Pun-Arabism

As is usual for me these days, I was babysitting some code, and with nothing to do, I had this delightful exchange with a rather biting punster grad student of my university who is referred to here as Z. Others  chimed in occasionally. As Kannada seems to flow naturally, a good number of the jokes and references are in Kannada… so if you don’t follow, kindly excuse. If you don’t follow and you live in Karnataka, get off your seat and buy that Learn Kannada In 30 days book!

And it’s for humor only. Obviously no offense is intended. Your trolly comments will be deleted unless they happen to be pun-tastic.

Z: Dubai is short for Dhirubhai.
Me: And Ye(s)men is short for his assistants.
Z: When pissed, he would say Oman.
Me: When the skies got overcast and prevented him from stepping out, he’d say Bah! Rain!
Z: Heh. Just what i had in mind. bahar rain, it was in my mind though. His favourite actor is Arjun Sharjah
Me: He eats at Abu Dhaba?
Z: Illa, addikkinta Qatarnaak jaaga ide, tinnakke.
Me: Oh god, who’s sane in that country?
Z: Musk cat owners
Me: He hopes it rains gold… and then he looks skyward and says ‘Manna, ma’.
Z: He loves Annavru’s movies esp Jeddahra bale.
Me: When he gets impatient, his wife soothes him saying ‘coo, wait’.
Udupa: And not ‘aap qatar main hain’?
Z: ..But he decides to go to his sauti arabia
Me: He negotiates with the House of Saud, and hence he is called sauda-ghar.
Z: And his wife sings Mecca karoon Ram mujhe buddha mil gaya
K: Kuwait, both of you!
Me: Is she very orthodox? Madi-na?
Z: Eh, yen madi. Avlappa mane inda oDhogiddaga ivalu huttiddu (She was born when her father had run away from home). Baghdad.
Udupa: Ninn Yemen, Saak nilso ninn PJgaLu
Z: Amman is only there no?
Me: When asked to describe that, will she say I-ran?
Z: Yea, Iran and Basra alli hendathi basradlu (And in Basra his wife hit him)

Z: But are we allowed to stop? Tehrana mana hai.
Q: Neevu Turkey bagge talking taane?
Z: NinahAnkarakke udaaseenave maddu

Me: You started it, so that makes you the Pehla-vi.
Z: Wokay, let’s give a Haifa and stop.
Me: That aswan-san is very reassuring.
Me: Stopping now, we don’t widen the Gulf between us and the others
Me: Jaasti aadre, everyone will Suez for damages.
Z: Sari ya, as you say. but I dont see why them ask us to stop.
Me: Threats seem Constantin this thread.
Z: Ella pun-galu khali aago tanka Cairo

Me: Ambani fought tooth and Nile with the Government, alva?
Z: Hoon, gas price jasti maadiddikke. Anila.
Me: The rise was due to agitation in the Middle Yeast, no?
Q: IsRail ko bandh karo.
Z: Hoon but north, south, west – aa Morocco affect aytu
Me: That’s a very clean country antare… kasaa blank-aa?
Z: Yeah, surprising though. Madi-terrain-ian jana. DuDD bere illa. Kaasu blanku.
Me: And corrupt also. Wonder how many palms you’ve to Greece there to get work done.
Z: Aamdani Athena Kharcha Rupaiya
Me: Is Greece named so coz it’s close to oil deposits?
Me: Total law-and-order breakdown will happen. Law enforcers wont have much authority. They’ll just be per-se-police.
Me: And they can’t have any more fun. Party-none.
Z: They had an annual groundnut fair – kadlekai parshepolis
Me: Putting peanuts (aka flirting) is very different there. They have lovestories called Hejab We Met.
Q: Awrah louvvu amara.
Z: But right across the sea, Tripolis do that well.
Me: Do they believe in Women’s Lib, ya?
Z: Don’t think so. They give lot of Bengazhis
Me: There’s a penalty for not having a beard. Gadda-fees.
Z: Haha. That’s it. Done.
Me: Phew. was going to say the same thing. Looking at the thread, WOW.
Z: Haifa!
Me: Haifa!

Whoa. Longest live marathon punning I’ve been part of. Mind=Blown.

CS-boom-de-ah-dah OR I Love Computer Science.

So I chanced up on this Youtube vid of Discovery Channel’s ‘The World is Awesome’.  XKCD had its own lyrics to it. Someone (actually many someones) made videos of it. Given that the original is a camping song called I love the mountains or Boom-de-ah-da, it’s the sort of song to which you MUST add your own lyrics and sing it either while going on a long bus trip or around the campfire. Somewhat like Suraaaaaangani  - no one remembers the original lyrics, so everyone makes up stuff, chorusing only on the ‘maalu maalu maalu‘ bits.

And so I came up with ComputerSciencey words to the original tune. Given that this is all off the top of my head, I’ve not animated it or cartoon’d it (though I have vivid images in my head of what could be done), though I’d be delighted if someone did that and raised me to XKCD-level kvlt-ness.

Here goes. Additions, corrections, animations are all welcome.

I love regression
I love the Bayesian Nets
I love SVMs
I love the convex sets
I love the whole world
And all the ways to learn
Boom-de-yada Boom-de-yada
Boom-de-yada Boom-de-yada

I love XML
I love DBMS
I love big data
I love Open Access
I love the whole world
And all the data tombs
Boom-de-yada Boom-de-yada
Boom-de-yada Boom-de-yada

I love all fractals
I like combinatorics
I love upperbounds
I love a sort that’s quick
I love the whole world
So much complexity
Boom-de-yada Boom-de-yada
Boom-de-yada Boom-de-yada

I love wired networks
And data on the cloud
I love peer-to-peer
And speeds in gigabaud
I love the whole world
So much connectedness
Boom-de-yada Boom-de-yada
Boom-de-yada Boom-de-yada

I’m actually seeing in my head the faces of profs and grad students and labs which could be singing this, possibly in an ad for the Compsci department of some university.

There, my nerd-cred and nerd-karma quotas for life are fulfilled.

Midnight Minestrone Soup

I’m writing this in darkest hour. No, not metaphorically like that.. just that dawn is an hour or so away. My body clock is rather messed up, and I’m stuck about whether to embrace it or to go on the warpath and try to set it ‘right’, right here meaning the sort that’ll wake a few hours before noon and sleep somewhere on the good side of midnight. I’m afraid to upset the delicate balance I’ve created, but I also crave the productivity of the morning hours. It’s not like I’ve not tried setting it ‘right’… I’ve tried over so many weekends, to sleep it off or keep awake, but something or the other always, always messes it up.

Talking of which, I have a vague, vague wish I were in Egypt two weeks back. Some detox from the Internet is what I need, yeah, but I can’t voluntarily detox now when I’m actually awaiting a lot of stuff in my inbox. I can’t pull a danah boyd (Lack of capitalization intentional. That’s how she spells her name) and ask everyone to email me a week hence. Not just yet.

However, I don’t even remotely wish I was Egyptian over the past week. Uprising and all is great, but volatility kills me, it just kills me. I cannot take the excitement of a pregnant pause, the cusp of something totally different, the uncertainty in what’s coming next. And yes, I’m going through a bit of that for a few other reasons. I think if I were in Egypt, I’d've broken a window, set something on fire, thrown a Molotov cocktail at an armyman…. something to spark off all the latent tension.

I just can’t take uncertainty.

And all the stuff about how the Internet helps organize mobs… y’know what, uncoordinated publicity, hashtags and all that can only incite mob frenzy. Nothing more. If anything gets done, it’s in the frenzy of a mob. And it can also be easily defused. Expecting 10k likes to translate into 1k people on the streets is too much, let alone expecting 10k people on the streets based on some Facebook community. The reason all these things looking like they work are because they place great weights on things that don’t take much for people to do. Sounds pretty disjoint coming from me at this time in the night/morning, but it was very lucidly said by Malcolm Gladwell in an opinion piece I can’t seem to find now.

I’ve pretty much lost faith in humanity, so I don’t expect the outcomes of the ‘revolutions’ dotting the Arab world to lead to any larger good for the countries or for the rest of us. As long as there are people to be exploited, there will be tinpot dictators, slavedriver bosses, bossy spouses, martinet teachers.

And heck, if anyone’s nice to me, or anything good happens, I just don’t take it well. I am constantly looking for the price-tag, the downside, the catch… it’s good, in a way, I’ve to admit.

Y’know how it is when you hate things for absolutely no reason? Yeah. It pays to try finding out why exactly you hate these things, and for writing it down somewhere for posterity. Otherwise you’re wont to hear one mindblowing talk and say “Heck, why didn’t I consider this career option? What was I smoking?”, and kick yourself for weeks together till the reason is staring at you in the face and you say “Oh, yeah, that’s why”. Save yourselves the trouble, children.

Also, the reason you pick a career is not because you love the awesome stuff… anyone can love that, but you pick one because you like the boring stuff about the job as well. Like the endless waiting for code to finish compiling, or the thrill of reading a dozen papers on a topic and categorizing them, or dodging the paparazzi or singing the same note for three hours to get it right.

Short book review: I read Ryu Murakami’s Almost Transparent Blue. Fellas, don’t mistake Ryu Murakami for Haruki Murakami. Also, this book is absolutely not for everyone. Puke-worthy. And worse, pointless. Though, I must say, writing’s okay.

Oh, and the DA’s office decided to press charges against 11 students belonging to the Muslim Students Association for planning a disruption of the Israeli ambassador’s speech here last year. Looking at this, I wonder if my earlier stance on the need for student activism was misplaced. It suddenly seems like the right thing to do is to go to class like a good kid and keep away from any sort of trouble. I don’t know if it would have been just like this if it was a more protesty campus like Berkeley instead of goody-two-shoes Irvine… what do you say? As for facts, while I didn’t attend the talk, you can read this article here.

And, well, I’ve been at the receiving end of some racism as well over the past week. I don’t want to talk about it, and the perpetrator was someone well-known to be racist and well-known as the Department Jerk, so it’s not a reflection on attitudes here in general (though I’ve also heard tales of a racist European here), more so since the jerk was told off quite quickly by folks around me. I was very very pissed, and still am, and while it irks me that I’m not displaying any backbone here by making the Jerk’s life miserable, the more I think about it, the more it seems to not be worthwhile. More so since it seems more of a display of jerk-ism than racism.

Then… I’ve sort of been attending these Women In Computer Science events on campus. I’d love to go to those conferences, but haven’t got an opportunity yet, so just the campus stuff for now. While it’s great that these spunky undergrads are taking initiatives to get highschool girls interested in computer science, I have mixed feelings about another aspect of this. I find I am not too comfortable with the whole “Computer science doesn’t mean being a nerd, y’know” line. Especially when that is peddled about to get girls interested in stuff like Informatics and technical writing and software testing. For one thing, it makes Informatics, technical writing and software testing look like the poor cousins of ‘real Computer Science’. For another, it says folks in computer science are nerds and for some reason, being a nerd is a bad thing, and more so if you are a girl.

If your girls are not choosing parallel processing and database systems as a career because it requires being a ‘nerd’, there’s something wrong with the whole system, not with the girls. If your society says working hard is a bad thing, or choosing not to do something just because it’s hard is okay, something’s wrong with that attitude. If your society doesn’t reward persistence with anything but social ostracism, there’s something wrong with it, and that’s what you have to work to correct. Not these band-aid measures. Like getting women to do the ‘easier’ jobs in the field and saying ‘Oh, look, we have a fair representation of genders in our workplace’. This is just passing the buck, and it doesn’t solve any damn thing.

That said, I sometimes wonder if I’d've been better off in some artsy job that involved writing features and blurbs and reviews, meeting Marxy members of the literati, talking in abstractions, finding phallic symbols in the opening scene of Lion King, making Free Binayak Sen posters and Tshirts, and sending pink innerwear to some remote address in North Karnataka. That, when I’m not viewing people from other countries as objects in a museum, acting in plays which use just one prop and have plenty of monologues, and lamenting the cloistering morality of the middle classes of India. I possibly wouldn’t have been as analytical as I am now, but maybe that’d be a good thing; it’s blissful to not know the extent of your ignorance about the world.

And then I look at one of those Indian-hippies-discovering-themselves-in-the-US, with their Jayanagar-4th-Block-Pavement junk jewelry, their ill-fitting kurtas and their totally clashing salwars, their desperately-in-need-of-a-comb hairdo, their lack of pride in themselves, and back at my Zen-ish accessorizing, recent trendy haircut, clothes designed to blend in rather than stand out, and strict no-caffeine-as-wake-me-up rule and decide the change is totally not worth it.

Off with ‘em Misconceptions!

I entered the United States mentally prepared for things that would surprise me. But oh well, I still end up shocked, surprised, all that jazz.

First, about Americans. All I knew of them was that Indians worked rather hard in American companies. If something had to be done, it HAD to be done, even if it was 2 am on a Saturday morning. I don’t yet know if that’s a misconception, but here’s what I know: Everyone, EVERYONE without fail just clears off the California Institute of Telecommunications and Information Technology building at 5 pm sharp. And the place wears a deserted look on weekends. DESERTED. Yeah, there might be exceptions, but the place is tombish as the evening wears on.

And then about geekdom. I thought they were the bottom rung of society, etc. But then, I see Tshirts that say “Talk nerdy to me”, and “I Love My Geek”. And a few other things besides… geeks are the cool guys here, or so it seems to me in gradschool. But not that much geeky joking around. Not here, atleast. I thought I cracked the least geekiest jokes, while I was at NITK, atleast when you compare me to a SaiO or folks from Tronix ’08, but a post-doc with a double PhD from two continents and several other geek qualifications besides told me of late that I crack the nerdiest jokes he’s ever heard. ‘Plenty more where I come from’, I said.

And mad scientists. I attend classes taught by one of them. Contrary to popular perception, they are the most sociable people, some of the funniest I’ve met. And they have the best sort of communication skills I’ve ever come across. Even the most complicated equations take on a pleasing face when they are teaching you about those. They’ll talk to you for ages about their research and it won’t be boring in the least. Even if it has nothing to do with what you’re interested in.And if you don’t understand something, you can ask a million times. Oh, their awesome patience.

And the utter lack of hierarchical barriers. Getting back to the aforementioned Institute which is deserted at 5 PM… I found that out the hard way. On my second day in the place, I had been staring at my monitor for two hours and stepped out for a breather at 4:55 PM. I came back at 5:02, to find everyone gone, and the lab locked up. My things were inside, inclusive of wallet, mobile, laptop, keys…. and the whole place seemed to be deserted. I was told by someone to go up to the top floors, where the folks with keys were. And they were the only ones with keys, apparently….. this place was out of reach of Campus Security too. And hurry, because everyone leaves at five. I did so. I barged into the first open door and disturbed a man having a no doubt well-deserved peaceful cupcake. I blabbed something about my situation and he cross-checked whether I really did belong there. And then came down three floors to open the door for me. And waited till I had cleaned out my stuff. “Thanks!”, I said, “What do you do ’round here?”

“Oh, just Assistant Director”.

But then, the overwhelming social equality or whatever gets to me. We’ve come a long, long way since John and Yoko sang “A very Merry Christmas / For Black and for White / For Yellow and Red Ones / Let’s stop all the fight”. No allusions to perceived skin colours. No shortforms of people’s countries of origin – those have already been used during WWII and hence been given rather negative connotations. And lighter shades are more common than darker ones. And all you Dalit Leaders who talk about affirmative action and social justice…. just live here for ten days and then talk.

And for some strange reason, all the evangelists are South Korean. All the churches I’ve seen are, too.

And there’s this one-toothed old black lady at the same spot on campus every day getting people to sign petitions to make weed legal and taxable.

Did someone say the Nano would increase pollution? Hell, they haven’t done a comparative study of the USA and India. It naturally comes to me to hoard every single scrap of paper I find, and at the end of six months, parcel them off to the raddiwalla. Here, you shred and throw. And what’s with the leaf-blowers? This post sums it all up for me. Oh, and how many eucalyptus trees! In the middle of the desert! Isn’t it common knowledge that eucalyptus depletes the water table?

And the houses don’t optimize on sunlight.. it’s the way they are constructed. If I want to use my walk-in closet or the bathroom, I need to turn on the light. Even if it is blindingly bright outside. And all the doors/windows face only one way. No cross-ventilation whatsoever. Oh man….

Every single building, device and vehicle here seems to be built for an emergency. The first thing that hit me were the doors (literally). You pull the door to go into a building. So that when there’s a disaster, you can push the door (which is more natural) to get out. Every single time I approached a door initially, my head would fill with images of a hundred screaming people pushing Bren Hall’s main door and spilling out.

I mentioned my blog in passing to one of my non-Indian friends, and he asked for the URL. I gave it to him… but couldn’t help thinking WHAT he would understand from this page. All the lingo I use, all the references I give on this blog…. they seem so localized. That’s just a realization… I’m not complaining.

A Happy Kannada Rajyotsava to everyone.

And something I’ve been wanting to embed on a blogpost from a long time.. here you go:

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Postscript in Pink

Or An Afterthought in Amber.

Or Revelations in Red.

I’ve been seeing so many such titles at the Jack Langson Library [At the university, all places have names associated with them - John Croul Hall, Aldrich Park, Donald Bren Hall, Paul Merage School of Business... and most of these people are wealthy donors ] – all American ones. So much that I want to write one like that. It shall have tales of intrigue, death, violent romance and some very lurid images on the cover. Which shall all be in the title colour – pink or amber… but for red, it’ll have to be bloodied letters on a black background.

I’ve begun reading one such book now. It’s Indian English writing, though. It’s called The Pangolin’s Tale. It’s about misfits in society or some such. It promises to be an exercise in practiced, controlled, subdued cynicism and intense self-revelation. Wish me luck in getting through it without shouting ‘WHAT’ every few pages.

The writing seems bad… too much overload of information in the first few pages. It seems even worse than “Renowned author Dan Brown staggered through his formulaic opening sentence”, as Prof Pullum put it.

Last week, I read A Case of Exploding Mangoes by Md. Hanif. It’s a rather endearing read, I strongly recommend it. The language, the narration are all so good that you even begin to identify and/or sympathize with the rather sadistic under-officer Ali Shigri, but the plotline… oh man, give me a break! The author tries to do a Rushdie… y’know, the whole “I was witness to the whole history unfolding… I even took part in it. Though of course, by a quirk of fate, or planning, or both, history doesn’t record me in the story”. It was great in Midnight’s Children, it was okayish in The Moor’s Last Sigh. Ground Beneath Her Feet was seriously unreadable. I think that sort of plotline has been done to death, and if I read another book like that, I’ll write a blogpost from the future about how the author died in an aircrash/fire/car accident/suicide attempt and I was somehow responsible for it in my own small way.

I’m wondering what book to borrow next. The library is rich in All-American reads. Not so much chicklit. Any suggestions?

Oh, and the postscript in pink…. here it comes. All reflective, long-winded and meaningless.

When all the songs in your playlist start making sense to you in some weird, long-winded way, it’s time to begin worrying. People are fickle. Natural, considering that our minds are all work in progress. No one really says what they really mean. And you can’t fault them for it – they themselves don’t quite know what they mean. And you wonder whether it is okay to be curt right at the outset, and cause some unpleasantness which will resolve itself with time, or hope that things change as often as people’s minds, and try putting up with it, or sending subtle signals, or, trying to communicate your feelings through ESP and hoping that the person will be receptive enough atleast through that channel… in other words, not really trying to resolve matters, and getting so used to being in unpleasantness that anything else seems out of your comfort zone.

And the Afterthought in Amber:

Everything happens for a reason. When you go through adversity, you curse your circumstances, your environment, and most of all, yourself. What you realize when it’s all over is, it gives you strength to soldier on in pursuit of greener pastures. It makes your happy times even more happier, now that you know how lucky you are in having good times. There’s a constant amount of discontent anyone has at any given time, and it’s better wasted on real difficulties than on something you make up just to feed that part of you which feels discontent.

The Revelation in Red:

You can get used to anything. Even killing.

Wow, three random titles and I come up with stuff on the fly. Heck, I should write a novel sometime, Indian Diaspora Writer ishtyle. It seems so darned easy.

IrWhine – The First Week

So it’s nearly been a week since I got here. It’s rather hard to get close to a computer so far, considering summer break’s still on, and Fall Quarter starts only 23rd. So labs are all closed, and the libraries open only some hours of the day. And, there’s been lots to do.

Car Car Car Car Ell-nodi car.

Remember that Kannada song that went like “Sontakk-beltu kattikondu / Freeway-nalli haarikondu / Exit-alli jaarikoLtaaro” ? Well, all the lyrics are true. You are dead here without a car. The distances are just a few minutes away by car, but unless you happen to be PT Usha, you can’t even begin to hope to cover the distances in less than an hour. Public transport is decent, but the frequency SUCKS. I feel more so because I’m more used to Bangalore’s awesome BMTC, with it’s awesome frequency and service.

And since everything is optimized for folks with a car, and everyone (other than me) has a phone with GPS, people generally don’t know to give public transport directions or walking directions. So this Chinese lady was accosted by four rather scruffy-looking Indian girls (us), and asked, “Is this the way to Tustin District?”, and I think she got freaked enough to just say yes and shake us off. But it turned out, that was NOT the way to Tustin District. We ended up walking thrice the amount we were supposed to. So that lady earned the ire of all four of us, who wished she soon crashed her car on the San Diego Freeway, lost her license and was condemned to use public transportation for the rest of her life.

There was one other time when we had to get to this place called Quail Hill, and took the bus going in the wrong direction. We stopped two ladies crossing the road to ask for directions. One of them said “Hmm… where is your car?”. We obv said “We don’t have one”. She was LITERALLY taken aback before saying “I don’t know how you’ll do it, but cross the Freeway and get to Sand Canyon”. Driving directions for people on foot. Phew!

A side effect of walking around so much in the bright California sun is that I’m very tanned. Very very. My mother would really curse this place and lament about who would marry her dark daughter who’s been burnt coal-black in a place which has no fairness creams.

Hiee! How’re you doo-innnngg!

The first thing you’ll notice is people are VERY polite to you. We went to a hardware store and asked the guy if we could get a key duplicated. He said “Sure! I’d LOVE to!”. The bus drivers wish you a good morning. The guy who  bags your groceries wishes you a good day. Random people on the street stop to enquire about you. Old ladies crossing the road with you tell you about their children and grandchildren. Everyone makes eye contact, everyone smiles.

I likes the Eendian Curry.

One look at me, and everyone asks me if I’m Indian. Other Indians quickly strike up a conversation here. And folks of other nationalities too. There was one Turkish lady who taught dancing at the school here, and a Tunisian woman who was learning English to take up TOEFL. There are many people of Chinese origin… it’s after all the University of Chinese Immigrants.

One Chinese-American old lady caught hold of me while I was waiting for the bus on Sunday, and said she likes the Eendian Curry, lamented that these forks and knives here are not enough to take big mouthfuls when you’re hungry. She likes eating from banana leaves, and described in detail how she rips apart the chicken served to her on a banana leaf with nothing but her fingers and teeth. She hated American Indian Curry, it’s not spicy enough.

And then she proceeded to educate me about the ‘Cast’ system:

In Eendia, you have the Cast. C-A-S-T. There is Tamil, there is Punjabi. Tamil-Punjabi no marry. Punjabi-Tamil, no marry. Only Tamil-Tamil marry.

I asked her if she’d like to marry a Tunisian, or a Japanese… and said the country is pretty diverse and people prefer marrying someone they have more in common with in terms of lifestyle. And that it’s been ages since we folks said balls to the Cast system, it’s about time everyone else does too.

And she had so much ire about the system, it scared me. And the loneliness was so palpable in her voice… talking absolute random stuff about yourself to the first stranger you meet…. I was scared she’d come home with me and ask me to make her curry.

Irvine chaala baagundhi

The omnipresent Gult community. Most of them working here. God, how many of them! Clad in sarees and salwars, and even nighties, they make me feel at home, and tell me how to make ghee from butter, what fruits to buy in what seasons, and a load of other timepass stuff.

Down in the dumpsters

People here discard a lot of good stuff. They don’t have the middleClass Indian mentality here. And also, when they are moving house, it sometimes turns out cheaper to discard furniture than to haul it along.
So a senior said the best way to find these pieces is to talk an after-dinner walk around the block. We did.

Within three hours, our bare house had a couch, a center table, a writing table, a bookshelf and a vacuum cleaner [which we discarded because the plug was broken and beyond repair].

…And other stuff

I’m managing cooking fine. My roommates cook well. There’s hardly a moment to myself, so I don’t yet feel lonely or homesick. I don’t yet have a laptop… I’m waiting for a Dellivery. I’m also waiting to pile up clothes so that I can finally go to the laundry and feel that my $3 was well-spent. I don’t have that much of antipathy towards Pakis anymore, considering a few of them helped me out when I was lost on campus.

The place is quite costly, and we keep mentally converting everything into Indian currency. I find I like Mexican food, and am rather glad for the proximity to Mexico, coz the green chillies are hot enough. Unlike other places where the ‘HOT’ salsa sauce will be extremely mild.

The pizzas are a blessing, and ‘No Meat, No Seafood’ has become my catchphrase in restaurants.

The South-East Asians shock me with their flawless skin, and I wonder what they do to keep it so untanned. I find there are a lot of people just like me walking around on campus on a Sunday morning taking random pictures. There are a lot of beautiful rose gardens on campus. The birds aren’t as scared of my camera as they used to be in India.

I see so many maple leaves here, it feels like I’m walking on the sets of Mohabbatein all the time.

I also seem very impressionable… when someone talks to me in an accent, I tend to talk back in that same accent… it’s unconscious. I’m sure I’m going to get killed one day or the other. Though not as brutally as that Indian on the Cathay flight who said “Ching-chong chinky monkey”.

That’s it for now. I’m rather hungry, and need to go get some lunch. Sorry, make that PREPARE some lunch.