concept of heaven/hell, but it’s a useful concept to use in figure of speech…anyway that the topic for another blog post). It got scarier by the moment when my loosely hanging chair started twisting all 360 degrees at an enormous velocity and a great height above the ground. I closed my eyes shut and was actually thankful when the ride came to an end. I wouldn’t want to get on this again, if I can help it.

We were totally exhausted after this ride. We climbed down and couldn’t get ourselves to speak to each other for the next 5 minutes. Once we recovered, we decided that’s all we could do at a stretch and to give it a break and come back later for the other high thrill rides. We had some food and did a lot of the medium thrill rides which seemed totally lame to us after having gone on the Medusa and the Kong. So we never even gave the low thrill rides a second glance.

There were also penguins in the water section of the park. It was really nice to see hundreds of penguins all around us as we walked in the underground passage, where the penguins were housed in large glass enclosures around us. They looked really adorable and I added them to my long list of potential pets.

We then visited the underground aquarium where they had some ferocious sharks.

We then took some pics with Looney toons characters and then played around in the artificial snowland.

We then went to the animals section of the park and took some pics.

Finally when we had recovered enough, we went on the other high thrill ride, Vertical Velocity V2. This was supposed to be among the fastest rollercoasters in the world. It goes from 0-70 mph in 3 seconds, which is one hell of an acceleration when you start a ride. We found it really thrilling but not scary after having been on the Kong but disembarked from this one, totally exhausted. We knew we couldn’t do any more, even if there were any. Fortunately we had been on all the high thrill rides Six flags had to offer so we were satisfied, and so we wound up the day. We drove back and only then realized how much of a beating our bodies had taken. We were on the bed for the whole of the next day.

The end of the break was nearing and this was when there was one more addition to our gang. That was Varun. I had been in touch with this chap, for the last 6 months as he had been getting my opinion on various things once he had decided to come to UC Davis on the Global study program from SRM. He came from a mythical SRM campus at Ramapuram, whose existence most people aren’t aware of. (I still have my doubts, so Varun if you are reading this… is there an SRM University campus in Ramapuram or are you talking abt Easwari … expecting your comments :P). This chap had one scary profile attached to him (a 9.5+ GPA, a 1540+ GRE score etc and consequently admits at a couple of colleges by the time most of us hadn’t even started to apply to universities). His reputation preceded him and most of the others knew his heavy reputation before they knew him. He was also supposed to be one really good guitar player, making him a bit of an all-rounder. I had got to know him pretty well without having met up even once and he was one helluva computer graphics freak like I was, with the only difference that he had already learned most of the stuff I was learning.

I went over to meet him when he arrived in Davis and helped him check into his apartment. To show him around Davis, we took a walk from the apartment and which turned into a marathon as we walked at least 10 miles around Davis, braving the drizzling rain. I discovered that he was one amazing character, who always very instinctive and wouldn’t hesitate to call a spade a spade (As his new roommate and coincidentally our former roommate who moved out due to differences with us, found out). It was good to have such a person around.

He was a totally ironic person, who might act often unconfident, but is one of the most self-confident guys I have ever come across; act confident and that too with confidence even when not confident about something; act indifferent about something that may be very important to him on the inside; act sadistic to something though he may like it dearly; act unconcerned about a person he is very concerned about. He was one of the most complex people I have come across, but nonetheless a great friend who would unconditionally help out the people he cares for. (Note to Varun: The deviation in the last few sentences were just cos u asked me to blog about what I think of you, especially the criticism J). So he gelled in well with all of us. We also found out that he was also one amazing player of the guitar, when he played complex stuff like Hotel California, Sweet child of mine etc with amazing ease.

(TO BE CONTINUED...)