Posts

Showing posts from 2009

Book Repository Online

My son is a voracious reader. He devours tinkle digests in 1 hour. His last tough book was Raold Dahl's Witches. He has almost finished the entire secret 7 series by Enid Blyton and he has read and re-read the entire Asterix and Tintin collections. We also have our first serious difference in literary taste - I abhor Tintin, seems too much running around and absolutely not funny. I never took to it. Is it a male thing? But, he has internalized the two series so much that he has a skewed idea of history, economics and social set up all from the Gaul point of view (Tintin is not as influential). And he is only 7! I am desperately looking for the other books from the same publications: Iznogoud and Leonardo is a Genius. If anyone can tell me where to buy these series without shelling out a fortune in India/America/England please let me know! I also want to go back to the halcyon days when we used to read books together. I thought of Swiss Family Robinson - he would find it
I come to the end of my first semester as a PhD student. I am exhausted and humbled. My final exams were very hard! I guess studying towards exams is a habit not just something that occurs automatically when one does a lot of research in the area... Now, how do I get off this ride? To cheer me up, I have started another mania via my sister in Bangalore. There is a 10K run in Bangalore on 31st May. I am going to participate and hopefully complete. So today I started my training. 4 km in 40 minutes at IIT Stadium followed by pranayama. I did this after I dropped my son off at his cricket camp at 6 AM. Now sitting at my desk at 12 am I am a tad sleepy and my calves are tired and my breakfast was inadequate (Oats and a 1/2 banana). I have made Spinach paratha and cauliflower curry for lunch. I have also cooked a small bowl of soybeans towards a salad... Can't wait to get home to it.

further changes

Image
After dilly-dallying as a research associate in IITM for more than 2 years, I finally took the plunge and signed up for the PhD program in the area of Bio-Medical Engineering. I feel totally out of control right now. I have 2 graduate level courses, research for my phd area, an audit course in circuit analysis and finally helping out with my old project in the biotech department. This in addition to taking care of my almost 7 year old, cooking, cleaning (only when I feel like ;), Guitar lessons and working out if possible! I had to do a complete body check up before joining the PhD program. I discovered to my utter horror, I have marginally high cholesterol (201), low HDL (40) and high LDL (136 against a limit of 120)! My sisters HDL is low too. So we are on the bandwagon of healthy cooking and regular workout now. Neither has actually started, but the intentions are very much there. As a first I will present a multi-bean salad inspired by Smitten Kitchen . My version: Soak

The end of an era

It is a year since my last post. Life has changed dramatically in the last year. My mother gave up her battle with cancer and passed away in July 2008. One of the last serious books she read was Robert Pausch's The Last Lecture. She died 4 days before him. She may not have had as grand a life as Dr Pausch, but she was no less admirable. Her life revolved around my dad and the three of us sisters. She always held on to only our best behaviours. She did not hold on to the irritations, anger, resentments caused by our worst behaviour. We are not very sociable and tend to limit our interactions to just the 3 of us, our spouses and our parents.  She was our gateway.  She was also our buffer against the nuttiness of our extended families. We tended to treat her like another sister; Unlike most of her generation, we never gave her unconditional obedience or deference. I hope she didn't mind that.  But, in retrospect, that is what made her such a integral part of our lives lon