Winter Break

Traveling has been my favorite way to spend the holidays - be it the long weekends or the quarter breaks. From Vegas to DC and Michigan to Texas, I have traveled the length and breadth of this beautiful country. But still there remains infinite places that I still dream to visit.

This winter break we had almost a full month time which I could have traveled, may be a trip to Alaska or even Hawaii. Instead I chose to stay back in Columbus, working. I worked in my lab while everyone else was out holidaying. The whole campus was looked deserted. At the same time it gave me enough opportunities to meet new people, strengthen old friendships and enough time for reminiscence of this past year - how I decided to live a life that made more sense to me than this stressful, monotonous life of studies and taking exams! I was fairly successful, to an extent where I just managed to survive the cut-off gpa :)

Like I said, this winter break I was able to strengthen some old friendships, was able to go out for coffee and visit bookstores with them. Spent more time on extra-curricular activities. I bought a National Geographic Road Atlas copy from a half-prices bookstore near the campus. I got it for $5.99 which I believe is a steal. I was flipping through its pages and quickly read snippets from few chapters within the book and it gave me this blissful feeling that it was one of the best buy in recent times. It covers all the national parks in the country with a detailed account of camp and RV sites. Also the state park which is more useful especially when you have a shorter time to spare. Also I go these old NG magazines for $0.25!! Can you believe it? Mere 25 cents. I quickly picked two copies, though my heart kept saying I need to pick all of them, but my pocket said, two is enough for now, come back later :)

I went to couple of nice coffee shops, Cup -o- Joe and Caribou Coffee with Laura. Both places had nice ambience to offer along with great coffee (as told me by Laura as I don't drink Coffee). Deserve more visits in the future.

Looking forward for a fun bash new years eve with Maria and other friends at this Mexican place in Downtown. And in the meantime, I wish all of you a fun filled new year and hope that each one of us become more responsible and kind towards nature!

Black Belt

It was my last week of classes for the quarter. Most of the students in class exchanged email addresses or facebook links. This being a photography class, most of the students came from different schools - some from Engineering, some art, some from Architecture and some from social sciences. Some were as old as 60 (a retired school teacher) while there were quite a few freshmen students. I took it for fun of course.

The instructor was a really interesting guy. He believed in showing videos in class than teaching any technical stuff about photography. He says, what ever we shoot, we need to imagine ourselves in that picture and then shoot. Technical details are secondary. This was his answer to one of the question where a student asked - What makes a picture a great picture? Is it the name? or is the great technique?

As the quarter went on, I could make some interesting friends. There is this Chinese American girl, Tiffany (yeah this is her English name), who had an old-school SLR (the film one). We were the back benchers and amongst the ones who come late always. I was talking to her recently and I was sermonizing to her what all things she can do over the break. Right then I came to know that she dances (which is normal!) but then, she is also a Taekwondo black-belt! ( makes me think why do all pretty girls have these hidden talents? :P)

Anyways its always fun taking such classes.