Another Thanksgiving

From 2015 thanksgiving to this year - I don't know how time went by so fast. Too many things happened in between, changed my life so drastically that I felt I was constantly struggling to catch up, still trying. Life hasn't played fair with me for sure but I still have a lot to be thankful for. 

I've a loving family who are eagerly waiting to see me at home. My 2-year old nephew who hasn't seen me in real yet dies to talk to me on phone. I've a job that's going well and I'm almost always loved and appreciated by people. I've some awesome friends who're not living close to me anymore but are always there for me when I need them. Most of all, I woke up in my own comfortable bed and don't need to worry about food or other things. Life's good even though something is missing but something will always be missing and that's what gives us the drive to live and achieve the things we're missing. I know what's missing in my life right now - all the people I love, no one lives close to me anymore. It'll be almost 8 years soon that I left home. I missed my family but always had my friends around who'd fill up that space, but now that I've started a proper adult job like all my other friends, I'm missing the life I've lived for past 7.5 years. However, there's always something to be thankful for and what's meant to be for me will find a way to come back to my life. I believe that kindness, honesty, hard work and love can win everything in life even though sometimes it takes longer for some people.

Last year on this day I was with Aly and her family, it was wonderful. I was invited this year as well but couldn't afford to travel all the way to Illinois cause I've been traveling a lot lately and going home in two weeks. I needed some time for myself and I'm thankful to have that time. I'll have thanksgiving dinner with some of my lovely colleagues though, looking forward to that. Just hoping next year will be a more positive one for me and everyone else in my life who I love and hold closely.

The Most Horrific Travel Story

As much as I love to travel, it always comes with some sort of horror stories for me. I wrote some of them in my Yet Another Travel Horror series before. However, each time I face some trouble somehow at the very last minute I get out of it, which happened this time as well. But none of the other horror stories is equivalent of what happened this time. So, here goes the most horrific travel story in my life.

It's been a while that I actually traveled somewhere. Moved to Raleigh around the end of June, and didn't have the chance to go anywhere. So, when I had the chance to go to a conference in Montreal, I was definitely more than excited to have a break from my routine work life and see some new places. I've a photographer friend in Ottawa who I've known for few years. We always talked about meeting up but never had the chance since it's hassle for me to go through visa application procedure and all. Since Ottawa is pretty close to Montreal, I told my friend he should visit me, but he said I should go to Ottawa instead as it's the capital of Canada. After seeing some pretty places there he'll drive me to Montreal the next day. So, I changed my plan and decided to go to Ottawa first for a day. But now I really wish I hadn't done that..

I reached Ottawa on Saturday afternoon and got super excited to see pretty fall colors, even though it was cold and raining. Since I had to leave pretty early for my flight, I was super hungry and we decided to go for lunch somewhere in China town. I get on the car and put all my bags on the back seat (mistake 1). We parked the car on a street, it was a quite busy area. When leaving I told my friend if I should take my bag pack with me (which I always do but I was tired of carrying), and my friend said that it's a safe area and it should be fine. So, I took out my wallet and left everything else there (mistake 2). Little did I know that I'll have to prepare myself for one of the biggest shocks of my life! We come back from lunch around 30 minutes later, and one of the car glasses was broken and both of my bags were gone. I always tell people I carry my whole life in my bag pack cause it's always heavy. Literally my whole life was gone with my bag, including my MacBook Pro and passport with USA and Canada visa. The only other time I freaked out in my life was when I got the news of my dad passing away, then there was this one. I didn't want to think of the consequences since they can be so big. If I were simply a tourist then it'd probably be easier, I would directly go back to my home country. But in my case, I've a US student visa though I started my job under OPT. My home country isn't my home now, I've a home in Raleigh where I live and work and have to come back. In order to do so I've to show my passport, visa, valid original I-20, work authorization permit and proof of employment at the border. And I lost them all other than one card, which meant I had to contact all those related people in the right order to get those IDs reissued. That doesn't only involve time, money and extra effort, but unnecessary human interaction with the type of people you usually don't want to interact with without any reason.

Next four days were complete nightmare and I possibly would never want live that ever again in my life. First important thing I learnt is, my country's embassy doesn't have any emergency protocol for such situation. This third world country stopped issuing hand written passport last year November and to issue machine readable passport it can take up to two months, which is not guaranteed. So, what do I do in such situation? Stay in Canada like a homeless person without any status? Does BD government have no liabilities to ensure the protection of their citizens in foreign countries? My campus HR wasn't of the greatest help either when I asked them to send me my I-20 copy. Also, my roommate was out of town too, which made things worse as I had some copies of my documents in my room. My house keys were in my bag, so they were lost too.

It was a completely uncertain situation, totally out of my control. The only thing I was trying to do is stay calm and act rationally step by step. My stress level reached higher than the highest it could get, and I started to have my old chest pain that happened after dad passed away. But I decided to go to the conference since that was the sole purpose of my trip and figure out the rest gradually. Then on Tuesday afternoon I get to know that my passports were found! Apparently the thief of someone dropped them in the Canada mailbox and they took them to my embassy. My employee ID card was there too. Luckily I had decided to attend the conference, otherwise if a new passport was issued in the mean time it would make no difference to get back my old one. So, all the puzzle pieces fit together right on time and I could make it back home. It felt like a complete miracle but somehow I was rescued at the last minute again. There are more details of the story but I'll leave it to that.

I'm still trying to recover from the shock and stress, and dealing with lots of different emotions. I always trust people instantly and never believe someone would cause harm to another innocent person, but that's definitely shaken. I'm having hard time believing in my future self who would make decisions for me. I've made so many mistakes while making decisions and failed myself as a proper intellectual adult. I need to think how to better myself and avoid unnecessary hassles and stress. I've always been fine traveling by myself but now I feel paranoid. It'll take some time to get rid of this anxiety but at least hope this huge life lesson taught me something! 

Moral of the story - be careful wherever you go, not because you don't trust others, but for your own sake, because one simple mistake can change your life forever.

Fun with Data - Basics of R - Part 2

In our first post on R programming language I covered how to download R and R Studio, understanding the structure of R Studio, and loading datasets into R. I meant to continue the series (as I always do), but couldn't get back to it any sooner. Recently I've started working on a workshop where I'll be teaching R to the beginners. So, I thought this would be the best time to add more content to this series as well. 

In this Part 2 I'll write about the following - Understanding prompts of R Studio, doing basic calculations in R, all about variables, functions, the concept of vector in R, and data frame. Some of these I should have covered in Part 1, but better late than never!

Prompts in R Studio

• In console a new line starts with >, means it is waiting for us to communicate
• If we give it an incomplete command then it returns +. Press esc button to return to a new line.
• To quit R type q()

Doing Basic Calculations in R

• The order of arithmetic operations is  (left [done first] to right [done last]) : ^ / * - +
• ^ is used for raised to the power of, followed by division, multiplication, subtraction and addition.
• At the prompt, we enter the expression that we want evaluated and when we hit enter, it will compute the result for us. For example: > 10 + 22 will return [1] 32

All About Variables 

• Variables are the symbols that store assigned values. We can store a computation under a new variable or change the existing value of an old variable.
• Variable names in R are case sensitive (upper or lower case).
• It is a good practice to assign meaningful variable names that helps to refer to easily for complex calculations.

To assign a value: variable_name <- value

Example: x <- 100

ALERT! Reserved Symbols!

In all programming languages certain symbols are reserved for specific purposes. The reserved symbols in R are - c q t C D F I T (So, don't use them for your personal variables ^-^)

Functions

A function is a sub-program that performs a specific task. For example, to find a square root of a given value. It helps to avoid repetition and easy execution in future. 

Try this code to understand how functions work -

firstFunction <- function(n){n*n}

This function named firstFunction is supposed to return square of any integer. Test it out by assigning different values to the function. Think of what other functions you can possibly write.

Vector

Vector has different meanings in different contexts. In math and physics, a vector is an element with both value and direction. But in R, vector is a sequence of data elements of the same basic type. It can be defined by concatenating the members in a set c(). Example: x <- c(1, 2, 4, 5).

Once we have a vector of numbers we can apply certain built-in functions to them to get useful summaries. For example:

> sum(x)        ## sums the values in the vector

> length(x)    ## produces the number of values in the vector, ie its length

> mean(x)     ## the average (mean)

Data Frame

A data frame can be created by defining different variables for each column as vectors and then joining them together.

Example: Let us assume we have a list of different fruits with their names, colors and size.

> name      <- c("apple", "banana", "peach", "watermelon", "grape")

> color      <- c("red", "yellow", "peach", "green", "red")

> size_cm <- c(10, 15, 8, 40, 2)

Then we add these three columns together to create the data frame names fruits.data.

> fruits.data <- data.frame(name, color, size_cm)

To see the values of the data frame -

> fruits.data

        name      color       size_cm

1      apple        red            10

2     banana      yellow      15

3      peach       peach         8

4 watermelon  green         40

5      grape       red             2

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I think we've covered a lot of basics concepts already, so I'll stop here today. In the next post of this series, I'll write about setting work directory, manipulating datasets, and playing around with some plots/visualizations, and hope I can make it sometime soon! 

My First Race

I've been running for about 4 years now, but I mostly run for fun, it helps me with stress. When I was in Japan I used to run only when it was warm outside, didn't really go to the gym. Since I moved to Illinois running became more frequent, and I loved our campus gym. So, snowy winters didn't stop me from running indoor on track. However, when it came to signing up for races, I kept going back and forth, but finally I did it! :D

Today I ran my first race - Historic Hillsborough Half Marathon and Fleet Feet Five K. I ran 5K many times before, so I thought it won't be a big deal. But since moving to Raleigh I couldn't run outside as much for the terrible heat, and wasn't active as much for last couple of weeks for flu. Also, it was very flat in Illinois, but this race area was very hilly (of course it makes sense because it's Hillsborough!), for which I wasn't well prepared, and felt terrible when I had to stop to breathe. Anyway, I thought I was pretty slow and one of the last to finish, but was glad that I almost made it among the first half finishers :)

Overall it was a good experience and a good start. Now I know how it feels to run with hundreds of people, often for a cause, and can train myself for longer runs. Weirdly enough, North Carolina doesn't have many 10K races. Most of them have two options 5K or half marathon, which is a pretty big jump. I really wish I could do a 10K in between, but I think I'll start to train myself for a half marathon soon. 

The race t-shirt and the medal were pretty rad! Did they know that I love mustard color?! I think I'll be wearing this t-shirt a lot! :D

Race Goodies

Feel Better Food - Baymax Cupcakes!

Anyone who knows me well is aware of my love for Baymax from Big Hero 6. I mean who doesn't love Baymax? So, last week I was down with flu and fever, I took Friday off and decided to make myself some feel-better-food, and guess what was that? Yes, that was none other than Baymax cupcakes! I saw the recipe on Disney's twitter post and wanted to make them for a while. So, on Thursday Maddie and I went to the grocery store to get all the ingredients (of course we came back with everything in the store as usual! :p). Here is the list -

1. Red velvet cake mix (you can use any brand, I got Betty Crocker)
2. Giant marshmallows
3. Edible marker or black gel (I couldn't find that kind of marker but the gel worked fine for me)
4. Cheese cream frosting
5. Possibly cones to add frosting
6. Eggs
7. Vegetable oil
8. Cupcake liner

Directions to make the cutest cupcakes ever!

It's actually super easy to make. At first you prepare the cake mix as directed. Usually you pour the mix in a bowl, add eggs, vegetable oil and water. Then you fill in the cupcake liners and bake them for about 14 minutes.

Once they're baked take them and let them cool down for a while because you don't want the cheese frosting to melt (I know it's common sense but I did that -_-). Then add cheese frosting on top to make the belly of Baymax in whichever method you prefer. The last thing that's left is to add its face and arms. Take a jumbo marshmallow and draw its face using marker or gel. Then take another one and cut it into half to make the arms. Attach them with the cheese cream and you've your super adorable Baymax cupcakes, your personal healthcare provide! :D 

I solely made them to make myself feel better, they were too adorable to eat. So I ate the mushroom version and basically left them as a decorative element on my kitchen top :p But I recommend you eat them as well.

Mushroom cupcakes

Aren't super adorable? 

A Day at the Topsail Beach

North Carolina is famous for some of the most beautiful beaches in U.S. We were planning on going to the beach since I moved here, but for different reasons we couldn't make it in last two months. But with the occasion of my friend Nate visiting, we thought this would be the perfect time to make this happen. So, finally we made it to the beach last weekend!

Blissful solitude

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I grew up in a beautiful port city called Chittagong, where going to the beach on weekends was a pretty usual fun family activity for us. Some of my favorite childhood photos were actually taken at the beach. But since moving to Dhaka, and suddenly losing my younger sister in water accident, my mom became overprotective about us and would never let us go to the beach by ourselves. The last time I went to the beach and actually played with water was in 2011. We went to the Shirahama (White sand) Beach in Isu island with a bunch of friends visiting my house, which was 4 hours by train from Tokyo. It was very beautiful with white sand and blue water, I still remember the day. After that I've been around the beach few times but didn't really go close and play with the water. So, finally going to the beach, especially with two of my most favorite people made me super excited! 

We wanted to start early, but we ended up staying unusually late, so couldn't make it that early. It took us about 2.5 hours to get to the Topsail beach and by the time we reached it was past noon. When I first dipped my feet in the sand it was hot as hell but as soon as we got into the water it was unbelievably comfortable and pleasing. It was supposed to rain that day but luckily it didn't. Both the sky and water were pretty blue color and there were surfers riding on the beautiful waves. 

Play time!

We played and jumped in the water for hours, after many many years it felt like I went back to my childhood. Also, after long time, I went out with my actual camera and took some photos. I lied down with my back on the sand where waves could come and touch me up to my chin, I could feel the relaxing rhythm of them coming and going by. We talked about adult life but played like kids, and captured the memories in some pretty photos to cherish them years after. It was an amazing day!

We left the beach after 5 hours being burnt and I couldn't move my back and feet for next two days. But it was totally worth going, and I'm looking forward to some more fun trips as fall is coming soon. 

Where's Home for You?

I've always found the concept of 'Home' or 'Home Country' very interesting and at the same time confusing. "Where do you come from?" is a very common and simple question to be asked by people, whether you're living in your own country or in another country. This identity is embedded with us mostly by birth, which we can't choose as we can't choose who will be our parents. But as we grow up we eventually learn to live without our parents, most start their own families. Similarly, we're living in a world where more young people are moving abroad for education or job, it's becoming more common to meet people with mixed identities, i.e. half American, half German. When we leave our home country at a young age and build our own identity, own world at a separate place, in a different country, how much does it really matter where we're coming from? Or what percentage of us remains the same as what we had when we left home?

It's been 7.5 years that I've left home. I remember the day when I moved to Japan in April 2009. I was sad to leave my family, loving siblings there for sure, but I wanted to see more of the world, was excited to learn a new language, connect with the people who don't have the same background as me and many more. In my first year I became friends with 13 people from 12 different countries in my language school dorm and we're still good friends. Not that I never had homesickness, I did. But I started to create my own definition of home. After 5 years of living in Japan and finishing my college, I had so many memories and so many people I was connected with that I could easily call it my home away from home. As years went by friends graduated, most moved to different places for higher education or job, and each time I went back home I'd realize I had fewer strings attached. 

Same thing happened when I moved to USA from Japan. It was a huge step for me to leave my secure comfort zone, what I called home. But I was lucky to meet some amazing people and be loved and cared by friends from my very first day, and it never felt different. It's been 2.5 years here, don't know if I can call it home yet but I love the people in my life who are always there to comfort me and give me the feeling of being at home. In my entire time of living abroad, this is the first time that I'm sharing house with a roommate, who has been a friend from the very first day of grad school and now colleague. She's probably one of the most caring people on earth if not the most, and I can't describe how lucky I'm to have her in my life. When Madison told me she feels less anxious when I'm around, and actually got a lot of work done that she was nervous about, I knew that I can call this place home. We both long to come back here after tiring days at work and probably spend the most fun time with each other cooking, watching favorite movies/TV shows, or just talking about life.

Home is where the hugs are. pic.twitter.com/Gw5JDUrTf8

— Disney (@Disney) August 15, 2016

When people ask me whether I miss my home, I can only say that I miss my family. That's the only string attached to that place. I loved the city where I was born and brought up - Chittagong, beautiful port town with beach and mountains. I remember crying and being depressed for months after we moved to the crowded capital at the age of 12. That was probably the first time I realized what depression is, and the fact that I'm more of a quiet person, crowded places don't suit me. Unfortunately I never fell in love with Dhaka as much as I loved my campus in Tsukuba, and don't feel excited to revisit that city itself. It might sound harsh to many, but I developed the concept of my own home, where I fell calm and enjoy the little things of life.

I came across Pico Iyer's TED talk "Where is Home?" as I started writing this post. He put it beautifully - "I've always felt that the beauty of being surrounded by the foreign is that it slaps you awake. You can't take anything for granted. Travel, for me, is a little bit like being in love, because suddenly all your senses are at the setting marked "on." Suddenly you're alert to the secret patterns of the world. The real voyage of discovery, as Marcel Proust famously said, consists not in seeing new sights, but in looking with new eyes. And of course, once you have new eyes, even the old sights, even your home become something different."

As long as I can travel, see new places, I'd always be excited about finding a new place that I might be able to call my home, and I'm a lucky to have several home away from home already :)