me again!!

hey ppl!! am in kolkata/calcutta now.. finally getting some much needed rest.. bangalore was a blast.. had a great time there.. a huge thank you to everyone there..

arunima it was really good to meet you too.. everyone else in pune and delhi.. i'm really sorry that i won't be coming to either place.. but if you drop me a mail (soraystud@hotmail.com / soraystud@rediffmail.com) with your phone number i promise to call you up!! clouds.. am really REALLY sorry i won't be seeing you.. :-((

anyways.. have a blast everyone.. and i will try to post again during the wedding telling you all about how many offers/proposals/adoring fans i will have thrown at me!! ;-)) see you soon!

hey there!

hello people!! this is just gonna be a quick note to say hi! i am in india finally.. its seething with a mass of humanity here.. but i'm loving it.. caught up with old friends.. eating and drinking the place dry.. am in bangalore now.. having an amazing time.. photos will prolly only be uploaded when i get back to buffalo.. see you all again soon!

time to go

well, as the title says.. it's time to go. tomorrow i start a marathon, continent-hopping, two-day series of flights. i will be on holiday in india for the next month, so i dunno when i'll get to post anything.. but rest assured.. as the Governator Schwarzewhatever said.. "i'll be back!"

my schedule is as follows:
01/10 : buffalo - NYC - frankfurt - mumbai - bangalore
01/12 - 01/20 : bangalore
01/20 - 01/22 : kharagpur
01/22 - 01/26 : calcutta
01/26 - 02/02 : allahabad
02/02 - 02/07 : calcutta
02/07 - 02/10 : mumbai
02/10 : mumbai - paris - NYC - buffalo

i am hoping to get to meet quite a few of you who i know via the world of blogging.. that should be cool!! :-)) the rest of you.. wait your turn ;-))!! haha.. just kidding. blogging has been a great experience.. primarily cos of all you wonderful people out there!! take care and see you here again soon!

blast from the past

i think i'm slowly turning into my dad!! not only have i started looking like him, but there's nothing i enjoy more than sitting at home in the evening after a long hard day with a bourbon and coke. the similarities get even more unnerving.. i've started appreciating jean michel jarre even more.. and wait.. old elvis movies too! yep!

so there i was on friday night.. winding down after what had been one of the hardest weeks of my life as far as work output was concerned.. we had subs for dinner, then sank and arul slept off early, also tracie hadn't been keeping too well since she got back from cleveland either.. so i poured myself a healthy shot of jim beam and was watching elvis presley in 'Clambake'.. which was nice..

it was an interesting time back then in the 60s.. before flower-power kicked in.. the people seemed so much more innocent.. but let me stress.. 'seemed'. humans have been playing mindgames ever since adam & eve, and the 60s were no different.. same games, different fields i guess. here's an elvis song from the movie.. 'A House That Has Everything'

I can see you now living like a queen,
    In a house that has everything, everything but love,
Crystal chandeliers, chauffeured limousines,
    Yes you'll really have everything, everything but love.

I see diamonds, sables, sapphires and pearls,
    And as the picture clears,
Poor little rich girl sitting all alone,
    Counting her treasures in tears,
Better just a shack where two people care,
    Than a house that has everything, everything but love.

anyways.. i dropped by at 87M looking to score some, and found the boys there already sitting in the circle.. bong all ready to be lit!! hehehe, just had a very irreverent thought.. wonder if dad used to do the same in his time ;-))

two-faced

am not gonna write about how long and dreary my day was.. i think everyone's pretty much having the post-holidays-hangover. instead.. i wanna share with you something i heard on the news today.. and it shook me! the one and only George W. Bush, in a pre-election pep-rally speech.. was talking about the economic situation in the US.. and mentioned the phrase "bottom line". what's so weird about that you ask? well, the weird part is that when he said it.. i heard "but i'm lying". now try that yourself, and say both.. see?! i actually stopped, kinda surprised, trying to figure out which it was!

so all day.. i kept turning the thought over in my head. how some people say something and mean something completely different. some people aren't that good at it, and you can see through them.. but some have raised it to an art form. beware, for even in the guise of old friends, blood relatives and committed colleagues you can get taken.

i must say that i am sick and tired of being taken (..advantage of, .. for granted, .. for a ride) but the worst part is that this stubborn streak in me to 'be there for everyone' is what causes most of these complications. why do i do it? that's another post in itself!

anyways, back to the issue at hand.. subconsciously we are all manipulative. despite all outward appearances, everyone would like to be master of his destiny (note for all you politically correct readers: master/mistress of his/her destiny.. my apologies) but then there are some of us who would like to take it a few steps forward by trying to control / dominate / manouever people around them.

well, what can you do about it? at the risk of sounding selfish, i would say that anytime someone asks something of you.. stop, and think, what's in it for you? some relationships are sacred, like parent-child.. but even parents play mindgames!! the days that 'the meek shall inherit the earth' ended in Biblical times.. if you don't stand up for yourself then i'm sorry my friend, no one will.

*sigh* did anyone notice how i called you 'my friend' and in the same breath also said 'no one will'.. subconsciously i am also becoming one of 'them'.. aargh!!

holy melancholy

the year has started off very weirdly.. The Life Apathetic With Saurabh is mind-numbingly excruciatingly dull right about now.. maybe now i need to get Bill Murray to improve it! i think i'm slowly realising what life is gonna be like once i leave college, and let me tell you i'm gonna stretch that graduation date as far as possible!!

the last few days have been a grind.. open the library at 8 in the morning.. dull library work all day.. take two half-hour breaks in between to rush to the lab and prepare some experimental setups.. close library at 5, then after work back to the lab. by the time i get back home all i can think of is dying, until the next morning! food and drink can wait until the weekend!

it's interesting how my dream job has been changing over time.. when i was in high school all i ever wanted to do was fix cars. i just wanted to be in and around cars. one year working at a service workshop before i joined college and i knew that being a simple mechanic and service manager would be a very dead-end job.

but in college all the courses regarding automotive engineering were theoretical.. so my focus changed to automotive design engineering. day and night i pored over training manuals, service journals and other technical handbooks.. and took notes, on where and how i would be able to apply all that i learned.

well, with no scope of doing that in either kenya or india.. i landed in buffalo.. and immediately got into materials science, at which point i still hoped to be able to turn back to automotive engineering.. but that led to nanotechnology.. then i changed labs and came to biomaterials, and that was that for cars.

and now here i am working on biofilm formation in hydraulic situations, and my dream job now is in a lab somewhere, running experiments and getting data. pen-pushing has never been an option, and that hasn't changed yet.. but if tomorrow that's gonna pay for food, drink and clothing then that's what i'll do!! ;-))

'Fifty-two degrees at kickoff in Buffalo Jan. 2: Weird.' -
    Peter King, Monday Morning Quarterback, Sports Illustrated

HNY and all that!

firstly Happy New Year to everyone.. even if your New Year comes on the third sunday of the fourth month of every fifth lunar calendar year.. you get the drift.. it's 2005 baby! as you probably gathered from the previous couple of posts.. i wasn't really glad to see the back of 2004, it was a good year.. but hey! change is always good!

sank, arul, azmi & jason.. thank you very much for the birthday surprise.. we had a great time this weekend! to everyone who called, doodled, messaged or mailed me up.. another big thank you!! vipul, deepa, malvika, kamala, smitha, tracie, BD, vaishali, nilesh, diamonds, beatrice, gaurav, ishani, poonam, concubine, aru, nits, vidya, sandy, reshma, tayal.. *pause for breath*.. will, abhita, kanan, varsha, beeta.. ok, you know yourselves!! thank you!! and that's not even adding everyone who scribbled me on orkut.. thank you everyone so much. :-))

it was an excellent weekend.. had a rollicking good time for the New Year's Eve party at jason n azmi's.. then again for the birthday dinner :-)) were it not for the Buffalo Bills losing the final game of the season and crashing out of playoff contention, it would have been one of the best weekends ever!

"i am so high, i can hear heaven.. but heaven, no heaven don't hear me" applied to me this weekend.. i was dazed and glazed all the time.. and it was a good feeling. but once you're high, then it's a plateau.. and there's nowhere further to go.. but you put Tool's 'Salival' on.. and transcend a new high.. and every song is a new story, a fresh canvas to take your brush to, a different musical journey every time.

life has been good the last few weeks, and i thank God and anyone else who might have been responsible for it. :-))