Winter Blues

It’s been a while since I last updated my blog.  There was water spilt over my laptop some days after I last updated this blog. I was left without a laptop for a month and then I got busy with exams, work etc. I can only give more reasons but I’m gonna stop here. I’m not going to write the depressing story of my internship search, for I have another depressing story to write in this blog: The Winter. Also, I’ve planned to include some of my pictures and those of my friends.

Winter was my favorite time in India. I loved winters because we could stay outdoors for long time and its very pleasant in the evenings. To go out on an evening walk with a coat on, was one of my favorite pass times back in India. Well, not any more. Winter here is very harsh. With temperatures staying below 0 degree centigrade for most of the time and chilly wind (above 30mph) because of the plain landscape, forget a casual walk, I don’t even feel like getting out of the house. Two of the most boring aspects of winter are wearing coat and wearing shoes. Add thermals to that, its like you are being constrained while walking as if you have to think twice before you walk a step forward. Only relief was when we had a snow storm last week with temperatures touching –30 degree centigrade and winds blowing at 50mph and 18 inches of snowfall in 36 hours, school and office was suspended for two days.

Below are some photos that we took outdoors during winter just to get a hang of how its here. Look at those trees, all dried out!

I don’t know what they are up to or asking for… Ayan and Aravind…

Beside me is Aravind, and I had a splash of snow on my face while posing for the photo.

As for winter vacation, stayed indoors..

As you see the room is all messed up. BTW that’s my roommate Ayan on top of Arun.

At times we go to a popular café' for an evening chai (interestingly what call “tea” in India, people here call “Chai”!).

When we went on an operations club meeting

New faces here are Elaine (beside me), Somak and Sino

Most of the photos we took were not sufficiently lit as the sunlight during winter is sometimes for less than 6 hours and during those 6 hours we are busy doing something else.

Have a look at the map below. My life has been restricted to that small red circle in the entire campus.

An enlarged version of the above map

 

YONG (Yongs hall): This is the building where my office is located

PMU (Purdue memorial union): This building has a host of eateries including Starbucks.

RAWL (Rawls Hall): This is the building for MBA classes and we have our meeting rooms/ study rooms here.

All the three buildings above are connected thorough an underground tunnel. That reminds me, when I came here in the beginning, I thought the tunnels are useless and a waste of money, especially after I realized that they are air-conditioned. But now I see so much value in those. I’m mostly staying indoors during this time of the year and its making me claustrophobic. Seriously, My routine is like I come to Rawls at 8am, take off my coat and keep it in the coat locker, hop through all the three buildings through the tunnel for attending classes, working in office, studying / meetings at school etc. I am so used to the tunnels now that some days I don’t even get to see sunlight.

On the lighter side, I have also included in the map, the location of Harry’s. Its called Harry’s Chocolate shop. It’s one of the favorite places of every Purdue alumni and students because one, its located right next door to our school and two, Harry’s Chocolate shop has been serving liquor to the students since 1919. I think the busiest days at Harry’s are during our exams because our exams are usually held  in the nights like our last exam on Monday was from 7 pm to 8:30 pm. So, people after the exam just get out of the school and get into Harry’s. This is a slightly outdated picture of inside Harry’s taken on Heather’s (beside me) Birthday, which was a long time back. Beside her is Josh and Amber.

Its elections time at school now for the next three days. Josh is running for the President of Graduate student association and I’m campaigning for him.

I thought of writing about winter because contrary to popular belief in India about snow fall, it doesn’t get any exciting. It gets worse when you fall on sleek of ice formed on footpaths (side walk as they call it) and cramp your hand or leg. Even worse is when you break your laptop as it happened with my roommate Ayan. In fact the winter has had such an impact that I wake up, sometimes, with dreams of walking on lush green grass (I’m not kidding). So, that’s pretty much of life here. I’m signing off hoping for an early spring.

P.S.: I’m running on really tight timelines with 20 hours/ week GA, internship search, case analysis with three different teams and hence, I’ve not been able to update my blog. But in future, I’ll try my best to keep updating this blog.