NYC

Apratim and I reached Shatyaki's place at NYC on Friday evening. We went to the Empire State Building first to have dinner in a restaurant on the first floor of the building. The food wasn't good, not good enough for $35 each one of us had to pay. But the beer was awesome. Definitely something to try out if you are around. We went to the Times Square from there. It's was so lively. So many electronics sign boards with bright displays and so many people of so varying forms. It's one of its kind. The variety in people is something very prominent in NYC. When you are waiting to cross a road, just watch the crowd on the other side of the road and you will find Americans, African-Americans, south-Asian, Mexican, European, Chinese all mixed together. By the way, Indians and Chinese are everywhere, on all the streets, true for almost all cities in the US. However, NYC is more like our desi cities. It's dirty, not as much as Kolkata/Bombay but much more compared to Chicago. The rush in the trains, the crowd on the streets, the hawkers and stalls on the footpath, in a way it's closer to what we are used to. However, the buildings are much taller :). Once done with the Times Square, we went back to the subway station to receive Dipanjan. It will be unfair not to mention the subway of NYC. It is the lifeline of the city. The look of trains and stations are worse than that of Kolkata/Delhi. But it is massive. The number of lines and routes are just way way beyond what they have done in India.

On Saturday, since most of the people were asleep in the morning, Apratim, Shravan and I went for a walk. The office of the United Nations was the first stop. It wasn't that impressive and also we couldn't enter the campus due to security reasons. From there we went to the Grand Central to receive Shayak. Grand Central is like our terminal stations in Howrah or VT. It has a huge hall at the center. The stations are for both normal over-ground railways and also the subways. The platforms are distributed around the hall and along the passages towards the platforms or the exits stalls are located, mostly restaurants. It was also a very crowded and busy place, however remarkably clean. Shayak's train was a bit late (Yeah! Trains are often late in the US and not just NYC.) Once he was there we went back to Shatyaki's apartment. It really helped that his apartment was in the Manhattan (the rent is $3800/month cheap compared to Manhattan standards). Once all were up and ready, we went to a Pakistani restaurant to have lunch. The food was of of good amount and good taste. We went to the Central Park from there. It's another unique feature of the city. So much green in the midst of concrete jungle. The park is huge. I had already heard that it's difficult to walk around the entire park on foot. So never gave it a try. And anyway, we were full. So we just decided on a good place to sit and talk.

On Sunday, five of us went to see the Statue of Liberty. Since there was a problem in the subway, we had to use a detour to reach South Ferry station. We could see the statue from there but to get to the Liberty island, you need to take a ferry and there was a looooong line for that, majority of them were Indians I guess. There were so many saree-clad women. It was a bad decision to go there on Sunday morning. We would have to wait for 2-3 hours in the queue itself and then it would have taken around 2 hours for the visit. We concluded that it wasn't worth the hassle. We rather went to visit the famous Bull of the Wall street and then ground zero where the WTC stood before 9/11. It's now occupied by bulldozers and cranes and materials for the ongoing construction work. From there we headed for a Bangladeshi restaurant which had some amazing preparations. I sometimes wondered if we were more passionate about the places in NYC or the food. That night we had a very light dinner and went for a long walk by the river after we met two of our batch mates from IIT who are working there. It was a nice walk.

We got back at round 3am. By the time Apratim and I left at 7:30am to catch our flight, everybody else had already left the apartment. We made sure that Shtyaki was awake so that he didn't miss his office. He is doing an internship in Mckinsey and his office hours are 8am-11pm. We had asked him if regular employees also do the same. He said, “No! Regular employees work less number of hours. 11 hours a day, but 7 days a week.”

(will put the pics soon)

Quals over

I have spent so many posts writing about pre-quals, it would be unfair if I don't let you know that I finally passed it; both subjects. It's a relief. Well, it was a relief after the exam itself. I knew that I had done reasonably good, but still you can't be sure until you get the final verdict. Passing the qualifier was all the more important because, as I reflect on my stay in the US so far, that is probably the only thing I have achieved (got away with). I got my advisor decided, only one month past the second semester beginning and there hasn't been much (I would rather say 'any') progress in my PhD work. Now that I have passed the quals, the university can't throw me out of the PhD program but then I might end up with no funding to support myself. No reason to be happy too much! I hope and I fear that I really get started this summer. Ahoy matey! Lots of work ahead!

Lucid Dream

Have you ever had a conscious dream? A dream where you could take decisions, could influence the flow and most importantly, you knew that you were dreaming? If that sounds utterly impossible and confusing, you are not one of those kind, the people who experience 'lucid dreams'.

I found it quite perplexing when one of my roommates last year talked about it. I thought either he was exaggerating or just trying to trick us with an outright lie. There were occasions where I had realized that I was dreaming but those were experiences of split seconds before I actually woke up. I thought it would never be possible to go through a full-fledged dream like that. But I have to change my mind now. Last night I actually had a lucid dream. I remember quite a few details of it which I do not for a normal dream. We were a group of friends riding bikes on a road and I took decisions on what to talk about or which route to take. Similar things happen in a normal dream too but there we experience it as a helpless watcher just looking at what is happening and when it turns into a nightmare, we suddenly wake up and get relieved realizing it was just a dream. But this time I remember chanting to myself 'you are dreaming, wake up' and I woke up. It sounds like myth, like sci-fi movies and I wouldn't have believed it till today. But I do now. It's a bit funny and a bit scary at the same time. Tricky game of our mysterious mind.