The soundtrack to my dream...

... last night was Coldplay's "Don't Panic"

Hmm.

My first white hair...

... and it's on my chest.

I feel old.

Quitting a job is so much trouble

I finally did it. Quit from my fun but under-paid and over-worked job. Obviously the employers didn't take it well. They'd just lost a guy that did all their donkey work for them without a complaint in the absence of any support team whatsoever. Desperate attempts were made to retain me (none of which involved a promotion, pay raise and support which would have actually worked.)

Instead I was threatened about how I was walking away from such a great deal and that I could have all the support I wanted in a month as long as I did the recruitment myself. (I'm sorry, what are HR departments for?) Wild promises were made about the future of the work I was doing and about the benefits of working for a "global" company with a "global" clientèle. Yeah right.

My decision was made for me the moment my paltry pay raise came in and when I was offered a far, far better paid job at another company. And so I leave one marketing agency to join an online portal to manage one of their verticals. A lot more responsibility although just for one site, but accompanied with a good support team to help me realise my ideas.

Rant

This is going to be a post filled with me griping about random things in my life. You have been warned. Stop reading now!

I'm very irritated with how lazy I can be. Laundry piles up at home because I keep putting it off. I also own a bunch of clothes and other crap that I don't use but I've not got around to getting rid off! All of this contributes to how grubby my apartment is beginning to look and I get annoyed with that too.

I'm annoyed with the company that employs me because even though I was supposed to be appraised and given a raise in April that's been put off for more than 4 months now. While the appraisal itself happened in July, I'm still waiting for the promised raise.

The knock on effect of not getting my raise means I'm still living frugally and have to keep putting off the purchase of "luxuries" like new sheets for my bed or bookcase for my books. My books continue to languish in boxes or just lie around gathering dust which makes me very very irritated!

I also want a new laptop, my HP Pavilion is 5 years old, has no working battery, 1 or 2 broken keys, USB ports that are loose and wiggly and a power port that is loose and needs to held in place just right or it will turn off. Amazingly enough, the hard disk which is just over 4 years old is going strong, my speakers still work well and the screen is still in good shape after I replaced the backlight about 2 years ago.

I seem to be back in the "loner" mode that I was in for year or so in 2002-2003 but I don't feel too bad about it this time. While people still tell me its weird to go watch a movie on my own or sit at a coffee shop reading a book, I'm perfectly happy doing that. What's so weird about doing things on your own anyway??

I've have so many other things to grumble about, but I'm running out of time now. Bah! That's worth a grumble too!

Wipe your feet, please.

I might as well have that written on my head the way people just walk all over me!

AAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRGHH!

Sorry. Just needed to scream. I'll go back to being quiet now.

Life as I know it

This used to be the name of a friend's blog, she has since changed it. Twice. :-)

Anyway, I decided I was not boring the few readers I do have enough, so I might as well write about my daily routine... hehe

So prop up those eyelids, fasten those seat belts (so you can't run away) and away we go...

So the first interesting thing, I teach at an all girls' college. Which means, being the cool, young prof makes me very popular (or so I like to think!) The department doesn't have me take any lectures or assign work to students, so no one hates me yet. I spend most of my day talking students through their work, their lab experiments or any other questions they may have. The general purpose trouble-shooter, thats me.

The main mandate of my job though is to take care of the department's intstrumentation needs. Currently, this means I have to co-ordinate the negotiations and purchases of a million different things since we have just received a sizable grant. This part is not fun, except when I get to ask the college to issue huge sums of money! ;-) But once all the instruments are ordered and delivered and installed, it means I have so many toys to play with! Yay!

The worst bit of my day is the commute. I spend anything from 45 to 90 minutes travelling one way to work. But this can't be helped, Bombay is that kind of a city. I'm still working out a good routine which will help me minimise this travel time. Of course, I can't really fix that since I haven't yet found a place of my own to stay and am still living with relatives.

/me pokes everyone reading... Hey! Wake up!

Gifts!

As a goodbye gift, Heidi sent me two magazines of puzzles to occupy me on the airplane, a bag of Jelly Beans (I love them!) and some sleazy postcards... Well, cheesy at least! ;-) There's also a mystery book wrapped up which I'm not supposed to open until my birthday!

Rebecca sent me the DVDs of the Lord of the Rings movies!! Simply awesome... I've watched them all again in my last week here. :-)

Shivanee & Chhavi put up with me being cranky for almost a week, that's also a cool gift. hehe! (They also fed me well :p)

Gauri drove me all the way to Chicago.. (I had to put up with her being cranky then ;) )

*sniff* Thanks, you guys!

Going home...

I leave for India on a flight this afternoon out of Chicago.

After months of agonising (and not posting anything here either) I finally made the decision to leave grad school and go home to India. This was something I considered as far back as last summer, but a bunch of meetings over three days with the Director of Grad Studies at my dept. convinced me otherwise and he also told me to explore options with other depts. I did and found a dept. and a lab willing to take me in and that I was interested in.

A year of mostly no work but lots of interesting new things followed. Which also included me teaching in a classroom regularly and having a great deal of fun doing it too! But alas it was not to be. For sundry reasons I find myself deciding I'm better off out of grad school for a bit and looking for a job. I can't stay in America unless I am in school, so I have to go home.

The 20th of this month was the last day I spent in East Lansing. I spent the day finishing up sundry chores and doing a little shopping. In the evening I met up with some friends at the Peanut Barrel. It was a happy-sad occassion. In fact I feel a bit sad writing about it now.

I got home later that night and had a ton of laundry to do. And of course pack my myriad books and comics for shipping the next day! I ended up not doing the packing and catching a few hours of sleep.

The 21st morning was spent in a frenzy of packing and sealing and clearing out my closets. My friend arrived to pick me up later and helped quite a bit. We spent ages at the post office trying to ship the books back to India and I think it was past 1pm when it was all done.

We drove to Chicago right after that. My friends in Chicago were annoyed since I promised them I would be in town by afternoon and they had great plans for the afternoon and evening. Taking me to the beach, out to a club, etc.

I have spent the past week, mostly just faffing around here, meeting people, taking walks in the evenings (Oak Park is a beautiful neighbourhood.) I also found a book sale and quickly snaffled up a copy of Steven Pinker's "The Blank Slate" for just about $4.

Yesterday, I walked over to a local cinema and watched a sub-titled version of "Hero." This is absolutely the best Chinese martial arts film I have ever seen.

Earlier this morning, I went to the post office and mailed off a box of my Groo comics and also my phone to A in Maryland... sigh, I'm going to miss that phone too! :(

Happy Birthday!!

This blog is 1 year old today! Yayy!!

/me throws streamers in the air

Much has happened in one year both to me and to this blog. The changes in the blog are quite evident. From the dowdy hard to navigate page it was last year, and rare updates, it has changed to the snazzy, still hard to navigate and still rare updates. ;-) Well the updating part I hope to change with a flurry of posts over the next few days and weeks. And those posts will explore a little of what has been happening in my life! To use a violent metaphor, I'll be killing two birds with one stone. So there.

Tenacious

How do you know when it's time to let go?

(To people in India, remember the Fevicol ads?)

Current mood: Bouncy!!

I have a crush!! 'Nuff said.

A little better

I'm feeling a little better than my cranky self at 4am yesterday. Not much, but a little. I never did go to sleep, I just went straight to school and kept working through the day, and I managed to catch up on a bit of work and that made me feel a lot better.

It also helped that I have a fairly sweet bunch of students and they noticed right off that I was frazzled and talked, laughed and joked with me through class to cheer me up. And this is despite the fact they had an exam today and were understandably frazzled themselves!

I napped for a really short while in the evening, but all that coffee from the morning seems to have lasted me through the day. Or maybe it's some mysterious rays from my computer that keep me awake!! hehehe...

Not Happy...

... is what I am now.

My life sucks... FUBAR doesn't even begin to describe it. And yet I put on this happy, everything is fine face. It's stupid, stupid, stupid!

I shouldn't even be writing this here, but hell, it's 4am, I'm depressed and I need the release!

I'm falling behind with my work out of sheer laziness. I recognise the signs and symptoms, but inertia prevents me from doing anything. I need a good swift kick on my butt, but in the US, everyone is too damn PC to do that. I need my mom to twist my ears and give me a good talking to. I'm too embarrassed to call her up and tell her that!

Where is this going? Where am I going? I honestly don't know. I've been happy-go-lucky, follow-the-default-path for too long now. Maybe I can still change, but it's not happening now.

Why can't someone pay me for doing the things I like to do? Fat chance of that happening, because the things I like to do are reading, watching movies and surfing the internet. And of course, writing inane blog entries.

Look at my reading list on the right. It hasn't changed in over a month. Wanna know why? I keep finding more books to read and never finishing the ones I've started!! And I'm too lazy to change the list on AllConsuming.net.

It's Thursday and I've already been waiting for the weekend for over a day now, when I can be lazy and not feel guilty. Am I self-destructive? I think so!

Oh, damn, it's 4:20am... I'm due to teach a class at 11:30am. I end this here.