It’s a tough road ahead but I need to look beyond. I just feel so good about the fact that I can finally graduate with a Ph.D. While working on my Ph.D. for past five years I have now forgotten why I started it. But I do know one thing that now I need to complete it and forge a new path.

One thing that is affecting my peace of mind is that I do not have a job right now. Perhaps I didn’t start looking for it, when it was the right time. When is the right time to start looking for a job? Most people tell me that this is not the right time to graduate because there are no jobs in the market right now. The condition may continue for a while. I don’t know what to make of this statement. Because when I look back into my life, I realize that I couldn’t even dream of doing what I am doing today. Living in an alien country and writing my dissertation. And my circumstances never deterred me from doing whatever I wanted to do with my life. I always believed that, there is always a way to get out of any situation. Yet, at times I have felt that I am limited by my circumstances. Hopefully something will work out.

I think right now what I need to concentrate on is completing my Ph.D. now that I can see the finishline. I have been working on it for past three years. It was an absolutely new topic for me about which I knew nothing but I was fascinated about it. So I researched and learnt. I have enjoyed most aspects of working on my dissertation. Whether it was writing the proposal, going to India to collect the data, living in USA experiencing the culture around me, meeting all the interesting people, building my online presence, becoming a facebook junkie, twitterer, blogger. I have enjoyed it all and I have learnt a lot at every stage.

But now I am at the most challenging stage, pulling it all together and finally writing it. Since the beginning of this year, I have tried to immerse myself in it and stay away from hanging out with friends. I have had moderate success in it. I am hoping that in the month of May, I will be more successful at it and I will finally have it written.

Mobile phones are magical. They have touched almost every other life on this planet.

Last week I was talking to my mom in India. Every morning, my mom goes out to listen to spiritual discourses. Since her surgery, she can’t go out. Therefore, she is using her mobile phone to listen to them every morning from home. I was amazed to hear that. It’s almost her private live mobile-cast of the spiritual discourses. She calls up this girl on her reliance mobile phone, who keeps her mobile phone in front of the speaker. And she can listen to the spiritual discourses every morning for free. The mobile service she uses, allows her to talk for free across India.

And I was wondering, why her mobile phone was engaged every night my time (every morning her time) for so long