I fly

I am back to Minnesota after a packed and exhausting trip back to India. Tired and jet-lagged but need to catch up with lost work hours. I didn't write a single line of the draft paper I was supposed to finish during my visit. Two meetings coming up back to back tomorrow. I don't how it will go through. But I think I will survive.
It was nice to meet up some old friends, and their new other haves, on the last day of the trip in Bangalore. It was for very short period but it matters nevertheless. I also ran a 5k there hours before my flight. 

Interview

Hello Everyone. Long time no see. :)
I have a news. I am interviewing on this Saturday. I will be interviewer not interviewee. If you haven't heard about 1947partitionarchive it is time to hear about it now. A bunch of students in California decided to digitally archive the experiences of folks who have witnessed the India-Pakistan partition back in 1947. Since the number of such folks is dwindling fast it is imperative that we do it now otherwise it will be never. I guess it was inspired by a similar project for Hiroshima & Nagasaki disaster. I am really glad that someone took the initiative to finally document this. I have read a lot of stuff about partition and always wondered what it would be like to go through those horrific times.

I will be video interviewing a 90 year old man who migrated from one country to another during that time. It is my chance to witness the horrific part of history first hand and help record it. I am glad that I got the chance but there are very mixed feeling of grief, heartbreak, anguish and finally disgust towards those responsible.

It took me a lot to actually prepare for this. I had no experience in either interviewing or documenting history or video production or anything like that. But I had a little (online) training and lot of reading to back me. I am strong in theory. I always have been, in most things. Lets see if I can practically execute it now. I feel confident enough. I invested a lot of myself in volunteering to be Citizen Historian as the Archive folks like to call it. It came at very busy time. I am wrapping up things to prepare for my India visit next week. I still have some shopping things left. I think I will skip the part where I decide what I wear in the wedding. I will let more capable people (my Mom) handle the difficult things. It is not the domain of Zuckerburg-ian fashion admirers.

I am applying for a 14 day intense training on large scale scientific computing using parallel clusters. It is highly competitive and I have very slim chance of getting in. Let me try. Trying to meet the deadline tomorrow so cheerios!