Getting Cold... Getting Used To

Sun shone today after a week of rain and its really good. Finally. the temperature touched the 20 degree mark.

This week was very very busy.

First I got my TA duties assigned. The instructor for this second year under grad course (Basic Circuits and Signals) is a Prof named Tom Ray. He is a pretty nice guy and I doubt he will exploit me. We are an army of about 10 TAs for some 200+ students. So each will be incharge for some 25 students. We had a meeting earlier this week about sharing of responsibilities. I had a choice of either becoming in charge for lab or taking care of Problem Analysis sessions and organizing weekly quizzes. I took Problem Analysis (PA) because Lab means I have to run around to each student clearing bugs in circuits and stuff. I have to come every Monday and Friday at 8:30 in the morning for this session starting from next Friday. My duties include grading the weekly quiz and making sure all students do their assignments. Yet, I had to supervise the first intoductory lab session yesterday morning which was about teaching the students soldering (because the lab TAs haven't been assigned yet). I had a pretty good first class and I believe I communicated the process to my students well. I had some problem with my Chineese students though. I'm not being racist, but I have observed that Chineese students' english is extremely pathetic in general. They ask me some doubt and I have to ask them again and again the same thing to understand what they mean. And each time, they re-phrase it , making the comprehension worse and worse! But I think I'll soon start to get used to their tongue.

I attended my first Materials audit course on Thursday. The class was terrific. The prof (named Tom Smy) is teaching directly from Feynmans lectures on Quantum Physics and its very very interesting. And there in the class, I met some 4th year undergrads from SriLanka. Finally, some one here spoke to me in Tamil! Of course their dialect is completely different. They introduce me to their friends like this :
"Yivar Peyar Aerevinth... Yivar Yindhiya Lirunthu Vanthirikkiraar" !!
They are really friendly people. One of the guy's name is Prakash, there is one Dileeban and one Satya ( I haven't met any Prabhakaran or Nalini yet !!) . They told me that there are over 200 Srilankan students in Carleton! Few of them came here with their families after the expulsion of 1995, but most of them are here only since 2001. Their plan is to come here to do under grad, get a job, and then sponsor their parents back in Colombo and bring them here as permanent residents. Most of them are native of Jaffna.

Even fall (autumn) hasn't arrived yet and already the temperatures have dropped to 8 and 7 degrees in the night! And whenever it does get above the 15 degree threshold by God's grace and I start breathing easy, people here switch on the AC, because its just too hot for them! The colours of the leaves have started changing and soon next month, the whole city will turn Bright red from green and there will be a riot of colours all over.

Some maintenance company guys came home today to inspect the heaters at home. There is a huge boiler and a furnace in every home in Ottawa which heats the house all through the winter. People usually switch it on at the end of October and turn it off only at the end of April when the winter gets over. It needs cleaning every September before the onset of winter. The guy told Mr. Shahadat that he needs to replace the furnace because there are some cracks. And Shahadat is working on it. Winters get pretty nasty here during February when there is freezing rain - rains drops frozen during their descent. That makes roads and pavements very slippery. And also, since days become extremely short then (4 PM sunset against 8 Pm sunset currently), many people go into depression because of lack of light! The cure for this psychiatric syndrome it seems is exposure to a table lamp!

One of Mr. Nihal's friend today dropped by my place and gave me a huge study table and a lamp. Its really great and has helped clear all the mess in my room (i just used to keep books and bag on floor).

I'm reading The Hindu e paper regularly. Mainly because the local and even the national dailies here are very much like the stupid Tamil magazines in chennai- mostly Page 3 stuff. A