IITians are omnipresent

EPFL campus is teeming with IITians in the summer. They come for their third year summer internships, and come in hordes. So, I heard there are like 25-30 IITians at present on campus. They work mostly in the Informatique and Communication department, coming from either Computer Science and Electrical in India. How do they come? Well, they write. they write hordes of letters (suck letters - Dont know them? Well they are 'some useful
constructive conning' letters) to ask professors in the European Institutes to take them for summer internships. And many european institutes like EPFL have started a regular summer program to take these undergrads on some projects. Wow. could you have thought of that in our times - Europe for a summer internship in your undergrad. I did mine in Kolkata. :-) And boy, do I feel old; these guys are 2005 batch, making me 5 years senior. Today a couple of them took me to their home nearby for lunch. They cooked rice, daal, and alu bhaaja. Though the rice was burnt and dal was just boiled dal, I enjoyed their hospitality a lot, as well as the effort they take in cooking everyday 2 meals. Because, it is well neigh impossible for a student here to survive by eating out - it is so expensive to eat out. I will have to start real cooking - not the parathas and maggi - real soon. Maybe after I shift to my new apartment on 15 Julie.