shuttling between US and India

..and now i'm back in India after 7 months in the US. 7 months where i worked pretty hard, but made sure to enjoy other aspects of life as well, including spending time with wife and friends. I took some personal time to reflect on things I need to achieve in the future. The good thing about shuttling between 2 parts of your life, one indian and one american is that you learn you can never be rid of either, and moving or staying should be based on an acceptance of both, not rejection of one. Finally, you should stay where you are happiest, and this your heart tells you, and this is the right answer even if it doesn't make sense professionally or financially in the short term. I now also have a better understading and respect for "time". It is not finite in terms of things you want to achieve in your life (there is ample time for that and life will give you a break from time to time), but one has finite time to put ideas into action. At some point, stop thinking and just do. If its a mistake, so be it. I took some courses to satisfy my growing interest in the financial world. The physical Universe is a fascinating place in terms of underlying structure, but the financial universe is so interconnected and capricious, its equally fascinating to someone who lacks deep knowledge of this field. I did some traveling to remind myself how much I enjoy seeing new places and how beautiful unpopulated and untouched natural surroundings can be. My greatest triumph of the last few months was overcoming my fear of water and learning how to swim. I now enjoy it a lot and it was a well-learned lesson in how going outside your comfort zone is the only way to remain challenged and therefore young (yes, i'm starting to feel old, but i'll fight it the only way possible - by not settling for anything that's easy).

I am now trying to adopt this mantra on a day-2-day basis. To do something which I am not familiar with or which doesn't come easily as a consequence of past training. This way, I can lose track of time and be productive rather than let petty deadlines rule your life, in which case you lose productivity and enjoyment of work.

The weather in Chennai is comfortably warm, now being winter, and I am in a more relaxed and well-adjusted state than a year ago when I dove into changes that had unanticipated consequences - but that is so with most big decisions and one has to accept them with an open mind and look for opportunities in the future. I now know a) where i want to live and b) how to make peace with a choice. I am now in the process of implementation. The results will follow as they always do.

The local news here in Chennai, and elsewhere in India is about the Mumbai attacks. I will go about my life in the usual way hoping that effective measures are introduced to improve security and tackle the underlying causes (by asking the Americans to do so!). The "local" news in Chicago concerns the Illinois governor who has taken a chapter, rather than a page, out of the indian politician's playbook. Governor Rod Blagojevich is invited to visit his kindred souls in the indian political leadership who survive on the apathy of most sections of our indian society, and preferably take them back with him to Federal US prison. America, world police, we need you (Somalia and Zimbabwe will second it)