Packing

Wow! I never thought it'd be this much trouble packing! But since I'm close to being done, I won't complain too much. My room is now almost stripped bare, and only the closet remains. And then I'll be done.
It was an interesting experience, packing up. I last did it a year ago, when I packed up to leave Mumbai and move to Austin. Since it was done gradually then, and with full help from all family members, it had seemed less painful then. Besides, I was much too upset to be leaving my family to really take care of what was going onto the luggage. But, man, now I know!
It seems incredible that a single person could own so much stuff. I went nearly crazy just packing the books. There are just too many! I'm glad now I hadn't thrown away the brown boxes that Amazon.com delivers its packages in -- they came handy now, packing up stuff. First thing in was the Algorithms textbook -- I guess I wanted it out of my sight. Operating Systems was next. Security was the last thing to go in, with me giving the book a fond glance before packing it in. Next, I tackled the novels.
There were so many!! I honestly was stunned that I had so many books. PG Wodehouse, Ngaio Marsh, Alistair MacLean, Anthony Horowitz, Ian Fleming, Ken Follett, a bunch of manga (mostly comprising of the Ghost Hunt series).....all went into the boxes one after the other. There was a copy of Artemis Fowl, that I'd gifted myself last Christmas (for emerging alive from the rigorous Fall semester); the Wisden Cricketers' Almanack's 141st edition; a James Bond comic I had ordered on a whim from Amazon; a Robin Cook novel I'd bought ages ago, and forgotten I had it; multiple issues of Reader's Digest, Wired, PC World and American Artist; even a couple of Hardy Boys books I'd bought for my 15-year-old sister, who's a Hardy Boys fiend .
There was other stuff as well. A receipt for my iPod; a catalog from Dell that I'd gotten right after I'd ordered my laptop. I threw it away with a whimsical grin -- now that I actually work there, I don't really need it any more. There was a massive stack of ACM and IEEE research papers, assigned at some point or the other by various professors, or ones that had simply interested me (one of these was a most instructive article on cross-site scripting, a way of exploiting vulnerabilities in websites); a bunch of hurriedly made drawings, stuff that I'd made as I was studying, and was a way to let off stress and steam; an ancient box of Pringles chips, which I threw away hurriedly, without waiting to check the inside. No doubt the inside of the box would have interested a biologist of some sort. There was a printed notification of UT's football match against Ohio State University (which we lost) in Fall 2006; scribbled notes on assignments, trying to solve some problem before actually typing it out on Microsoft Word; and a piece of paper where I seemed to be asking myself what course to take -- it had the names of all the interesting courses in Spring 2007, and the professors' names next to them, and little question marks and exclamation marks around them.
It was interesting seeing all this. It brought back the hectic life I used to lead as a grad student (one that I'll resume in a month, sadly). Just seeing the little scraps of paper, and little mementos from the Fall semester, it had just seemed to capture instances of my life. I could literally relive every moment from Fall.
Maybe it wasn't so bad packing up, after all.....

Unpredictable Texan weather

Man! Talk about unpredictable! Texan weather is harder to predict than the outcome of, say, roulette or something. It was pouring on Thursday; rain interspersed with shine yesterday; and hot and sunny today. I give up! I can never, ever predict what tomorrow's going to be like. In fact, forget tomorrow! I can't predict what it'll be like an hour from now. In fact, even as I speak, the sun is dimming, and the it's getting cool and overcast (just the way I like it!). And, as I complete this sentence, the sun is coming out again. Hmph!
Today is Saturday -- the day that I have, for the past three months, gone out to catch the latest movie released on Friday, and then roamed about the malls for ages. But there's no movie of interest this week -- I'm waiting for August 3rd for The Bourne Ultimatum to release. Instead, I think I'll start packing. I'll be moving out of my apartment on the 1st, so I guess I should start clearing up the mess created over the course of one year. Sigh! I really don't feel like getting started. I try to motivate myself, but one look at the massive pile of research papers from ACM and IEEE sends me back into my corner, hunched over my laptop, furiously typing into my blog, telling the whole world what a mess my room is.
It's the books that scare me the most. I've got a HUGE pile of books to be packed. I'm a regular bookworm, and, in spite of nearly dying of penury over the past year, I've still managed to collect well over 30 books, not counting the 25 or so I brought over with me from Mumbai. AND, to top it all, there's a massive bunch of textbooks collected -- textbooks, that I might add, I've never had to open even once in the semester, because the professors' notes and research papers we got assigned were good enough. Probably the only textbooks I cracked open in the entire year were Database Systems by Garcia-Molina, Ullman and Widom, and Network Security by Kaufman, Perlman and Speciner. The only ones!! And when I look at the massive tomes on my bookshelf, notably the books on Operating Systems and Algorithms, I groan. My intention right from the time I joined UT was to study Networks and Network Security. Why on earth did I lug those blasted books with me? I knew I never intended to take an OS course, ever. I now sit on the chair, looking balefully at the books with ill-concealed hostility.
Well, the more time I spend here, the less I'll have to clear up the scary mess, so I guess I'd better get started now!