Certified crazy

Last weekend saw me going back to Sophia. Some friends and I decided to go Parasailing. Super fun. Got scared considering that they dropped me from the chute, onto the sea. More than the drop, it was the fear of water that sent me panting for air after the drop. Other than that, the whole thing went off well. Also went down to Marineland the next day to see some dolphins and whales play. The sea lions did a small skit which was very cute.

Plan was to go bungee jumping off the highest point in europe, but couldn’t find a driver to take us to the point up in the mountains. May be next time.

This could probably be my last post from Sophia Antipolis and Eurécom for a long time to come. With exams done, and projects submitted, and reports taken care of, now its time to shift base to Paris, for internship for the next six months.

Time sure flew by very fast, especially this semester, as I had expected it to, and we are all saying bye bye and au revoirs to every other person who leaves Sophia for other places in France and elsewhere in Europe. A lot of parties and good bye dinners. Hugs. Pool games. Foosball. Wine. Flowers. Jokes. Laughter. Jogs. Trips to Carrefour. The climb up to Eurecom. More trips to Carrefour. Closure of EDF contracts. Trips to Issac. The balconies. Rain. Tea. Cheese balls. Maggi. French. And the struggle to speak Français. Beach. Promenade des Anglais. Crème glace. Fountain. The walks through the jungle. The complements. Benches in the moonlight. Neighbours. Sitting at the window. 321. The church. Running to catch the last bus back home. Falafel. Summer wind. Group classes during exams. Copy everything blindly from others´ notes. Open book exams. Handwritten A4 cheatsheets. Badminton. Asking for everything under the sun. And getting it. The calls. Late night speak-your-heart-out sessions. Haircuts. Cleaning up after parties. Cooking food and seeing it being eaten very happily. Pani puris. Hair bands.

Au revoir, mais pas adieu.

Past two months have been a blur and I guess the next one will arrive and finish before I can say cheese. This spring semester has kept us all busy. Some quick updates on what I have been up to.

April was home-college-home routine. Assignments and homeworks, labs and reports, projects were never ending. Had a 10-day vacation from school in May, so got my family to come over to Europe and went on a tour to Austria, Germany and Switzerland. Loved Austria - must go back if I get a chance. Ma and sis came back with me to Sophia for about three weeks. Piling on good Ma cooked food has its own (side) effects.

Some of us went to Cannes during the film festival and some friends were disappointed that they did not get to see Aishwarya Rai.

There was “Indian Dinner” organized at college yesterday. We cooked food for about 50 people. I still can’t believe we pulled that off - about 25 Indian dishes. I am amazed at the amount of spice some of my classmates can handle. Some others constantly held a glass of water in their hand. Some of us will leave college for our internships next semester and yesterday felt like a farewell dinner. I don’t know yet where I will be for the internship, but I hope I enjoy the next semester as much as I enjoyed the last.

Life would have been so much more interesting if all the signs on our Indian roads would have been in what we call “Bambaiyya Hindi”. Some examples:

Exit: chal kalti maar. 

No smoking: Cigarette nahi pine ka, kya?

(French) Vous n’avez pas La Priorité: Abey, tera number nahi, apun ka hai. 

No entry: Andar nahi ghusneka. 

Keep left: Baine baaju me rakh. 

No U-turn: Wapas ulta nahi ghumne ka. 

Can you think of some more funny ones? 

• Exams are done. Should pass in most of the papers. (Note the “most”)
• Made Pani puri, pav bhaji at home in the last two days (including the puris - damn cool the way they pop up - if they do) and called in some French friends to taste some ethnic Indian cuisine - rotis et al.
• Project needs to be worked up - I’m putting most of my time on it, now that I have one week of vacations.
• Evenings are spent watching movies with friends. Fun.
• Cleaning up two weeks of mess after exams are done gives a really bad backache.
• Cut a friend’s hair for experimenting - results were not bad at all.
• I’ve grown to admire the brilliant way some geniuses think - Markus Kuhn is one such man.
• I need to catch up on my to-read books.
• I like lying down in the afternoon under the Sunlight in my room these days. Can make one sleepy in a matter of seconds.
• Found a place in Antibes which sells awesome Falafel. That, plus a double scoop gelato (tiramisu, rocher) = heaven.

Runa tagged me sometime earlier this month with the 7 things tag. The rules are:

1. Link to your original tagger(s) and list these rules in your post.
2. Share seven facts about yourself in the post.
3. Tag seven people at the end of your post by leaving their names and the links to their blogs.
4. Let them know they’ve been tagged.

The 7 facts are:

1. I have eaten Pani Puri for breakfast, lunch and dinner, two days in a row.
2. I was once addicted to Internet chat.
3. I am petrified of ghost stories.
4. As a kid, I used to cry so much so that my teachers used to complain to my mother “iske aankhon me nal lage hue hai. Hamesha roti rehti hai.”
5. I like reading children’s story books - Nancy Drew, Famous Five and The Secret Garden have been among my favorites since school.
6. I have never been hospitalized.
7. Most of the songs that I love are from the black and white era of Bollywood.

And now, I tag fellow bloggers *drumroll* Ruchna, Kapil, Sharan, Anuja, Ankur, Prakash, Tejas. Feel free to go / not go ahead with the tag.

Last friday we decided to beat the boredom of not having anything to do, with a trip to nearby Antibes. It was fun learning the bus routes (the wrong way :P)

Antibes is a quaint little town and we thoroughly enjoyed passing around, smelling good food, posing with BMW motorbikes, running down races and practicing some horrible, horrible French. All in all, a fun weekend Some pictures are here.

Now, off to Paris tomorrow morning. Hopefully, some good touristy pictures coming soon

Met Pradeepto and Missus, and Anurag at our usual hangout place - Pizzeria - to get the update on their Akademy visit. Need to try out the Bachelor’s ice cream next time, now that I know the location.

I went down South last weekend for the Bangalore Flex User Group meet that Mrinal tweeted about. I reached halfway through Vandana’s OpenLaszlo talk. (Thanks to Bangalore’s famed traffic jams). The part that I attended went well, with flex users trying to grasp laszlo’s components and comparing similar alternatives available in Flex. Quite a few new people joined in too, I was told. The meet ended well with discussions on how should laszlo save its backside As always, coffee time is the best time to get a feel of the group. Met some people with brilliant ideas and trying to get them into action. Nice!

Headed to some shopping and thought of picking up something to eat at MG Road. Wasn’t hungry, so headed back with some coffee instead.

Next day was spent trying to figure out what OS to install on the new laptop, at Parthan’s place, after an awesome Thali at Nandhinee. A few hours later, I ended up buying two waitlisted tickets (both of which got confirmed btw - separate trains ofcourse) to Chennai for the next day, all the while having a confirmed KSRTC bus ticket. More has been blogged about this meet (and the goofups) by Parthan, Aanjhan and Onkar.

Next day was spent in Chennai. The flight out was delayed by almost two hours. Landed up at home at 1.45 am with Mom yelling. All attempts at breaking in quietly failed terribly.

Note to self: Next time, plan things out! (but unplanned trips like this one are awesome fun too! :D)

I head out to France to pursue a Masters degree next this month. Now, for the first time in my life, shopping seems like a daunting task.

A quick update on what I have been up to:

• Took a train with Aanjhan to Pune last Friday, to meet Runa, Sankarshan and Ramkrsna. Train route was amazing. Need to take the train next time.
• Talking to random people in a train and passing time is simply awesome. Like one of them said, 77 INR, not bad at all!
• Went to Raigad and Mulshi lake. Both are awesome places to be in. Check flickr streams here, here and here.
• Runa treated us to some awesome home cooked bengali meal.
• Ramki treated us to some more of his uncle jokes.
• Sankarshan threated me and ramki with “Don’t move a muscle” while the 5 of us travelled up the mountain in a 4 seater ropeway car

A much needed vacation well spent.

It all started one day when Akshay blogged about how he wanted to make a positive change in his life by starting to wake up early each day. I have tried a lot of different alarm clocks, and various ringtones (including a shrieking voice) and radio that goes off early at 6 am, but none seemed to work for me. Its not that this has been an issue since ages - I used to get up by 5:00 am and reach the station before 6 am a few years ago. But somehow, I got myself into the habit of sleeping at 2am/3am and waking up at 8/9/10 am.

So when he asked if anybody was game, I jumped in.

Akshay, his friend Anil and I took up the challenge of waking up at 5:30 every day for the one month that followed, in a very interesting way. It was decided to document the whole experiment on a wiki. Hence, was born 30each. One of the challenges that we decided upon was to capture 30 sunrises. I however, did not capture any. That needs a different post.

In the course of the days that followed, I realized I got up not because I had to, but because I wanted to beat the others at the proto-call. As days passed, not counting the days I slept late because I couldn’t help it, I realized reading before I hit the bed helped. I made sure I switched the laptop off by 11, and would be drowsy by the time it was midnight.

Although the month of May was a very hectic one with a lot of positive developments on the personal side (yes, this being one), I still managed to miss only 11 days, that too, because: one, no day was an exception, (as per my own rules set during the start of the experiment), two, a lot of days were spent on things which shall be blogged later, and three, a lot of Partying happened in this Month - especially night outs with cousins. So, all in all, it is a big Yay!!

During these days, my reading activity shot up. I completed reading A thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini, Maximum City by Suketu Mehta and Why Men don’t listen and women can’t read maps by Barbara and Allan Pease. I am reading Chetan Bhagat’s 3 Mistakes of my Life these days.

It is June already, but last I checked, the wiki looks like it will keep getting updates from the three of us.