Back to Chicago....
ek ka do ek ka do......well yes! I saw 2 movies at the prie of one this sat! luv this theatre here whr thers noone to hk once u enter the row of 12 sreens!!! go wherever u want..thts it! :D "Kicking n Sreamin" was awesome...laughter riot!! the chotu chini guy bon sang was ulti kewl! "Monster in law" was bearable...really reallly found J Lo hot!
Sunday was the museum day at the fields museum of natural history...6 hrs at a museum!!! woho! damn kewl!!
from Africa to China to Tibet to japan to hawaii to pacific islands to egypt ...this was one helluva roller coaster!
catch a glimpse of the hues @ http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/goel_sagar/album?.dir=874e&.src=ph&store=&prodid=&.done=http%3a//photos.yahoo.com/ph//my_photos
The most captivating thing were the models explaining the mumification process.first the body organs are removed. The person who cuts the body would be rituallly cursed and chased away. The body then dries for 40 days. Insets and scavengers are to be kept away during this time.After washing and stuffing the body with straw and other materials, it is entirely bandaged including iindividual fingers. The internal parts which are removed are separately wrapped.After 2 months the final rituals are performed and the mummy kept in boxes and buried.
The animal models were breathtakingly realistic...n boy wot a collection!
The most famous possession of this museum is Sue. She is the largest most complete Tyrex in the world.
Having exited the museum we boarded the $10 cruise for a 30 min ride on Lake Michigan. it was simply WOW! The best view of Downtown Chicago can be seen from here.Later in the day we went to Sears tower- the tallest building in Chicago. went upstairs only to find that it would cost us a freakin sum of money we werent ready to part with. So we kataoed it and came bk to r beds.
My Guide's Here!!!!
After 2 weeks and 2 days of peace thr was a sudden metamorphosis in my chores. Well, my internship advisor who had been holidaying in China for all this time finally arrived here on 18th May. My first meeting with him is something im gonna remember, not just bcoz after endless tries he still cudnt get the pronounciation of my name right, but coz he was so congenial and talked like he was a student himself. Greg, was exactly the way I had conjured in my mind....this really nice guy who takes real good are of his students. During the conversation he revealed that he was real bad at spellings and drawings :P
The day was special for another reason. I got a chance too attend the lecture of Robert BOB Horvitz, the 2002 nobel peace prize winner in Medicine and Physiology. He was jus like Greg (n y not Greg did his Phd under him!)-humorous and inspiring.
He mae the audience burst in their seats with his on-the-spur-of-the-moment snippits. This amazing speaker said whilst tallking about apoptosis( programmed cell death), "Bird feet come in two flavours-one the normal ones like in pigeons n the other webbed feet like in geese" hehehehe...Mo' ovr he seemed to personally know two of the birds whose photos he showed ..intersting.......His lecture just left me in complete awe of this Dr....
Well, life's been hectic since my guide came here...mo n mo work,,,,,well good in a way....workoholic tht i am! :P
N yes!! before i forget...the ABCT (read amerian born confused Taiwanese) in my lab -Victoria Wu, under whose guidance I am working.....fianly wore something othr than Black today!!!! She's so patient with me..Im thankful for tht....n I mean it....some of my frnds can vouch for the fact tht I can get really irritating at times....hehehehehe.....ADIOS!
Wot a WEEEEEEEEEEEk!!
The last week was pretty hectic......with lotsa work ....majorly repititions of my previous experiements coz of my absence of mind.....damn! i was like in a never ending loop of making silly (read bizzare) mistakes which really got on my nerves.....I hope im not jinxed...
Im still waiting for my guide, Greg. Hopefully he should b here by Thurs 20th.
Saturday was work plus shopping at JEWEL. O ya! we also ate at this THAI restaurant. Man it jus drilled a hole down my pocket and wasnt tht gr8 either! Was a lil happy wen I had a look at Anish's plate....weird stff all over...n something which he said looked like "snake babies"!!:P
Wen I spoke to my folks back home they seemed to b pretty enthu abt wot was goin on with me. "Kaise ho?", "Kaisa lag raha hai","Khana theek se kha rahe ho naa?", "AAche se ghoomna","Eat a lot of fruits, they'r cheap thr"...n so on.....really miss evryone at home...!!
SUNDAY WAS CHILLAXOFREAKOUT day @ Chicago......i was simply spell bound byy what Chicago had to offer!!!!
Really tall (well thts an understatement) skyscrapers...man it was some skyline at downtown Chicago....
the first place we hit was JOHN HANCOCK OBSERVATORY-1,000 feet above the Magnificent Mile, Michigan Av, the heart or rather the most bustling n colorful part of Chicago.This was a 96 storey (!!!!!) building with an observatory at the 94th floor. It is the city's only open-air skywalk. Here you'll see a 360-degree incredible view of Chicago, Wisconsin, Michigan, Indiana and other parts of Illinois.The ticket to the observatory cost $12 which really put us down( especially after blowing up $10 each at the crappy Thai pl. we werent in a mood for letting thoz bucks out so easily) .....but then this was a one-time-in-the-life opportunity.We worked a way out :) We took the elevatorin the lobby and went straight up to the 95th floor at the restaurant-cum-bar. Luck favors the brave goes the adage but didnt quite work for us :( The incharge linda shooed us outta thr.Well, thr u r! whr thr is a will thr is a way goes anothr adage. We took to the elevator to the last floor. It was the Lounge of the same restaurant. Things seemed to work peacefully...we waLKED AROUND smitten by the sight below thru the glass walls.....WOW! I had never seen something la tht before...its inexplicable....the Lake Michigan on one side and the Chicago Skyline on the other. The cars on the road seemed like of of those baby toys..the buildings so minuscule that I could squash them down with my feet...No sight of living things (Now i know y they are called lesser mortals)...
Next we jhandoed in pure desi ishtyle..tadoing bandiyan(n real sexy ones:P), feelin the chilly air, rockin wit the music at the virgin store, Feelin a kick at the Nike showroom and Smellin' the fragrance at Boss's. This was the MAGNIFICIENT MILE- a mile long area along the N. Michigan Av...the place ud find any brand label on earth...the shoppin pl. for the world.
Walkin n window shoppin we reached NAVY PIER- originally built in 1916 to serve Lake Michigan freighters and provide transportation to other cities on the Great Lakes, as well as for recreational purposes. In 1941, Navy Pier was converted to military use and used throughout World War II. From 1946 to 1964, it was a college campus. After a lull in the 1970’s and 1980’s, Navy Pier was revitalized and, today, it is a multi-million dollar convention, cultural and recreation center and Chicago’s most visited attraction with food chains, food shacks, Ferris wheel, A nice cute garden,cruises, power boats, lil' ducks in the water and birds flying ovr the shore,a 3D time escpae (dont believe we spent $10 for tht bird-shit) ride whr u were supposed to sit in front of a screen in a dark room with ur 3D glasses on whilst some crap plays on (one distinct thing i remember abt this was the black female among the crew who seemed 2 b luving her job like nobody's business!! Dancing, jumpin', shouting, she was the only good thing abt this Time escape ride).The best site at Navy Pier was the museum of glass paintings...outta the world..never seen so much finesse in glass paintings....
Chillin out (literally, the weather was damn cold and Anish was without his jacket) we hopped over to Millennium Park-undoubtedly the best thing of the day."Millennium Park," says one prominent civic leader, "will be a worthy creation for all time. It will define Chicago to the entire world as America’s greatest city. Located in downtown Chicago on Michigan Avenue between Randolph and Monroe Streets, the 24.5-acre park is an unprecedented center for world-class art, music, architecture and landscape design, where you can experience everything from interactive public art and ice skating to al fresco dining and free classical music presentations by the Grant Park Orchestra and Chorus.The best feature here was the Crown Fountain- two 50-foot high glass block towers at each end of a shallow reflecting pool. The towers activated with changing video images and lights, and water cascades from the top of each were simply awe-inspiring. This fountain showed the Faces of people on a 50-foot screen with water falling from the top. Wow! I was feelin so good here. Just wen I thot we shud move ahead water fountain emerged from the Mouth of the faces. I luckily managed to capture that on my digi-cam...kewl!
Having done with this, we moved on to catch some museums but all of them seemed to b closed. The road led us to the Buckingham fountain and then to the lake shore whr we relaxed r cryin feet. The sight of the skyscrapers from here was breathtaking!! After some pumping from my side anish finally had some tempo to head towards the Shedd Aquarium but it turned out to b their closing time when we reached thr at 6 in the evening. Tired and half-dead after those miles of walkin arnd in Chicago we head for home by catching the CTA TRAIN FROM THE ROOSEVELT SUBWAY.
The icing on the cake was provided by the toppings on the pizza (which we munched after reachin home) ......I kept thinking "MAN WILL I EVER 4get this day" ...ZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzz
P.S.: ull wanna c my pics @ http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/goel_sagar/album?.dir=d176&.src=ph&store=&prodid=&.done=http%3a//photos.yahoo.com/ph//my_photos
SUNDAY FUNDAY
Y'day was fun....
we entered in2 this fusion traffic jam show from the backdoor( without paying the ticket fee tht is ;) )
T'was onme helluva dance show......the best thing was the wave by thoz 5 dames ...n wot a way to do it....get on all fours-all get into one line-put their feet over the shoulders of the person behind-n there goes the wave...TMO!!
Went for 'The Interpreter" at Century theatres dow(illegally offcoz) coz thrs no one to chk.....unfortunately v cudnt do tht coz the othr movies playing at tht part of the corridor were bullcrap.....nywyz will try r luck again sometime...
had dinner at POTBELLIES....nice place must say with the live music arnd,,,,
T'day mornin' we cooked something entirely rselves.....the capsicum turned out to b pretty cool..yummy!!
One weird thing here in the lab is tht thez ppl dont use the laminar hood for the microbial work ...everything is done on the workbench.....guess theyve worked fine with this...only time will tell if i get any contamination in any of my cultures....
i guess ill push off now.....may b hang arnd in the univ or go home.....lets c......
Amerians, Indians, ABCDs n all tht.....
THrs jus one word to describe americans -"weird?" I dun get wot thez ppl r thinking at the back of their minds...Nywyz..its been a gr8b place- thts the northwestern univ...n Evanston in general...
y'day Anish and myself played cricket with desis here....and boy! is was sooo much fun...cricket surely gets all indians united..b it in india or anywhere! gottu meet some really cool guys here,,,,deepak, robin, manish, zaheer, roopam, piyush n all.....deepak n robin have an amazing sense of humor i must say....At night we were tr8ed by Kunal-"the dude" at clarkes...tho i really didn' have too many things to choose from wot i got finally was so pathetic tht it was for once i felt tht its a curse being a veggie!...nywyz i still like it this way......we jhandoed arnd the univ and good lord......since the weather was kinda warm and pleasant after a long time it was like the whole of evanston was out on the strests....have never seen so many hookers in one single hr than ever b4 in my life!!!!! N wen v reached home thr was some "ation" next door..needless to say americans jus need a reason to .......................
Today was sooo freakin awesome....we went to jewels to buy r groceries with kunal......later we went to Devons street..its lie a mini-INDIA and a mini-PAk...its like as if ur in some indian gully.......thrs such a marked change between this place n the rest of the US.....indian stores selling any stf ud find in india....along with the refuse strewn all over the roads...chaotic traffic....(how can v have india without all tht haan?),,,,we had a luvly sumptuous dinner at one of the places....man it surely rocked for $ 9 !
have been hearing a lot abt thes american born confused desis or ABCDs as they r better knwn...hope to get to know them soon...
Where am I?
29th april 20:20 hours IST:
I leave my hostel room totally oblivious of what a few days hence would b like. The only thought i had was that the outgoing final years wouldnt be thr wen i came back....it was seriously weird even trying to think about that.
30th April 00:05 hours IST:
I Reach Dum dum airport and wished happy b'day to amit .
30th April 12:30 IST
After a torturous night out at the airport I reach Pune only to run helter skelter and get my bags packed an meet all my relatives.
1st May 21:00 IST
I leave for Mumbai International Airport. I feel for the first time that I am going somewhere far- but where ?
2nd May 06:30 IST
After another night out at the airport I board the plane along with Anish, with whom I'd stay for the next 10 weeks.
2nd May 11:50 Germany ST
We reach Frankfurt and again depart at 2:15
The feeling is that of awe (except for the fact that the flight attendants arent like I expeted to be -Thanx to the cheap tikects of AIR_INDIA. Food isnt all that gr8. I try to shuffle between sleep and food and the intermittent sreenings of movies and soaps.
11.3 km above sea -level! flying thru the snowlike layer of clouds! -35 degrees outside temperatures! man its some experience.
2nd May 04:15 Chicago time:
I am finally thr! feels like wow! all set to rock this summer.
Step outta the airport after all the formailities-the strangest thing is that one an walk out with anyone else's bag!! I mean there is no heck whether u r carrying ur own bag or not! now thts weird!
Shabbir bhai drops us to 1112 Garnett street (r residence for the next 10n weeks) by his car.
Finally it all sinks in......YEAH! I am at the US of A for my summer internship at Northwesternn University, Evanston, IL.......BOY!!! This is gonna be one helluva summer.........lets c what happens,,.......
