In My Day...

Today seems to be the day to romanticize the past [and revile the present] in lab. As I walked by our second-year grad student at her lab desk, she stopped me to say that she just wasn't in the mood to do anything today, not work on her papers, not work on her presentations, not shop for furniture, and not even work on her computer. To put it simply, she's kind of in a funk. Not ten minutes later, one of our postdocs told me, "Chaya. Life just gets harder from here on out. I'm just telling you that right now. It just gets harder." As I told her, that's probably true. And as she herself admitted, there are also many good things that happen in adulthood, things that seemingly outweigh the difficulties. But to her, the difficulties still win out.

It is true that as we grow up and begin our careers and train for our professions, as we build relationships completely outside the realm of our lives with our parents and siblings, as we, effectively, develop our own personas, new and whole perceptions of who we are as people and how we fit into the world, our responsibilities grow. We take care of ourselves physically, financially, and in other ways: we do our own laundry, clean [or not clean] our apartments when and how we want, and take ourselves wherever we want to go [literally], instead of waiting for our parents to take us there. Yet with all this new responsibility comes so much privilege, so much power. Isn't it great to develop a stronger sense of yourself, to make deep and lasting friendships, to mold your opinions and beliefs and wash your own clothes and drive yourself wherever you want to go?

Why do we romanticize our pasts so much, anyway? Yes, life is hard now. There are always struggles. But wasn't life also hard three years ago, when I spent the entirety of my freshman year trying to figure out how to transition to college life, constantly sick because of the mold infestation in my dorm room, struggling with making friends and figuring out who I was? Weren't there responsibilities in high school, too, when I woke up at 5:45 (I can't believe I did that anymore) to get to school by 7:10, spent seven hours in school, drove home in a car without air-conditioning in Houston, and also had homework to keep up with?

I'm not saying that romanticizing the past is a bad thing. In fact, it's probably a great coping mechanism. If we don't pick out the best parts of our pasts to focus upon as we look back on different stages of our lives, we would probably have a pretty hard time moving forward, especially if we truly believe that things only get harder as we get older. Additionally, romanticizing the past is one way to help ourselves grieve the closings of different chapters in our lives. If I weren't convinced now, as I am, that South Asian Society (the club that has shaped my college career in deep, unalterable ways, the one I have loved for four years) is somehow "different" now than it was when I was a freshmansophomorejunior, then I would be devastated at the prospect of leaving it behind at the end of this semester. It helps to tell ourselves that things were better before, because doing so makes letting go easier.

But maybe we should go about all of this in the opposite direction. Rhapsodize about our futures instead of longing for our pasts. The truth is, the future is bright, and we have a lot to look forward to. Yes, we'll miss what we had before, but we'll also continue growing and moving and becoming the people we were always going to be, and that's a good thing, if you ask me.

Or maybe we should just forget about yesterday and tomorrow and figure out a way to love today for exactly what it is.

We Should Be Happy, That's What I Said from the Start

This morning I took a partially eaten box of Club crackers to lab. Starting two summers ago, one of my labmates, James, has consistently kept dark chocolate chips at his bench, and I spent many a quiet lab afternoon munching on those dark chocolate chips and chatting with him and the rest of my labmates. Unfortunately, I don't have much of a sweet tooth, and dark chocolate chips don't exactly fill me up. So forever, I've been telling myself that I need to bring savory snacks into the lab for everyone to snack on. Finally doing what I've told myself I would do for so long really felt good. Even better was that I finally got to snack on crackers in lab! And the best was that my labmates enjoyed [and are still enjoying] the crackers as well. I didn't realize until some time in my college career that I'm turning into my mother in the sense that I love it when people eat food I offer. So to see the cracker box slowly emptying brought me more joy than something like that normally should. Ha.

You know how people talk about the straw that broke the camel's back? I feel like eating three Club crackers on my way out to the parking lot after my day in lab was that for me, except in a positive way. It was the one incident in the day that made me realize that, once again, I'm happy today. There are just so many reasons to be joyous. The weather was beautiful today, and I ate lunch outside with two of my closest friends. I started a new mapping project in lab, and if things go well, I'll leave the lab [forever, which makes me sad] two weeks from now having mapped two mutations in about 10 weeks. Actually accomplishing things in my labwork makes me feel so good. I got to leave early today, and beat traffic coming home, but also managed to do real work in lab--yet another thing to be happy about. Last but not least, it didn't hurt that I wore a bright red shirt today that made me feel pretty. Course, I ruined the whole look (tunic and skinny jeans) by wearing chunky flip-flops, but said flip-flops are very comfortable, so I'm okay with that.

I very recently reconnected with two friends I haven't really kept in touch with throughout college (one via facebook message, the other via phone), an act definitely galvanized by the funeral I went to last weekend. That it was so simple to get back in touch with those two, especially one of them, that all it took was one facebook message, one phone call, made me feel...hopeful. It's great to make new friends, but the Girl Scouts weren't kidding when they said, "Make new friends, but keep the old, one is silver and the other's gold": there's nothing like the comfort of knowing that someone who knew and loved you back in your middle school dork days is still at least mildly interested in your life and your future.

And a lot of other things are going well in my life right now: my family, my future, my love life. There's just a lot going right, right now. It feels a little precarious, but hopefully life will stay this way. = )

"Hopelessly, the hope is we've got so much to feel good about." (Good Life-OneRepublic)

Note: Entry title is lifted from a line from "Happy" by Nevershoutnever, some of the lyrics of which confuse me, most of which make me, well, happy.

Good Week

I found myself unaccountably and unusually happy yesterday. Starbucks gave away free brewed coffee to every customer who brought in a travel mug, and I took advantage of that promotion before I left for work, which meant that I was sipping on an inordinate amount of coffee all day long. I've found that, oddly, caffeine tends to make me feel sanguine, so perhaps that's what spurred my happiness. Additionally, over the past two days, prospective students [high school seniors] have been visiting Rice for the annual "Owl Days" event. I love witnessing their eagerness and awe as they experience college--for many, it's the college they've already decided to attend--firsthand for the first time. I miss that feeling. Prospective students, or prospies, as we call them, always make me smile. It has also helped that in just the past eight days, I've:

1. Gotten my new cute netbook
2. Decided to go to Imogen Heap's concert--and purchased tickets for said concert!
3. Decided to go see John Mayer AND Owl City (it's like my dream come true!) in concert
4. Had dinner with an amazing group of friends who always have me laughing like a maniac and feeling loved
5. Booked a trip to New York City to visit a friend right after graduation
6. Had a ridiculously good end-of-college night on campus

Ostensibly, it's been a relatively good week. Then again, it's also been an unpleasant week in many ways. A friend of mine from high school passed away on Easter, and I went to his funeral and wake this past weekend. I've been to too many funerals for people my age, but this was the first one for a person I could truly call my friend. I have a lot of memories with this guy [granted, they're mostly from middle school, and thus at least 8 years old], and he was truly a nice person. I'm still sad about his death, but more than anything it's made me painfully aware of how precious my own life is.

It's amazing how forcefully perspective can be pushed upon you--and also how easily it can slip away.

New Toy!

I'm writing this on my new netbook, a yellow Samsung N150. See below for a visual aid:

(photo cred: http://tinyurl.com/y7uo6zp)

I've wanted a netbook pretty much ever since they first came out, so I'm really excited about this one. It has a 10.1" screen and is, well, super cute. I got this netbook in preparation for medical school. I've had my old laptop (an IBM thinkpad that's solid, but a bit of a clunker) for about five years now, and it's definitely time to upgrade, especially since the harddrive on my IBM is woefully small. My lovely father has decided to get me both a netbook and a laptop for medical school. I know the expense may seem a bit over the top, but I won my first laptop (the IBM) in a scholarship contest, so I figure the amount of money I would have spent on that first one for college can be spread over to my new netbook and laptop.

Anyway, while I'm super excited to have an adorbes new netbook, I have to say there are a few things I'm not so jazzed about. To run through my reaction:

Things I Love

• It's so small!
• Hello, it's freaking yellow! (the inside is white)
• It has a sweet mousepad (wait, what do you call the mice on laptops? Touch...mouses?), that pretty much does all the cool things that Apple products do with their touchscreens: scrolling with two fingers, zooming in and zooming out when you make the corresponding motions with your fingers, and even rotating photos when you make, again, the prescribed motion with your fingers.
• Its speakers are pretty sweet, especially compared to the ones on my previous laptop, which were, like the harddrive, a bit woeful.
• It has a built-in webcam! I totally did NOT have that on my previous laptop, so I'm pretty excited about being able to, you know, video chat and take mirror image photos of myself and whatever.

Things I Don't Love

• Because this netbook, like all netbooks, runs on an Intel Atom processor, I can only run Windows 7 Starter on it, and not the full version of Windows 7. When my dad and I were looking at netbooks online, I thought Windows 7 Starter was just some sort of trial version, that you could upgrade your OS later on once you had bought the netbook. Yeah, I was wrong. Windows 7 Starter is apparently designed for low-process (or something) computers, and it has some limited functionality. For example:
• I CANNOT CHANGE MY DESKTOP WALLPAPER. You have no idea how much this bothers me. This was the first thing I was excited to do once I began playing with my netbook (I should name it...), to make it my own and personalize it in some way. But yeah. You're not allowed to change the desktop background if you're running the Windows 7 Starter OS. Why they limited that function, I have no idea. I don't imagine it takes so much out of your processor to just display a photo other than the standard issue one as your wallpaper. But yeah. Since this was the first thing I wanted to do, and it was also the first disappointment I had with my netbook, I find it incredibly irksome. This initial disappointment led me to see other things I'm not terribly fond of on this netbook. Which kind of sucks. [seeing the disappointments, not the netbook itself]
• I feel like even though its screen is the standard size for netbooks, 10.1", mine doesn't seem quite as small as the ones I've seen before. Maybe I'm just being silly. In fact, hopefully I am.
• The battery on this guy is definitely a little bulky. The other netbooks I've seen, mostly Acer and Asus and HP ones, seem to be sleek overall, pretty planar with no bumps or anything, but the battery on mine sticks out a bit, which I imagine would make fitting it neatly into a sleeve a bit difficult.

All in all, though, despite my few disappointments, I'm still quite excited about my brand new netbook. I'll get over the unchanging desktop eventually, and on the bright side, I can still have a slideshow of photos as my screensaver. I'm sure this is the start of a beautiful relationship.

Spring Road Trip

Every year Rice gives its students a four-day weekend in early April, a break called spring recess. Freshman year, I went on a short trip to Austin during spring recess, to visit friends at UT. Starting sophomore year, I've gone on road trips with my incredible friends to various and sundry places in Texas: South Padre Island sophomore year (quite possibly the most epic spring recess ever), Corpus Christi/Port Aransas junior year (tons of fun, one highlight being that we saw real porpoises in the Gulf of Mexico), and San Antonio and thereabouts senior year.

It wasn't easy to get my parents' permission to go on that first trip in sophomore year. It was the first time I would be traveling such a long distance with friends, and it also was a trip involving boys, both facts which gave my parents pause. Thankfully, though, they eventually relented. It's funny to think back to the frustration I felt two years ago about my parents' worries, because now it's almost a matter of course that spring recess (and fall recess, which is the first semester parallel) means that I'm going on a road trip with my friends. I'm so happy I had these road trip experiences in college. It's these that cemented my friendships, and our trips gave birth to countless memories, quotable quotes, and new musical finds.

This year, as I mentioned, my friends and I (five of us total, which I think makes this our smallest trip to date) went to San Antonio. We'd already been there once before (for a fall recess) to go to Six Flags Fiesta Texas, so this time around we day tripped at Lake Travis and Enchanted Rock. I didn't join my friends at Lake Travis (met up with friends at UT instead), so I can't write about that, but I did enjoy Enchanted Rock.

Enchanted Rock is located outside of a little Texas town called Fredricksburg, known for its proud display of German roots and its antiquing. I think the hill itself is just a large rock formation made of pink Texas granite (which is quite lovely). The entire park is really well-maintained and pretty. We walked along really clearly marked trails to a pseudo-summit of sorts, and sat in the sun for a while to catch our breath. I felt a bit silly because there were a lot of older people walking up and down and around the hill fearlessly, but I was definitely treading with caution, especially on the steeper parts. Really there wasn't anything to be worried about, but it was just something I wasn't used to. So of the four of my friends, one started feeling a little sick when we were sitting at the summit, so she and I laid down in the shadow cast by a big beautiful boulder while the guys climbed further up and explored for a while. It was a really gorgeous day as far as the weather was concerned, so laying in the shade was absolutely glorious. We also got to take in an amazing view of the sky. There's nothing quite like a Texas sky.

After the five of us met up again, we all went back down the hill and waded in the small, clear creek at the start of the trail. The water was so clear you could see the pebbles below, and we saw quite a few tadpoles and some sort of tiny crustacean in the water. It was really lovely. We stopped in Fredricksburg for ice cream on the way back to San Antonio, which was a great way to end a really pleasant afternoon. Below are a few pictures from the day:

The beautiful sight from the beginning of the trail

The group, excluding me. It was a sunny day!

The guys on the climb down

The girls = )

Lovely deciduous trees--I missed these so much while I was in India!

Me and the best friend. We looked disgustingly like a couple with our unwittingly matching outfits.

Feet picture in the creek! The pebbles blend into our brown skin.

Okay this is blurry, but Texas wildflowers [this photo was taken on our drive back to Houston] are gorgeous.

A New Hole in My Face

I had no idea what to title this post. "I Got My Nose Pierced"? "Getting My Nose Pierced"? "Nose Piercing"? So I called it the most ridiculous (and true) thing I could think of. I do indeed have a new hole in my face. On the right side of my nose, to be exact. My mother tells me that the piercing is in the wrong place on my nose, that it should be a bit lower and more forward. Unfortunately, she [and a nice old lady that we're family friends with, and my gay best friend, all three of whom told me my nose was pierced in the wrong spot as soon as they saw it] is completely right. But since my piercing was four (or five, depending on which side of the international date line you were standing on) days old by the time my mom pointed out the problem, there was nothing I could do about it. It's all a bit upsetting, since I was really pleased whenever I saw my nose ring in the mirror before the misplacement was pointed out, but now when I see it I can't help wishing it were shifted slightly. I have to get used to it though, and I'm sure I will, because I'm stuck with this piercing for the rest of my life. All in all, I'm pleased; it looks much better than I thought it would. A recap of the experience:

I got my nose pierced in Little India in Singapore, at an Indian jewelry store called [charmingly] Ani Mani Porchalai. [and by charmingly, I meant slightly ridiculously] I stayed with my closest girlfriend from college and her family while I was in Singapore, so both she and her mother accompanied me to the jewelry store. The whole process was relatively unceremonious: we walked in, said I wanted to get my nose pierced, and the jeweler called over the resident piercer. I chose the nose ring I wanted (small, gold, with a diamond-looking stone) The piercer dude asked me which side, I said right, and he marked the spot with a pen [ah if only I had asked him to move it!] and then handed me a Q-tip dipped in anesthetic ointment to rub on the spot. I rubbed, the jeweler told me to close my eyes and brace myself, and the piercer began to pierce my nose. Without a piercing gun. Instead, he stuck a sterilized needle into the stem of my nose ring, and proceeded to poke a hole in my nasal cartilage with said needle. Since the outside of my nose was anesthetized, it felt at first like an ant bite, a prick:

[my friend has a fantastic SLR camera, so she took pictures for me]

But as the needle penetrated the skin and began going through my actual nose, I started to feel the pain a bit more:

It definitely got to a point where I was thinking "when is it going to end?!" as he was piercing. I'm proud that I didn't scream, but I definitely whimpered a little. Getting your nose pierced is no joke. It hurts. Thankfully, the pain of piercing is the worst of it; during the recovery period, the area around the piercing was a bit swollen and tender, but I was pretty much completely healed in four days. So overall: yay! I got my nose pierced! I survived, and it looks pretty good. Sadly, the nose piercer guy definitely said that I have a "thick nose" and it was a bit difficult to pierce. FML, a little. For most of my life, I've had a bit of a complex about my nose being large, so it was kind of the cherry on top of the sundae (in a non-good way) to hear that. I wasn't really hurt; I mostly found it funny, in a sort of wry way. I mean how many people are told that their nose is thick? Ha.

Aaand hopefully this is the first of many posts about my Asia trip now that I'm back home. Hope you found this one entertaining!

Chetan Bhagat [By Which I Mean His Books]

So a large portion of my time in India has been spent reading. As I [sort of] mentioned in a previous entry, I used to read ravenously during any and all school vacations all the way through high school. Then, some time after I began college, my thirst for books began to wane. I'm not sure what caused the change; perhaps, tired of reading and analyzing so many novels for my classes, I preferred to veg out in front of the television during my free time. Or maybe I decided that a college-age English major decided to read more literature and less chick lit, and I just couldn't muster the same kind of reading fervor that The Princess Diaries series elicits in me for books like Emma. I'm not saying classic literature can't be great to read, but it definitely slows my reading pace. (Case in point: I read Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children, definitely the most literary of the books I brought to India, for the first two weeks of my trip here. In contrast, I read three of Chetan Bhagat's novels in five days this past week.)

Anyway, all of this was to say that one of the best parts of my trip so far has been the rekindling of my obsession with books. I owe a fair amount of this rekindling to the works of Chetan Bhagat, author of four novels, the titles of all of which I only just realized begin with a number:

1. 5 Point Someone
2. One Night @ the Call Center
3. The 3 Mistakes of My Life
4. 2 States

It seems that all of his books have inspired Bollywood movies, though the only one I was aware of was 5 Point Someone, upon which the recently released blockbuster 3 Idiots, starring the ever-charming Aamir Khan, was based. I had actually heard of this novel two years ago, the last time I visited India, but didn't read it until just now. For a quick rundown:

• 5 Point Someone is about 3 male protagonists and their time at the Indian Institute of Technology in Delhi, AKA IIT Delhi, pretty much the most prestigious engineering college in this country. The guys screw up in every which way. One of them falls in love, one tries to commit suicide, they struggle with familial pressure and academic pressure, and somehow manage to forge an incredibly strong friendship, all while drinking and smoking weed quite a bit. The book is funny, dark, and at times rather incisive. In fact, these three descriptors can be applied to all of Bhagat's novels.
• One Night @ the Call Center is about, well, one night at a call center, this one in Gurgaon, a borough, I believe, of Delhi. 3 men and 3 women working together see themselves and their lives sort of unravel over the course of one night's events, and emerge on the other side of the darkness--with the help of a mysterious call from God--with renewed senses of themselves, their hopes and dreams, and assurance of the paths they must take in order to reach their goals. This book was pretty inspirational, and also dark, funny, and incisive. The only part I didn't like about it was the rather blunt and sweeping characterization of Americans as stupid, paranoid, and smug. Nationalism and patriotism are all well and good, but I don't think they need to be pursued by demonizing or putting down other nations.
• The 3 Mistakes of My Life is the most unlike the others of Bhagat's novels, because it is set in the old part of Ahmedabad, Gujarat, and is about three boys who are not very financially privileged, unlike the main characters in all the other novels. Also setting this one apart was the examination of religion, politics, and cricket (the sport), and how the three affect daily life in India. Bhagat was definitely trying to push a certain agenda in the novel, making his villain part of a religious political party and his first-person protagonist disinterested in politics, but as I didn't disagree with the views he advanced, I wasn't bothered. I may have liked this one the best of Bhagat's novels.
• 2 States is subtitled "The Story of My Marriage," and it's basically just that: Bhagat is Punjabi, and his wife Anusha, whom he met at the Indian Institute of Management in Ahmedabad (IIM-A), is Tamil Iyer (incidentally, just like me). The protagonist of 2 States is a male Punjabi student at IIM-A who falls in love with a Tamil Iyer girl. The bulk of the book details their struggles to gain their families' approvals before getting married. This was the first of Bhagat's books that I read, and I found it funny and fresh. It was especially humorous to see my own culture from the vantage point of someone outside of it but trying to find a way in.

Bhagat's books definitely have some grammatical moments that I take issue with, but I think it might just be a matter of different kinds of grammar being acceptable in India than those that are considered correct in the US. I really like that Bhagat seems to be trying to do something with his novels. He's not just telling stories; he's saying things about India, about the schooling system, the linguistic pride that divides the country, the dangerous mix of politics and religion, the disenchantment of the youth, and the hopes of his still-infant nation. He's the best-selling English language novelist in Indian history, and I feel this distinction is definitely well-earned. A few more things about Bhagat's books:

1. All of his protagonists are having sex with their girlfriends. Are most young people in India sexually active before marriage? The idea inspires both horror (ew are my cousins doing that? [Somehow I doubt it]) and surprise. Growing up in the States, I, like most other children of Indian immigrants, have been exposed to a sort of fossilized version of Indian culture, courtesy of my parents. In my mind, Indian people never have premarital sex. But I mean, some of them must; otherwise Bhagat wouldn't put it in each of his books.
2. All of Bhagat's protagonists are first-person male. This is rather refreshing, because I most often read books with female protagonists. Much of the comedy in his books comes from his protagonists' candid descriptions of heterosexual boys' reactions to girls and their physical attractiveness. Also, the male point of view allows for some level of incisiveness that may be lost with a female protagonist. For instance, in One Night @ the Call Center, the protagonist [rather insightfully] notes that "only women think there is a reason to thank people if they listen to them."

Not much else to report on the topic of Bhagat's novels, except that they're definitely worth a read. All four managed to make me tear up at times, which is saying something, because though I'm kind of a crier, I hardly ever respond to books, a trait that sometimes makes me wonder if I'm an emotional rhinoceros. I wonder if, in keeping with the numerical theme, Bhagat's next novel's title will begin with Four...