Last night I had my first class session for a six week M.Sc. course that I’m teaching. Pretty interesting student demographic – no white folks at all - four Arab chics, two Indian chics, two Arab guys, two Pakistani guys, one Iranian guy, and two Chinese chics. With 13 people, it’s a good class size for a graduate course – not too big, not too small. There should be good class discussion.

I’ve been teaching graduate level courses for over seven years now, and I’ve seen the demographics...

Ever heard a Russian guy sing Indian songs… I just did this past weekend.

On my way back from Boston, I took a cab to the airport and got chatting away with the driver who happened to be Russian. The conversation started with talking about hockey and other assorted sports, but upon learning of my desi background, he started telling me how popular Raj Kapoor movies are in Russia even to date, and how he much he was revered there as a superb artist.

I’ve never seen much of...

Sitting here in a hotel room watching TV – Trauma is on. It’s a good show… makes you appreciate the work of emergency medical personnel and paramedics. I also have to admit that I like Anastassia Griffith’s character in the show – just something about a blonde who exudes poise and confidence rather than being consumed with beauty and looks.

Also wondering how I came to develop my travel quirks – like drinking tomato juice on the plane, ordering chocolate ice cream through room service...

Starting my Sunday morning at 7:00 am…

• I just put a mix of Costa-Rican & Nabob to brew myself a pot of coffee for the rest of the morning before wife wakes up and we can have brunch.
• I’m listening to this song that’s been stuck in my head since I heard it yesterday – it’s called Saanware from the album Teri Justajoo.
• I’m planning to finish reworking on chapter 3 – my advisor wants me to add another diagram to explain my research design. So I gotta do that – and then hopefully today,

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I co-presented at a conference yesterday where we had a very good audience turnout – especially considering that we were presenting hard-core research to practitioners who we thought might not have been interested in that type of presentation in the first place. We had about 40 people in the audience which was an exceptionally good turnout at a large conference with 10 to 12 concurrent sessions going on.

Anyways, the presentation went well, we had a few insightful questions from the...

So I got 5 hours of sleep last night and feel a little better… this is after almost 10 days of 2 to 3 hours of sleep each day. So batteries are sort of recharged.

Still have a lot of work to do though – I’m basically behind about 5 days from what I had set myself to do. It’s just taking way longer than I expected, especially now that I have to worry about page length as well. I keep wondering if there is a better way to say all I need to say in lesser number of pages etc.
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That’s right – I’m talking about my Ph.D. here – Piled, High & Deep describes it well.

Over the last one week, I’ve slept about 2.5/24 hours hours on average… and it’s going to be a crazy three weeks ahead. I’m trying to get my dissertation out the door – it’s high time I do it. My research was done ages ago (1.5 years to be precise), but working full-time, I only got to write two chapters of my dissertation with some drafts and bits for the other chapters.

So today...

both by the same singer - Mohit Chauhan - pretty good...

Just thinking whether our sense of happiness and desolation are mostly relative to what we see around us… moreover, the comparison happens to be with those who’re thriving in their lives rather than those who’re underprivileged.

It’s been almost 14 years since we moved to Canada. The initial few years were rather challenging and grueling - Parents had invested their savings in a business in Pakistan that didn’t do too well, and the rest went to immigration and moving related expenses....