New Year, Blue Me?

It’s 11 days late and I still haven’t posted my New Years’ post oh no! Procrastination FTW, but more like I fell sick and then traveled to another country and was overwhelmed and had to stop and -

WAIT

REWIND

Hello! It’s the new year, but it’s still the same me? Or a more blue me (literally) as my sister convinced me to buy more blue clothes as opposed to the black I usually adore all the time.

I think 2016 was not a very special year overall, but it had so many ups and downs throughout the year that I completely forgot about.

Highlights:

1) Baking/Cooking

This was the really fun part where I learned to love the oven, and it learned to tolerate me.

Right from making pies for Pi Day to macarons, I think I have baked a lot to call myself an amateur baker. I think the best part about being moderately good at cooking/baking is when your friend bites into the food you made, releases an orgasmic sound and will not stop raving about how good it is, as you blush since you’re not used to so much praise.

I also experimented a lot with savory dishes from different cuisines to add an extra dimension to the things I eat. I still have a list of recipe bookmarks which have about 200 different things I want to cook/bake, eventually.

2) My thesis!

I think that this was the most important decision I made in my life, apart from ditching Glee when it got bad.  It made me fall in love with the kind of work which I had never done before, which had something that would affect other people to a point, and not just be a full stop in my resume, like everything else had been.

Me and my advisor went from a frustrating connection (on his part, not mine) to a place where I could converse with him very casually without getting awkward, and also give my two cents to the project. With the current semester, I would officially have had some sort of class/relationship with my advisor through the entirety of my Masters’, and I think that is really cool.

2.4a) Applying for jobs vs Ph.D

This was the thing I pondered over all summer and spoke to about eleven hundred people about the same, hoping that they would give me some insight into the same.  I had already been in school for the majority of my life, why not continue into a Ph.D and not have to worry about the outside world (It’s a wiiild world).

However, I did realize that without any official “work-experience” I was already suffering, and made a decision Future Me would hopefully love me for. I think another major reason was that I knew a domain where I wanted to work, but not an actual topic, and might have ended up drowning in the research to realize what research I wanted to do.

3) New York

I ACTUALLY WENT TO NEW YORK!!!!

New York has been that place everyone likes to visit because the Statue of Liberty and Rockefeller center and all the clichéd stuff you see in movies. And that was mostly the reason for me as well. But, there was also Broadway! Tiny coffee shops to love! Crowded places with people that would remind me of Mumbai!

It was my first solo trip and I was absolutely in love with the whole place and cannot wait to go back at some point. I will make a detailed blog post at some point, talking about places and experiences and all that jazz.

Highlights: I got to see Phantom of the Opera and Matilda, both on Broadway!!! These were experiences that would fill the highlights of my life, if I had to list down some.

4) Going home

In the last eighteen months, I had to become a perfectly responsible person with enough patience to fill a tank instead of staying with my parents and having only the responsibility of being a student. Part of me had enjoyed the independence, but the major part of me missed the emotional comfort you get with people around you, especially family in my case.

Going home was emotional, to say the least.

From going to the default family restaurant Swadesh where the waiters still remembered us, to driving to Worli Sea-Face with old childhood friends, this trip felt more like walking down nostalgia lane, as opposed to jumping back in where I left off.

I think the dichotomy of wanting to be treated as an adult, but then to want to lose all responsibility when you go back home, was something I did not realize was a thing. Another beautiful thing I got to see was my parents as their own entity, as a couple in their own stride as opposed to being just my parents. It was something I always knew, but something I could obviously see now, and it made me feel like there was some positive outcome, even though I know that this way of life where we live different lives and meet once a year is not a very easy one for either side.

5) Future?

I have no idea what 2017 holds for me, as it is all a big ball of uncertainty after May. I am hoping to treat it as an adventure, as opposed to something that makes me anxious. (Bets on how long till my first breakdo – I kid, I kid)

Leaving you with this song, since I feel like this article has been an ode to love towards a lot of people: