It's been a while...

...since I last wrote! Heavens! Half a year -- I see my last entry was in January. Well, what can I say? It's been crazy, at work, and my life in general. Work's been insane, till I moved to a new team (which I absolutely LOVE), and my Mum and sister were visiting me in the interim, so what with juggling a new job, and showing my family around the city (this time in a car!), I didn't really have a lot of time to devote to other pursuits -- like writing on this blog.

It's been an eventful six months! For one, I've completed two years at Dell, which is quite an achievement. I never thought I'd last two years anywhere unless it's a compulsion (like studies). But I've stuck it out in Dell entirely by choice for two years, and while it hasn't been a smooth ride all the way, it's certainly been a learning experience! And I'm wiser and happier than I was two years ago, which is what matters, right?

I've traveled a bit! I took my Mum and sister around Austin, around Texas and around the country during the two months they were here. We visited the little towns of the Texas Hill Country -- Burnet, Fredericksburg, Johnson City, Wimberley, Dripping Springs, Marble Falls...and enjoyed it immensely. I think there's something just so fascinating about small towns! And since I'm a girl of the hills at heart, I really enjoyed exploring Texas Hill Country! We went in the peak of wildflower season, when the hills were ablaze with flowers of various hues, and the very wind seemed fresh and fragrant. Lovely! We also did a road trip to New Orleans, which is by far the longest I've ever driven -- 12 hours in one day, practically without stopping! But what a trip it was! We saw the gorgeous Louisiana bayou, the beautiful pine forests of East Texas (Loblolly Pines, I believe they're called?) and the gorgeous, gorgeous city of New Orleans. We later went to Disney World, and had the most fantastical, magical, incredible five days there. Ahhhh!! What a couple of months it was!

And now, I am all set to go to Atlanta to visit an aunt. Well, technically, she is my great-aunt, but since she is almost my Mum's age, I call her aunt. I've been looking forward to this trip for a while now, so I'm excited! Plus, it's always exciting to see a new city, though the most exciting thing in Atlanta I'm looking forward to is the historic house of Margaret Mitchell, and see the setting of Gone With The Wind. Plus, it's Georgia! The very name evokes thoughts of gracious southern hospitality, so I'm quite looking forward to the trip.

And, I've been immersed in the wonderful, magical world of Enid Blyton. She was quite my favorite author growing up, and even reading the books now, I've realized that no matter what, she'll always remain my favorite author, of all time! Why, the magic! I've raced through the "Barney" mysteries, as they're called, and the Adventure series. The "Barney" mysteries are the exciting stories of siblings Roger and Diana, their younger cousin Snubby (quite a pest!), his dog Loony, their wandering circus-boy friend Barney, and his monkey, Miranda. From meeting the rather wild Barney in The Rockingdown Mystery, through Barney's search for his father in the hilarious and mysterious The Rilloby Fair Mystery and The Ring 'O Bells Mystery, and the culmination of the search in the heart-rending, haunting, melancholic The Rubadub Mystery, it's been a magical series. I try to ignore The Rat-a-tat Mystery and The Ragamuffin Mystery as they're nowhere near as good as the first four. The Adventure series is the exciting adventures of siblings Philip and Dinah Mannering (and Philip's collection of pets), and their friends siblings Lucy-Ann and Jack Trent, and Jack's adorable talking parrot, Kiki. Exciting, adventurous, and hilarious (especially when Kiki scares off the bad guys with her nonsensical babble), it's been a fun read. Ah, I do so love Enid Blyton's books!

I'm planning on going to London later this year, probably around my birthday (which falls very close to Labor Day weekend). I'd love to see the rest of England, especially the places Enid Blyton wrote about -- the beautiful Dorset beaches and coast, the Devon moors, and the cliffs and beaches of Cornwall. But let's see! At the very least, I'd love to see London (and I hope I can snare something from one of the boutiques on Bond Street while I'm at it!).

Whew! I've blabbered on for quite a bit. That's what happens when you don't write in a while! Things just pour out in a rush. Well, I guess I'll head off to Atlanta, and hopefully have a ton to say when I return! Sayonara!

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!