It takes me 45 seconds to walk from my apartment to the nearest Starbucks outlet. This morning during the walk, I noticed –
the clear blue sky
the pleasant weather
green trees flanking the walkway
two butterflies flying right past me
birds chirping in harmony
a beautiful woman walking across the street (she may have even smiled at me)
I realized you don’t really have to make big travel plans for these little things. They are all around you and all you have to do is pay attention 🙂
Just when I thought my life as an actor was over, the universe conspired to send me some artistic angels. I have been working with them for a year or so now and I cannot believe my luck. I am honoured, delighted and grateful to be in the presence of these bright young minds and beautiful souls who welcomed me to their theatre group and revived the actor in me.
And now, after working on two plays in the last two semesters, I have embarked upon a new journey this Fall – my first musical! Coming soon : The Rocky Horror Show
Venue: UTD Theatre Dates: Oct 31 – Nov 2, Nov 7-9 Time: 8 pm (plus special midnight show on Nov 9) Tickets here
So, amidst all the chaos of studies, cultural events, theatre, travel and Netflix, I landed an internship in summer 2019 at an impressive company iCode. As it happens, this is my first job in The United States and I am having quite an enriching experience. I have tried spell it out in this LinkedIn post and article. Check it out:
Graduate studies can be a tricky business. In the day and age where many effective lessons and courses are available for free on the Internet, it becomes difficult to choose the right subjects to invest your limited time and money in. More often than not, it just comes down to the professor. In the Spring 2019 semester, I had the pleasure of studying in the class of one of the finest teachers I have seen in a long time. Everyone was already gaga over his abilities, but I only knew how amazing Prof. B.P. Murthi was once I started attending his lectures.
Your first impression of Prof. Murthi is that he is a simple, soft-spoken man who delivers his lectures with great confidence. Having taught at UTD for 25 long years, his profile boasts of several accolades and awards. But to really understand why Prof. Murthi is so wonderful, you have to attend at least a couple of his lectures. He is one of those teachers who make your life difficult and challenging, but you’ll be grateful at the end of it when you realize it is all for the right reasons. He gives you interesting insights about predictive analytics and its applications in the marketing world using the SAS programming language. His conversational style and sense of humor keeps you interested and engaged. He spends a considerable amount of time teaching how to interpret results that you get after running the code. He emphasizes that we are managers and we need to be able to draw insights and interpret the results effectively to help with important marketing decisions. Just knowing and running the code is not enough!
All other good things aside, what really makes Predictive Analytics with SAS under Prof. Murthi one of the best classes to take at UTD is the homework he gives you! His assignments that focus on real world problems and his project, which is perhaps the most meticulous data science work you will do in your graduate studies. It is also what will make you stay up at night scratching your head, calling your friends for help, looking up solutions online, and still come up shorthanded. From linear and logistic regression procedures to factor, cluster and discriminant analysis, and from heteroskedasticity, endogeneity to time series and panel data – Prof. Murthi strives to ensure that you understand all the important concepts of econometrics in the analytics context.
Thanks to Prof. Murthi, I also had the opportunity to work with a brilliant group of Business Analytics students – all of whom came from varied backgrounds and were extremely talented in their own respective fields. I am thankful for having Sajal, Varda, Aman, Aditi and Nitasha as my group members. They held my hand throughout this semester and, along with Prof. Murthi, helped me understand how econometrics and predictive analytics work in the real world. Hours and hours were spent on our project that answered three important predictive analytics questions using SAS on a retail data set –
What is the quantifiable effect of advertising on a specific brand of spaghetti sauce? How can we describe typical customer behavior? When are customers most likely to churn?
We applied RFM, Survival analysis and logistic regression on a complicated and large data set with millions of rows to answer these questions. We also gave recommendations based on the insights we got from the data. This kind of hands-on approach on a real-world data set is precisely what is needed for graduate students majoring in data science or analytics.
There are many professors who use Powerpoint presentations to teach and most of the times, the slides are enough to help you prepare for the exams. But not with Prof. Murthi! You need to attentively sit through each one of his lectures, take notes, make videos, do whatever you can to capture everything he says if you really want to make the most of his class. It is all worth it as, by the end of it, you feel you have learnt something valuable and are on the right path to learn more.
When I shook Prof. Murthi’s hand on the last day of class, I genuinely felt a sense of gratitude. I also felt sad that the class was over. In fact, I may audit some of his classes in the future… just for some perspective!
The earliest memory (and perception) I have of Easter is the song “My name is Anthony Gonsalves” from the 1975 movie Amar Akbar Anthony. In the song, Amitabh Bachchan emerges out of an Easter Egg to break into a Bollywood number about how he is looking for a suitable woman to marry. So, when Dylan and Alli mentioned to me that Opa will be hosting an Easter Egg hunt, I thought it would be something similar – trying to look for Opa in a huge Easter egg! That was not the case, as I discovered later.
After spending a heartwarming Christmas eve with the Johnsons in December 2018, I had a few opportunities to hang out with the Johnsons in the months that followed. I was really touched when Omi and Opa made it to my play A Mirror through You and told me that they loved it. So, when Alli invited me to spend Easter 2019 with the family, I was obviously quite excited.
The day started with a wonderful service at the Watermark church characterized by mesmerizing lighting, scintillating music, and a gathering of beautiful believers who raised their hands and sang in joy and celebration throughout the morning. This was followed by some hot coffee and breakfast at Starbucks where we bid goodbye to our friend Madison. We made it to Omi and Opa’s place right in time for lunch. As usual, Omi had worked hard to prepare a delicious meal for the whole family. It was soothing to see her calm face and welcoming smile once again as she greeted us when we entered. Opa, as usual, made everyone feel at home from the moment we entered with his sense of humour. For one of the jokes he made later, Omi burst out laughing saying “You don’t come up with many good ones but that one was really good!”. I must say – Opa’s one liners always stay with me long after I leave them 🙂
Soon, we were joined by the rest of the family – DJ, Vicki, Spencer, Heidi, John, Aiden, Liam and their soccer-playing British friends Luke and Matthew. We sat at the dining table – a group of people all very grateful to be there – enjoying Omi’s delicious meal and Opa’s pleasant company with some wine, bread, meat, dessert and anecdotes from around the world. Matthew spoke about traveling across England, Aiden (the valedictorian) spoke about his upcoming Air Force days and Opa narrated the incident when he went train-hopping and met a guy named “Hoppy”. With our bellied full and hearts content, we moved on to the most exciting part of the day – the Easter Egg hunt.
Opa asked 9 of us to wait in his office while the others hid the Easter eggs all around the house and the front yard. He then explained the very interesting set of rules that revolved around each one finding 10 eggs as soon as possible. It was clear that Opa had put a lot of thought and effort in planning this egg hunt. As soon as he said GO, young Liam and soccer-player Matthew just sprinted across the house to be the first ones to find their 10 eggs. As I had expected, I finished last. In fat, I was only able to find 3 eggs by myself. The remaining 7 were found by the whole team working together. This was bound to happen since all the easy ones were already taken and it was only the difficult spots were left to be explored. I will always remember how everyone from Heidi and John to DJ and Brandon and Spencer and Omi and Opa were going all around the house and giving me hints to help me finish the egg hunt. That’s when it really felt like a “HUNT”.
Finally, we found all the eggs and it was time to open them up. We gathered in the living room and sat around in a circle with each one taking turns to open up their 10 Easter eggs. It was exciting to see what each egg held – sometimes it was a few pennies, sometimes it was dollar bills and sometimes it was a special coin that gave you the power to pick one of the bigger eggs near the fireplace which will hold a bigger prize. The most hilarious thing was that by the end of it all – I, the last one to finish the egg hunt, ended up winning with the most amount of money 😀
After that dramatic turn of events, we all had some dessert and coffee and started a game of Blackjack. I was the bank, Opa was the dealer and Matthew, Liam, Brandon were the ones trying their luck. This game had its moments too with everyone losing out a couple of dollars to eventually making it all back by the end of the day.
As the afternoon came to an end, it was time to say goodbye but not before we clicked some happy photos. Everyone gathered in the front yard and posed with their winnings. I clicked some pictures of Alli and Dylan, who looked absolutely adorable and well co-ordinated with the pink dress and pocket square.
And once again, as I left Omi and Opa’s house after hugging everyone, my heart was filled with so much joy, warmth and gratitude for the opportunity to meet these marvelous people in a new, unknown country. I told Dylan that I would never have imagined that I’ll be welcomed into a family like this, that I would be spending Easter or Christmas with them, that I would sit at a table and laugh and dine with them, experience their way of life and hear their stories while I share my own.
I will be forever grateful for these memorable moments spent with the loving Johnson family. I know that they have a special place in my heart now and I will always wish them the best. As Opa says – this is my American family 🙂
We never forget our first international trip! Mine was when I visited Singapore and Thailand and it was special for so many reasons.
First, I met the coolest bunch of travel writers and journalists on that trip. Priya, Kiran, Malavika, Nolan, Antoine, Alka, Bindu, Anjali, Anita, Akash, Swapneil, Karuna were all a delight to travel with. Primrose, the one responsible for getting us all together, joined the party a bit later and made sure the trip was one of the most memorable ones for everybody. Our guides Toon Hee and Josephine were so lovely that they made us feel at home from the moment we landed.
Second, I visited some of the most beautiful attractions of the Lion City and was blown away by the architecture, food and culture I witnessed. From the famous Universal Studios on Sentosa Island and the majestic SEA aquarium to the Gardens By The Bay and One Altitude Bar (the highest bar in the world), it all felt surreal. My persoanl favourite moment was the 3D Transformers ride at Universal.
Finally, this was also when I went on my first cruise – Royal Caribbean’s Mariner of the Seas – where everything from the room to the views to the on-board entertainment was simply top-notch. I chronicled all this in two features I wrote for India.com –
I also shot a lot of videos in the two countries to make a farewell present for my then boss and now trusted friend, philosopher and guide Abhishek Mande. I have used the same footage to make a little dance video that captures the fun times I had on that trip. Here’s what happens when Singapore-Thailand meets Gangnam!
So I spent my Spring 2019 break on a trip that has been the best so far in this country! It all started with New Orleans where I met some wonderful people, visited some marvelous hotspots and ate some delicious food. It is all captured in this fun video which is my attempt to preserve the memories and say thank you to the amazing friends I made. Enjoy!
I have been trying to piece together the impact of tourism on water scarcity and how these two co-relate. Due to my experience as a Travel writer and my interest in solar desalination, it feels like the area I should do some more research on. And thanks to my current education in data analytics, I have the advantage of using tools and technologies that can be helpful additions to my arsenal. Today, I came across an article that talks about the sustainable supply of water for tourism in The Yucatan:
It’s inspiring to see students working on sustainable desalination and I think the tourism industry, specifically, can benefit from more research and initiatives in this direction. Personally, I am interested in looking at more data points I can use in this area to be able to come up with insights as an analyst. I’ll be thankful to anyone who can point me in the right direction.
My friend, Jenny, pointed me towards this wonderful podcast episode with Ewan Nicolson from Skyscanner where he talks about how Skyscanner uses great technologies and exciting data sets to understand trends in the travel industry! Have a listen:
