False idle time

Written on 3:04 AM by Tushar

In storage jargon false idle time refers to the idle CPU time when all active processes wait for I/O. I think it is best suited to my current situation as I wait for the green signal from USCIS to start working for VMware.

Yes I am missing my better half a lot and people are annoying me by asking same irritating questions everyday such as “आला का OPT?” (Did you get OPT?), “कधी जाणार US ला?”(When are you going to US?). As if I want to keep it a secret! One of my neighbors had assumed that I am no longer going back to US and looking for a job in India! But other than that there is nothing else to complain about.

I wonder whether I can buy this much free time in near future when it is simply fine to not log onto Internet for a week straight. You have no idea what it means to someone like me who spent past 15 months of my masters program treating my laptop as one of my body parts. This reminds me of my meeting with Dr. Yair Amir on my last day at Hopkins. He congratulated me for my decision to take a 50 days long break before joining VMware. He was fortunate to get A DAY long break after his PhD in Israel before moving to US! Now every year when he goes to Israel for a couple of weeks for a vacation he does not even carry his laptop. It is an extreme step for someone like him who is running a company and reminds me of a factory, given the rate at which he is churning out publications in the field of distributed systems. Shouldn’t I consider myself lucky that I don’t have to resort to such extreme measures to spend time with my family?

To avoid my empty mind from being devil’s workshop I started doing what I do the best. Read. So far I have read 5 Marathi books in a fortnight. One fine day will start blogging in Marathi too. Although I don’t mind reading English fiction (loved Kite runner which I read during summer, 07), I prefer nonfiction any day. I was searching for a good book about India as I feel that I am getting detached with my motherland. It may be due to lack of reading Indian newspapers or watching Indian news channels (most of which are after sheer yellow journalism with an exception of NDTV). Have started reading ‘India unbound’ by Gurucharan Das and will keep you posted on how it goes.

A while back Indian stock market was a gold mine. India was rated as one of the top 3 countries for investors. Even after the recent dip it still is a better place to invest than US.Gone are the days when stock trading was considered as gambling. Today an average Indian looks at stock market for a serious investment. I have tried taming the bull in the past and was pretty successful too. Compared a lot of options to trade online such as ICICI-direct, sharekhan, religare etc and I guess I will go for IndiaInfoLine. Here is a good guide if you are new to investing.

As mentioned earlier I am also going to D.Y.Patil College to guide MSc students for campus placements.

Blame it on my marriage but collection of my photographs is growing by 200 a day! Minu is yelling at me for not uploading wedding pics to our wedding website but I get demoralized just by the sheer volume of pics. Thanks to my awesome camcorder, making movies is the next best thing! I recently went to Stud farm too to shoot videos. I wish I could keep the camcorder ON all the time to capture new tricks that Mahi is learning day by day! I am yet to learn movie editing though.

Hearty chats with the family members, evening walks with Swapnil, simply lazing around at home…activities like these are refueling me with enthusiasm which I hope lasts till my next visit to India. But I must confess it does worry me that I am not working at the moment. I laughed at myself when I came across a blog from one of Blogger developers who is quitting Google to explore other interests for a while! I guess this guilt feeling ain’t my fault. This is the way we Indians are brought up. Anyways I sincerely wish

"चिठ्ठी आयेगी आयेगी...चिठ्ठी आयेगी!” Amen.

Posted in Activities, india, vacation

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