I think it might be good for me to get in the habit of taking account of things that occur around me. Perhaps you should too. And let me know so I have something fun to read in the morning with coffee! Today I read the Anthropic IPO Prospectus. It filled me with quite a lot of dread. I was then led to a curious thought, can you invest in nukes? Not directly, but you can invest in the companies making those nukes. Ah yes. Investing in death. What an interesting world we live i

And roti... As well as dal, and paratha, and pickled green chilies, as well as idli, dosa, batasha, jalebi, the one snack things I can't remember the name of (oh wait, namak para!), and those little coffee candies from the IT guy, and, of course, Danny's Fried Chicken. And after becoming all of these things, I feel truly nourished. As I flew over the midwest, I was immediately hit by a sense of... what's the opposite of claustrophobia? Wait let me look it up. Allegedly, it is

"If you build it, he will come," - Field of Dreams (1989) I remember watching clips of a strange movie where a man hears voices in a cornfield and builds a baseball field. I thought it was weird as a kid, but the message still sticks. This week I would be going to a village that has not been supported by the Sehgal Foundation. I wasn't really sure what to expect. The villages I had seen so far had renovated schools, newer infrastructure, and healthy looking kids. I must admit

I came back from Rishikesh sore from hiking but refreshed from the beautiful sights. Now, it was time to get back to work! I only had a couple of weeks in India before I would be going back home, and I had lots of data to sort through and analyze before presenting my findings. At this point in my internship, the homesickness was starting to hit. I knew that the reverse would certainly occur once I would be back to the mundane calm of the midwest, but I was having intense crav

Never have I seen such a magnificent sight. Although later, I would be informed by my friends that the view before me was not of the mountains. They were simply hills. But how could something this massive be deemed just a hill? My friend from Nepal was quick to correct me, and after she showed images of the Himalayas I knew that I simply had to visit to redefine my definition of a mountain. Although we might have been able to see the Himalayas from where we were, the fog had

"Kindred spirits are not so scarce as I used to think. It's splendid to find out there are so many of them in the world." Anne of Green Gables by **L.M. Montgomery I have never in my entire life met a book character that I related to more than Anne. She embodied something that I forever hope to cherish; a sense of childlike wonder that will be instilled in me eternally. I wonder what she would think of India. The longer I stay and work here, the more I realize how privileged

If you haven’t already been introduced to the rich, folk-like melodies of Fleet Foxes, then I encourage you to give them a listen. This was the song that was stuck in my head as I made my way out to a tiny village in Nuh, Haryana. “I'll run down Lay my weight where it lies I'll come round Out in sheltering sky” The song depicts a maternal relationship with music. It feels like a gentle hand pushing you forward towards adventure. The drive as we left the city was calm. The vie

I agree, starting my blog with a Toy Story 5 reference is quite the choice. However, I have always found that I enjoy my work much more when I incorporate a little play and imagination into my research. It is my third or so week researching in India, and I was finally going to the field to meet with the village women and collect data! I would be traversing to a tiny village in the Nuh district (get the reference?), and I would be conducting interviews with women to assess how

Noah Kahan Reference 🎵 I love the rain, but this kind of rain was a whole new kind of chaotic. I was incredibly excited to go out to the field on Wednesday to explore a village and get to know the women who were a part of the project I was currently assessing, but the weather had other plans. And so did my health. I came down with a mild but still uncomfortable case of the flu at the beginning of the week. It wasn’t anything too serious, but I decided to take a couple of day

What defines a woman’s place? I’ve heard the commonly thrown-about insult, “go back to the kitchen!” more times than I can count. But the kitchen is where scrumptious chemistry occurs, and it is the best place for dancing. My first week at the S M Sehgal Foundation has been so full of curiosity and adventure. Although I was incredibly sleep-deprived when I arrived in Gurugram at about 9:00 pm, I will never forget the surreal feeling of realizing I was 7,620 miles from home. I

“You’re gonna love pani puri.” Says Lavanya, my thoughtful and brilliant roommate. She sits by me as I draft out my first blog post. While she sorts through whatever “flip flops” are (I thought those went on your feet, but apparently that’s a computer engineering thing), I am typing and deleting drafts for what would be the first post on my blog that would be on a website I have yet to create. When I was little, India was portrayed in the media in a one-dimensional way. I had

On May 20th, I made my way from the middle of nowhere Iowa to a country that was once so powerful it made claim to half of the entire world! Except it didn't, because it was too tiny and it couldn't handle it's enormous amount of colonies. But the fact that Portugal had so much influence in the 16th century is pretty incredible. Size matters not! Even though I have so much love for the intricate Manuelian Architecture and the beautiful azulejos that depict hundreds of years o

Yay I'm finally doing this! My many thoughts have finally escaped my thousands of notion databases. Welcome to Lily's Valley! I can't tell you how many times I started a blog and deleted it. However, I'm hopeful that this will be a consistent little corner of the internet rather than a "url not found" corpse later on. Today I am rescuing my scrapped post from the depths of the dumpster and putting them out on the web! (This is your sign to do the same) As a raging perfectioni