I am alive

BOMBAY (Feb 7): No, all ye faithful readers of this blog, I am neither dead nor without an internet connection. I was and still am busy with a paper submission deadline. Sigh! the things that people do in the name of higher studies. In order to not lose my meagre readership, I thought of giving a not-so-brief update.

I turned 27 a couple of weeks ago, amidst considerable fanfare, sponsored by my partners in crime at IIT. A couple of eggs were gifted to me, in the hope that atleast one of them would find its way on top of my scalp, but my ninja moves ensured that it was not to be. Some highly unconventional gifts were received, including one that questioned my sexuality, but moi loved them all equally nonetheless. This was the first of the series of birthdays that I have officially decided to hate. Twenty seven, as it turns out, is on the wrong side of twenty five, especially for a single man suffering from hairloss.

In other personal news, I managed to finish the Mumbai marathon in a decent (for me) 2 hrs 14 mins and this is the last sentence I will write about it, lest you all tie me to a stake and burn me for this shameless piece of self-advertising.

Finally, an old undergrad friend of mine has started a blog. So if you came here looking for examples of good penmanship, then please proceed further. I, for one, am looking forward to discussing gay topics like HTML templates, comment moderation, lack of readers and low pagerank with him. Ofcourse mutual backscratching in the form of inter-blog comments with him is tacit.

Asterix
PS: I had drafted the first half of a post on a topic, which I feel is spicy and cheap enough to attract comments. No wait, not just spicy, but TOI spicy. Something that the esteemed newspaper would be proud to carry on their front page. So please look out. And as usual, thanks for stopping by.

There and back again

Shortest post ever. Back to Bombay today! :) Immense joy results. Highest density of happiness per word. Will miss Delhi a lot but a few dozen beers should take care of that!

Status Update

Been a hectic last few days here at Pittsburgh. Came here on the pretext of attending a Machine Learning conference, but my achievements have been elsewhere. Be it a visit to Lake Erie to meet a friend, or to Niagara Falls (like a true desi) at the drop of a hat, or eating tuna dishes (3 meals in 3 days) - which is a mean achievement for a veggie like me.

The conference has been good, a little more down to earth than I expected, but thats ok. Got to meet some of the famous names in this area, whose papers I had read for years now. My blog backlog is huge now, with bloglines showing a list of more than 100 blogposts to be read. So I guess I will put the wireless internet to good use, while nodding and pretending to appreciate all the talks.

And I will answer this one question all of you may have -- I expect myself to take around 7-10 days to undo the effects of the conference and refill my cynicism tank. Postings on completely inane topics are expected around early to mid-July.

Asterix