Birthday Celebration in US

Reading the title of this post, you will react in one of the two ways, or even both:
0. Damn! I forgot to wish him? Many Many Happy returns of the day, Atul!
Response: Don't worry, it is never too late. And I'm not good with birthdates myself! So I understand your feelings :) Thanks for your be-lated wishes, in advance!

1. How old are you now?
Response: And to this I like to reply the way my Sensei, Master Meitatsu Yagi (i.e. my karate grand master), then 60+ yrs of age, used to reply: "I am n years YOUNG!" :)

As always, I usually am not very keen on celebrating my own birthdays. So, I did not do anything special on the birthday, but sit on my a$$ assaulting my keyboard.
But, the raccoons, i.e. friends from my department did come at the stroke of midnight with tons of enthusiasm, million dollar smiles and most important of all, a yummy chocolate cake!

Having fun! From My birthday in the year 2008

After extended photo session, I did the honors of cutting the cake. Then as a ritual, everybody put cake on my face, and then the legendary birthday bumps!

Do I look different? From My birthday in the year 2008

I would like to thank all of you who knowingly and unknowingly made me feel special, scrap'ed me on orkut, Wall'ed on FB, emailed me, sms'ed and called me up for a quick chat. Thanks everybody for your kinds words and wishes.

Compared to my first birthday here in US, this second birthday was much livelier. Have a peek at the album.

Much awaited move to new apartment

Couple of last posts have been centered around my internship experience. And I bet you are tired hearing about it now. I have almost convinced everyone that I spent 3 months of my Summer'08 in Heaven... But remember that every coin has two sides :)

I have been wanting to post about my new place ever since I moved in here, only because, in retrospect, the old apartment was nothing short of a hell hole, lest to mention the horrified experiences I and Vish had with our 3rd roomie! And the first step into this new apartment induced very strong positive vibes to start my new kicka$$ semester of Fall 08.

My Desk: From New place Coronado Apts

So, Saturday, 2331 hrs I landed in Pittsburgh, heavy hearted from the sadness of leaving California. I have been very very excited to move into a new apartment since it is located in a nice locality, good land lord, good management, neat and clean. And the maintenance guy had promised everything would be just good. At close to 1 am as I entered the house... WOW! New floor carpet, and new paint, I take a quick peek into the bathroom: neat, clean and NO wooden flooring! Great! I ran to kitchen, and tears of happiness started rolling down my eyes: Gas operated cooking stove!

There are 2 other types of cooking stove that are more common here: the ones with heating coils, which are just BAD. But nothing sucks more than the second type, hot plate kinds. Which is what we had in our old hell-hole. There wasn't a day we didn't manage to burn food on that !$#ing cooking stove. And not to forget how difficult it is to clean it. And now here I am, staring at the good old LPG gas operated stove... I light all the four burners and me and my room mate stare at it as if in trance!

Blue Angel: From New place Coronado Apts

As Saggy commented...

I'm sure that when Prometheus stole fire from Zeus and gave it to the mortals, he wasn't aware of the glee that it would bring to mankind!

It's been more than a month now and we are still more than enthusiastic about cooking every single day over those beautiful dancing blue flames. You probably can imagine how important it is to have a nice stove from the fact that I have been blabbering about it for almost most of this post!
And as Saggy again puts it, I think is might actually be TRUE:

I'm sure if someone asks me who my current 'flame' is, I'd answer "LPG-Blue".

Other good thing about new place is that it has ample of sunlight throughout the day in every single room, including bathroom, enough wind when you open the windows, and no trace of wind when you close the windows! No pesky little gaping holes around window frames to kill us during chilling winters! All in all, I've started liking this place very much. And so has my other 2 room mates. with whom I share the place. Another good thing is that me and Vish have managed to find a decent 3rd room mate, Madhav (Vish prefers calling him Rasiya and I call him Motu!), who is not a PITA like the previous a$$___e! Another plus about him is that, like us, he is C L E A N!

So here you go, have a look at the photos. They don't do justice, but will work for now.


The first weekend we moved into apartment, we had an impromptu dinner party, have a peek at the photos.

From An Evening in Coronado

A small, completely unrelated, news, I have updated some info on my homepage too. And I promise to put up a nice revamped version sometime soon.

See Also:
0. Move to New Place
1. An Evening in Coronado

Some Wonderful Moments of a Noogler

Last day of my internship @ Google was a mixed bag feelings: the joy of having worked with a great team at a great company, sense of achieving something in 3 months, joy of graduating soon, and at the same time the sadness of missing all the good things (read food) I had, the volleyball games, new friends, cycling, gym, and what not.

From Some Moments at Google

There are a hundred things that I did apart from regular work, and missed out on at least a thousand other things. I have put up an album that captures some of wonderful moments spent at Google. Especially an introduction to most of my co-workers: Some Moments at Google.




Related links:
0 Noogler's Point of View
1 Last Week of Internship At Google