Back to my proposal

Okey, enough writing for tonite. Actually made the last 3 posts also tonite, and changed post dates appropriately. Actually no more writing till I defend my PhD proposal on 6 May. Better concentrate on writing my proposal now. :-)
Have a lot to write though, and dint get time this month..some topics on the burner are as follows. remind me if I forget to make a future post about them:

1. Elephant and Dragon - A new dawn between the superpowers of this century, India and China, has begun. relished the prospect of us taking over. Enough domination of caucasians now for over 1000 years. Time for some brown and yellow man to take over the mantle.

2. Started applying for jobs very recently. overhauled my webpage and resume for it. applying mainly to industry and startups, and a few labs which do some development and prototyping too. Hope to start in fall sometime.

3. Going to Mexico for a week in may, ostensibly to get my visa renewed. But, actually to backpack and travel and discover the mysteries of the mayans and imbibe a whole new culture.

Tiff with the police

So what happened tonite was - I was coming home from department around midnight. After non stopping completely (you know the kind of STOPs you make late at night) at one of the stop signs, I noticed the car behind me was a cop car. shucks...Dutifully stopped completely at the next 2 stop signs. And then made a turn towards my apartment. The cop car came and stopped at the intersection. For some stupid reason, I wanted to test him. :-) Went around the block and came back to where he was stopped and went past him. The cop now sensing something funny, immediately came behind me and switched on his cars lights. I stopped. He came over very slowly, torch flashing at me. was pretty scared to see a car following a cop car, i guess. :-) gave me a lecture on stop signs and asked me why I was going around. I gave my most innocent face (people tell me it's not that innocent any more)..nways, saw my licence, insurance and let me off with a warning. Not before i almost got caught at not changing the address in my licence. Pleaded i had shifted house recently, and filled change of application on the internet and it not yet arrived and some other bull.
Moral of the story: Never follow cops. They get nervous. :-D
But, they should also do the same, na? :-)

San Diego Fiasco

So on 3 April I got up very early 6 am (after going to sleep at 4 mind you, so it is indeed early). Had to catch a flight to San Diego at 8 am. My heart was fluttering (no, not just for teen aged girls, hearts flutter for grown up men too) at the prospect of going to san diego - my favorite place in this country. Oh, what I would give to get a job there. Anways, had a conference I was presenting my summer@epfl paper - simulation symposium. schedule was tight, but still i thought of spending whole of sunday there - surf is the most amazing there, only comaprable with Digha maybe. (Dont smile, New Digha is the most beautiful beach on earth, including saint tropez, maimi and san diego. and no, i am not colored by the fact of living close to it for 20 years and going there more than 20 times. :-)) But, instead of reaching there at 10 am to spend time with Mani/Inder/Ahamed there, I reached at 11 pm. spent 6 hours each at houston and las vegas airport. Had missed my 8 am flight from houston, bcos of stupid daylight savings time - had completely forgotten about it. Las Vegas is pretty cool though with smoking lounges, bars, massage chairs, slot machines, free wifi, et. al.

Presentation went pretty well. lot of interest in the paper, helped hugely by a best paper award my boss had received on this paper at another conference. Met a few people. Learnt to keep all my job options open; and not say that I am looking for industry options only. Then went with Mani for a little while to the lovely Mission beach. still cold. but, I was promised that water will be warm and waiting if/when I take a trip back for job interviews, or better still job.