ephemerality

i met her after a long time

last i remember, she was naive

and i too hadn't touch my prime

as it happened, i saw her coming from far

she moved gracefully, like that of a cat

her gait was dainty and quite at par

i think she had also seen me,

coz she was saying something, but 

for her cipher, I didn't have the right key

i had so much to say,

the only question was HOW

i finally decided, and put it for another day

she came closer and I could see her properly,

her lips were full like the petals blossomed

and hay had made her hair go curly

she touched my face lightly,

it first felt cold and then it felt warm

it was something like that, sorry I can't articulate it properly

in another second she was gone,

i just stood their transfixed, knowing well

my heart, she again managed to con  

i will meet her, may be after another long time

till then, i think- let her be free

she be free, the wind and i be content, the chime

  

Shangri La

once during one of my times amidst a river and a mountain peak

i wondered, what is it that we all seek?

a job where we want to go back to work on monday

earn enough to promise a gift to a loved one and then be able to pay

a body that without fatigue can run a mile

a tongue that is measured and never utters anything wile

a home where someone kisses after opening the door

and a soft bed to lie when we are tired and sore

food for the present day and for the morrow

and drink at times to celebrate or to forget our sorrow

a past that is like a book, full of learning

a present that is without yearning

and a future having a smiling mourning

to be near to the mother who tended us when we were young

and to be with the father on whose broad shoulders we swung

a friend on who we can rely for our life

and a special someone who through all our thick and thin,

was with us and who we lovingly call as wife

in the end it is the same that we all seek

now i understand how someone could be happy at the bottom

and another be unhappy even at the peak.

Friend Zoned

Sitting in the office, so far away from home do I realize how much technology has affected our lives. After a drab day at the office there I see Akash online and we start taking digs on Pachori. Before long Pandey joins it and there I was Rolling on the Floor Laughing in 5 minutes time and quite literally. I was given funny looks twice by people who must have heard my stifling laughs which sometimes were broken only by an uncontrollable burst of laugh. We were commenting on a string on Pachori's wall and having a group chat. I don't remember laughing that hard for quite some time, guess the hardest of the laughs are caused by the silliest of the things. The times the 5 of us spent in Jabalpur have been the best times of my life, this I say even when I've traveled to Amsterdam, Barcelona, Paris and Madrid.

We were fresh into the IIT, with shining dreams in our eyes, quite unmarred with failures, the world was our oyster and we were its pearls or so we thought. I do not say that we weren't a bit conceited and had a very small bubble around ourselves but nonetheless we were happy as a bunch of naked urchins in village pond. I have made many friends and been a part of many groups but it is this core group of friends for who my heart truly feels the belonging and the longing. One thing I have noticed is that ever group has-

• The Binding Agent- this guy is the cutest guy of the group or at least so say the girls. He keeps the group together, he is the mediator in times of crisis and most importantly reminds every member of the group of the other group members' birthdays. He is one guy who even in such a small group is the privy of everyone's innermost secrets. He is so wordly untainted that every one in the group measures his conscience keeping him in mind. He is the one whose approval we take for selecting a girl and before introducing her to the core group as the bhabhi. Not to forget that this guy is the poster boy, the fucking Aloknath of the group who is always selected anonymously to ask the parents for late night excursions and other similar things which parents usually say no to.
• The Chick Magnet- this guy is the most handsome guy of the group or at least so says he. He usually is quite adept in utterly useless arts like playing guitar and singing. As useless as you all might call these frivolities they are a big chick puller, nobody wants to admit. This guy gives you a lot of trouble when you try to keep up with him about the last pond he dipped his beak in. Whenever you take this guy home you give him a deep look and remind him the unbreakable Bro Code- "Friends' sisters are out of bounds". He usually tells you about his innumerable encounters with girls and the different Pick Up lines he used and you often stop yourself just short of noting down in a notebook every single thing that came out of his highly kissed and 69ed lips.
• The Protector- He is usually the biggest guy in the group, physically and otherwise. He is the coolest guy, coolest in the sense when ever you find that your backs are against the wall, you go to this guy. His amazing cool in such crunch situations do half the calming down and the other half is the manner in which he suggests you improbable solutions. Improbable they might be but they give you a hope in such a desperate situation and that is what matters. He might look big and appear more like a meat ball but this big guy has got a heart bigger than his brains and his @$%^, he won't mind me saying that his heart is bigger than his brains but I am sure he would mind me saying that his heart his bigger than his @$%^.
• The Nerd- He is the technology advisor, the career advisor and the teache's pet. He has solutions to your every academic problem and who constantly pesters you to improve your pointer, He is the only guy in the group who knows enough engineering to be qualified as an engineer. If you are in your office and stuck in a MATLAB problem, it is this guy who you ping and call. He is usually a guy who turns out to be the biggest prick when gets high and he gets high the fastest.

The there is also the fifth guy who more often than not marvels at the fact that what would have happened to him had he not found this group. He screws up academically and he goes to the nerd. He screws up in a fight and he goes to the protector. He screws up a date and he goes to the chick magnet. He screws up with any of the other three and he goes to the binding agent. They were there when he celebrated his highs with highs and his lows, also with highs. Whenever he has wanted to do anything be it remarrying his parents or organizing a charity event, all he had to do was to toss the idea within the group. The group that has never ever failed to raise his spirits, further his dreams and aided in achieving his ambitions. 

               Naive I was, one who had heard of but was unknown to friendship

               never did I imagine there would be some names constant on my lip,

               be it the beating sun, the smiling spring or the harsh of the winter

                  there they were with warm hearts and shoulders as strong as sinter  

post pre break up

some of the fortunate ones have the pleasure of being in love, more fortunate ones have had the the pleasure of being in love again and again and again...

someone left her, she didn't have a choice. she left me, i didn't have a choice, and now i get to leave Someone who doesn't have a choice either. as it happens we never think of having to leave or being left when we start, we just go on with the euphoria of having started. we start with an admiration of the person, then we collect the balls to contact, be friends, share our highs and lows and then we collect our balls again and say the right thing. i was with her for 2.5 years and She has been with me for almost 4.5 years. towards the end i knew the string was getting frayed by the day but i never realized it'll break someday. conversely She knows from the very beginning that i will eventually leave Her, yet She loves me with all Her might, of all the things She has taught me, the one i cherish the most is- how to love. She taught me how to love and i loved her with all my might. She was there when i developed my love for writing, She was there when i developed my love for squash, She was there when i developed my love for Ganga, She was there when i started to put my family at the top most pedestal and She was also there when i started loving her.

the other she was not happy when i shared my love with my friends, was sad when i developed a love for my career and was livid when i displayed my love for my parents, yet i loved her and She loves me. she watched me do good and at times better than her, i do remember that her wishes sounded frail but She teaches me that the way i can look farther is by standing on the shoulders of the giants and who can dwarf her! she tried to sequester me from my family, my friends, my passion and my aim and She has gifted me my friends, my passion and my aim. yet i loved her and She loves me.

when the distances grew bigger she made me aware of it. whenever i am away from her, She reminds me how close we are. when we broke apart i was crying and she displayed amazing control, it was the first time i had a heart break, it was the first time a dream cherished so lovingly, nurtured and kept safe for so long had broken apart, i cried for so long and i still get those intermittent periods of pain. so, what happens when we break up, now that the time is so excruciatingly near, i believe that we both would have tears but we will smile, She has had thousands of break ups before me and i now also have one experience under my belt.

i remember one fine evening on the Ganga ghat i made two promises, she broke my promise to her but i am sure She is looking forward to me fulfilling my promise. i  intended to fulfill both and i intend to fulfill one at least.

we will not leave each other as easily as i was left before, we are in love and we always will be, me and my Benares

kismet and kinara

I was walking out of the Barcelona Al Prat Airport and there was Joan standing with his characteristic smile to receive me. The evening went by pleasantly as it always is the case with him, he had everything planned. You want some pot? Yes, and then some 'good old timers'. While sleeping on the couch (the spare bedroom had bed bugs) I reflected on what had happened, I was received by my friend on the airport in a foreign country, I marveled on the fact yet again that I indeed have been blessed with very good friends.

The next day I went to watch the match between FC Barcelona and Valencia. I asked Joan the way to Cam Nou and he simply said, just come to the nearest metro station and you will know your way. The sight at the Metro station was one to see, it was like zombies at the time of holocaust, hoards of people wearing the Barca colors. All you could hear was "Xavi, Iniesta, Pique, Messi, Valdes", somebody asked me what do you say, 1-0 and I was given a look that did force me add "in the first 15 minutes" after my score prediction.

In the stadium it was a sea of masses, never have I seen a spectacle as that with the emotions running wild and crazy but in sync through out the stadium. Barca lead with a 1-0 indeed and teh whole stadium erupted, I can only imagine what those players in the center feel when they glance along the stands.

Barca played bad and lost the game, a miss by the Barca players and the shouts of 'puta' can be heard through out the stadium. The spectacle that followed after the loss was nothing shorter than those seen at the cremation Ghats of Benares. As I later said Catalans do bleed FC Barca.

There is something about friendship which we all must understand, it takes probably a small talk to become friends but it does take a long time of nurturing and knowing each others habits before we conjure that time less bond called as true friendship.

I met my old friends again. 'Old' here might be misleading, the first time I met them was merely 9 months back, I was skeptical and to a certain limit slightly apprehensive of how people in a foreign land be like. It was apprehension then and an honor now to have all of them assembling in the city center just because I was there. It was one of the best evenings I have had for a long time. Good beer, excellent food and more than excellent friends, what more can you want from an evening. The best investments are not the ones that you do in the Wall Street but the ones you do inside the walls and out on the streets, in your friends.

When I see trees from a train, they appear to move but in reality they are constant and it is us who move.

I was in Castelldefels back to the little town where my international tryst started. How much seems to have changed since I was there last. Things are still the same- the small train station, the RISA, the beach, the little town but i have moved on. So it still puzzles me at times who moves- is it us or the time? Or may be both, it is just a matter of personal choice in the end. 

Some call it the wheel of fortune, some call it the wheel of time and some call it fate, but all mean the same- Time and Tide wait for none. I however am happy to look at the blue sky and hear the sound of the waves rather than worry about either.

Requiem of a Dream

We were sitting on the ghats discussing how the life afterwards would be like, as it happens I said it is impractical and she said not. I said we are from different streams and she said yes. I said we might have different career preferences and she said I will prefer you. I said it would be difficult and she said she never likes anything easy and I couldn't say anything.

I took her hand and we looked at the houses on the ghats, a little downstream was a bridge and the sun was on the way down. The water was golden and the birds were flying low in a perfect formation. I said a useless fact about birds and their formations and I knew she was as uninterested in that fact as I was. To lift up her mood I said I would take you to Venice someday. Now if there is something which gets a girl instantly in a good mood, it is the promise of being taken to Venice. For a long time we talked about Venice, the carnival, the Gondolas, the wine and the violin player. I wanted to hold her hand but didn't know how to, I remember advising my friends about the perfect line to hold a girl's hand but none came at that time. I resorted to a lame- your knuckles are so fascinating. I don't know what she thought at that time, may be she too wanted to hold my hand but since I was the one with balls, she allowed me to take the lead. I guess she would have thought at that time- if I keep waiting for a line worth remembering I might have to wait forever. And how true she would have been. So I had her hands in my hand, my heart beat had jumped from 72 to 82 in a matter of 2 seconds.

I remember I was shivering at that time, she inquired and I made an excuse about cold weather on the evening of 23rd of march. She let it pass as well. I was measuring my hand size with hers and grabbed it tightly, I was kissing on her hand and moving up. She slid next to me, we were initially sitting a bit apart and so it became a bit difficult for me to kiss her hand. I started kissing her shoulder. I could feel the fabric of her brown T-Shirt and I could feel her beneath it. I could smell her perfume, her soap and her shampoo, it was an aphrodisiac of the highest order, the strongest I have ever felt till date. I could hear her labored breathing and I was so near to her, my face was millimeters away from hers and then my nose touched her cheek. I heard a slight gasp, don't know whose was it. And then as I rubbed my nose upward my lips touched her cheek. I could see her slightly parted lips, they were quivering. I kissed her cheek again and again and in one fleeting instant she turned her head towards me and I kissed her lips. First it was a mere touch but then I took her lower lip in between mine and just continued caressing her lower lip and after a while gave her the charge. Probably after a minute or so, I looked at her excitedly and blurted out as happy as a 5 yr old kid- that was my first kiss, that was my first kiss!!! She was intelligent she kept her eyes closed and brought my face close to hers, shhhed me and continued kissing. I could hear temple bells during the break but they stopped the next second. I am not sure whether they stopped by themselves or I stopped listening to them.

We finally broke apart, it felt the same as I felt when I jumped from the airplane with a parachute on a fine summer afternoon in Spain. My heart was racing, I had difficulty breathing, my pupils got dilated, my limbs got numb and I could feel nothing except what I was supposed to feel, just the lips and the air.

Her phone was ringing, she didn't pick up, we were looking at each other and the phone was ringing, I was talking to her and the phone was ringing, I looked at the phone and the date showed 12 February 2014, Brussels Area!!!

A promise was made and a kiss was delivered,

I sometimes do wonder, 

was it another dream, another life, another person at yonder 

or a memory, cherished and revered?

I guess I would never know...       

Why should we Love!?

There are three kinds of people in this world- Who have never been in love, who are in love and who are between loves. And it is so, that the best(read elaborated) answers come out of the people on the terminals of the three kinds list which I have mentioned before. Ironically, the people who are in love are the ones searching for words, talk about grass being greener on the other side.

Let us look at love scientifically , I am an engineer and especially after The Big Bang Theory, nerd is the new stud these days. So why should we love, no pun intended?

•  Increased energy, less need for sleep or food and focused attention- Love releases dopamine which has the same effect on the brain as Cocaine, so why try cocaine when you can simply save yourself the trouble, money, risk  and time. But wait a second, you do all these for LOVE as well. Options to achieve above stated result- Love or Cocaine or Almonds, bananas, low-fat dairy products, meat and poultry and pumpkin. I guess now you understand why so many love stories are made/ended at Choubey Ji’s.
• Increased confidence and aggression- love triggers dopamine which enhances secretion of testosteron(t) and estrogen(e) secretion. Now both t and e causes hyper active sweat glands, surge of emotions(temper and arousal) and increased senses. So if a guy or a girl talks about sky being bluer and the roses in the hostels looking redder, he/she is not bull shitting, he/she is in LOVE. Options to achieve above stated results- Love or Testosterone injections or an increased Protein Diet(eggs, fish, chicken, curd and milk). Now, you know why people become possessive.
• Increased water absorption in Kidneys- Making Love releases Vasopressin which is also called as the antidiuretic hormone(here I assume that Making love indeed follows Love). This causes is primarily responsible for body's retention of water by acting to increase water absorption in the collecting ducts of the kidney nephron. So either you can make love and release vasopressin or you have to increase your water intake.
• Improved relations with your parents and controlling blood pressure- Oxytocin is the intimacy hormone. Love causes it to be released as usual. So being in love causes us to be closer to our parents, part because of a guilt complex and part because of oxytocin level. So either you can fall in love or you can follow the diet you’d follow for dopamine. Although let me warn you if controlling blood pressure is your sole motive, then falling in love might not be a good option.

  So far so good, now apart from these, Love has many other good effects as well-

• It teaches you how to be tolerant(DON’T read submissive). So you know if you can tolerate your better half or your good half, you can any day survive a demanding, grumpy and difficult to please boss.
• It lets you know who are your best friends. Love follows break ups, that’s the gospel truth. Now before you fall in love, you have a set of friends who advise you not to, who you show the finger while, all those enzymes mentioned above and many more gets released in your body. Then it so happens that they stop for your other half, so she/he jumps the boat. You are sad because of the lack of enzymes of course and then those ‘fingered’ friends come back to you, the ones lets you blame your other half sitting all the while with a poker face are your best friends.
• It teaches you how to edit a CV or write a Statement of Purpose for your MS in US. After all you tend to do twice the writing and twice the research.
• MOST IMPORTANTLY- It helps you make a practical definition of your future partner. The Brocode says and I quote- You need to buy a couple of Marutis before you earn your BMW.

Neither should you be afraid to love and accept nor should you be afraid to not love and reject/get rejected. It’s all a part of your growing up. Love, leave, live these three words are all in there to play Permutations and Combinations with.

travelling is learning

4 countries in 3 weekends! Working in the weekdays and travelling during the weekends is what I have been doing since the time I came here. I realize the difference between my last Europe stint and my current one. Last time I was sceptical, laid back and unsure about many things. There was something that was holding me back, something like a thorn that doesn't bleed or stop you from walking but sort of makes its presence conspicuous by a constant pain.

Travelling is fun, travelling is learning and travelling is the best time to discover oneself. So I think I'd share every country's experience on these three points.

Luxembourg- Its a really small country in the vicinity of Belgium and I had heard that it seems like a scene from Eragon era minus the dragon.

• Fun- I was on a very tight schedule of trains and buses. The trains and buses in Europe run on time!!! It was difficult to digest initially but then I got used to it and now have started loving it, kind of what happened with me in case of washing and wiping ;)
• Learning- Always prepare your JIC 'just in case' plans. I looked out on the internet about the weather forecast but i still kept an extra sweater, you know just in case. As it later happened that i underestimated the temperature, the temperature is not all that different from India, but it is the winds that kills you.
• Discovery- People might not know you but they would go to great lengths in finding you the correct places like running with you for a good 200 meters to catch the last bus leaving in 3 minutes.

Germany- How I wanted to go to Luxembourg and ended up in Germany is yet another long story, so may be I'll tell it some other time. But I did go on to spend the weekend in the country side Germany. I remember when I was on the bus and I asked the driver which country are we in? Oh the look on his face was one I'll remember for a looong time. I really had to tell him that I knew where i was heading to. It can happen only in Europe that in a span of 2 hours you can cross a country by road!

• Fun- My host family were kind enough to host a pot luck and naming it Parth's Pot Luck. It was later did I realize that I would be cooking chapati and Indian curry with 10 people watching me and asking questions! The best part, me and the other 10 people tasted something like that for the first time. I had cooked it for the first time. It was good and I gloated for the rest of the evening because one of them asked me whether I cook for a living. No, I cook just to live. With people from 5 nationalities viz Philippines, Germany, United States, India and Russia, it was one of the most multicultural dinners I have ever had. It so happened that one of the guest couple in the pot luck worked in the local club, and then it dawned on me, why they said see you really soon while biding good bye. Now I understand why pot luck is called as pot luck. 
  Not to forget about my first snow fall. Trust me the first snow fall is always special. You will but not be doing justice if you try to imagine it, it has to be felt- the little flakes of ice, touching your skin and then melting in a blink of an eye, the landscape and it is so damn easy to have a drink on the rocks :D
• Learning- I learnt that cooking is not just for survival but you can make great friends and also represent your culture, your beliefs, your ethics and of course the girls really dig it. Sometimes you just have to take that plunge without knowing what is going to happen whether you are going to make a dish out of it or you'll have to forcibly dish it out.You need to believe in yourself first before you went on to believing others.
  
  
  I was invited by my host for a walk in the woods. I had always romanticized about going for a long walk with my grandfather in a forest listening all the while to his stories, gaining in the meanwhile a plethora of wisdom and knowledge. Wisdom about life and people and knowledge about how it used to be in his time. Combine this with a scenic beauty that looks as if Robert Frost's, John Keats' and Emily Dickinson's poems just got life and you can imagine what an experience I had.

 That afternoon, those 3 hours went by in a jiffy. There was a man of wisdom, of age and experience, telling about what trees are used for what, how to make a cut in life and how sometimes life cuts you. There was a boy young, carefree, absorbing and observant, one from the new generation- the generation that is ready to travel around the world, learn new things, cultures and traditions but never been lured to leave his own country for ever. He was telling and he was listening, they both switched places at times. He was wondering how he wanted to be at 70 years and he was smiling at how he used to be at 23. He told him his problems and he told his. He solved his problems with experience and he tried to solve his with mathematics. His face was lined and wrinkled, his face was smooth and young. He stooped a bit with age but was proud, he was upright but not yet proud. But what was common in both was that glint in the eye, his eyes sparkled with thinking of his past and his eyes sparkled imagining about his future.

The sky was a perfect white, you can see how the picture seems to have blended with the background of this post. For the first time I saw the grass being greener on my side. I found a really easy way to meditate, to empty my mind, to STOP THINKING. Just listen to all sorts of sounds that go around you, in my case the gurgling river, the chirping birds, the whistling breeze, the whispering leaves and the creaking trees.

So I learnt from him that life is not meant to be going how we want it to go, rather we are meant to be maximizing what we get however it goes. The country side, the pot luck, the crazy party and the walk in the woods, every single moment of my trip was an experience learning or otherwise but worth remembering for sure.

• Discovery- Its really not that bad trusting people. As the sayings go-

"Good people give you memories and Bad people give you experiences, a wise man should have both."

"There are no strangers in this world, just friends who you haven't met yet."

Squash, lemons, life...

It all started with a mail. It was a long rally of mails but it was like a rally in squash, I was the sole player in the rally. Anyway, I played a shot and waited, then another shot and then waited again. In the end I slept off with my racket(cellphone) in hand just in case the other player decides to come in. The other player hit a shot and waited for me to wake up, of course riding on a time difference, so not practically waited up just for the rally but anyway, it’s not the point here. The point is that in a rally, you never kill the ball, you always keep it up, I was asleep and lost the rally...Oh yes, I did lose it but I had played well, and I know it, I was slowing down a bit but that was more due to fatigue than lack of intent. So the other player calls of the match at 0600 hours, on a chilly morning! Never have I felt such a shiver run down my spine, I was sweating and shivering at the same time, partly due to the cold and wholly due to the match being called off. The ball was well worn and at the kill shot, the ball just tore up, the rally was over once and for all and no more balls left to continue that rally sic.

I talked to my friends, wrote the declaration of ending the rally, did both simultaneously. You see, the promise to continue that rally was one I held too dear to my heart and hence needed strength. But as they say in french c'est la vie (that's life). Life gives you lemons and sometimes want you to chew them, no lemonade, no tequila but the hard and sour way you do it slowly, excruciatingly blaming all the time to the other player, to the ball, to God and to oneself. But when you chew a lemon, you don't realize that at this very moment for the same mass you are getting more sugar than strawberries. Sometimes the God doesn’t want you to hydrate yourself with a lemonade or get it done with a bottoms up via tequila, he wants you to chew that lemon. To get that extra sugar to not lose another rally and to win the match eventually.

In Paris I walked over a bridge they call as the Pont des Arts, they say if you attach a padlock on the railing and throw the key in the river Siene below, then you would never falter in the rally and it would go on forever. But I did not put a lock there, the idea of relating a lock with a rally sounded preposterous. You see being in a rally doesn’t mean you are bound with the other player, in fact its the exact opposite, the real rally makes you feel free, the smooth court  movements are as if you are floating, gliding doing waltz on the court, its zen. Am I sorry that I did not put a lock there? No.

I will however go to the Pon des Arts once again may be to remember, may be to forget my first rally. The view from the bridge is not that bad either...   

The court is empty, the player is gone but the sweat drops from the rally remain. Someday some other player will come, it will take time though, Squash is not played by many but the good thing is that by that time the last remnants of the sweat drops would also have gone.

C’est la Vie

P.S.- V and V

Roti, kapda, makaan...

As yet I am struggling to find all three of these. Roti- is not available here, makaan- I would be leaving the guest house tomorrow and kapda- bloody windy out here, so the traditional Indian winter clothing doesn't work. 

Its dark outside and I am yet have a ray of sun, hope and warmth.

The work is good, the hot chocolate cup is 0.25 Euros, and you get warm water for free!!! So I am working on a new technology, the Bluetooth low energy transfer and I have to find out and pin point where exactly the sensor falters and try to rectify it. MATLAB and MS Excel and not to mention, perseverance.

Another striking thing here is that pedestrians are not considered as the have nots, the destitutes and the disposables like in India, where you get that Angry Young Man look from the driver whenever you try and cross the road. Here the people stop for you and smile back if you smile at them as a sign of gratitude for letting you pass!!! They don't honk horns and I have yet to see a Cow that is not roasted or in sauce...

So far so good brrr...cold

Ethiopian food- smack smack :)

Belgium

Which Beer would you like to have sir? The time was 0800 hours. I smiled, I was indeed in Belgium , the land of many beers. As of 2013, there were 1150 original Belgian Beers, quite impressive for a country with an area about 1/8th of Uttar Pradesh.

My place of work IMEC, an R&D company based in Belgium and Netherlands is in Leuven, a University Town, about 20 mins from the capital city of Brussels. The student population in Leuven is about 50000, that's more than the non student population of this place. The age range here is mostly the young crowd 18-30 or the old Grand pas and Grand Maas.

The weather is so cold that people tend to pick up their drinks straight from the attics! The first day at IMEC and my God, I was surprised by the sheer size of the place, its gigantic. I was picked up at the reception gate by my Guide. I was a bit intimidated by the Security Arrangements though, appeared as if I was entering some Defence research facility, reminded me of my days at the Defence Bioengineering and Electromedical Laboratory. Its funny how the work being done for the wellness of general public is being so heavily guarded, thank you Global Competition and Bin Laden (Rest in Jannat sic). I was taken for a security tour and was given a brief about the fire drill, it was fun. Technology apart, it was really inspiring to see so many fitness crazy people in the facility. There were more cycles than cars in the facility! I was given a brief account of the research by Walter, my in-charge. He had an urgent meeting and I was left to explore the place. Everyone was so "into research" even while eating, it was like sitting in the Sheldon Cooper's House with Penny also a PhD!!! :D

After IMEC I went to the Leuven City Centre, towered by a big Gothic Cathedral with a mini Carnival going on. As happens with every European City the centre had more bars then any other shops and even during a Thursday afternoon, people were there on the street. People really know how to dress here and look good! They are so casually and carefully good looking. A few Belgian Waffles and a Belgian beer later, I was on my way back home, it was cold and it was dark at 5 pm and it started to rain and i forgot my way home...phew

The first day ends, drenched, tired and supremely excited!!! I M E C...