Wise men from the mountains say, a lot can happen over the course of 4 months. And that is indeed true. Although it has been that long since I last updated this place, quitting was never my intent. So here I am, back again with a genuine attempt to kick this place out of the slumber that it comfortably decided to settle for. Obviously, the look, feel and of course the URI has changed. I realized that the server where I had this hosted was a little too much on the pricey side ever since the emergence of the “clouds”, that I simply had to move out of it. And this place seemed an obvious choice, while I worked out the logistics at the new place .
Going back to the original quote, the wise men were indeed right this time (too). A myriad of things happened over the last 4 months: so much that I started to write about them and I got lost thinking about where to start. Now that can be taken as a partial excuse for this hiatus. Every single one of them could be a post in itself and I absolutely plan to do that soon enough. But for now, let me make an attempt to categorize them a little bit. Travel – well that was perhaps the biggest of them all. For once, I decided to do a little more justice to it, than I would have possibly done on an otherwise long and harsh Winter followed by a delayed Spring. It all started with a visit to Montana and the Yellowstone National Park, amidst the heavy snow in early March to try my hands on a snow mobile. What resulted was a 300 mile drive through layers of snow and ice in Billings and Bosman, followed by a 80 mile crusade through the “snow filled” wilderness of Yellowstone National Park, on a snow mobile, watching the Elks and the Bisons wading through the snow and the Old Faithful erupting every 90 minutes. A four day trip was all I had, but every second we spent was truly worth. So here’s to the first of the adventures,
Then came the early glimpses of Spring, just like the hedgehog had predicted. But the glimpse was all that came in March. A Texan summer was what followed the Montana trip. And that had to wait till the middle of May, when my brother decided to graduate. This meant two things – a trip down to Texas, a state or more appropriately put, a side of the country that I’ve never been to and chance to reignite my yearn to get back to school. With the summer heat slowly starting to settle in, Texas was perhaps not the best of places to be. The “vastness” of the state took me by surprise, although I was fully made aware of it. The barren lands and the enormous landscape that decorated the highways were strikingly different from the heavily populated, narrow lanes of the East. While I save the rest of the trip for yet another post, here is to the Texan university and the Texan summer.
The graduation ceremony also meant that my family was in town. And it comes without saying that “sight seeing” was part of the agenda by default. And for me, it meant a chance to be a guide to Philadelphia. Now having been adept at being a guide to New York City, catering to a diverse range of people from party goers to art lovers and from hikers and bikers to tourist photographers, Philadelphia was a first time. But this also gave me a chance to see places in Philly (as it is “lovingly” known), that I had been pushing off for a really long time: one of which was Philadelphia Museum of Art. With the weather being at its monsoon best and activities, hence, being restricted to indoors, the museum was a perfect plan for a day long “picnic”. What followed it was a 5 hour journey to the world of art – paintings from the 17th century realism to the impressionism of the 19th century and to the “crayon filled” empty canvases, also known as modern art of the 21st century, sculptures from the Fall of the Icarus to the Pythian Sibyl and even an entire temple from South India! The place left such a lasting mark that I enrolled for a year long membership at the museum! So here’s a fleeting glimpse to what I witnessed.
The last 4 months also saw me going back to the classroom albeit just a 3 hour weekly session. GMAT was the topic of the 9 session long class that last all the way to the end of May. I had long been trying to make an attempt to prepare for GMAT and the unpredictability of my work schedules meant that I needed a classroom study to train to focus on anything other than work. And this proved to be just what I wanted. Although I need to follow it up with more preparation and ultimately the exam itself, the class proved to be a refresher and quite a starter.
I also managed to finish quite a few books. The travels and the transits in between meant, I had the time to do so. But let me save those for someother day, since quite a few of them have been impressive enough to be rewarded with a post in itself. So here’s to what hopefully is a new start to my blogging – Its summer time!
Idle thoughts 