There’s a very simple explanation for my year-plus absence from etherfarm. This simple explanation has fifty-seven parts, the first three of which are described briefly below:
At 18:32 today, the Wife and I had our first child, Ray Bueno Nayar. He weighs in at 6 pounds, 13 ounces (3.1 kilos), and 19.5 inches (49.53 cm). Ray is fittingly named after my maternal grandfather, who was and is one of my favorite people on this planet.
So let me break this long hiatus with an exciting announcement: sometime next March the wife and I will be having a son.
I have a confession to make. I have gone corporate. At the end of January I took a contract job with a large software company. …
It’s my birthday, and I’m not the kind of person who likes getting presents. In fact, I kind of hate it. One, for quite some time I’ve had very little space at my residence, to the point that receiving even a new kitchen knife would require some serious rearranging of furniture. …
Popping in from Bangalore to issue a sub-continent communique to concerned comrades, a lame one-off response to an email inbox I fear checking.
I now have no fewer than 204 triple-seam laser spot welds in my left eyeball. The doctor, who referred to his surgical laser as his “death ray”, was quite expert at all-things-eyeball and I my vision couldn’t have been in better hands. I’m quite grateful that he was able to fit me in before I leave for my honeymoon, as retinal detachment had already begun (eep). …
Let’s pretend for a moment that I didn’t have a hole in my eyeball. I’d like to focus (pun intended) instead on the process which is only beginning to unfold before me. In order to get this hole welded shut by some overtrained monkey with a laser pointer, I have to see my new HMO’s “primary care physician”.
I’m currently typing at you from an internet cafe in Granada, Spain. Forgive chickenscratches and heavy accents. I’m using a keyboard designed for people who purposefully speak with a lithp. …
I spent a long time this summer traveling through rural areas, which naturally made me think, in simultaneously romantic and masochistic terms, about my childhood summers in rural Illinois.
As a kid, summers were hard for me physically. An asthmatic child who couldn’t roll around in the grass without breaking into hives and who couldn’t really handle super-humid midwest US days for very long, I found summers to be much like that which winter probably signifies for most people—long days locked indoors. …
In perhaps the most tangible example of “fate” I can think of (or, if you rather, the surest sign of the apocalypse), in less than four days I’ll constitute the lesser half of the Nara and Narayan Nayar duo. When Nara is asked if she’ll be taking my last name, she responds, “How could I not?”
A week ago, I became a fully-qualified doctoral candidate of Literature at the University of California, Santa Cruz. With the help and support of friends, colleagues, professors, and family, not to mention the months I spent preparing, I passed my qualifying exams with flying colors.
Things have been quiet here, I know, but there’s really not much I can do about it. I’ve been devoting most of my waking hours towards preparing for my doctoral qualifying exams, a grotesquely medieval academic hazing ritual if ever there was one. I will spend a total of seven hours on May 18 and 19 sacrificing brain cells writing essays to appease the Great God Literature, then on the 24th of May I’ll sit at the end of a long table, opposite 4.5 of the Great God Literature’s henchmen, doing my very best to keep a straight face as they scrape metal claws along a chalkboard ask me what the hell I was thinking when I wrote said essays. …
Apart from a three-week stay in rural Illinois, my extended hiatus from this site can be attributed to a number of relatively large projects bearing down on me right now: my Ph.D. qualifying exams (late May), upcoming wedding (late June), and my dissertation prospectus (August). Much of the last month has been spent in Illinois at the farm, planning the wedding and studying (in my own way) for the exams. …
While I put together the most loathed and most loved type of gallery: “photos of my dog”, I’d like to let the world know just how cool my dog is:
These photos were taken last weekend at Davenport beach, 11 miles north of Santa Cruz.
I adopted Lakshmi exactly 9 years ago today. …
A quick happy-birthday-to-me. I turn 31 today, and I don’t feel a day over 45. Yay for that. …
This page lists all 16 entries filed under the Personal category in Synapse. Entries are listed in reverse-chronological order.