Yo.. :).. Long time, eh? how've you been? Oh, I have been good... awesome really.. what brings you here? Well, I decided to give blogging another chance... give myself a new challenge every time.. write something at least once a week.. practice my Dutch - I am starting a Dutch language course today, and I have a feeling it would be good fun to share my thoughts on the language here, if nothing else I can write something in Dutch, translate it to English and thus practice my writing skills in both languages.. Besides, I have this application on igoogle page, called "GRE word of the day" (yes, I am not over that GRE fever yet :) ), which gives me a new word everyday.. and by the end of week (5-day week, weekends are for fun not GRE), it accumulates 5 new English words with their meanings.. and my challenge is to use those 5 words in less than 3 sentences.

So, the words for today are: antipodal, apostate, affinity, incorporate, febrile. Well, let's see.. In an attempt to incorporate these five words in one sentence, I can tell you that finally I have come out to my parents - told them that I am not febrile anymore and my affinity for blind faith and holding someone responsible for every event in my life has vanished, thus, I have turned into an apostate and my views might even be antipodal to theirs. Aha, mission accomplished :)

Well, as you would imagine a lot has happened in the last one year since I disappeared off the blogging scene..

1. I have travelled a lot - been to Praha, Berlin, Munich, Vienna, Interlakken & Jungfraujoch (Switzerland, or as they know it in India as Yash Raj studios), Nice (France), Monte Carlo (Monaco, which houses the casino where the great James Bond frittered away Indian money - i.e. money stolen by British from India and then allocated to James Bond), a 6-day trip to Greece (Athens, and Crete island) with Yusuke (my Japanese boyfriend, or former boyfriend since he is married to his very nice Japanese girlfriend now) and my former roommate from IITK - Abhinav Agarwal, a 5 day trip to Portugal with two of my best friends in Amsterdam - Tanit and Vincenzo- where the fun was further bolstered by the company of a former portuguese colleague- Raquel, who showed us around and took us to her place for a wonderful dinner of crabs, lobsters, shrimps and clams..

2. I have switched my field again, and have finally started (May 2010) my Ph.D. in Computational Biochemistry on "Role of chaperones in protein folding": http://molsim.chem.uva.nl/ . We have moved to a new building, which is a lot fancier than the one before that even as it's located in an area (Science Park) away from the city center and looks more like a construction site than a research-zone. But I love my work, like my boss (Peter), the 2 supervisors (Jocelyne and Bernd) and new colleagues - which includes 2 Indians (both from IIT Bombday) as well. The group is quite hardworking, yet relaxed and I fit-in perfectly as the one lazy guy who tries to balance the excess of work done by others.

3. After having struggled for more than a year to keep the apartment clean while sharing it with someone, I have finally managed to move in to a nice huge single apartment with a big bedroom, a bigger living room, a proportionately big kitchen, and an even bigger bathroom. To make it look more homely and suitable for bringing girls home, I have bought a washing machine and decorated it with some random things that suit my minimal tastes.

4. To eliminate the possibility of bringing new girls home every now and then, I have started dating a wonderful Dutch girl.. who I couldn't possibly stop gushing about, but will do the gushing over several blogs to avoid looking too smitten..

5. And the best of all, I got myself banned from entering or even passing through Germany for two years.. :).. On my way to India in March 2010 after my residence permit expired, I neglected to get a transit visa and got held up at the inter-terminal passport control at Munich international airport. They wanted to deport me (which was stupid, since I was already going to India) after marking me as an illegal alien, filing a police report against me and banning me for life (which was lowered to two years after paying a fee and filing a petition), and taking some pictures of me..

The whole experience was quite funny, since I couldn't stop laughing the whole time and had to employ all my acting skills to look serious when a cop would talk to me or walk by.. when they took me for a picture, I almost struck an excited pose seeing a camera but realized immediately that it was probably not politically correct and I should at least try to look sullen.. So, now there are sad ugly pictures of me hanging all over German borders marked "Most Un-wanted"..

On the sports front, I took up wall/rock-climbing, but quit after 7 months after having realized that my acrophobia was still intact and was probably getting worse with every failed climbing attempt.. so, now I just stick to bouldering.. I joined an indoor soccer researchers' league, became infamous as the lean-mean injury machine as people would run into me and hurt themselves - somehow, I always got blamed for that even as they were the ones running into me - ahh, the perils of being too strong :D.. In a separate incident, we recently won a mixed 4-a-side beach volleyball tournament organized in Scheveningen (near Den Haag).. http://picasaweb.google.com/ashish.nigam/BeachVolleyballInScheveningenAug10 ..

Well, I guess this is enough for today.. I have a presentation coming up next Monday and I am already mixing my dreams with reality unable to distinguish between the two sometimes.. I actually have to ask people whether I talked to them about something in reality or whether it was just a dream.. :D..

Anyway, back to work..