On being desi

Earlier this year, I spent a weekend in DC with a couple my family knows well, who have been like second parents to me while at C’ville. Over filter coffee (Tamil style) one of the mornings, I got to talking about their story of how they came here so many years ago, met and married each other and now had a full, happy life in this country. I wondered who had been their support system when they first moved here, at a time when Indians in America were concentrated in the Universities and the Valley and were not as ubiquitous as today; I had them, and over my three years in America, various other people, who have been my support system to help me settle down. I wondered who was there for them, whether they brought a year’s worth of tamarind from India for sambar and special idli rice and even their filter coffee powder!

Since my move to Florida, I had not cooked anything Indian, and had survived on fruits and pasta and ramen noodles… nothing wrong with it, but when I started craving curries and rotis I knew I had to fix it. At one of my fruit-buying trips at the local Publix, I spotted an Indian. I struck up conversation with him and asked him to give me directions to the Indian store. And as a freebie, he threw in directions to the Indian temple too! So this morning I drove up to the Indian store and within ten minutes I had a basket full of frozen rotis and daals and spices. I got to talking with the store owner and she offered to give me ideas on all the spices and stuff I would need to get my kitchen started. As I browsed through the aisles (there were just two), I savored the sound of all the people shopping there and the various languages they were conversing in.

I have always believed that as someone who cooks a lot Indian food at home, I wouldn’t want to go to an Indian restaurant on the weekends when I eat out. By that same principle, I’ve always tried to get to know non-desi folk at school/work because I rationalized that I left India to get to know people of the world. But today, as I perused the aisles of the store, I savored the little India around me, enjoyed speaking Hindi with the people there and felt comfort and at home for the first time at an Indian store.

I guess no matter how much we try to acclimatize ourselves to our new “home” land – America or Argentina or anywhere else – we never really stop being desi… You could suppress the desi-ness but it comes out in the least expected places and times… sometimes all it takes is the sight of bhindi (okra) and you can almost smell it frying in your kitchen in India. To my desh on its 64th year of Independence, I hope you know that your influence stays strong even so far away.

Passing the baton

A few months ago, a new club was born at Darden, the Darden South Asia Society (DSAS). It took over a year’s worth of work in petitioning and designing the vision and mission of the club; but finally the approvals were obtained and we held elections to determine the first ever leadership team of DSAS. In the few months that we have been in the team, we have tried to give more direction to the club by holding events as promised in our petition but by also involving ourselves closely with the Career center and Admissions.

And then a few weeks ago, we held elections to select the team we would hand over to as we leave Darden. This weekend IJ, club president of DSAS hosted the present and future leadership team at his place for a “retreat” where the current team appraised the incoming team about our workings, events and vision. Tomorrow, we will hold our first weekly meeting with the new leadership, as we begin to hand over responsibilities to them.

One of the things we struggled with in our brief stint as the leadership team was choosing what we could achieve in the limited time before end of the year. We wanted to do everything, but often times we had to reign in our enthusiasm for the sake of practicality. It was great to hand over those ideas to the incoming team – unlike us they have a whole academic year to take the club a notch further.

In passing the baton over to the first year students, we are giving away something we planned and envisioned for the South Asian community at Darden. We wanted to create a club that not only organized the famous annual Bollywood Party or inter-school cricket tournaments but also one that provided career and academic support and mentoring to incoming South Asian students. But this was not a club targeted solely at the South Asians, as our membership list would testify. With the region becoming the hot bed of business, we wanted to use the club as a platform to help the greater Darden/UVA community understand the intricacies of doing business in South Asia. In my admittedly biased opinion, I believe we have achieved everything we set out to, and we still have events in the pipeline!

Here’s a memento IJ handmade for us – needless to say, it has the pride of place in my room.

For information on DSAS, visit our Facebook page and follow us on Twitter or contact us at dsas@darden.virginia.edu

Do I dare look back?

Long post coming up...

I did not want to do the customary year-in-review, but then thoughts, they come and go and what is this blog for, if not to capture them before they run away? So I plod on, in a stream of consciousness ramble that is a function of a heavy tummy from too much food and heavy eyes from little sleep!

So I proudly celebrated a full calendar year of being vegetarian this year and I’m really proud of it. I am not counting in all those accidental meat tastings… the only half-full outlook to those incidents is that I am now super conscious when I am ordering food and make sure to mention my preference for absolutely no meat or meaty broth in my food. Technically I’ve been veggie for more than a year now, but one full calendar year makes me feel so good about myself, that I have decided to remain veggie for as long as possible. And it’s been easier than I thought!

I travelled quite a bit this year – maybe not as much as I would have liked but I did go to some really interesting places and that’s what counts, right? Right! So let’s see… Washington DC, India, Brazil, California – see it wasn’t much. But my trip to Brazil was most memorable and it’s gotten me on the track to planning another trip to the continent – more on that as it unfolds. Another serendipitously good trip was the summer in India. Weather aside – it was either incredibly hot or annoyingly wet! – I went to places that I couldn’t point on the map before the summer and all of it in the country I profess to have spent the first twenty something years of my life and profess to have travelled extensively in.

I spent a fantastically ups-and-downs filled year at business school… and since this blog has been all about business school for the most part, it would be unfair to talk more about it. It would suffice to say that I saw way too many ups and downs this year… there were times when I thought I wouldn’t survive and other times when I just wanted time to stop and hold on to the moments. I found out much more about my friends here and made a whole bunch of new ones too. Like a database keeping up with times, I purged and I added… and then some more. Over the months that passed, I saw different facets to the people I thought I already knew well, some pleasant some not so much.

One thing that I did consistently through the year was to look for a job – first the internship and then full time. I wish I could say I rounded off the year in style with a fantastic big bucks offer, but sadly I cannot. However, I have hope – green shoots and all that, so maybe in next year’s recap, I’ll be able to write all about what a fantastic journey it had been… and why not? Believe it or not, looking for a job – and the inevitable rejections that come with it – are enough to teach you a lot about yourself as it taught me this year.

Which then brings me to my things to do next year. As always, it’s to lose weight. I know I know, it comes back every year to haunt me, but this year I’m really going to do something about it – starting from January 11th (this is SO not a good way to start on a resolution!) - and since I've already begun last year, it's off to a start of sorts already! Other things I want to do are remain vegetarian, get a few more stamps on the passport, oh and get a job! Some other plans for the year are to experiment with cooking – especially baking – and to make sure that my experiments are all given away to others to eat! I also really want to get back to reading – and maybe once I graduate, I cannot cite the three-cases-a-day excuse for all the things I’ve missed out on and the people I’ve not given their due attention to last year. This year I just want to be a better, happier person... not such a tall order is it?

Oh and this year I also want to figure out what I want to do with this blog – that’s right, sweeping changes await this space. Happy new year!

Freedom is...

...a word that we throw around to justify bad behavior, short skirts, hurtful words, jumping signals in the night…

Every year Independence Day becomes a time to reflect on the importance of where India is as a nation today. Having grown up in urban India, I have known freedom since I was old enough to yawn. Freedom meant that I could choose to wear the kind of clothes I wished, wear my hair short or long, black or red… It meant that I could play cricket with the boys as a 12 year old. It meant I could choose the books I wanted to read, the amount of religion I wanted to practice, the languages I chose to learn or not. Freedom meant that I could choose to study a branch of engineering as the only girl in that department, and no one stopped me. Freedom means that I can proudly go to a country on the other side of the world to get an advanced degree… because I want to… at which age, my mother had already had me. Freedom means that when I marry, it will be to a man of my choice, after my mind is ready to accept him as a partner. But this is not just me; this is every urban Indian man or woman.

Freedom is what I saw in rural India this summer. It was where a woman could walk around in her community, doing door-to-door sales, unaccompanied by any male member of the family. She could be an entrepreneur… and a mother… and a cook, homemaker, a wife, a daughter-in-law. And freedom meant that she could juggle all of these roles with WonderWoman-like dexterity. Freedom is where the son of a single mother from a small time town in rural Tamil Nadu could dream of getting an MBA degree from India’s premier business school… to achieve and then go on to start his own firm.

Freedom means that we no longer have the benefit of someone else’s wisdom, that we go on to make our own mistakes to learn from them. That we fall and get up and fall again. That we chart our own course, take our own risks, with no template that we have to follow, with no comfort of knowing how it all will end. Freedom is knowing that life comes full circle, but meanders in ways unique to each of us, to the choices we make, the heartbreaks we endure, the sacrifices we make, the successes we earn. Freedom is blooming where we’re planted. Freedom is, but only, a state of mind. Freedom is… everything we want it to be.

To India, Happy Independence Day.

Internship - the last mile

I’m on the last week of my internship here. While work has gotten less exciting in the past three weeks (i.e. no traveling), it’s been information overload. I had one really slow week that frustrated the hell out of me – it’s hard enough to wake up in the morning, even harder to make it to work when it’s pouring outside – the least I expect is to be busy for the nine hours I’m at work. Instead, I had enough work for about an uninterrupted half day and then I’d wonder what I should be doing. Not that I minded it so much. You see, sitting in the middle of the action, you pick up stuff just from hearing and seeing. So although I didn’t get an opportunity to work with as many people as I would have liked to, I did get to learn a lot from observation (kind of like the way I learnt to cook!).

But that was just the one week. The one after that has been pretty busy. My final deliverable is a creative brief to an ad agency, one that encompasses a number of brands. After some analysis on the regions we are piloting this initiative (that I’m working on), we came up with a few brands that have the highest salience (how’s that for jargon?). I have spent the better part of last week meeting with the brand managers of these brands and studying brand materials I have obtained from them. While I have enjoyed meeting these people and learning about the brands and how they have been designing the campaigns that I see on outdoor overheads (OOH) and commercials (TVC), I wish they had time to talk to me about other stuff… like what keeps them here, what they like about their job, what their career graph has been etc. Basically the typical networking buzz except that I actually really WANT to know this about them. More than just an exposure to the workings of a typical CPG firm, I am using this internship to evaluate whether I want to return to India after Darden. Unfortunately, people here have been way too busy and I am constantly aware of the long hours they put in everyday, including Fridays.

On Saturday morning I return home for a few days before I have to leave for VA again. It feels like my ‘vacation’ is ending. It was great having free evenings with no cases to prep for the next day. I am actually reading – the newspapers, magazines, books… I have enjoyed walking around Nariman Point in the evenings after work, looking at headquarters of a lot of major corporations. It’s been a welcome change to be able to watch Sunday night movies on tv, with nothing to ‘study’ for Monday morning. But I’m ready for this to end because I really want to spend some time with the family, not just hurried weekends like I had over the past two months. In the meantime, I have this week to get through.

Mahayatra through Maharashtra

Tomorrow I leave for the first of a few trips as part of my internship (refer to map of Maharashtra state). I leave early morning for Aurangabad where I will spend the day observing Project Shakti in action in the villages around the city. The following day I will travel to Shirdi where once again I will get to observe Shakti Ammas as they go about their duties. And finally on Day 3, I will be in Nasik where I will get to interview some Shakti Ammas and understand what the missing links are.

I’m very excited about this trip not just because I’ve never travelled to these areas before, but also because of the sudden attention that rural India has been garnering in the media. I’m referring to two much emailed articles that came out in the WSJ and Mint newspapers today (Mint is a business newspaper that partners with WSJ). Rural India has been untouched by the recession and continues to consume and purchase more consumer products in the market than urban India. In fact, sales from rural India account for more than 50% of Unilever’s total sales in personal care products in India. Rural India has accounted for 50% of Vodafone’s new subscriptions for cell phone connections in the last year, and just today, the Indian prime minister has said that the economy will target for 9% growth rate, fuelled no doubt by the growing consumerism in the robust rural economy.

To know more about HUL’s Project Shakti, try this and this. This project has been successfully implemented in countries in Asia under Unilever Bangladesh (UBL) as Joyeeta and in Unilever Sri Lanka as Saubaghya.

Legend:

Mahayatra: long journey

Amma: mother

Turning the page

** Warning: Looooooong post ahead

First I must apologize for the extended period of silence. Things have been a little unwieldy since school gave in to summer. That’s right; I am officially done with first year. I have spent the better part of the last few days trying to come to terms with the feeling… I don’t know if I should be happy or sad… Honestly, I feel kind of numb. This year has been a little hard to digest. Typical of the Darden program, so much has been thrown at us this year and so fast, that sometimes I have trouble believing I actually went through the whole year and lived to tell about it!

I remember how it felt at orientation, oh 10 months ago. A sea of unfamiliar faces, everything was at once befuddling yet exciting. There was a sense of nervous expectation, a sort of go getter attitude. I walked in to Darden with dreams that were big for where I came from, yet seemingly modest given the type of school I had come to. The economy was just showing some signs of weariness, but the red alerts had not set in as yet. I may have been $60000 in debt but I felt like a million bucks!

And then the floodgates opened and suddenly it felt like sensory overload. Names gave way to faces, acquaintances became buddies and second years became inspirations to look up to. Suddenly Microsoft, McKinsey, AT Kearney, UTC, Danaher became more than just tickers on CNBC, they were for real and I was sharing glasses of wine with them or corresponding via email. In class, we were talking about real companies, real people, real problems. Excel became my new best friend, my alarm clock my worst foe. On Thursday mornings, it seemed like the night couldn’t come soon enough to go back to bed, and yet there I was letting my hair down at TNDC. Weekends left only a whooshing sound in their wake as they sped by and then there was the 100 case party where I sang till my voice went hoarse, forging new bonds even as I did so. Days merged into nights and days again, and I stopped to take it all in only during winter break, when time seemed to stretch on forever. Soon it was 2009 and with it came a slew of disappointments as the recession had spread its tentacles into our summer recruiting. The upbeat mood of the first semester gave way to more somber countenances in the second semester and expectations we reset and we scrambled to find employment for the summer. Even in the midst of all the self doubt and falling self confidence, I made time for the GBE to Brazil, the best forced vacation in all my life and one that I’m not likely to forget for years to come. Business school taught me to leave my worries behind as I went to explore a new country and was enriched by the experience.

I don’t really know where the last quarter of school went, but here we are. The year seems to have flown by and as I meet people who are joining business school this fall, even the recession seems to bounce off them and their optimism. But for me and my class at Darden, there is something about this recession that has bonded us together like no previous batch at school. We rallied around one another, lauding one person’s success with a bulge bracket investment bank just as we supported the other that got yet another I-regret-to-inform-you email. It was May and 20% of us were without direction for the summer, yet we threw farewell parties and danced our hearts out at the Bollywood, Japan and LASA parties. There were days when I was filled with hope that everything will be ok, yet there were days of despair. On the latter, I was never alone, finding support and encouragement in the success stories of others or just in having lunch together at Café 67. And yet, this much cursed recession forced us to expand our boundaries. People took risks, followed dreams and went where others would not look in a regular year. While someone went to Africa to do economic development another went to DC to work in sustainability. Someone found intellectually rewarding work in an 11 member VC firm while someone else found a window to showcase his Crystal Ball skills to a government firm. Some people traded their dream jobs for more satisfying start up experiences, while others just walked away from the rat race to start their own thing and thus give employment to another classmate through the Batten institute. As for me, I had a strange turn of events. I came to Mumbai to work with the firm that was my dream employer through most of undergrad and my days at Infosys, one I had lost hope in when I chose to pursue an MBA abroad. Not only was this opportunity at Unilever serendipitous, even more interesting is the nature of work I get to do. I am working with one of their most talked about CSR initiatives, the Project Shakti.

I have a ton of impressions from coming back to India after a year. A lot of time spent in commuting has given me enough fodder to ponder and reminisce. And while I miss Darden and its familiarity, I am discovering a different work culture at Unilever, and I constantly compare and evaluate. I also spam my friends’ inboxes with all the conversations I wish I could have with them! But as I go into week 2 of my internship, I look forward to being able to get back to writing about all that goes on in my head.

Vacation and back… Part 2.

So taking on from where I left off in Part 1, this one's about Agra and Jaipur... and a few other things.

Agra - Shah Jahan's view of the Taj from his prison cell

Agra: Agra was the next stop on my holiday. On the way to Agra is Akbar’s resting place, the Sikandra Fort. The fort is built with a grandeur befitting the great ruler of Mughal India. A fine specimen of architecture, this is also one of the better-maintained of the monuments he built. In the lawns surrounding the fort, monkeys and peacocks and deer roam freely, in what can only be described as a breathtaking sight. I have never seen so many peacocks together! It is not hard to imagine how it would have been when Akbar had walked the courtyards there or held darbar in those lawns.
No visit to Agra is complete without a mention of the Taj Mahal. Just as its beauty is alluring, so disappointing is the town that the Taj calls its home. Dirty and most tourist-unfriendly is Agra city, my lasting impression of Agra is of the feeling of being ripped off on any transaction you make, be it a tourist guide or a handicrafts seller. Stay at a nice hotel and you will easily forget the disorganized and dirty town you see as you go around in your car. The Taj itself is home to a number of pickpockets, unlicensed guides and street vendors, all promising to sell you the Taj in all sizes for a price tag of Rs.5 to Rs. 5,00,000. But cross the gates and behold the beauty in white marble and you are left speechless. No amount of photographs in magazines or documentaries on the Discovery channels will prepare you for the sheer breathtaking edifice that the Taj is. A good guide will tell you little bits of history and details of architecture that will make the monument all the more spectacular. But even without it, when you enter the inner chamber where Shah Jahan is purported to be buried alongside his beloved Mumtaz, you can’t help feel envy for a woman who was so loved. The Taj is best viewed early in the morning before the marble floors get hot. The Agra fort is another must-see in Agra. Here’s where you’ll feel sorry for Shah Jahan as you visit the chamber where his son kept him captive, his only solace being the distant view of the Taj Mahal that he could see through the holes that were gouged patterns on the wall. Here he died, after spending 12 years in captivity. His body was rowed across the Yamuna and taken to the Taj where he was buried.

Jaipur: From Agra we made our last stop at Jaipur. Undoubtedly the best part of our entire vacation, Jaipur was everything that Agra was not. Clean, friendly and very pro-tourist, Jaipur was an absolute delight. At Jaipur are the Sawai Man Singh Palace and fort, the museum and the Jantar Mantar. And don’t forget the shopping. There’s lots you can shop here, right from Jaipur block printed clothing to silver jewellery to handicrafts. A not-to-miss is the area of the Bazaar that seats the men and women who will henna beautiful and intricate patterns onto your palms. Rajasthani food was delightful, especially the sweets! The only downside of Jaipur was the hot sun that had me tanned about two shades.

I celebrated my birthday over the weekend when I was in Bangalore with my family. Bangalore has got to be my favourite Indian city after Chennai. I love visiting Bangalore but it's always great to be back home because it helps me appreciate Chennai's traffic more. Bangalore is infamous for bad infrastructure which pretty much translates to bad traffic jams on the roads. That apart, Bangalore has a pulse and culture that's unparalleled. Did I mention that Bangalore also has the best pubs? Anyone who knows me will know that I will not write about Bangalore without talking about the Legends of Rock pub. Great music, period. That's enough reason to go there.

Being my last birthday at home for some time to come, my birthday gift was a good time at the pub topped off with some lip smacking dinner. Thankfully, this time there were no talks about growing old(er), since everyone was too busy with all the work we had to do in Bangalore. When I returned, it dawned on me that I have very little time before I have to go. It sucks.

Vacation and back… Part 1.

So I’m back from a whole bunch of traveling. I wrote a bit about the palces I was going to in my last post. Ideally, I would have liked to write a post each about each of the palces I visited simply because they do warrant a piece each. But with going-away day barely a week away, I’m hard pressed for time and therefore I’m going to make it short.

First up my Mumbai trip. I love Mumbai and I was thoroughly pleased to see that it hasn’t lost any of vibrance in the last 5 years that I’ve missed it. I got to meet some friends and generally had a lot of fun visiting places I had not been to when I was living there. Unfortunately we couldn’t catch a show at Prithvi theater but we did catch some good coffee in the historic theater that was started by Raj Kapoor. I got to meet this awesome entrepreneur buddy of my friend and also an old friend of mine who I’d lost touch with. Some shopping and cocktails and yummy maharashtrian food and great company – ingredients for the fun-est time ever!


Haridwar: This was the first stop on my trip. Reason for being there is simply the Ganga. Of the 2 days we spent there, one evening was spent at the ghat watching the evening aarti which is really really beautiful. Haridwar’s ghat or bathing area is built for just bathing. There are stairs leading into the river while a part of the river itself is channeled to flow through a narrow-ish area with bathing stairways flanking both sides. I’m not doing a good job with the description, but the picture below should explain. The first and only way to describe this palce is crowded! There are multitudes of devotees thronging to the banks of the Ganga to wash their sins or take blessings (like me). I did not go there as a devotee – this was hardly a pilgrimage. But the sight of the river and kind of faith that people have for Ganga Mayya (Mayya = mother) kind of makes the whole experience a reaffirmation of faith. Save for this, my view of Haridwar is being crowded, old-world and a little dirty. I guess it’s typical of any Indian pilgrimage town.

Rishikesh: This is about 20kms from Haridwar. Here the Ganga is more placid and cleaner. She is also a lot deeper here. The symbol of Rishikesh is the Laxman Jhula which is a bridge spanning the Ganga. The other side of the bridge is home to the temples and ashrams that play host to the scores of devotees who throng Rishikesh every day. This part of the town is really quaint and is a pedestrian-only area. In true Indian style, there are beggars and cows jostling for space among the devotees and shop keepers who sell you everything from precious stones to Ganga in a bottle.

Devprayag: I haven’t got much to say about this places since I spent only an hour or so here. Devprayag is the confluence of Alaknanda and Bhagirati rivers that then flow downwards fromt here as the Ganga. Bhagirati is the more placid of the two while Alaknanda is faster, with a roar that can be heard some distance away. At the point of confluence, you can see the two rivers distinctly, differentiated by their colors.

Haridwar - Those are real people!

Next up, I headed over to Agra and Jaipur which I will write about in Part 2.

Interim

One would imagine that with a nearly three month vacation, life would be a lot like sitting by the beach on a lazy summer afternoon (under the umbrella of course and slathered with liters of sun block) sipping iced tea. Pop! I just burst that bubble.

Life has been a frantic run over the past few days, under a deceptively calm veneer. I’ve finally managed to clear one of the three pre-matric exams that Darden requires us to take (all in true Infosys Perception© style) leaving me with Economics and Math to go through. And of course all the pages and pages of excel exercises. I should not be cribbing because, as mommy dearest puts it, I need to get used to the idea of actually studying – well she doesn’t put it in such flattering terms – after 3 years of giving up cramming. I guess she doesn’t know that I barely studied in my last year of engineering! Of course she doesn’t really understand the cramming I did for my certifications at the company… All she knew was that it required me to go to work on the weekends and eat pizza lunch at my cubicle! But studying isn’t all it is. I have a lot of shopping that needs to begin. I need to figure out what “Indian” things I need to take that I wouldn’t get in C’ville. We’ve done our google snooping for Indian provision stores and everything, but my mum worries that I might resort to eating out more than required if I’m strapped for ingredients! I need to watch enough tele to satisfy any craving I anticipate over the next two years for Indian television. I've been talking to a lot of old friends, and meeting with as many as I can. There are many goodbyes left to be said. And I’ve got to take my vacation!

I’m beginning my traveling a little late in the summer. This week, I’m heading off to my second favorite Indian city, Mumbai, to spend time with my best friend and to meet a few others. Maybe I can catch some Mumbaikar Dardenites too... Next weekend I’m off on a longer vacation further up north. I’ve always wanted to visit Haridwar, home of the Ganga (note: technically the Ganga originates from Gangotri, a glacier further up in the Himalayas. The Ganga also passes through Haridwar and its sister city Rishikesh, both holy places according to Hinduism. More on these places in a separate post). This is a trip I’ve been meaning to do for a long time, but somehow being in the south made it that much harder to make it. I’ve managed to convince the family to go this time with a fair bit of I’m-going-away blackmailing, something I’m resorting to a lot these days – its working every time, I should add! I’m also covering two more cities that I’ve been meaning to do since ages- Agra and Jaipur. Agra needs no introduction. It’s the home of the Taj Mahal. Enough said. Jaipur again, is tourist paradise. The pink city is home to many a beautiful palace and some rich Indian history. My camera’s going to be working on overdrive, that’s for sure! Once I’m back, it will be time to get the bags out and start packing, counting down days before I have to leave yet again. See, that’s what I find amusing. I read blogs of people in America who are moving cross-country to join school this fall, and of the major farewell parties they’re having and all the good byes they’re saying and how bad they’re feeling about moving. And all they have to do is get on a car and drive. Or at worst, get on a plane. And here I am, along with scores of other internationals that make up the diverse batch of Darden’s class of 2010, traveling to the other side of the globe, knowing that I wont be seeing my family and friends for another two years. Not to mention that should I wish to visit, it’s a 24-hour journey through 3 continents to get here! A certain fellow blogger who had the misfortune of leaving to the US on the same night as I did in January this year, will be aware of the tears I shed at the airport! And all for a 4-month stint. I don’t want to imagine how embarrassed I’m going to be this time!!

So that’s life thus far, my last lazy summer vacation. I’ll sign off now. But there’ll be a lot more action soon. Until then, here’s some other news. The sister also got a job at the company.