I must say the last 3 days have been some of the exciting days of my life. This is the first time that I am coming home since I took up my job as Research Assistant at Indian Institute of Technology Powai, Bombay (rather Mumbai, I am shit scared of the MNS :-P) under Prof. Prabhu Ramachandran to work under the FOSSEE group. Bill Bryson says in his book, 'Notes from a big country' that there are three things that you can't do in life. You can't beat the phone company, you can't make a waiter see you before he's actually ready to see you and you can't go home again. Although in the book he moves on to prove that you the third claim wrong, but it seems to fit me. My home has been renovated during my absence and a lot of things seem new here. Let me first tell you that I am not here for a vacation, but I am here for a conference called Pycon India, happening at IISc - Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. The conference happened on the 26th and 27th of September and I must say it was simply awesome.

Before going to Pycon I need to first tell about my first journey on flight. My first flight was from Mumbai to Bangalore on Indigo airlines. I was very excited about it and it was pretty evident. I fought with my teammates traveling with me for the window seat and won :-P. The flight started 25 mins late on account of unavailability of the runway for some odd reason. When the plane actually started I got so excited that my heart was beating some kazillion times a minute! Its an amazing experience I must say. The view of the city getting smaller and smaller until what you see are just the white clouds and azure skies is overwhelming! Each time the plane swooped to the right or to the left it would make me skip a heartbeat. When the pilot announced that we were flying at 37000 feet and at 780kmph I felt like jumping up and shouting 'Yay!!' And when the flight lands, the land below becomes clearer and clearer and at one point everything below looks like an architect's prototype of a city! It all looks so beautiful. It was an hour and 40 minutes of an out of the world experience for me. Hope I have a many more, even longer ones :D

Anecdotes from the first day(26th) of the conference: The keynote speaker was our Prof. Prabhu and he delivered an awe-inspiring keynote which was about how he got involved in FOSS in general and Python in particular. Other interesting talks on the first day were Test Driven development using Python and our very own FOSSEE talk on NMEICT-National Mission on Education through Information and Communication Technology. Some of my close friends(Bose, KB, Subba, Chandan, Nagraj) from college who are also FOSS and Python enthusiasts attended the conference. At the end of the day we all went to eat out at Food Corner, Malleshwaram. Then went over to my aunt's place to wish her on her birthday. Had a good, festive dinner at her place (yes after having had heavy snacks in the evening with friends). On my way back met with a small accident. Fell off my motorcycle :-P and ended up with nothing more than scratches on my palm and knee.

Second day(27th): Went to the hospital in the morning to get my wounds from last night checked up. Turns out it was nothing serious and came out after having got an anti-tetanus injection. On account of this had to miss the Mayavi talk by Prof Prabhu (which I later came to know was excellent):(. Needless to say, my mom didn't let me ride the bike today. Hope I get to see the Pycon session videos soon. Arrived at IISc late and attended the NLTK talk, which I must say turned out to be very boring. Met the guy who introduced me to FOSS, Pravin after a gap of an year! He's back from the US and for good. He quit his job at HP for a job at Redhat India. It was awesome to meet him after such a long gap. Plus he got amazing chocolates which we gobbled upon then and there. Then I left home to have my first lunch at home since my arrival :-P. Lunch was excellent. Mom had prepared amazing 'akki-kadlebeLe payasa' and 'soutekai tovve' and 'tarkari bhath'. Thanks to the excellent lunch I couldn't resist an afternoon siesta. I slept for an hour and then started off to Ravi(one of my best friends from high school)'s place. Spent the entire evening at his place. Went to CCD, had a long conversation. In the meantime his mom had prepared delicious 'aloo parathas' which I happily gobbled up along with some amazing 'raitha'. I was looking at a few of his childhood photos when I got a call from my dad saying that he had met with a small accident. He asked me not to come to the spot and instead go over to the nearest police station and place a complaint. Some b*****d had hit my dad's car from the rear and fled from the scene and my dad managed to chase him down and catch him, but he managed to flee the scene again leaving behind the vehicle. Thankfully nobody had been injured. I hurried to the police station and lodged a complaint. The officer in charge responded quickly and transmitted wireless messages alerting fellow policemen close to the scene. They responded quickly and managed to seize the vehicle in question. Then I returned home and so did my dad.

And thus my exciting three days have ended. I am in town for one more day and planning to spend it mostly at home. Although, I have one more friend left to meet before I leave.