Quite a bit different.

So this is the first time I am writing a blog post on my new laptop and it is the first time I am writing in ages.

It feels a bit different.

I am back in Washington DC after half a decade to attend a marriage ceremony and it feels quite a bit different.

The furniture in my room is the same, the people I met here are all the same but some of the things are quite a bit different.

The city is white instead of green (last time I visited was in the summer of ‘09 and it’s the winters right now), a few paintings have been moved or changed, there are some new carpets, the room clocks are now Apple iHome docks, the kitchen has a Keurig Coffee Brewer, anyone and everyone but me has an iPhone. I can go on and on.

These are all the changes on the outside. Within my small micro-life itself, everything feels changed, as if I have evolved somehow.

From June 2009 to now, I have graduated from college and have a good job, I know a foreign language (English being listed under my mother tongue), the money I got from home to shop over here has been withdrawn from my bank account and not asked for from my dad, I have a BlackBerry and not a Nokia (I want an iPhone too now … The iHome docks are so cool. I can’t play music on it unless I have an “I” device).

In those 5 years I didn’t really look back and took stock of how things have changed. But right now, like a memory stamp, I can actually think backwards and compare what I had right then when I was here and what I possess right now.

Not only that, I can also compare what I wanted then and what I yearn at this very moment.

The wish to move out of my home country is still there and my dream destination still rests in North America, it’s just that it has moved quite a bit north.

My dream B-School is still HBS and the timeline in which I would want to reach there is still similar but the latest plan has a small detour in between, where I get a Master’s before I go to Boston, MA.

Most of my songs are the same and I still have the same habit of trimming down the playlist and adding a few good tunes every now and then. However, my most played songs are now by Coldplay and not by Eminem or Akon.

My close friend circle is still the same. A Mallu-Christian, a short-heighted short-hair Punjabi and some distant others but I have made new ones and plan to meet my decade old pack of boarding school buddies soon.

Is this how the life evolves ?? Is this how it changes, twists and turns and shapes itself into what we want or what we receive ??

I have no idea, no clue at all. From what I have heard from my Uncle, who has a whopping 46 year work-experience (I don’t even have a 46 month experience at this point), life for him has had its ups and downs … But it is as it was, 5 5 winters back when I saw him and promises that it’s gonna stay the same when I see him the next time.

But to me, it’s a little bit different.