I’ve finally moved to Bangalore and it is…it’s Bangalore. I have to admit, it’s the first time in my life I’ve ever felt homesick (I don’t know what I currently define as home, but whatever it is, I want it). Maybe, and is probably more likely the case, it’s just the first time in my life I’ve slowed down to really accept the emotions that I feel. And I’m proud of myself- I think that’s signs of progress, and of maturity. But it’s painful. It’s one of those things where you know it’s good for you and you are making good progress (and you wouldn’t have it any other way), but that doesn’t mean it sort of sucks in the interim.
On the flip side, I think it also helps bring clarity to what’s important to you in life. You discover things about yourself which, you sort of knew, but have never completely come to terms with.
A few things that probably everyone else in the world knew but I have just accepted
- I am pretty high maintenance. For example, it bugs the crap out of me that I was the idiot that left my hair straightener at my parents home in the US. (No, blow drying just isn’t the same, thank you very much). And when I moved to Bangalore, I spent all my savings on a nice apartment, furniture, appliances, and paint. I spend so much time picking out the right clothes sometimes. And I don’t regret it, it makes me feel so great. I used to think I’d get some kind of bonus life points if I was the fastest girl done getting ready. And don’t get me wrong, I can be ready and presentable in 10 minutes if need be, but WHY? I LIKE taking my time. It’s way more fun that way.
- On the flip side, I can’t stand the time it takes for womanly maintenance (waxing, threading, etc…) It also bugs the crap out of me and I procrastinate like no other. I mean yeah sometimes I go out with shorts and the I dare you to say something yeah you look, but those instances are few and far between. I really wish I just really didn’t care like some of my friends that I admire so much, but I do (damn you media and your influence on my self confidence) I suppose I’ll have to figure out which way I fall, but in the interim I begrudgingly go to my local salon, where I make new enemies every week (REALLY does it take that long to wax my arms are you serious why can’t this go faster and why is this so painful?!) and spend way more time than I want to doing things that I am still not sure if I care about.
- I am so nerdy it’s really past funny. I ask a million questions about everything (way past the normal level of curiosity) and if I could spend 3 hours a day just reading about random things that have nothing to do with what I do directly I would totally do it. And if you show even the slightest interest in whatever I am currently interested in (which right now includes BitCoin, the difference between women and men led startups, dance bars in Mumbai, or Python) I will probably send you millions of emails with millions of questions and ask your opinion/thoughts on everything (and by ask I mean essentially harass). When I want to know the answers to something, I am ruthless/relentless and all proper social norms go out the window because I essentially think it’s a war against the Universe for truth and justice, so everything is fair game.
- I love having fun, and I just think life isn’t worth living if you aren’t having as much fun as humanly possible. This means that work should be fun, after work should be fun, the weekends should be fun, and life should just feel pretty amazing. It also means that I don’t have multiple faces. I can’t be a different person during work, after work, with friends, with family. And after reading Lean In (which deserves its own post) I realized that it’s ok. Maybe that is the future of the workplace anyway. Irrespective of where workplace trends go, I have realized that I can’t be anyone but me in any context, and that is going to have to be ok.
But overall, I’m really excited that I get this opportunity to live in this incredibly vibrant city. There’s a few things that I want to do, which I have on my to do list, hopefully I’ll get to accomplish them this year in Bangalore, we’ll see. But I suppose overall, I’m thankful to be here, thankful that I have this amazing job in this amazing city.
So I Quit My Job and Moved to India 
Congrats on the big step! Dude, I totally feel you. I wish I didn’t get sucked in to this whole care-about-your-appearance and image BS force-fed to us by Hollywood, the media, and society at large, but it’s hard not to at least a little bit. I wish I could use some excuse like “image is good for my business” or “I need to look good to feel good”, but alas, it’s just the leftovers of my past vanity that I can’t quite shake off. And talking about being nerdy, some of my current open tabs on my three open browsers (I can’t force myself to just close them, or even bookmark them – fml….) include a Nicolas Cage interview in The Guardian, a BBC piece analyzing Foster’s Beer, and a wikipedia page on “Gratin”. It. Never. Ends.
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Holy shit I just Googled Gratin and now I really want to know everything about it EVER. This really is a growing list.
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You probably don’t have numpy installed but here’s something for you anyways :p
#!/usr/bin/env python
from numpy import convolve, array, hstack
from time import sleep
W = 40
R = 122 # change me!
def g(x):
x = hstack((x[-1],x,x[0]))
k = [1<<i for i in xrange(3)]
c = convolve(x,k, 'same')[1:-1]
r = array([((1<>i for i in xrange(8)])
return r[c]
if __name__ == “__main__”:
x = [0]*(2*W-1)
x[W] = 1
while True:
print ”.join([‘*’ if i else ‘ ‘ for i in x])
x = g(x)
sleep(0.05)
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^– looks like the tabs didn’t survive so we need a text file: http://db.tt/O6RYBO2z
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Awesome!
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