Happening Life!

As we draw close to yet another year, I look back at the past year and have my usual year-end thoughts: "Wow! So many things happened this year!" When I am actually living my life and experiencing things, I don't stop and take notice. I just go through them with an, "it's no big deal" attitude. It's only occasionally that I pause to realize that it is indeed a happening life. Consider the highlights of just the current quarter:

1. Christmas came early for me, at the beginning of this quarter, with a couple of peer recognition awards, an outstanding support award and an appreciation award for implementing a project I led. I also won a couple of prizes in a team game and lucky drawing at work. I pooled in some of those awards, pitched in a little myself and took my team out for lunch.

2. On October 18th, I helped organize the TRAC 1B (PDF link) session here. TRAC is a workshop on Hinduism conducted by Dato' J Jegathesan around the world, to increase awareness of Hindu traditions, religion, aspirations and culture among young Hindus. At the TRAC 1B event in October, Uncle Jega talked about the power of mantras. Also, we gave our first presentation of RHYTHM. RHYTHM stands for Reigniting Hinduism in Youth Through Music. As part of the RHYTHM program, we presented four group songs. During this visit, Uncle Jega and his wife stayed in my house for 5 days, and we had a wonderful time together.

3. Later in October, I finished the first trimester in my MBA program with A's in both courses I took, scoring above 90 in both. God I love the feeling of good academic performance. Has been so long since I last felt it! And, it is so much fun to learn new things... especially when you know that you are learning the very basics, the equivalent of alphabets, of whole new fields. I am soaking it all in with the wonderment of a child.

4. I took a long overdue trip to the East Coast to meet some very dear friends in late Oct - early Nov. I absolutely LOVED spending time with them. I met 3-year-old Sarika for the first time. She is my old college-classmate-cum-close-friend's daughter. She is such a sweet and loving child, and we hit it off from the moment we met. Felt so nice to be around a child who can't stop talking to you, playing with you, touching you and who declares that she loves you within two hours of meeting you for the first time. Poor thing was crying when I had to say bye to them. I never thought I'd say this, but meeting my friends on that trip made me want to move out East. Other highlights of my trip included - enjoying the fabulous Fall colors along I-95 on my drive from NJ to VA, experiencing the vaunted subways of New York City for the first time, and most of all, watching the 2008 US Presidential Election results unfold on big screens in Times Square. It was a real party with free snacks, coffee, tea and water courtesy of the big TV channels, and the crowds cheering wildly every time they showed the numbers, with Barack Obama sweeping state after state.

5. Drunken photos from a college party plastered on Facebook - guess, I can check that off my list of things to experience as a student in America (although I still refuse to sign up for Facebook)! Last month, I participated in the great American college tradition - Beer Olympics. Around 10 teams, each with 5-6 MBA students from all the classes in my college gathered at around 2 PM in the afternoon and started chugging beer. We kept chugging well past midnight, while we indulged in increasingly loud and boisterous drinking games, celebrating each victory with high-fives, group hugs, crazy pictures and even a couple attempts at 3-level human pyramids! Past midnight, after all the games were done, prizes were given and everybody else went home, my dear classmates (who had spent all afternoon screaming the unimaginative-but-very-catchy battle cry of "Here we come bitcheezzz!") were still not done partying. We ended up at a karaoke bar, chugging more beer! By two most people were trashed, except yours truly, who was sober enough to drop off a few people at an apartment. Until last month, I did not even know what beer pong, quarters and flip cup were. Now, I can say that I've been there, done that, and got the t-shirt. Yes, my classmates actually got t-shirts made with 'beer olympics' and 'Downtowners' (our classes are held Downtown) printed on them, to the envy of other teams. I wore that t-shirt to the next class, earning a snide remark from the accounting professor.

6. The day after the beer olympics, I was supposed to help a local Sai Center at their event to celebrate Sai Baba's 83rd birthday. I had told them that I'd be there at 6 AM to help load big vessels of food. Needless to say, I was not even awake at 6 AM after having gone to bed well past 3 AM. Incredibly, I did make it by 7:45 AM. I am not a follower of Sai Baba and I don't even belong to any Sai Center or group. But I like volunteering for service activities with the Sai people because they are genuinely nice, especially the head of the Phoenix center and his family, and a few friends from the Tempe-Mesa area. When they have their activities, a whole bunch of people - very young children to older adults - come together and it is a real family atmosphere. Having grown up in a joint family in India and being very family-oriented, I always miss this family atmosphere here in the US. So, I am grateful for any opportunities to do stuff with them. I especially enjoy work that involves food. I had helped a little to prepare some of the food the previous afternoon, before I left for the beer olympics. At the celebration itself, they made me incharge of all the food in the kitchen for close to 300 people! Feels very good to be trusted and accepted like that by people, even though you don't belong to their organization or group. By that afternoon, I was pretty burnt out myself! The highlight of the celebration was the chanting of Rudram with a group of young people. They had learnt Rudram to present it on this occasion, and I got to chant with them. It was simply awesome to witness a group of young people in America chant the centuries-old mantra - the very same words, the very same accents with which they have been chanted for thousands of years, by millions of people, in a land on the other side of the globe. I was so touched and moved, I choked up a couple of times during the chanting. This felt more awesome than the time I chanted Rudram 11 times, with the people at the local Ganesha temple during the Deepavali festival a few weeks earlier.

7. Meanwhile, things are getting real exciting at work. I am getting involved in two projects which will put in some revolutionary technology on the metering side of our business. Although I am not part of the development teams which will implement these technologies, I have been identified to be primarily incharge of the systems when they go into Production. One of the projects will go live this month. I am working closely with the project teams to learn and transition the systems over to the support team. Lot of new things to pick up. High visibility systems to take care of. Exciting times ahead.

8. What other exciting stuff is in store for the 20 more days left this year? I have a mid-term exam coming up next week. And then, Phoenix's very first light rail system will be inaugurated this month. I will be volunteering at the inauguration event - my small attempt to be a small part of the local history. After that, I will be preparing for my trip to India. I will be in India for most of January 2009. I will be seeing for the very first time, my first niece who was born this quarter. I know I am looking forward to that!

Can't believe I just typed out all those details from my life, as if this was a teenage girl's journal! I guess, more than the current post, some of my past dramatic posts would qualify for such a journal.

So, yeah, it's a happening life. Despite my going through most of it with a 'meh' attitude. Life is what happens in those special and precious moments, while all the years whizz past in a one big 'MEH'!