Time to leave!

Its less than 2 days left here in Switzerland and finally I am done with winding up the work I did (was supposed to do at least) here. Still some things left ... have to write a report after getting back to IIT.

Was nice to meet both my postdocs here today, though one of them has now left and is in Germany these days. My professor, Tom Henzinger is away and had met him before he left last to last friday itself.

It has been a great time that I have spent here, learning lots of new things about academics and otherwise. I guess it has been fruitful in the sense that I could write some program that runs and does something - whether its useful or not is still debatable! :D But most of all, I have loved the new things that I have learnt - I had never played games before and was nice to do that here ... was great to learn many other things supplementary to that in CS. Rishabh was a great person to be with while he was here - is now back in IIT KGP - and I hope to be in touch with him. Saurabh was a good sophie to have to do all the work for me :P, more seriously, I probably didn't get bored here just because he was always there when I wanted to bug someone with non-sensical stuff (being a sophie he didn't have much choice but to listen to me anyways :P) and have some good discussions. Ankit and Prasang were also around and playing cards and fatte maarne mein bhi bahut majaa aaya! The IIIT guys I met here were also fun to be with and spent very little but real fun time with them!

Switzerland overall is an amazing country - just loved every part I have been to. It was sad I couldn't go to some parts of Europe I would have gone to otherwise, but I guess spending more time in Swiss is something I won't really regret! Seen some of the most beautiful sights ever in my life in the last 3 months or so - absolutely stunning natural beauty.

Having my parents here towards the end just made the whole package unbeatable! It was their second trip outside India and first real stay abroad - and not a bad place to do it! I am sure they have enjoyed this place as much I as did - sadly though they couldn't go to Mt. Titlis today which was in the plan - I am really optimistic and hope they can make it tomorrow!

Some bad experiences - well treating those as lessons of life :). All in all, a fabulous three months here - and now its time to pack up and go back to our motherland!

Swiss trip gets better!

Studying hard for JEE: Painful
Putting fight and getting foreign internship: hard work!
Waking up at 8 in the morning, after a late night movie: Barely manageable
Return ticket to Geneva Airport: Rs. 1600
Seeing your parents come out into the arrival lobby: Priceless!

Pretty much sums up my day today. Mamma and Pappa (Mom and Dad) arrived today in Switzerland for a vacation of 20 days and will be flying back to Mumbai with me on 26th of this month. It was a really great feeling to receive them at the airport (and unlike some other people, get there before they came :P). Won't really attempt to describe that moment ... was really special though.

Met them after more than 2 months - and will be spending the longest consecutive period with them, in the last 2 years or so - what a place to do it! Hope they have a great time here, roaming around this beautiful country - really missing Dadu (my elder brother) here :(

PhD comics : Independence? Day

Fundu comic strip ... NBDu saala :P

Lugano

July 1, 2007
Lugano, Italian side of Switzerland
We are here at the Lugano train station right now, approaching dawn - at around 4:44 a.m. - where I find myself in a waiting room, luckily open in the night, with Nipun, Saurabh and some arbit guy - heavily drunk and snoring - when I realise I have nothing else to do and sleeping now will not be the best thing to do, and so I end up writing all this down! The plan was made initially on Friday - to come to Lugano by an "After 7" train and do arbitgiri here in the night and go back by another "After 7" train. I had heard about the Italian side of Switzerland being really beautiful and hence had to visit this at least once, specially after knowing that we are confined to the Swiss territory now!

About the beauty of this place, I guess we will find out soon enough, when we decide to leave from the station and start roaming around. Meanwhile, I take this time to write about the interesting 4 hrs or so that we have had at the station so far.

We reached here at 1:15 a.m. by taking a connection from Lausanne to Luzern-Art Goldau (or some similar name - don't remember exactly) and then to here in Lugano. We then roamed around, near the station, in order to find some place where we can spend a reasonable portion of the night, but in vain! This place seems to be pretty much deserted at this time of the night; even on a Saturday night! We had noticed that the station didn't have gates as such - so there was always a way to get in here and find a bench to sit, sleep - whatever we feel comfortable.

When we came back here, we found out that there was a waiting (this drunk fellow is making some weird noises here - I suspect he is going to puke, although I hope he doesn't do that too soon!) room where we can comfortably sit inside. So, in we go and Nipun is off to sleep immediately. Me and Saurabh keep discussing things about "Life, the Universe and Everything". Around 2:15 or so, we see an arbit guy - all buttons of his shirt unbuttoned and looking really weird (as another cargo train passes by - these Swiss have a nice funda of this cargo transport; more about this later) - moving around on the platform; so we got a bit worried and lock[ed] the door of the waiting room from inside: gives an added feeling of safety, or so we felt. It isn't too long before the guy comes to the waiting room. We open the door for him and he comes in with the normal hi, hello. (Another cargo train [passes by]) Then he asks us if we understand English and starts off some conversation. We tell him we are from India, Bombay - and he knows about it - says "Bon Bombay" and all : some attempt to say "Bombay is good". Then he starts making some paper rolls with Marijuana - telling us it is international quality and how drugs are common in Swiss and Europe in general and how the police also don't care too much about it. He was also doing some weird actions which none of us could understand, but I nodded and acknowledged, just to shut his mouth! Both Saurabh and me felt a bit uneasy with this guy smoking cigarettes and marijuana at 2:45 in the night, that too in a waiting room whcih was non-smoking! So, Nipun was woken up and we left from that place in search of another place.

We immediately found another waiting room on (another cargo train - 2 engines in the front and with 32 containers like the ones seen near dockyards) the same platform which was also open. We got settled there and Nipun again slept off with Saurabh and me still talking. We tried to list down all the places we have visited on weekends here - and with some fight - could recount the places for all weekends so far - this being the ninth. The arbit guy was seen around once or twice but didn't bother us again.

Saurabh and me went back to our philosophical thoughts - with some plans decided by me, which I hope to execute sometime - as another arbit guy came along, with a large backpack and a long iron rod in his hand. He came, he sat, said "Ca Va" a couple of times and went away. Some time later, this drunk guy came along and is happily sleeping now - with his head resting on his shoes initially - now they have fallen down - and it seems he is not going to wake up till noon.
12:17 AM Nipun and Saurabh should wake up in some time: its 5:35 a.m. now with birds chirping away, people cycling around (someone takes a snap of our waiting place) and there is more than enough light to start our day travel in Lugano.

Hope to have a nice day today. :)

Sangram
P.S: Interestingly, Shantanu and the Parisian gang, Sushant, Ankit, Gole and Cheema (Alex and his friends :p) are in italy right now, just a few hrs. from here!

Shopping!

On thursday we had gone shopping - nothing great, just normal groceries. Most of the times here in Switzerland, we end up shopping in one of the shops named Coop, Migros or Denner - these being the supermarkets and the cheapest among all shops around. The worst thing about Switzerland is that the shops close really early in the evening - sharp at 7:00 p.m. on weekdays - and it gets worst on weekends - with closing time 5:00 p.m. on Saturdays and almost no shops are open on Sundays - really strange!
But anyway, we did manage to find time on a weekday to rush from the lab to a Migros store - one of the largest stores around - the one with 3 M's - at Lausanne FLON at around 6:15 from the lab. We finally reached the store at around 6:35 leaving us with a mere 25 minutes to shop our normal stock of groceries. So, all us moved around briskly, with Saurabh pushing a trolley around and we were just collecting stuff - all that we thought we could consume sometime here - until we realised we had shopped much more than what we normally do. Lots of things bought ... and no wonder, the bill was a whooping 76 CHF - the highest we had gone so far in a single shopping spree! And it didn't end there - Saurabh and Singla went to the Indian shop and Saurabh found things worth 39 CHF to be purchased from there as well! Thus making it 115 CHF spent just on daily eateries shopping in around 45 minutes time - I was amazed when I realized that converted to Rs., it meant we had shopped for things worth around Rs. 3832 (courtesy Google :P). I don't think I had ever shopped for such a large amount ever before in my life - and definitely not in a short span of just 45 mins! Singla and Rishabh also had their shopping done - though they didn't shop as greedily as we did - but Migros supermarket must have earned quite a fair bit from just these three quick shoppers coming in at their closing time :-). For the records ... just putting down a list of the things we purchased that day - with their prices!

1. Milk - 2L x 2 : 4.20
   
2. Multifruit Juice 2L x 2: 3.80
   
3. Apple Juice 2L x 2: 3.80
   
4. Yogurt 400g x 2 : 2.70
   
5. Pasta (maggi style - white sauce) x 1 : 2.80
   
6. Pasta with mushroom x 1: 2.60
   
7. Mayonnaise 265g x 2: 2.80
   
8. Onion 1kg: 2.60
   
9. Tomato: 3.85
   
10. Bread x 2 : 2.80
    
11. Cheese slices x 2: 5.00
    
12. Cottage Cheese x 1: 3.90
    
13. Mozarella cheese x 1: 3.20
    
14. Chicken burger patties 1kg: 14.00
    
15. Some other chicken stuff - Poulet Cordon Bleu 1kg: 12.50
    
16. Corn flakes : 2.10
17. Fish Fingers x1: 3.45
18. Indian shop - Maggi x 4: 4.00
19. Indian shop - Parathas x 5: 15.00
20. Calling cards x 2: 20.00

I hope all this adds up to the right amount, else we were cheated :(

Feels fundu though ... now won't have to shop for some days ... and also relished some of the chicken stuff yesterday night! Was awesome :)

Google downtime!

While we all have always felt great about Google doing cool new things and engulfing almost everything that can be done on the internet ... it is sad that (at least) I have become quite heavily dependant on Google services during the time I use the internet.

So, now, currently when GMail is facing some downtime (really rare, but still ... it will happen once in a while!) I am in a fix and can't find a way to do some things I want to do! Tejas and me had decided we would meet online right now and chat online - that was going to be on GChat and hence that is not doable. I thought of mailing him to say I am not able to connect, but then GMail is down anyway and hence the mail is not accessible! Luckily this blogger service and youtube - also among google's services are running - else I would not have found much to do online and would have probably slept off immediately.

I just wonder what it will be like if one (not so) fine day all of Google's data servers break down - what a loss to the e-world it will be! Hard to imagine that!

First call back home!

Well ... in between all these interesting battles I have had, trying to make sense of what people around are saying and trying to tell them what I am trying to say ... it is such a nice feeling to be able to hear some Marathi words being spoken from far far away ... reaching my ears directly, crystal clear! Really ... this world has become a small place ... such an amazing feeling to be able to talk with parents and my brother without caring about any money being spent ... and describing them in detail what view I am seeing from my room and what things I did during the day.
This might be something which seems to be attractive only for the first few days after I am here ... and later it might become something routine ... but the fact remains those words which I am able to hear mean much more than what they do, when I am back in Pune or IITB! Amazing what places and situations can do ... and how seemingly trivial things gain so much importance in one's mind!

Why do these people not speak English!

The first few days of our stay here in Swiss land were really difficult, in terms of trying to communicate with people. I haven't really been faced with such problems before and this has been one learning experience which I would have liked to avoid (well, probably not, once I am not settled here!).
General people around do not understand English ... so it is difficult to even ask them directions and get basic groceries. Some times, we are lucky to find maps and directions written in English, but then French pronounciations are so weird, that one cannot ask for directions even after reading a place's name! So, Rennens is pronounced not in the usual way, but as 'Hanoe' or something like that! And if one says Rennens and asks people around, they make expressions as if I am asking them about some addresses on moon! We found it difficult to explain to store-keepers that we want milk, cheese, bread ... everything ... its amazing how one can face difficulties doing these stupid, simple things!
The most important thing to do here seemed to be learning a bit of French and the websites are helping me out in that regard! Now that I have got settled in EPFL though, things are much simpler, because there people luckily understand English and hence life is peaceful. But I can still see a form unfilled on my table, which is supposed to my room checklist and I have not handed it over to the Concierge just because I do not know what is written on that! Phew ... not having a universal language is painful at times :((

First sight of Switzerland

On my flight from Mumbai to Zurich, I could get a glimpse of this place and it seemed to be a really beautiful country. But the flight from Zurich to Geneva was just beyond words ... amazing mountains seen below, with a stunning view of the lake, it was really a very pleasing sight.

One might feel ... upar se sabhi kuch achcha hi dikhta hai yaar ... but I hadn't seen anything remotely as beautiful before. This was just too good! I hope to see some of the places which I saw on that short flight of around 30 mins ... those were locations which I have no intention of missing out on!