The Right time

Is there such a thing as "the right time"? The right time to tell someone you are breaking up with them, the right time to tell your boss that you're moving on to another ccompany. Chances are if you think the right time is when the person is happy, you will probably ruin their day. And if they are having a bad day already, you will just make it worse.. And I'm not equating the two situations above.. they are very different. But the underlying action is the same.
So my conclusion is.. there is never a right time for delivering crappy news. Just do it and get it over with..

Colorado Springs Winters

I live in one of the prettiest cities in this country. Being a Bombay gal, I thought I'd always prefer to live by the ocean.. and I still want to. But waking up to see Pikes Peak and Front Range mountains every morning changes my perspective a little :) The snow capped mountains standing at 14000 feet are gorgeous. I especially love it when the clouds gather at the top and sometimes even at the base. I've been up Pikes Peak via the Cog Railway and the ride up was amazing. Luckily, my parents were here at the beginning of November and we could make it. After that it starts snowing and it's difficult to get the train all the way up. Loved the view from the top :) Took lots of pics even though it was freezing up there!
The best part about Colo Springs winters as any one who has experienced them will tell you is that the sun comes out and since we are at 6500+ feet, it all melts. I haven't had to drive on icy roads a lot (but that's probably because I don't drive very often). The sun makes everything brilliantly white and that hurts your eyes so I have managed to acquire some sunglasses too!
Last year (2007) was one of the very few bad winters with blizzards and all. Luckily this year I didn't experience any of that. It started snowing in early Nov and now in early April we are getting light powdery snow. When I woke up this morning, it looked like someone had spinkled powdered sugar on the grass, cars, sidewalks,..like powdered sugar on a donut :)
Well, I have complained lots about the snow sometimes. But I guess there were only a couple of days when it got me down. Like the day after my parents and bro left after spending Christmas together. I slipped on a patch of ice - my mistake I was hurrying without looking and fell flat on my back. But when I thought about it later, I remembered the thugs in Home Alone and it was quite comically very similar to them slipping on the ice.. haha
I also visited the Air Force Acdemy which is right opposite my apartment. When you drive in, the visitor center is literally at the base of the mountains. When we were driving back, it looked like it was going to snow. The clouds looked quite dark and the colors of the setting sun played on them and it looked very picturesque.
No I did not go skiing this year but I definitely will the next time I get an opportunity. Even if it is only to dress up in some cute outfits :)

A book that made me cry..

It's been a long time since I read a good book. A book that could move me and make me feel for the characters. Maybe even identify with one or several of them. I picked up Jodi Picoult's My Sister's Keeper from my neighborhood library last week. I was not very impressed by Ms. Picoult's Picture Perfect or Vanishing Acts that much. But in this one she writes about a family dealing with a daughter Kate who has a rare form of leukemia and another daughter Anna who was conceived to be a donor/match for her sister. Anna is made to donate cord blood, lymphocytes and bone marrow so that her elder sister can live. As in many countries where the parents make decision s for their children, Anna's parents decide when and what she donates to her sister. The final straw for Anna is when she is asked to donate her kidney thereby introducing the risks of the surgery to her and is when she decides to put her foot down and subsequently files a lawsuit against her parents for "rights to her own body".
The book tells the story from the mother, father, Anna and her elder brother Jesse's points of view. It takes the reader through the emotions felt by each of them; Jesse's frustrations at being ignored, the parents helplessness and difficulty in choosing between their children and so on. It also introduces a subplot where the lawyer and the guardian for Anna were supposedly lovers grown apart but that was unnecessary. The story is about giving an individual the right to choose. The legal and medical stuff did not keep me that occupied as the prospect of what Anna would do - whether she would be given the choice.
The courtroom scene where Anna reveals the reasons for her lawsuit were surprising. It showed that she was not doing it to just get the attention but because Kate wanted to choose not to live this way from treatment to treatment. And only Anna could give her what she wanted - a way to end her life by refusing to donate the kidney. The author subtly does not include Kate as one of the storytellers and makes her voice heard through Anna. Ultimately, the ruling is in favor of Anna but in her own words nobody wins even if she wins.
The part that made me all teary was the final few pages. While returning from court there is an accident and it is Anna who suffers a fatal head injury. the doctors in an ironical twist of fate ask her parents whether they would consider to donate her organs. And it ends up that her kidney does go to her elder sister who presumably lives a long life with Anna's ghost to haunt her. Not the other way round.
I felt for Anna as well as for Kate. The book was about doing the best for your children, for your sister, for yourself. And when decisions you make have conflicting interests, there is no right answer.

Light of my life

After the proposal. Grinning away!

California Dreamin

So its almost the end of my three month internship in San Jose. and i can say ive learned quite a lot. About mashups which are web applications that allow you to combine content from two or more web service/RSS providers. And quite a bit about me. Now when I arrived in San Jose I dint know anyone, specifically any Indian. This was so different from last year when me and a bunch of guys and gals from Bombay all boarded a plane and headed to ASU. This time I was really on my own. So Ive learnt to appreciate my own company during this time.
I really like California. Its so green as compared to the deserts of Arizona. Dont get me wrong. I love Tempe and Sun Devil Stadium and the Town lake. But they have beaches in California. Id take the ocean over cactii any day.
The only thing I haven't liked about my internship is the fact that quite a lot of times, the people would speak in a regional language that I ofcourse do not understand. Especially since I am not from that country. Now I have seen this happening in so many places. But I always maintain that if there is a mixed group of people, everyone should converse in a language known to all. Usually that language (in my case) happens to be English. I mean isn't one of the benefits of being in an ethnically diverse working environment, is to learn about people different from your own culture. Sadly this did not happen in my experience and I gave up trying to communicate with them, thus also losing out on learning some of the research ideas they would talk about only in their language.
Overall though I liked being there and I also took a trip by myself to San Francisco to see the sea. My boyfriend calls me a water baby. Maybe something to do with living in Bombay so close to the sea. I also went to the Yosemite park, met up with some of his friends, shopped and took care of myself. So I think my California experience was a hit.
Hope I can return to this place someday..

Off to a good start?

My first blog. yaaay. Partly inspired by my boyfriend who writes amazingly. I have also been given rights to edit (some of) his blogs and decided after quite a while to write something by myself. Now every gal needs her space.. on the web hehe.
Well lets see what thoughts come to be penned down here...
A quote to think about,
A path with no obstacles probably doesn't lead anywhere.