The year that Was... The Most Awesome Year yet

On a High after giving the Dec2009 CSIR when we all got back to Pune in Jan, all the whole of bioinfo batch wanted to do was: Masti. January seemed to be dedicated to it. The batch went to an overnight trip to Vasota. Considered by far the best by many, not me though. The guys next went to Purandar Fort. One of the cheapest and definitely the most spontaneous of our treks. Not satisfied yet, our next trek was to Dhak Bhairi. The most toughest trek ever and that is a unanimous opinion. By now we all had got our guides and projects. Buried somewhere within the GBs of Pics that we took, was our Literature Review which we were supposed to be doing. But hell May was far off, who cared about the project anyways? :)
Next came Feb. We took the first Sunday off from trekking. Bad decision: in the evening we guys got robbed at gunpoint by Somya at Chatuhshrungi. What a start to the month. Bloody ended every damn plan prematurely, before we even thought of it. It was a bad bad experience. Well in any case it put an end to all our masti. Everyone came right back to their ground states, I infact went into an underground state not being able to bear the loss of my Corby!! Feb went off with rounds of police stations, people, contacts, hell we even got to talk to Somya through a contact in a desi bar. Said he had sold our phones coz he needed 2 laks.
March came and i applied for my passport. On Holi the good news came that Somya had been caught by the police and they had recovered our phones. Man the joy and happiness of it all. That was a gr8 holi! Like the first Fri of every month, this one had already been taken up by Wangikar Sir. I had a lot of preliminary data processing to do. On top of this the police tells us to get orders from the courts to get back the phones. March went in courts and coding.
April started and i started to actually code on the real algorithm of my project. I thought I could finish it in 2 weeks. The rounds of the courts and police stations continued. I kept on coding. I took a whole month to write down 750 lines of code and it ran terribly. It was slow, it was buggy, it was bad coding. By mid april i was supposed to get my passport. But Hell it had gotten stuck in the Police Stn! More rounds of Police Stn then. But we got our cell phones back finally :)
With May the temperatures started getting really oppressive in the Lab. I Optimized my code so that it ran like a sports-car. It was lighter - 450 lines and faster. Time had come to run it on my whole dataset. This was also the time when all my interviews were gonna take place and the sem end theory and practical exams were scheduled as well with the Project presentations. Unfortunately the class performance was so bad that the project presentations were shifted to Jun end. Which was good :) May was a crazy crazy month. I literally jet setted my way about Mumbai Pune and Bangalore for PhD interviews. Whats worse is that i failed in all of them :(
June: I finished up whatever was my project. The results turned out to be bad unfortunately. Next scheduled was a trip to Bangalore for IISc interviews. This was a do or die moment for me. The story of how i did it is for another time and place but point is i DID it :) After that when i came back to Pune for the Project Presentations there was just no looking back. I had gotten the passport cleared as well by "donating" stationary to the police stn passport office. But atleast i did not have to pay money upfront in this corrupt country of mine! June ended MSc ended, a chapter of my life closed, a part of me remained back in Pune, the rest of me walked on.
July was the Month of Meeting Everyone. Met all the old friends. Relaxed at home cause the future was secured in IISc. July 28th touched Bangalore! New chapter started!
August. New place, new people, new food, heck even new clothes thnx to mums insistence. Pankaj was the only thing I already knew about IISc and am glad he was there. Made new Friends. Realised that again I had got a gr8 batch. Went for trips. Weekends at Ashwins. Exploring Bangalore. Meeting up with long lost childhood friends in a city stranger to all of us. The best Freshers ever!
September, broke the shell completely, lost control completely, exams came, i failed completely! On top of that personal complaints against me by A**HOLE profs with bloated egos coz of plugged A**HOLES. Was a bad time towards the end. To the rescue came Friends from Pune. It was time to go back to my roots. Go to a place where i could just be me. Turned out the name of that place was Urli Kanchan, a small village 35km from Pune off the Pune-Solapur Highway.
October: thats how it started, In Urli Kanchan. One of the most unforgettable nights ever. The night was crazy. No other word for it. 7 bikes, a field, more than 6 kilos of food, liters of a potent drink, 5 deg Cel, one small bonfire and 11 guys. After I came back from Pune I knew everything was gonna be just about fine.
November came and with that exams. Ones which I couldn't fail, infact a few in which I had to do exceptionally well. A month of some cold calculations and hard work regarding exams. A month also of the One Plunge taken with the eyes closed without gauging how high the fall was, how deep and cold the water was. And mid Nov! a gamble which paid off. Probably an event which has already changed my life forever ahead! Exams came in, I just gave em. And the ones in which i needed to, I just DID. Again!
Dec: This month had FAMILY written all over it and that too in BOLD! Came back home. Drove to Ahemdabad in the brand new SX4. The best car i have driven till date surely! Came back drove to Mahabaleshwar. Relieved some of the FYBSc Botany memories. This was the most offbeat vacations with the family. And now in the wee hours of the last day of this great great year, this blogpost.

Next Year: Jan is gonna start with a Bang called Honda Dazzler! Life is gonna be sweet. And like Calvin says: The Days are Just Packed!

Cocktails and Dreams

I have no idea why I put that as the title. Except that theres a feeling associated with that phrase. Its from the Movie Cocktail starring Tom Cruise in which he is a bar tender and he dreams of opening his own bar one day; which he does eventually and names it 'Cocktails and Dreams'. The phrase has always evoked a success-content-happiness-bliss kinda feeling. The kind I am feeling now. Life has become one long stretch of euphoria interspersed with satisfaction and I am gonna savor it for as long as it lasts.

1st sem in IISc, the first 4 months have been a whirlwind of course work, assignments, exams, failures, successes, late nights, early morning boring lectures, new friends, movies in library, dominoes orders, tp with tp gang, CSIR jhol and what not.

I have started getting my stipend. Will buy my own bike next Jan. Hopefully. Finally.

Life next year is gonna be just awesome.

I realised i have never blogged about IISc before. Maybe sometime later i'll tell the story of how i made it to IISc.