Snowy day in Cambridge

Snow in Cambridge by Sahil Kirpekar is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.

the global class

Doing my Masters program in Bioscience Enterprise at the University of Cambridge, one thing that has hit me in my class is the kind of geographical, cultural and linguistic variation that exists today in the world of business and academia is mind-blowing. Being amongst the top 3 universities in the world, it is quite expected to attract interesting and talented people from everywhere, but a total of 19 nationalities amongst the 25 students in my class. So, a term into the course and having made many great and some not-so-great friends amongst my class-mates, I have definitely learned more than I ever knew before about these countries. Some of the cool trivia I picked up so far has been :
- Estonian is a language
- there are no border entry or visa checks for anyone at Andorra
- the desert heat in Jordan is one of the largest parties in the world
- South Africa has eleven official languages: Sepedi, Sesotho, Setswana, siSwati, Tshivenda, Xitsonga, Afrikaans, English, isiNdebele, isiXhosa and isiZulu

Another thing that I realized was that, as cliched as it sounds, the world is really a much smaller place and in the concept of six degrees of separation. I mean what are the chances of a person like me who has never lived for longer than a few months outside India and an Afghan in my class living in California who has lived in California all his life knowing two people in common.

At the end of this term, I would like to confirm what my course director had mentioned at my interview for the course last month. I have learned as much if not more from my class-mates as from the people lecturing.

Red Ivy.. St. John's College, Cambridge, UK

fundamentals of swimming...

is swimming as important as it seems? i mean apart from the survival bit; the part where we as humans need to learn it to improve the chances of survival, of the race as a whole, to keep the race going...
i am talking here about the aspect of swimming purely from the point of view of an activity by itself - not leading to any foreseeable material gains. in short, swimming for pleasure. i think swimming is something that each one of us should indulge in for purely the pleasure part of it - unbridled hedonism.
the sad part of it that some of us are totally oblivious to the pleasures of engrossing oneself in one of those absolutely indulgent swims - and sadly only because they have not actually let go of the edge. They have been only making impressions of the swim from afar and are too paranoid of making their first sway into uncharted territory lest it doesn't live up to the expectations. Little do they realise that by ogling at the beautiful water from the edge and staying away from it inspite of realising from the lovely, cool splashes that the swim will be potentially amazing, they are losing out on the best time, place and situation they can have the first swim in...
so before the day comes when swimming will be only with the survival point of view, let us explore the pleasures involved in it, with no restrains, with no worries. the first swim - as anxious it causes one to get, could be the harbinger of a totally new phase in life...
cheers!!!

POST ORGY BLISS...

WELL.. WHAT BLISS!!! HALF PAST 3 PM... BANG IN THE CENTRE OF THE STREET IN DA STREET IN dARJEELING...

the seven year itch...

the sunday express 'eye' last week had a special feature on the seven year itch.. originally featuring marilyn monroe... but this article mainly emphasising on the itch making you want to do something different from what u started out with.. something that u think at that point in time are cut out to be doing more than anything else in the world... It featured the typical stuff.. people who started out as regular accountants and ended up being musicians.. and the sort..... got me thinking though...

i mean ... does changing over from medicine even before you actually start out practising it count as a change in profession....why not they would say.. cause the training in med school has always been taking as granted u working as a professional doctor rather than getting the subjects being taught academically stronger... and the expectations are always in that direction too...

well i don't think that i was ever comfortable with the thought of doing the same thing all my life.. people say this is the voice of youth, immaturity and all that.. but seriously, i can't get myself to stuck to the same routine for more than a few years.. m sure the performance bit would be going lower by the day after that... unless u are really crazy bout ur job or you are extremely boring... or both!!!

so what is to be figured out is whether i am allowed to include myself in the seven year itch list (six actually)!!!

on that note... later...

the smell of fresh salmon...

i hope it is not too offensive or too intruiging a title for my first post ever. but it is just what is at the top of my mind at the moment..

i dont think there could have been a better time to get my first post here going... 2.42 am ... on my bed at home for a change... i mean considering my constant unprovoked travelling fits... then, suddenly you take time to get used to vegetating like this.. better than pondering?? i'm not sure!!!



i mean the other day i was making a list of the things i want to do during these 5 months of seeming nothingness.. and this whole list of stuff comes up. but the whole problem lies in the inertia that is perpetually building up.. apart from those sporadic spurts of enthusiastic activity towards one of those things in the list...



having an admit to one of the world's top 5 universities seems like bliss after seeing the terrible scenes across the country created by students protesting against the dead wall of the government's newest caste based reservations... but then the whole part about running away from the situation keeps hitting you....



more on better stuff later....cheers!!!