When the eagles are silent, the parrots begin to jabber.

I have been meaning to start a blog for a while, but I keep finding excuses not to. I figure that since today is my birthday, it is a good day to start - my goal is to make it one year without giving it up so this provides me with a pretty simple end date to remember.

The purpose of my blog is threefold: to keep some type of documentation of this year; to try to stay in touch with family and friends; and to keep track of my marathon training so I stay accountable. I am stating this outright because you can expect my blog to be extremely boring.

Anyway, for this first post, I thought it would be good to start with some details about myself. Since you are only reading this if you already know me, I will try to make sure that no one knows more than half of things on this list:

1. I think that people look distinguished when they eat apples (whole, not sliced). I therefore try to save mine for social situations.

2. The happiest moment of my life was when I found out my cousins (Niki and Peppy) had named their baby (Vikram) after me. I had started to slack off in life right around then, and decided that I needed to kick it up a notch when I heard.

3. I tend to make really big changes in my life all at once, and they are often based on TV shows (think Scrubs/House pushing me towards medical school... yeah, I'm one of those people...).

4. I only have three requirements for an ideal girl: 1. She can make me laugh. 2. We have interesting conversations. 3. She is smarter than I am.

5. When I first came to Cambridge, I went on a run on the footpath which takes you through fields and some farms, and I immediately came to the realization that I take my life way too seriously (please ignore the fact that this blog just perpetuates this...). Since then, I have been trying to keep in better contact with my friends and family though I am still failing miserably. I decided to make that my New (Academic) Year's Resolution.

6. There are 3 events in my life that I think have most shaped who I am today: 1. Seeing a homeless mom and her child in the snow at a gas station near Tahoe. 2. Seeing the children begging on the streets of India the first time I went. 3. Leaving my Uncle's house in India after seeing my grandma for the last time.

7. I listen to pretty much every type of music as long as I can hear the emotion in it. The exception to this is when I run - I then only listen to vulgar club music because it tends to have a good beat. I am afraid, though, that while running, I look like Jack Nicholson's Joker from the Tim Burton versions of Batman when he is dancing through the streets.

8. 3 things I wish I could change about myself: 1. I wish I had some musical inclination - I am as tone deaf as they come. 2. I wish I could dance. 3. Less body hair.

9. To this day, my favorite book is "The Little Prince." I tend to read it during the big changes in my life (from #3) and it helps calm me down.

10. For some reason, I whistle "The Hokey Pokey" kind of a lot. It unnerves some people, I think.

11. My favorite movie is A Few Good Men - so much emotion and such an amazing cast. I have probably watched it 50+ times by now.

12. If you know me at all, you know that my life revolves around family. That's because I have such a big family on both sides, with mostly older cousins to look up to. I know it's sappy to say, but I actually do idolize all of my cousins, but none more than my cousin Meena (sorry everyone else!). This is not just because she is a super-genius, but because of two stories that stick out in my mind: 1. One day while she was still in med school, she was talking to my mom on the phone and she asked to talk to me - she had a test the next day about which she was very stressed, but she spent 1 hour talking to me about my life and giving me all sorts of advice and just catching up. It was one of the best conversations I can remember having. 2. I will never forget the Christmas card she sent to us one year that was completely covered in her tiny writing - how she had the time to send that to us, I will never understand.

13. I cannot touch my eyes, or watch anyone else touch theirs. It all goes back to a video in 5th grade that they showed us where for some reason they were putting a needle in someone's eye. So unnecessary.

14. I work very hard to make it seem like I don't care what other people think about me.

15. My two favorite things to buy are baseball gloves and computers - however, both of these things tend to last a while, so I rarely get to do so. I also really like buying cilantro.

16. I think my two favorite things to do are read for fun and SCUBA dive. I don't do either nearly enough, though.

17. I am the most emotional person I know (#7,11), though I place great value in logic.

18. My eventual goal in life is to become a professor so that I can continue research and work with students, and to do work in improving global health/the general standard of living in developing countries (#6).

19. I am super-uncomfortable in large group situations, or around people that I don't like/am intimidated by. If you have seen me in either of these situations, you know that I tend to make really awkward and often inappropriate jokes. I do my best to avoid these situations at all costs.

20. I love clearing my spam on Gmail to keep that folder clean. It makes me feel so productive. I am thinking about starting a new email address and subscribing to all sorts of junk just so I get enough to satisfy my cravings.

Now for a brief section on running: if you don't already know, one of my goals for this year is to run a marathon. I am scheduled to run a half-marathon with my sister in January but I haven't signed up for a full marathon yet because I am trying to coordinate my schedule. My training has been kind of up and down - I need to switch to morning runs because I tend to get back late from lab and then I skip runs for other things. However, today was an up day because I ran from my cousin's house into central London, past the Bank of England and St. Paul's Cathedral, over Westminster Bridge towards Big Ben and the Eye of London, and then back over the Millennium Bridge. It would have been perfect if I was not getting poured/hailed on (though admittedly even that was cool). It was about 10 miles total, one of my longer runs.

Finally, since this is a blog that I will use to keep track of my time here in Cambridge and then when I come back to Boston next year, I will quickly summarize the last few months of my life:

In June, I graduated from UCSD and moved back at the end of the month. In July, I went to Australia for a little over 2 weeks. I then stayed home (Danville/Los Banos) for a few weeks. I went to Yosemite for a few days before coming to Cambridge. Since coming here, I have gone to Norway and Greece, and have made quite a few trips into London (mostly to see family - I am currently on the train back from belatedly celebrating my little twin cousins' 6th birthday this weekend!). Since this next week of my life will be relatively boring, I will use my next few posts to post some pictures and summarize each of those experiences. I also tend to think of random little things here and there when I walk to and from lab, so expect some random posts as well (yay for already losing all potential readers!).