There is no sleep here

Tis true. College = no sleep. Let me give you an example-

Pooja and I were done gymming (at 11 pm), and both of us knew there is a lot of work (studying/assignments) at home to do, yet both of us along with Kanu sat in Spoke and finished a plate of Nacho Fries. Nacho fries are the only way I like french fries- under lots of sour cream and salsa :D The night doesn't end here. We come back to Pooja's place and since it's raining outside, decide to have chai :D Now finally at 2 am, I am back home, and all set to begin studying for tomorrow morning's Staged Operations quiz. As I said, sleep has no place here :)

Footnote (or Header, considering it appears above)

The photos are up on my Facebook profile.

Also, I have new respect for Macs. I generally favoured other Apple products, but the Macbooks are quite intuitive and easy to use. Still very expensive, but now I can see some justification of the price. Thanks to Kanu and Pooja :)

It's been a long couple of weeks!

Yes. Finally!

It's pretty late on a Saturday night, and finally I have decided to update my blog! Forgive the delay, but it has been an unbelievable couple of weeks in so many ways! As I finished my Reaction Engineering lab on Thursday evening (Thursday is my worst day schedule-wise), I was dead tired, and realized that I just wanted to sleep at home. Except now home meant 611 Lambton Hall.

After New York, the only thing that happened of note was the Megabus ride from Philly to Toronto. Warning- MEgabuses can be more than an hour late. But they are really comfortable. It's like 9 hours of a Shivneri and no one sitting next to you. And wifi :) I can't think of more economical, comfy ways to travel. Immigration was at 6 am though :(

I entered London (the one in Ontario, not the cool one) on a dreary, wet day; not the best of welcomes. But the University of Western Ontario (henceforth referred to as Western or UWO) campus is just beautiful! Wonderfully green and quite big, it's a very nice "bubble" (as it's called) to live in. Lambton Hall is full of international students, and do we know how to party! Western is that kind of school: every minute we're not studying, we're partying. London's economy runs due to Western students; UWO may be located in London, but London exists for Western. Downtown is no bigger than Deccan area, but all throughout the week, Richmond Row is alive. Richmond Row is a line of clubs, pubs and the like, forever inhabited by Western students after dark. Partying is so big here, that lines to get in on Friday or Saturday nights stretch for miles! Okay, not miles, London isn't big enough, but trust me, they are very long :D

Lambton Hall is no less. All you have to do is knock on someone's door, saying you were looking for a party. If they don't know where it is, they'll start one for you. Trust me, this happened to us! If it's not a few frames of pool at the Spoke (the campus sports tavern) then it's the Sunday pot luck or the newest- the wine and cheese wednesday :D I love living here! Saying that I live in 611 would be a lie; I sleep there, but I'm just generally downstairs at my friend Pooja's place. We cook there, eat dinner there, read the newspapers there, even leech off Pooja's internet. (Fancy Mac people with their Airport modes! :P) As a result of this non-occupation, my room is unbelievably clean! My mother would be proud.

Speaking of pride, I get major ego boosts by cooking nowadays! It feels so good to fill your refrigerator with products of your own hard work, even if you're the only one eating it :D I can't deal with eating outside every day, it becomes dreadfully boring. Every week I think of what to get to make my cooking better. I'm a culinary work in progress! :P

After the first few days of non-classes, I was suddenly bombarded with a ton of classes and assignments! In the second week, we had four assignments due! That is preposterous! Classes here take the phrase "keeping you on your toes" too literally. I'm forever swamped with work. It's a good week if I'm done with my assignments for the week on Thursday :D But I'm not complaining! The idea of constantly using your brain appeals to me, and I love sitting in the library! I am particularly incapable of studying at home (I see the bed and I think of zzzzzz) so I'm generally in Weldon or Taylor Libraries. I love libraries!

On this extremely nerdy note, I shall end this post. I had the most frustrating day today though-spent 6 hours doing two assignments, of which we're not quite done with one! Argh. But then, I'm loving it :)

The City (Part Two)

We decided to take it easy on Sunday. Fewer commutes wouldn't make our legs ache as the day before. Right? No.

The first thing on our to-do on Sunday was the Met. The Metropolitan Museum of Art is one of the most famous museums in the world! In retrospect, I wonder how I agreed to go to an art museum (I'm quite aesthetically challenged) but it was a good decision. It is impossible to cover the Met in a day, or even a week. There are so many exhibits that Tai and I spent ten minutes figuring out which we could and should cover in 3 hours. The Roman and Greek exhibit was out (Tai just went to Italy in June) and the Egyptian exhibit is sort of a blackhole, so we saw the Photography section, along with the Frans Hals exhibit. I have very little knowledge of artists and art in general, but you could make out that Frans Hals was exceptional. As was the entire Impressionism section. A little harder to understand was the modern art. I think I have come to accept the fact that I will never truly appreciate modern art, but there were a few pieces that appealed to me, in ways unknown. David Smith in particular. Also, the Andrew Caro exhibit on the roof. All his work was made from scrap metal and what seemed to be industrial parts, but it was striking to say the least.

After 3 hours of walking non-stop, we just wanted to plop, so we went to Central Park, found a shady spot, and took a power nap. Relax happened, now refuel was necessary. So just off Madison Avenue, we found a great tiny coffee shop called Via Quadronno. Authentic Italian, it served us great coffee, an outstanding panini and delicious tiramisu. The best meal of the trip for me, even with the Malaysian fare at gobo the previous day.

Refreshed, we went to Empire State Building. I've technically been to the Building before, but I was still very excited. It's 1250 feet high, and took only a year to build. Seriously! From the 86th floor, all of New York city was in front of us (actually, it was around us) and man, was it magnificent! Something about being so high in the air, atop a feat of engineering genius, in the midst of all the lights and the skyscrapers gets your adrenaline pumping. Something very Fountainhead-isque about it!

Technically we did take it easy. Just the Met, Central Park and Empire State. Still my Achilles tendons were making their painful presence felt. We went to a relative's place for the night, where Tai had two bowls of shrikhand and I had one along with three scoops of ice cream ( eh, I'm on vacation, and the relatives are very good at the aggrah part!). It was 12 30 by the time we reached our beds, and crash is what we did, again :D

Footnote

I've put up photos of New York on Picasa, there were too many to put up here. Here's the link-https://picasaweb.google.com/prachi.a.joshi/NewYorkNewYork :)

The City (Part One)

What can I say? It is the most amazing city in the world. The title of best city in the world will never be objective, but New York City will be somewhere up on everyone's list. It never ceases to amaze me. I just came back from a weekend in the Big Apple, and even though it almost killed me, I've never felt more alive. The city has a pulse, an energy in the speed and vibrancy with which life is led in the city. I went from the peaceful sleepy silence of a town like Allentown to the fastest, busiest city in the world. Quite a jolting experience!

Now I shall cut the drama and vagueness and tell you why and how I had fun in the Big Apple :P I've only been to New York for a few hours everytime I came in the last few years, but this time we had two whole days at our disposal. To make our NY experience even more authentic, Tai and I didn't take the car in. As a result, we walked unbelievable distances! Even if you use the subway, you end up walking a lot in New York. At the end of both days, our feet were going to fall off. On Saturday, we first got tickets for....wait for it...Broadway!! More on that later :) After that, we found our way to the Brooklyn Bridge. In my opinion, it is the most beautiful bridge in New York. Constructed all the way back in 1883, it took a whole lot of great engineering and determination to get it up and running. After dodging the large number of tourists, runners and cyclists there, we walked to Wall Street where there were a thousand people. Seriously. The Bull, which is quite massive, was obscured by a number of people. We saw NYSE (not the most pleasant of places right now), 1 wall street, Trinity Church (apparently famous for the movie National Treasure), and the JP Morgan. So, JP Morgan was this fancy industrial millionare. His son decided to be even fancier, and in a show of super ego, built the Morgan building, which is just three storeys tall. Apparently they have so much money that they don't need to build any more floors. On Wall Street.

From there we went to Strand, which is a fantastic bookstore. The sheer number of books there is overwhelming. If I was ever let loose with money there, I'd buy half the place! The place does not end. Crossword and Landmark may have good ambience, but Strand outstrips everything because of the number of books.

And then it was approaching 8 o clock. We made our way to Times Square. In the true sense of the word, Times Square amazes me. The large volume of people is only eclipsed by the glitziness of the electronic billboards. There's not much more I can say about it, just look at my pictures in the Picasa album. One unusual thing we saw were Conversation Bowls. They were literally huge bowls of wood in which people could sit and chat. Very curious but quite cool.

A bagel filled with tomato and herb cream cheese later, the Majestic. Enter the theatre for possibly the greatest musical of all time- Phantom of the Opera!! Tai and I could hardly believe that we were about to watch Phantom. It was my first Broadway musical and there was no better first. Phantom is brilliant on so many levels- the costumes and sets are grand, the lighting is excellent and the music, the music was on a different level altogether. It is easy to forget all the music is live because the talent of all the singers is phenomenal. Actually phenomenal is a word I'd use to describe the show completely. The music had such an effect on me that everytime I heard the organ (the huge church wala organ) play the first few notes, I get chills down my spine. The Phantom himself has been portrayed so well- the perfect mix of darkness, evil, hurt, love and power. As you can see, I'm still completely enamored. Just hear the Nightwish version of the Phantom of the Opera song. And then imagine it live.

That night's performance was also the last for two long-serving members of the cast. By long-serving, I mean 17 and 23 years each :D So at the end of the show, there were speeches, flowers, a few tears and never-ending applause. We were probably two people in the audience who didn't know this beforehand, so it was a surprise :)

Still absorbed in the world of the Phantom, Tai and I came out, with Brooke Shields just getting out of the other theatre. The Addams Family now stars her, so we got a good glimpse. Apparently New York is star studded, but she is the only one we saw. :D Times Square was even busier, and it continued to be so till about 12 30, when we left. We were dead tired, and when we got to our room at two, we simply crashed. End of day one. I like this city :)

A Tuesday night out

Yes yes, I know the order of the posts is all wrong, but I'm just too lazy to put it up in correct order.

For those who are visiting Toronto ever, there is this street called Esplanade, near King station on the subway, lined with a bunch of cafes and restaurant. Quite buzzing till about one a.m. I personally recommend Flat Iron and a Firkin (that is the name), where five of us had a great time discussing everything under the sun! On paper (on the screen, to be exact) it sounds not very extraordinary, but new country, strange metropolis, newfound friends, and some excellent conversation made that night memorable.

Cheers!

Footnote- The five people being Anisha, Nikita, Ruchi, Rohit and I. It was Rohit and the girls :D

Moryaa it is :)

It's the first of September, 2011 and most of India, most specifically Pune, is beginning the 10 day revelry that is Ganeshotsav. A tradition started by Lokmanya Tilak (the celebration; Ganpati has existed since well, Parvati and Shiva :D) in Pune, it has now found a place in the heart of every Indian. And I found a funkier way to experience this, in Allentown, PA where my sister lives. On Sunday, my sister and her fiance decided to have a small Ganpati Pooja at their house. An email in Marathi was sent out. Potatoes and tomatoes were boiled, kurtas were ironed. My sister even wore a saree! :) The menu was extremely simple and marathi- batatyachi bhaaji, usal, masaale bhaat and saar. And a whole lot of sweets from different parts of India (those Tai and I didn't make).

There was something wonderful in the way these young adults (I don't know what the word for 20 somethings is) got together, and established their own Ganpati routine. Only three of us were Maharashtrian, none of us knew the proper order of ritual, yet everyone's devotion was sincere. So what if the aartis were read out(from Devnagiri as well as english script) more than memorized? We sang not only the aartis of Ganpati, but quite a few others from other parts of India. I'm sure Ganpati wouldn't mind. After all, he was the coolest one- lived well, ate a lot, and was quite smart (remember the race?). Anyway, I'd say it was more devotion to their culture, to their motherland that saw about 15 people come together and celebrate today.

Tilak must be happy. :)