how i landed in Melbourne and why…

After the final semester jury was over at NID, the only thing that was rattling in my head was the diploma project I should get into next. I was sure I didn’t want to get into studios, working on projects that were only keen on “boosting the human ego”. And from the time I’ve heard about the Nano! I knew that I really did not want to be with the glamorous part of the automotive industry that dealt with “designing the biggest screw ups of the future”. I knew my interest laid in two things ….sustainable transportation and Boats. : )

The first thing I did was, start hunting for boat design studios in India and abroad. But I guess the two month internship at a boat building company wasn’t enough…so… the next step was to find out if there were any consultants or design houses working on sustainable transportation. No luck in that too….

But I guess opportunity was knocking at my door when Praveen (our dept. head) informed us about some projects at RMIT. I asked Praveen if he could check out if there were any projects in boat design. After a week’s time, he told me there was project called the flexicar project. I wasn’t that aware about the project but later on came to know the project’s main theme was “sustainability”. And that’s it, I unlocked the door.

Meanwhile I was busy working on the FRP boat model… the one I did for the internship… pretty stressful but got to learn a lot about boats during that time. There were hints of the “my baby syndrome” eating my tiny brain… but somehow managed to keep them at bay. Lalit, Sameer and I sent our portfolios to RMIT and we were replied a month later.

I chose the car/car sharing design project for an urban Indian context. I have heard about car sharing systems before and thought it would be really great to learn about in detail. Designing a car sharing system for India would be really difficult by doing it from Melbourne …anyways it would be a place to understand car share….

So….then began the endless visa processing procedures……we thought the visa wouldn’t reach in time, but it did…about 3 days prior to departure…..

I left for Mumbai on the 6^th… traveled in a sleeper bus (had a severe back ache when I reached Mumbai). The entire journey, I was taking snaps and figuring out the new sony H9 digi cam I got a day before…

The flight to Singapore from Mumbai was at 11.30pm… reached the airport at 8pm…And had a really long wait for about 2 hours…!! My mobile was flooded with phone calls from friends who wanted me to get them something or the other and from relatives that I never knew I had…trying to explain them what I was going to do in Melbourne and why…was even more time consuming. So in the end…2 hours actually seemed like half an hour.

In the Qantas flight from Singapore to Perth, I had a terrible time…. I realized being vegetarian is not easy…but I’m trying. In the flight I asked for vegetarian food…which they didn’t have at that time, but managed to find one plate for me. It was Indian food so I didn’t have much problem eating it. After an hour or so…the trouble started and I ended visiting the toilet 5 times and puking my stomach out. Felt like the worst day of my life.

At the Perth airport, there was a really long queue…and with my head aching, it was a pain to stand in the queue for about 2 hrs. After that, while I was sleeping in the waiting area… a guy wakes me up saying “u gonna miss u flight son”… I told him my fight was two hours later…

On board the Qantas flight to Melbourne, I got a seat right in front of the big highly pixilated movie screen. With the splitting head ache, trying to doze off in front of that was another challenge. After about an hour, I had more puking sessions in the toilet. : ( Luckily after some time the head ache was gone and then I had a chocolate ice cream…it really cooled things down.

While waiting to get my luggage at the airport, I wasn’t able find Liam and suddenly realized that I didn’t get the address of the nunnery where I was going to stay. Kept explaining myself for the next 5 minutes how stupid it was to come to foreign land without even knowing where to stay!!!…Suddenly got a glimpse of a familiar face…there was Liam. Thank God!!!

The first thing I noticed was the cars at the parking ….. the ones that I was used to looking at my computer desktop. Then I noticed the car parking facilities, the ticketing systems, and the number of Holdens parked. We reached the nunnery at 12.30am…and were trying to figure out which room I was allotted. With not there to attend us, I got into one of the rooms and slept off.

In the morning I met Lalit and the gang… not much seemed different… felt like I was back in NID. We met Liam at the “RMIT building 87” and got our student id cards done and our opened a bank account in half an hour flat !!!. Every thing seems so fast here. (its just been a day and I’ve already started comparing! ).

We got back to the nunnery in the evening and the city looked so different in the night, with all the lights and buzzing activities around. The next day we left for the Melbourne museum from the nunnery at 1pm after Shweta fed us all with her delicious daal chawal and aloo mutter…

The museum experience was good (it was for free so even better!). The best section there was of the body & mind and the drugs section. Got to see the video of a woman giving birth to a baby …. Freaked me out!

chef Shweta…

sameer relishing aloo mutter

Shweta, Sammer and Lalit

Shweta and sameer…all smiles

We had to leave the museum at 5pm and there was much more to be seen. We decided to check out the rest later. For dinner I got to do some cooking ….actually not cooking…just helping, Shweta is very strict about who gets to be involved in cooking…