Ups, Downs

It was a day of ups and downs.

On the one hand, my beloved yellow netbook Sunbeam is almost certainly irretrievably dead. On the upside, I should be able to salvage all my data, and my sister has a pink version of Sunbeam that she's going to let me use, so all is not lost. Still, I liked my little yellow netbook. It won't be the same.

Went to Macy's with my mom to shop the clearance and "one day sale," ostensibly to find some professional clothes for my medicine rotation, which begins in about a month. Here's what I discovered: the clothes at Macy's are almost all ugly. I'm better off buying random things off of the clearance racks at New York and Company and Express and Ann Taylor. I did, however, buy myself a little sweater dress for $4.99. Oh how I love cheap things. Sadly, the clearance shoes were neither cheap enough to buy nor comfortable or professional enough for clinics.

Spending the weekend at home for the first time in a while gives me plenty of time to watch I Love Lucy with the parents and eat too much Indian food. I realized last night that if/when I get married, I will most certainly put I Love Lucy on DVD on my bridal registry. It might sound weird, but I know that show will be a central part of my future family's traditions, so it's of paramount importance that I get a copy when I strike out on my own--or with a husband, as the case may be.

Lastly, listening to John Mayer's Battle Studies while reading Pestana's surgery review makes studying that much better.

Coming Attractions

I really want to blog about my time here in detail, and do it right with photos and everything, which means I probably won't get to do so until I get home (which is approximately five weeks [OMG five more weeks] from now). So that I don't forget the things I wanted to write about, and so that I actually write about this trip instead of just posting pictures on Facebook, here's a list of topics I want to cover in future blogs:

1. Mahaballipuram (really amazing historical city on the coast of the Bay of Bengal in Tamil Nadu)
2. A Primer on South Indian Temples (because I've visited so many while here, and have been taking pictures as well)
3. What Once Was and What Might Have Been (my parents' history here and musings upon the life I might have had had my father not been recruited by an American company--and thank goodness he was)
4. The Ugly Truth (about the unpleasantnesses of India as I experience it, encompassing things as specific as my family here and general as the widespread lack of soap in public restrooms, a state of affairs that makes me want to use this smiley: -__-. What's the point of washing your hands without soap?!)
5. Narayana Tirtha Aarathanai (this is the weekend music festival, held in the village [and I mean village] where my mother grew up, that I attended this past weekend. It's one of the main reasons I left for India as early as I did and am staying for as long as I am.)
6. The beauty of the Indian countryside

Those are the only posts I've thought of so far, but I'm sure I'll come up with more as time goes on, and that miscellaneous items will begin to coalesce as my trip continues. I've been in Thanjavur, the town where I was born, for 8 days now, and I'm leaving with my family for Bangalore via train tomorrow night. From Bangalore, I'm heading back to Chennai on March 2, and the night of March 17 will see me on a plane to Singapore!

A New Beginning

I've officially defected from Xanga and come over here. I've been thinking about doing this for quite some time, (a bit idly, I'll admit) but I was hesitating because I always develop attachments to the things I use often--cameras, computers, glasses, cars, and also blogging sites, apparently. I felt a bit like I would be betraying my little ol' Xanga were I to start a new blog here. But since I haven't posted regularly in my little ol' Xanga for ages, I don't feel so guilty anymore. Besides, the Xanga had too much of my teenybopper past attached to it; perhaps that's why I haven't blogged much recently: it was slightly buried in the remnants of the past. Anyway, though, here I am!

Having graduated a semester early, I'm spending this spring semester working in my lovely plant genetics lab on campus (You're sure to hear more about it as time wears on. Lots of fun stuff happens in lab.) and going to India (to visit family) and Singapore (to visit a friend) for seven weeks! Which is a long time. Which brings me to the reason I felt like posting in the first place. I know the trip could be really good, if I went at it with the right attitude. I'm sure there will be many memories to be made, lots of fun to be had, much soul-searching to be accomplished [check it out--countable and uncountable nouns in that list, woot!] in both India and Singapore. Yet I kind of don't want to leave home. I feel like being gone for such a huge chunk of the semester will lose me the opportunity to watch my friends do a lot of interesting things--not to mention to do a lot of interesting things (i.e. go to Chicago over spring break, do random stuff in lab that both annoys and entertains the postdocs, linger obnoxiously long over lunch in South Servery, do movie nights and celebrate 21st birthdays and on and on) with my friends here at home. And I know I'll get homesick in India; I always do. Plus I've never actually gone there by myself before, so I'm slightly nervous about lugging around my bags and making my way through the airport and actually knowing what I'm doing.

All that being said, though, if this trip isn't going to suck, I need to get myself excited for it. So to that end, here is a list of things I am looking forward to doing during my trip to Asia:

1. Drinking fresh coconut water (eleneer; how the heck do you transliterate that?)
2. Eating palm fruit (or so I think it is; all I know is it's called nungu--again, how do you transliterate that?--in Tamil)
3. Eating roasted corn (suttu solam!)
4. Seeing Singapore for the first time!
5. Visiting the temples I love
6. Writing lots of postcards to friends back home
7. Getting to know my cousins better
8. Going to Pizza Hut in India; yay for paneer on pizza!
9. Making enchiladas for my cousin in Chennai
10. Buying clothes and shoes and earrings and other nonsense in Pondy Bazaar and elsewhere
11. Seeing parts of Chennai I've never seen before (hopefully this will happen)
12. Writing in my little green journal and maybe even conceptualizing a new piece!
13. Reading lots of books in my spare time

Right, that's a pretty good start, I'm thinking. But if I want to actually get on the plane, I need to pack, which means I need to get off the computer and get my day started, which I am loath to do, but I guess I should just suck it up. Hopefully I'll be able to update this once or twice while I'm in Asia so that I can show you guys what I'm doing over there. Here's to happy blogging!