I never really imagined that I had such a considerable penchant for stirring sheep into sheep seething with rage, as is evident from the array of comments that have been left on my previous entry. If I learnt of this earlier in life, I probably could have put it to such a lot of good use 
In any case, thank you all for your comments. A little bit of controversy and a whole lot of angry people is good every once in a while so thanks again for making it entertaining. One thing certainly has come out of all this – I know I have a wide readership that is watching me like a hawk!
In the meantime, my life is certainly proceeding at its normal pace so it is time once again to return to dwelling on that.
This last Friday was a fun day. The Engg. Career Center was conducting mock interviews for people who needed some practise and I decided that signing up for one would be good idea since I haven’t interviewed in the US before. I showed up for the interview all dressed up and admittedly, it went off pretty smoothly. I ended up getting a semi-job offer which I think I shall follow up on sometime but since the company in question is not exactly my favourite, I am going to wait. The good thing was that since it was a pretty standard interview, I got to practice all my lines!
In the evening, Booze and I went to the Saint Louis Symphony since it was the start of the season and as Wash U students, we get a pretty nice discount. As Booze and I were trying to buy the tickets, I wondered whether it matters where you sit in a symphony hall. Since most of these structures are built with acoustics in mind (like reverbration time should ideally be 1.8s), I figured it wouldn’t really matter, but I am not entirely sure.
The three pieces they played this time were by Britten, Haydn and Tchaikovsky. I haven’t heard of Britten before (not that I know anything more than a pittance about Western Classical Music but still) so I was a little more attentive as they played the piece. I have to admit that it wasn’t really to my liking – the music was very nocturnal and had a lot of sudden changes in tempo (the kind of music you would put in an action sequence in an English movie). The second piece was ‘Concerto in D Major’ by Haydn. What really struck me about this were the exquisite piano solos and the particular dexterity with which the pianist played. The music was very cheerful, had a quick tempo, and was very melodious (from my perspective) and I enjoyed it thoroughly. The last one was by Tchaikovsky and lasted a full 43 minutes. It was certainly very different from the first two and provided a nice contrast. I didn’t pay too much attention during this one, so I am ill-qualified to say much.
Friday evening saw most of the young Indian crowd in St. Louis descend onto Club Viva in Central West End for the Bhangra Party organized by NetSAP. I showed up too along with a bunch of friends, and was quite amused to see that there are actually so many young Indians around in St. Louis! I had a reasonably good time although I have to say that the DJ was not exactly the most brilliant one I have come across in recent times. I am no expert on mixing (and don’t even attempt to become one) but I assumed that it would be only natural that the music transition from one song to another as smoothly as possible. I least expected to be found suddenly hit by the realization that the song everybody was dancing to mysteriously went blank only to be replaced by another song with completely the wrong beat!
Talking about work, my thesis-writing is proceeding at a pretty rapid pace and Pavan and I are also making some good progress on getting our experiments done for the paper we plan to send out to USENIX so things look good on that front.
And finally to end, a note on the weather. In St. Louis, it is beginning to turn to winter again. Just this morning I walked out of my building happy to feel the nice 60 F breeze. I reminded myself about wearing shoes in a few days (vs the floaters I wear during the summer) and thought about the close to 2 years I have spent here in St. Louis. I don’t think I did very badly for myself – life was good to me, fortunately. But something tells me I am going to miss St. Louis …
