Cooking in grad life....!

When you are a grad student and you don't know how to cook well you are fucked up. You must have to be a good cook along with being good in probability and graph theory to be successful in your graduate life! Span of graduate life is lower bounded by five years. You can't spend all of these years just on maggie and granola bars. It becomes even harder if you had not ever been to kitchen before your graduate life. Believe me, I never loved cooking...I always loved to deal with cooked food, i.e. to eat. I never cooked anything except bread with butter and egg boils. When I was supposed to land in USA, I thought I would do research for 20 hours a day and food would be tertiary to my life. I thought I would I would be able to live on  boiled rice and daal for my PhD life. I realized pretty soon, the reality is very different from what I thought. I soon realized that good food is very important for me given that I am single and too lazy to get a driver's license. So I can't visit some random places to eat good food, however most of the good restaurents are pretty costly and only handful of them are good. So whenever I and my roommates wanted to get some respite from studies, we have eaten and got drunk and played 29 (which has become impossible now as I have only two roommates and I don't know any version of 29 with three people)...! I tried most of the food places around college park (the places which are walkable from A V Willams building). I gradually realized nothing is comparable to what I used to eat at my home. I started missing the road sides foods from Calcutta, Biriyani from Arsanal....sweets from kamdhenu and Swapan's Phuchka (Panipuri) and last but definitely not the least : my mom's cooked food.

I tried learning cooking.......As a result of this my roommates were the initial victims of my learning process. I always thought cooking is a random combination of one or two vegetables along with 3-4 spices chosen randomly with their quantity being also highly randomized. As a result of this with very high probability I used to cook food with arbitrary taste.....Initially I used to like my cooked food. But the main reason was my roommates used to cook good food so I was fine with the variety of my food...I never realized how bad I cook. Now days passed. Gradually I learned something, which is better than what I used to cook but still nowhere close what we can call good food. The major problem is that it is not impossible to cook good food once in six months but definitely not every week.

I do not have a solution. I think the problem is well posed. I could try to be more patient and not being lazy and try learning properly OR marry someone who knows cooking (believe me, that's not my intention) OR live in this state....I know the third option is most likely. If anyone has a good suggestion, please let me know. I would give you a big treat...!!! (Don't worry I will not cook , will get some pizza for you)......

Life of a Grad Student...!!!

I am not going to tell you guys the normal story of a graduate student. It is entirely my story or the story of a handful like me. However I think it's interesting.

The thing you are supposed to do is research in grad life and probably that implies you are supposed to do nothing else. It is not like I am doing research 24 hours and I don't have time. It is like I don't have anything else to do in my leisure time. I agree 29 and beer can lift your mood up for a while but it is certainly not the thing you look forward. I think you need something more...probably a friend...a girl friend...?? When you step up to the 24th year of your life (whatever your parents say), girl friend is not a luxury, rather necessity and you should have one. You know why you feel so bad if you don't have one? You would always see other grad students are talking about their wives or children.and you don't get to participate. Some also talk about their girlfriends/boyfriends and you are supposed to go to a party with your significant other half(what does that mean???). Let me tell you a story. When I started my graduate life in 2009, there was a Korean guy in my department, who was wandering why he does not have a girlfriend etc. I tried to console him and wished him best of luck. Last month I met him in the department with his wife and she was pregnant..!!!.. It made me happy. I think there's still hope. However you feel different (and try to be indifferent) when your fellow college mates start to think about marrying within next year. 

They only way I can be in peace is by looking at some emails exchanged between me and XXX, some months ago and I realize having a girlfriend is pain. And some time I feel the other way around. Sometimes I try to analyze why I don't have enough female friends...reduced sample size...(higher study...!!!). All these analysis everyday ends in me feeling sleepy and going to bed...!