The Mundane life of a Grad Student

Lessons From The Recent Trip to the North

With two hours to kill, blogging at O’Hare International airport seems to be the appropriate thing to do. Having had an exciting trip to Purdue (pronounced Pur-doo), blogging about the trip also seems the appropriate thing to do. And therefore this “report”, nay, blog.

Before I talk of lessons learnt, I believe it would be prudent to present a terse account of recent tourism related activities that were engaged in, in the days that have just passed. The trip to Chicago was a lot of fun. Sears tower was scaled; the field museum was attacked. The lake-shore drive was traveled in – twice, both by bus and by car; an Indian buffet at Devon street was hogged.

There were four of us, viz. Radha, Rishi, Harsha and self. It really felt nice to be in friendly company, company that I shall miss when I find myself in A&M again, later today. Roughly two-hundred-and-forty-fix photographs were clicked on my good ol’ Panasonic Lumix (by Radha, obviously). They reside on my computer now, and the best shall, undoubtedly make it to Radha’s blog.

The Sears tower was tall, to say the least. It is such buildings that make you glad that you are an engineer, and that one of your kind actually was responsible for building the thing. The field museum won over the aquarium as a destination, more due to its queue being smaller than anything else. It was drab, to say the least, save a rather menacing stuffed Cheetah.

The other Walmart was visited the next day in Purdoo. It was more exciting than the Houston Space Center, at least! Nothing was bought save a Wrigley winterfresh (which is being consumed right now). An Arab restaurant was eaten in at night. Good. Did not like the tiramisu though.

This trip taught me a lot. I shall enumerate what I believe I learnt in the trip:

1. Eat rice with chips and side dish. Harsha’s flat does it. Tastes pretty damn good.
2. Eat Arab food. It’s not that bad.
3. Watch movies on TV with Laptop on Lap. Radha does it. Make sure there’s a good internet connection, though.
4. Every mall in America is the same. At least in small towns.
5. Every downtown (Mumbai, Houston, Chicago) looks the same, save the building height.
6. Exotic dishes like bisibela bhath are within the realm of self’s culinary range. Or is it because Radha cooked it, that it looked so easy?
7. A car is as essential as oxygen in the US of A.
8. Money should not be saved – at least when one is a PhD student in the US of A.
9. Hard work is a lot of fun. Rishi enjoys it.
10. I am not the only coffee addict in the world. Rishi and Harsha are too.
11. Dino Bytes taste quite good. Maybe I could top my Honey Bunches of Oats with them.
12. Mani Ratnam makes movies. And a lot of them. That is what Harsha, Rishi, Matt and Radha seemed to be obsessed about all the time.
13. America is a punctual country.
14. I can never see snow in my life. Five inches are expected to come down in Laf. Tomorrow. And guess where I will be? Balmy old Texas.

P.S

I am posting this after coming back home. My flight was delayed by 2 hours. This places assertion 13 on shaky ground.

posted by Rap @ 7:30 PM