Saturday, May 25, 2013

Life in Feb 1 - May 25

This would be one of the longest gap in my "Life in" series. Truth be told, i just wanted a break.  But now i am ready, the break is over. Lets recap major events.

Travel:
After a very hectic last year travel-wise, i intentionally decided to take a break. So for the month of Feb and march, i was at a self imposed restriction to not leave the city. But come April, the flood gates were again opened.
~Weddings : Attended Namrata didi's wedding at Bhatinda. Good fun to meet relatives. Train ride to Bhatinda with all people in family was also fun. Liked the wedding venue, the small town awesome feeling was there.
Attended Gursharan's wedding. A simple Punjabi wedding. This was the first Punjabi wedding that i attended and it was good to see how simple and timely it all was. Also, it felt more relaxed. Also, at his reception, there were no rajgaddi, the couple say on a simple sofa. No DJ either at wedding or marriage. Very very good punjabi food. Just to give an idea, there were 12 kinds of halwa.


~ Trip to Cochin. Surprised everybody by a weekend to Kochi. Went to beach with Naniji, Mami, Numo and Aarti. Good fun. It is always a pleasure to be there.

~ Trip to US. Bentonville, Las Vegas, Utah (Zion national park), Bay area and back. Hectic but a lot of fun.


House shifting:
What a waste of effort it is - Meet brokers, see houses etc and how much hassle it is if you want to optimize on budget :)
~Shifted from Ashok Nagar to Koramangala. Distance to office is now 7 kms but time is 15-20 mins. Love being in close proximity again.
~ Had to buy pretty much everything. Fridge, microwave, dining table (got an Ikea one, second hand, imported from Australlia), carpets, tv stand, mattress etc. Still need to buy a sofa.
~ Parents visited to help me out.


Books:
~ Antifragile: Review
~ Listened to the audio book: The story of O. Review will come at some point.
In the middle of:
~Thinking Fast and Slow.
~Blood meridian: I don't think i will be able to finish it. Found it too bland, nothing is happening. Even though the writing is good. I will have to pick it up sometime later.
~India After Gandhi. As part of our book club. Read first half, review coming soon.
~Wolf Hall. It is getting interesting day by day.

Courses:
~ Didn't finish Game theory. Only the last one remained but lost interest as they were just introducing more type of games.
~ Need to get back in focus on the law one.

Movies:
~ The Good:
Rewatched Les Miserables. Changing the rating to 5/5.
Bernie by Richard Linklater (4/5). Jack Black is a treat to watch.

Silver linings playbook (3.5/5) Review
Superman of Malegaon (No point of rating)
Robot & Frank (3.5/5) Decent one. A camera cinema club selection.  
Star Trek: Into the darkness (3.5/5) Well done Sci-fi flick. 
Django Unchained (4/5). Love the fact that Tarantino can do it over and over again. 
Argo (3.5/5) Well done, not sure if it was a Best Picture winner. 

~ The Bad
Jack the Reacher (2.5/5) Not much to root for anything.

~The Ugly
Iron Man 3 (1/5) Horribly bad. Even worse than 2. 

Game of thrones tv series is back again. Enjoying it. Also played the board game at office. There are significant people who follow it now. 


Misc:
~Azim Premji University. Applied to MA in development, written test, interview. Was not sure if i wanted to join them, wanted to see the process. I thought that the interview went bad as they seem unconvinced about my answers. But got an admit. Sometimes life has its own mechanism of choosing its path. The email about the admit went to my spam folder. The follow up email came just one day before the deadline and i was in US at the time, and busy so couldn't think about it. Hence, naturally the deadline passed.
~eb stuff is happening.
~ Registered for Goechala trek in Sept end. Very excited.




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