Look back Look forth

That's the title of my friend meghna's last blog post of 2007. Its like a goodbye to 2007 and a welcome to 2008 post. But the best piece I've read in a really long time, bar none! It brought tears to my eyes. As I could relate to a lot of things that were mentioned. But I'm really happy for her and hope the next year is even better to her. Same to all of you too. but to be more specific,

Mickey, I hope you get in and stick to one college till you graduate.

Abhinav, I Wish for you that RTFS2 is way way wayyyy more popular than RTFS. More importantly, I hope that it turns out to be a work of pure genius. Don't disappoint me. ;)

Karthikeyan, I hope that being in singapore, your english got better. And all the best with that GRE

Sujata, I hope that you finally find solace in creative i college. I know your heart was into going to NID, but I hope everyone in your class has or is striving to get to your level, and not the other way round.

Sumit, I just hope you and I talk more than this. I would give anything to be able to go back to the way we were.... chatting endlessly, while I'm on the bus, while I'm in the loo, or even when I'm on the computer.

Abhishek, I hope that for fucks sake you stop loosing weight! Be healthy dude.

Divya, I wish that you stop crying....over little things. The world is a bad place, and there will be many more times when you will feel dejected but you need to be strong, and work through those times rather than just sit and cry.

(yes i did something like this before, in the blog post happy diwali, last year)

Pranav, I wish that you stay healthy and you keep in touch with me more.

Mohini, I wish that you stay safe, stay cool and carry on your cutter-giri.

Pranjali, I hope that you discover other words besides apratim. And yes, don't forget to still keep using 'apratim!' we Love it!

Harsh, I hope that you gain some weight... come ON, its about time! And succeed in all your endeavors.

Rahul, I hope you become a big theater star, because that's where I feel your heart lies.

Suraj, I hope you finally realize everything's ok in moderation. You were more often than not the king of 'overdoing stuff'.

Nikita, I just wish that you remember me once upon a time, now and then.. and maybe try and contact me... huh?

Damn, this is getting long.

Oliver, I hope you get into animation. Of all the people I know, you are the one who deserves it the most.

Taruna, I hope you finally get to go to the sheridan pub again, wish you many drunk wasted nights and hope that you don't get in trouble again.

Mark, I hope that you don't get shitty stupid teachers anymore. Well, really, that's a very selfish wish because I'm in the same class. LOL

Jeremy, I hope you somehow, with a stroke of luck, get a little less irritating, stop getting on people's nerves and stay out of trouble.

Hya, I hope that you.... that you stop being called flea-head. LOL. its cruel.

I'll just stop now i guess... If I missed you, and you really want me to add u to the list, message me.

Happy new year all you guys!

Is this going anywhere?

Last night, while trying to go to bed, I started thinking about when I'll meet my friends again. I went on my fantasy ride thinking I'd have friends over for dinner, maybe I'll cook... What if I want to cook some meat? Taiji probably won't let me do it in her kitchen...Maybe I could go to pranav's house. Could I get bacon in pune? It'll be hard to find. I wonder if everyone's gonna be ok with bacon... And just like that, I wasn't sleepy anymore. I wanted to draw the kitchen of pune. So I turned on the table lamp, and took my sketchbook, and started trying to draw.

But for some reason, it wasn't as easy as I thought it would be. I couldn't get the placement to look right in perspective. Now I haven't really seen the place in almost a year, so I have forgotten a lot of things, but I do have the main plan of the place in my head. I drew that in a corner to kinda help me with the perspective drawing, but now my right arm started hurting really bad. I figured I was spending too much time on the computer yesterday in a kinda uncomfortable posture. That could be the reason. So I put the sketchbook next to me and decided I'm gonna draw when I wake up tomorrow.

This morning, tried it again, but not getting anywhere still. I think I need to look up reference. maybe dig into my pictures from pune. That reminds me, I don't have any pictures of my friends at my place at the dinner party. I remember after, when we were in my room, Pranav was taking pictures....Where was my camera at that time? Why wasn't I taking any pictures? Oh wait, I did take a video of pranav that night, so I HAD my camera... Damn! Why was I so stupid to not take any pictures? You see... its like when u have something you don't realize how or 'how much' u could use it... Now that I don't have the camera, or those friends with me, I feel like I should have enjoyed it to the max when I had that.

Taking my mind off things

Hi, after two days of watching LOTR trilogy and eating and sleeping, I was desperate to get back to drawing. So I put my sketchbook by my bedside last night and when I woke up, I did some drawing so that I have a good start to the day! And I did. But shortly after, I was informed of a news that messed up my day. My uncle is in the hospital. He got a paralysis attack. I was really sad. I decided to call up Pranav and talk to him to kind of take my mind off things.

Then I came upstairs, Abhinav was online, so I talked to him for a bit, then he went offline. I also decided to redo my blog template to mix things up! I had been living for a "really" long time with that blue template of my face in the header. But I didn't really like the fact that its blog field was so narrow that the blogs would run really long, and people had to do a lot of scrolling to read my long entries. And I recently read an article somewhere, (I susect digg.com ) that mentioned that there are so many websites with designs that were meant for the age old monitors that couldn't do more than 800x600 resolution. And if anybody still runs his desktop at that resolution, he has no business being on the internet! I myself have a widescreen desktop, with 1440 pixel width! I could totally eliminate the need to scroll if I optimized the template. well... atleast for some small posts.

So I Decided to use the leopard style banner that I had made in illustrator a while ago. (Yes, I referenced a tutorial.) But the template that I had picked would cut off the banner if the window got too small instead of showing a horizontal slider. I didn't know what to do. I could set a size, but then its not flexible. I wanted it to be able to move the text as the window is being resized but not go below a certain point. So I fidgeted around with a lot of settings before I stumbled upon min-width. It should have been kinda obvious to me I think... but I'm a nut remember?  So that excuses me. Anyways, I hope you guys like the new template, lemme know if you have anything in mind.

Wonderful Family Christmas dinner!

I know its not christmas yet, but today, just happens to be the day we got together for a nice christmas dinner with the Pagel family. (We here includes me, JP and his GF stephanie.) The other two had plans. Yesterday, when we were watching superbad, Sandeep even asked me if I wanted to come. But I said that tomorrow is this big thing that vironica's been preparing for all week long. And I can't disappoint her. I know she's made the indian vegetarian food specially for those two vegetarian guys. I hoped he'd consider this and cancel his plans but he didn't. When I woke up this morning,  both were already gone!

Fuck that! I know I am gonna have a really amazing time with Philip and Brian and Nathan. Ladies, ladies, don't be upset. I do like you, but its just that being guys, we have more in common. Yeah, like porn, cars, gadgets, you know... Vironica had been talking about it... "this 'thing' that philip got from the states, its so cool! You can watch movies on it, listen to songs, surf the internet... and you can turn it sideways, it changes to side view! Oh my god!" And I had a feeling its the iPhone and I'd have loved to see it, but I wasn't gonna explicitly ask him for it.. But when Brian started showing his HTC windows mobile phone, we got talking about the iphone, and Philip said Julia has it. I was SO excited, I was finally gonna get to hold and use the iPhone!

And I have to say, I'm not very impressed! This obviously was a hacked iphone, as it was running on rogers network in Canada. The installer.app was also loaded. And I noticed that it was pretty slow. And not very responsive. I'd go into the installer.app and it would show me that its loading... I got around to playing tap tap revolution and also tried installing mobichat for trying to chat... but nothing! I watched youtube videos, that was pretty fun. But the speaker wasn't nearly loud enough. Its also pretty thick. I liked how slim the ipod touch was... I wish they could make the phone slimmer too! Also, the battery was dying, so everytime I went from standby to the home screen, it showed me a warning that I had to dismiss! That got kinda irritating. The camera, as expected, wasn't nearly as good. All I got were blurred photos. But I was using it indoors in a not very well lit room so I could give it a break on that. But really, not very impressed.

The dinner was WONDERFUL! Turkey, cranberry sauce, stuffing, potatoes, pepper, mushrooms, onions, ah! I LOVED IT! I am STILL so stuffed! I was the last one to finish the dinner and the dessert! Cheesecake! First time I had a cheesecake, and it was delicious! Oh! And there are a lot of leftovers for later! Then everyone started exchanging presents. I was taking a LOT of pictures of everyone! They were so happy giving and getting all those presents! It was beautiful moment. Then I ran upstairs and got my greeting cards. Mumchu even gave me a little greeting card and a small gift. Vironica had a gift for me too! This day was just perfect! I wouldn't have anything differently!

I think I should just end it now. Its a beautiful memory. I don't want to go on and on and make it riddled with silly little details that hardly matter... like brian making philip watch the 2girls1cup video....LOL. But, before I publish this, I just want to type out that I have now realized how stupid i was to post the last 'rant' of a blog post. I got carried away. I have gotten everything I needed from my parents and I just needed to distract myself from the camera topic and I think today was just the thing! 

Merry christmas everyone!

I want a CAMERA!!!

I am so stuffed! I just finished my delicious lunch of chapatti, dal, rajmah and aam ka achaar. Vironica made the rajmah and dal for us today-with my help ofcourse. Hehe. I don't mean to brag, but I didn't even need to look up a recipe for dal and It turned out awesome! But rajmah, even though it didn't look right in the beginning, it turned out awesome! except for the slight overdose of cinnamon. After all this, you'd think food should be all that is on my mind. But its not! I can't get the thought of a new digital SLR camera out of my head!

I shouldn't have stopped at futureshop's camera counter and looked at that Canon 400D! That's what caused this whole thing in the first place! Today I asked parents if I could buy one from ebay (or other websites like henrys ) a second hand camera for about 499 CND. I checked amazon USA and they have new one for 519 USD! Right now, I believe buying a camera in USD will be cheaper for me. But they said no. Making all kinds of stupid excuses and reasons. But I don't get it! I didn't even ask for a gift on my birthday! I wish I could at least get a little gift for christmas!

Ah!! who am I kidding. I am not gonna get them to say yes! I could just look at stores and see if I can pay them in installments. Maybe I could just buy one and return it within 30 days just to kinda tease my desire. That's something I can't do if I buy it at boxing day. Exchange or return it. Boxing day sales are usually final sales. Well... Lets see.

Lightroom managed images crash finder

From digg: Properly written EXIF Data in images are causing Leopard's Finder to lock up.I have lightroom v1.3.1 on my mac running leopard. a.k.a. OS 10.5.1. My whole collection of photos is managed from within lightroom. But because of the awesome integration of iphoto with the rest of the OS that apple advertises, I decide to try and import the same photos in iphoto. However, when I try to import them into iphoto, the process goes on for ever! Even if I try to import only one photo, the import will not complete. To look into it, I went into the photos folder in finder, and there were no thumbnails leading me to believe that the photos had been corrupted. I tried quicklook but finder crashed! I tried opening them with preview.... still didn't work. But these photos are working perfectly fine with adobe photoshop, bridge and lightroom. So its all of apple's lousy products in 10.5.1 that are causing this to happen. Get your act together apple! Fix this ASAP! I feel like I want to downgrade to tiger too!

read more | digg story

I miss you guys.

Whoa! I had two distinct dreams tonight, both of which involved me meeting my best friends. One from my school, and another one from college. I guess this is just because I'm really missing company of friends. Since college ended, I've been all by myself and I can't wait for college to start again!

My first dream, started off with me and pranav driving to the college. Together! Pranav's and mine houses are in two different corners of Pune. So us driving together to college would mean that we now live together... But now I'm thinking why then, were we both riding our own motorcycles? We could have saved money and the environment if we were both on one. hehe.. Maybe we both lived close to each other... and not together...? Anyways... Then we got to college, and spent one amazing day together. I remember I was sitting next to him, discussing things and it was just like being in heaven.

The second dream was definitely a little more scary. Whenever it comes to dreams of my school, you can be sure there's some dreaded aspect involved. And this time, it was tests, bullies, and public ridicule. I got to see the faces of all the people who made fun of me and bullied me in school. I also got to see the teachers who would go on and on! But when I finally spotted my friend, I went and sat next to him. Rahul hartalkar. He was my best buddy in high school. The last time I met him was in Nagpur before new years. It will be a year soon. And as I was sitting there, I became oblivious to the whole world around me. Nothing else mattered. It was so serene. And then I had to wake up to this cold lonely room of mine. BLAH!

Just not my day today

I just wish I didn't wake up. At all! This day has been a disaster since the moment I opened my eyes. I probably woke up on the wrong side of the bed or something. First, my throat was so dry that I had to walk downstairs to the kitchen at 6 am to go fetch a glass of water. When I got back, I was feeling uneasy to sleep, but I knew I wanted to get back to sleeping. So I decided to spend some time looking at photos on flickr...GAH! Its best I don't relive that.

I was talking to suju later, to apologize, and I remembered that I had to go to the college for the information session about the New years montreal trip planned by Breakaway tours. I quickly hung up and went upstairs to check my ical and found out that this was at 5 pm. I had quite a bit of time. So I decided to finish my chores. I cleaned the bathroom (how those guys manage to get it so dirty is beyond me!) And cleaned myself-showered; then had some rice and aloo chole for lunch. Funny thing, JP was there, and he asked me,
"this the same thing vironica made yesterday?"
"yeah."
"its good stuff eh?"
"Its not that great."
"no?"
"its not made the proper way."
"well, its good to have a change sometime... you wouldn't eat the same kind of pasta every time."
God! I hope he was joking! One, I don't have chole every day, and two, its not the same thing as pasta! But if I have to, I'd say "its more like one type of pasta done wrong". Instead of pureeing the onions and garlic and ginger etc together and adding it, I saw her add onions to the oil first, with no jeera or rye, then chopping up garlic and ginger and adding them. is led to white specs of garlic and ginger in the sabzi, which looked very unappetizing. Besides, the flavors weren't infused as well as they should have.
I'm sorry, I can't help the nitpicking. You must remember that I am a fussy eater. I am really thankful to vironica for the food tho. Because I had almost no food left because I haven't been grocery shopping in I don't know how long. I finished my bread and milk more than a week ago. And have been asking her to take me shopping, but she's been too busy with taking care of tera and maya.

But today she finally asked me if I wanted to go shopping and we did go. But didn't end up shopping for food. We were out for about 3 hours! What the hell did we do you may ask? Well, first, we were supposed to drop off JP to work. But he got a call from his girlfriend, who was whining so loud on the cellphone, I could hear her from the back seat! She forgot her laptop's charger/power adapter at vironica's place. She was really upset because she had to study for an exam and her notes were on the computer. So Vironica decided to take the cable to stephanie. We drove back home, picked up the cable, dropped JP, then proceeded to stephanie's house, which was in I don't know which corner of the world, it took us forever to get there! No, wait, we stopped on the way at Brian's... no philip's .... I don't know... clinic because vironica wanted to give him some orange juice. But he wasn't there. Then we proceeded to stephanie's house, WOW, SHE HAS A BEAUTIFUL HOUSE. BEAUTIFUL AND HUGE!

After that, we were driving back, I think towards no frills... But vironica changed the plans again. She was like, wait, this is closer... then we can also do this... or something. So Now, staples was on the way. So we decided to return my printer first, and then proceed with the grocery shopping. I went in with my printer, returned that to them, got my money back, and waited for Vironica. She didn't show up, so I thought she'd still be out in the car like the other time. I went outside and stood there, looking for the car, hoping that she'd spot me. But nothing! My feet and hands were getting really cold! Even thought I kept walking in and out of the store, and put my hands in my pocket! Now I was beginning to thank the fact that I decided not to pick up the other printer and walk out of the store with that in my hands. Finally, she shows up, she calls out for me, and I walk towards her, I can't wait to get back home now!

In the car, I take off my shoes, and try warming up my feet. I tell her I want to just get back to home now. She says "you need food, you have nothing!" Yeah right, NOW you realize that!! I would have even given in and gone to the superstore, but we kept getting these signs that today is not a good day to be driving. The traffic was just awful. We almost had an accident atleast 3 times. And had a couple other bad calls. She had said the following atleast 5 times "around this time of the year, everyone drives like crazy!" So be it. I don't want to die or cripple myself. I don't even want to take a chance with a small cut in my fingers. This is a really important time for me.

My portfolio requirements were emailed to me today. Nothing has changed really. So I will get to work tomorrow.... that is, IF I don't die of malnutrition... "what? me, die of malnutrition? IMPOSSIBLE!" .....GRRRRRR..... wait... *looks around* what's that sound... oh! its just my stomach grumbling.

Last night I was talking to suju and just happened to look back on some old times. I thought I'd post that here.

yash gupta: there are so many things I look back at, and there's only this memory of it in my head...no photograph, no video, no log/record of those times...
sujata bhagwat: what times?
yash gupta: the times like when I was in the hospital with arjun bhaiya
yash gupta: we had so much fun...
sujata bhagwat: huh?
sujata bhagwat: in the hospital?
sujata bhagwat: fun?
yash gupta: arjun bhaiya came back from the trip really messed up and had to be admitted...
sujata bhagwat: oh
yash gupta: he was vacationing with friends in manali and dharamshala etc
yash gupta: yeah... also involved a meditation camp or something
yash gupta: so while he was there, his friends would come over to visit him...
yash gupta: they'd sit around joke about. and we'd stay up watching tv...
sujata bhagwat: oh cool
sujata bhagwat: you never blogged abt it...strange!
yash gupta: yeah.. that was even before 11th grade started
sujata bhagwat: oh
yash gupta: and i didn't have much access to computer during tht time
sujata bhagwat: ok
yash gupta: so... yeah, no blog post about it either
sujata bhagwat: hm..
yash gupta: then there was the time of my 18th birthday...
sujata bhagwat: oh yeh..
sujata bhagwat: mumbai

This one had been sitting in the drafts for really long. I just forgot about it. So I'm publishing it now.

Stupid bus driver alert!

The bus driver on Oakville transit route 19 yesterday, should be fired. Yesterday, when I was getting back home, I took the bus from the go station, at 6:30 pm (In the complaint I made over the phone, I accidentally said 7:30 - stupid me!) This driver was totally out of his senses. Maybe even under the influence of something. In the buses here, there is a little chord that you pull(or a button you press) to let the driver know that you want the bus to stop at the next stop. Pulling the cord, or pressing the button, rings a little bell, turns on a sign that says stop requested and shows a little indicator on the dashboard for the driver to know that someone wants to get off.

But this driver, missed the stop at least two times! First, it was a group of three girls, who had requested a stop, but the bus kept going, and only stopped at the next stop. When the girls realized that he had passed their stop, one of them yelled out at him, "you missed our stop! Now we're gonna have to walk!" I didn't think much of it, because I didn't know if they had requested stop early enough. But I did find out that the driver is an idiot when I requested a stop, and instead of stopping at oakmead and Nipigon, he kept going all the way to river oaks! And When I finally walked up to him and said, "you missed a stop!" he said, "Sorry, I just noticed."

I had to walk back, in the cold windy weather, with a portfolio in my hand, and my bag on my back. It had snowed earlier, and the sidewalk was slippery. My toes started getting really cold and I was thinking I'd get frost bitten. The walk back home was pretty long. I was cursing him every step of the way. And I knew I was going to call Oakville transit and complain! But their phone centers had closed and so I didn't get a representative. But I did leave a message. I don't think they'd call back so I will call them up again. And I think that girl should too! That's the only way to fix these guys!

Ready to taste freedom

Yeah. I'm so close to getting the christmas holidays, so close to not having to go to any classes, no assignments,projects or homework. But I will have to work on my portfolio. I am also being asked by people to do some 'stuff' for them. I will disclose these in the future, when I'm done and ready to show you guys. So its a really mixed feeling.

And GAH! I hate all these adverts! I'm being lured into spending more money on stuff that I think I need. I almost purchased a Deviantart plushie and a subscription today. I admit the plushie is really desirable and the subscription would be awesome, but I have been surviving without it to date, and I will survive without it in the future too.

Back to the freedom thing... I tend to loose myself when I'm alone. I just kick back, relax and watch time pass me by. So, I really need someone to control me. To keep reminding me to not slack off and work. Now I think I miss my parents. That reminds me, the funniest thing happened the other day. I was eating dinner, and I felt like I was in pune..... why? guess. no guesses? Because I REALLY didn't like the way the rice turned out. I hated my food, but I had to eat it, because I didn't really have anything else, and I was really hungry. I was eating because I HAD to! did this ever happen to any of you?

Flashback and fast forward

I slept like a bear!

I was a little hungry tho...I wish I had more bread.

I didn't even want to cook. I wished there was someone to cook for me.

That's how tiring the class was.

In the afternoon I had a pizza...kseniya was pretty pissed at me tho.

Because of the following conversation:

"Kseniya, are you a vegetarian?"

"Yes."

"Do you eat fish?" (I knew she did)

"yes,"

"Is fish a vegetable?"

...

I laughed so hard. I knew this was going to bring me immense joy.

I decided to go back to class and do a survey.

I asked all the canadians if they were vegetarians.

I just want to tell gemal (I don't care if that's not spelled right)

"just because you're black doesn't mean you're cool"

I think this post is gonna make quite a few people angry.

Gerard stayed back today even after 5 o clock to take a look at drawings.

which is good because I wouldn't have paid 100 dollars per class if I wasn't even gonna get critiqued on my drawings.

He looked at mine and juan's and kseniya's

He even took pictures which he's gonna post on the life drawing blog.

I think I should go there and comment on the drawings and post a link to this blog post.

Nah, I'm too much of a chicken to do that.

anyways. gotta go now.

if I don't finish this assignment I'm screwed!

I didn't come to canada to get turned down...twice.

So, I was talking to oliver late at night the other day, and I have been meaning to blog about it since. Because its something that has really inspired me. I was just busy with the art history thing first, then the typography assignment. Never mind. Back to the topic. What happened that night really reminded me of pranav and sujata. When I was in India, they were my driving force. Suju because of how good she is, and Pranav because what a hard worker he is. Now that I think about it, when I came to canada first, I was really serious too. I was like "I didn't come here to slack off. I will work like Pranav and I will try to do everything as good as Sujata." That's not to say that pranav's work wasn't good, but Sujata's bar was definitely higher.

So I would work really hard on all my assignments and sincerely go to class, and talk to teachers and be the foremost kid. But I didn't focus on the portfolio at all. Because I had come to realize that I wasn't nearly as good as the others. I figured the natural way to go would be to finish my art fundies, and by the end of the course, I will be good enough. But that was a big mistake. Art fundies didn't really give me anything to add to my portfolio. And thus my interest in my classes went away too! I keep saying 'This is not helping me with my portfolio so what's the point!' And I have atleast 3 assignments that I handed in late.

Ah, gotta stop getting distracted! Back to my point - When oliver blogged about him showing his sketchbook to Mark Mayerson, I was really surprised...and excited... If oliver could tell me where I could get a hold of him too, it would be awesome! I talked to oliver about it, and he told me he stays in room A160 from mondays 2-5! I didn't know such a arrangement existed. But oliver's apprently the first person to go up to him and that makes me not feel so bad about my ignorance. But I do admire his will and his efforts. And so he simply said to me,
"I didn't come to canada to get turned down!"

And I remembered me saying similar thing to myself back in winter 2007. Oliver's from new york. He can drive back and forth in one day. Still he considers it such a big deal. I am half way around the world from my home. Shouldn't that amount to something? And that realization made me feel really disappointed in me. But with that came a new determination to work harder. And I am drawing more each day. I have a good feeling about this year's portfolio. I will get in!

"I didn't come to canada to get turned down twice!"
Just an end note to those who thought this wasn't up to par with my writing ability, all I have to say is, "I'm sorry I wasn't doing it for the sake of writing. I was doing it so that I have something to keep reminding me of my goal."

So, someone other than me DOES read the blog!

Last night, I happened to bump into a first year animation student, who's also a student counselor at sheridan. I was just sitting in the pit, trying to download some things, because internet at the house is not suitable to download large files anymore. He comes up to me, and he recognizes me. He says,
"Hi, are you in fundies? Do you have a blog?"
And I'm like,
"Yeah, a lot of people do."
god that was so stupid! He probably thought I was being all cocky about one widdle blog that I write and someone other than my friends happened to stumble upon it.
"What?... Do you mean a lot of people read your blog..."
"No, that's not what I meant, I was just saying that a lot of people(meaning oliver,) from art fundamentals blog."
Because I was definitely under the impression that he mistook me for someone else. Because one thing my blog isn't is memorable enough for a total stranger to remember about it and come up to me to say 'hi!'

But then he probably thought I was trying to avoid the whole thing... and he said,
"Hey, I didn't mean to scare or alarm you."
"Oh, no, I'm not alarmed, I'm glad, but where is this going?...ummm, hi! I'm yash, and you are?"
"Oh, yes, it is YOU!. I'm Sam. I'm a student counselor here."
"Oh, hi, what are you doing here?"
"As in what am I doing in the pit right now? I was just..."
"No, what program. "
"I'm in animation first year..."

And so we talked about getting help, and tips and pointers for a portfolio and stuff. I got down his email address, and hope to talk to him again sometime soon!

Lookin smart, Pranav!

Whoa! Overdue update heading your way! Watch out! hehe... I don't know what I was thinking, but now that I look back at what I wrote 5 seconds ago, I find it RIDICULOUS! moving on!

I finally ended up calling pranav up. It was Monday morning, and I was sitting at the dining table with my bowl of cereal and dear MBP. I was chatting with aayush. I had talked to sujata yesterday, and she told me Pranav had moved to the city now. And that he is getting better. I now wanted to speak to him personally and get to hear how he was doing, who are his roommates and stuff. So I called him up.

He said he's gonna get internet at his place sometime soon now. Ummm.... we'll see about that! hehe. But what really touched me, was him sounding more relaxed and cool about the class work and homework load. I was really relieved to heard him say "If I can't finish something, I just go to the teachers and say I can't do it." Not giving work precedence over his health is something we've been telling him for almost a year and he finally gets it! Now I'm sure EVERYONE has changed. NO exceptions! He also told me he had uploaded some pictures on orkut. I thought it was odd that I wasn't notified, but I said I'll check them out.

And I did check them out. two of them were pretty good pictures. The third one, however, I can't say much about it. But still, seeing him all better, made my morning. And I was thinking about the pictures all day. It was the one thing that kept me smiling. Because the rest of my day was a big disaster. one mishap after other. I will tell you about that briefly, as I don't want to make this entirely about that.

First, Vironica was supposed to take me to buy boots. She also offered to drop john at his friend's place, who's dog he's taking care of. I thought I'd just go along, and get my shoes and be back by class time, but I was wrong. When I realized that there was no way I was making it to class in time, I decided to skip it. And then, we went shopping for my boots. But one store after the other, we found nothing but mediocre stuff or ridiculously expensive ones. Finally at Zellers, I found a pair that was gonna be a good value for money. Then, at staples, I bought the lexmark wifi printer that I was desiring, but when I brought it back, and tried to get it to work with my computer, it just wouldn't go. After lots of fidgeting around, I called up lexmark, only to find that they don't support leopard yet. there are no compatible drivers. Damn!

So, I had to go back to another staples, and get a 'comparitively' lamer hp device, that had a really HUGE power brick, and didn't even come with a USB cord, has a useless 4x6 printing 'cartridge' thingy.. you load up paper in that, and put it in the paper tray, and it feeds the printer from there. Isn't that silly! And totally unnecessary. Also, it does not have a USB port for me to plug in my camera or other storage device and print directly from there! How inconvenient! First time I tried to print a photo with it, it BOMBED. It only printed one smal strip correctly on one 4x6 photo paper, and ejected the thing. said that I need more paper! What the hell! And when I reinserted that paper for it to finish printing, it wouldn't even get done with it and shove the paper out. So I manually canceled it and when the paper was out, I saw some random colors... That was so infuriating!

Don't even get me started about the scanning! Puhleez! I just want to forget about it!

My first snowman!

Yay! I finally made a snowman, all by myself! I was so excited! I have the pictures up on my flickr page. I don't want to spend time uploading them on blogger again. So you can head over to flickr.com/photos/yashrg and comment on them! I'd love that. Plus, did you guys know blogger now supports open id commenting? I hope this will open a wider window to people who want to respond/interact. Anyways, on with the details!

I woke up after a good night's rest and I went downstairs to get some breakfast. I had heard in the news that there's gonna be shovelable snow outside by sunday morning. They were right(for the first time...LOL) Vironica was resting on the couch there, and she said there were shovels on the verandah and that the snow is suitable to make a snowman. I was really excited! That's what I've been waiting to hear since the summer! (Last winter I was too scared to 'play' in the snow) So I ran upstairs and put on my clothes. Came running down and walked outside.

First, I had to shovel some of the snow from in front of the door. And I've NEVER shoveled snow before. And vironica was laughing out really loud looking at my goofy ways. She had to instruct me on the 'art of shoveling snow' but then I was on my way. It was quite an exercise and got me plenty warm. Then I went ahead and started rolling a snow ball for the base of my snowman. Because I wasn't sure how big I could get it without breaking it, I wanted to be on the safer side and keep it small. Plus, this was my first time and I wanted to aim for a realistic goal. I had to decide earlier on where it was going to end up so that I can roll the big heavy ball into place.

Then I started on the next ball. By the time I was done, I figured this was all I'm going to do. I thought this was good enough. Besides, it didn't seem very stable to me and I was scared whole thing would topple. But Vironica egged me on, so I started on the head ball! This one just collapsed under pressure when I was rolling it. I guess I overestimated its integrity. Vironica was watching me from the window and she laughed out too. I redid that and thus, the 'making' of the snowman was done!

Now for the ornamental finishing touches! I dug out two small stones from under the snow and shoved them in there. Didn't get the placement I wanted, but then I was happy with how it turned out.. gives it an expression... LOL. I put in a carrot for the nose, and some celery for the arms. I tried using the brocolli to make hair, but it didn't work out. green hair doesn't look very adorable. So I used that to make buttons on its torso. Vironica pointed me to the plant that had brown tiny flowers. I liked that idea and gave my bald snowman some hair. Sticking stuff in there wasn't very easy, took a little poking and re-enforcing with more snow.

And I just couldn't help but put in a little leaf where his private parts will be. I had always loved that concept in cartoons when lets say dexter removes his clothes, a little leaf will appear in front of his penis. It was just so hilarious! But finding a green leaf at this time was impossible so I just put a yellow leaf I found on the lawn. It was great. And when all was done, I couldn't wait to get back inside. My shoes were getting all wet.

Good thing that we took pictures, because the thing had fallen apart by evening because the temperature rose, and there was little rain. I will do another one sometime soon. Maybe even BIGGER! but I'm really glad with this experience.

I am your friend.... or AM I? read to find out.

AM NOT YOUR FRIEND IF.....
you have to think before you speak to me!

I AM NOT YOUR FRIEND IF.....
my presence ever makes you feel uncomfortable!

I AM NOT YOUR FRIEND IF.....
you have to thank me for everything I do for you!

I AM NOT YOUR FRIEND IF.....
you have to say sorry for everything
that you don't do!

I AM NOT YOUR FRIEND IF.....
you have to ask me for favors!

I AM NOT YOUR FRIEND IF.....
you think I would not be curious to
know your new philosophy of life!

I AM NOT YOUR FRIEND IF.....
you go by what I say and do not understand
what I don't say!

I AM NOT YOUR FRIEND IF.....
you think that listening to your dreams
would put me to sleep!

I AM NOT YOUR FRIEND IF.....
you think that seeing you in pain, would
not bring a tear to me!

I AM NOT YOUR FRIEND IF.....
you think I do not remember the first time
we met!

I AM NOT YOUR FRIEND IF.....
you don't see the thousand ways I try to
make you happy!

Aloo Pyaaz ki sabzi

I decided to make aloo pyaaz ki sabzi for dinner last night. I had bought a couple potatoes and onions a couple days ago, and I figure I should finish them before they go bad. (Hate it when that happens and I have to throw away food!) I remembered from my last experience that potatoes will take a really long time to get tender on the pan, so I must boil them first. Or else the onion will end up getting burnt in the pan while the potatoes are still raw-ish.

I had still to figure out a perfect combination for boiling potatoes in the microwave. But last night, I just got perfect potatoes with the doneness set to about half way through. I was kind of over zealous I figure and so I put the oil in the frying pan and started heating it immediately, not realizing that the potatoes might take a while. I don't know how that affected things, but I've heard keeping on re-heating oil is not good. Or maybe that was re-boiling or letting it boil for too long. Regardless, I'm still alive and healthy, so I should just get over it. LOL. But when the potatoes were done boiling, I heated the oil up and put in the mustard seeds and cumin. 

I probably should have taken a wok or kadhai-like vessel, because the damn mustard seeds popped all over the stove top. Leaving a big mess for me to clean up! God! Then I put in the onions before my potatoes were ready to be thrown in, and by the time I peeled and diced and put in the boiled potatoes, they were kind of burnt. But still, the end result was decent. I think I might just start making that more often. Whoa! I had a really awesome dinner last night.

And when I have good dinner, I usually get very happy, over excited and do something foolish. Like giving away all the rest of it to sandeep! He absolutely loved it, despite there being no chilli powder in it. And that made me pretty happy for a while. But now I'm thinking I don't have any other good stuff to cook anymore! LOL. I guess I'll just get burger king or go hungry tonight. hehe. later days!

Remembering Old friends

As I was returning from the workshop, I realized the train was unusually crowded today. I remembered even Nick was talking about it the other day, he said he didn't even find a seat! And my mind wandered off ... FLASHBACK!

When I was in Mumbai, I was really sick on my birthday. But I went to my classes still. And there, in just about 6 days, I had befriended naveen a.k.a Alaric. We were returning back to andheri station from the workshop, and the bus, as always, was really crowded. Both of us couldn't find a place to sit, and that didn't seem like a problem, it was very commonplace. But a few minutes into the ride, I started feeling REALLY weak. I thought I'd try and squeeze onto a seat. But naveen noticed it, and asked a guy to let me sit because I'm sick. And I got a seat. It was a really nice thing to do. For both of them. And I decided I'd call up naveen when I get back home.

I hoped he still has the same number and dialed. It started ringing, I kept hoping its th right person. Immediately I realized that I had called him up at around 5:30 am in the morning! He would probably be sleeping and wouldn't talk much. Worse still, it could be a totally different person, and would get really pissed off! Just then, he picked up, and I got that familiar voice going 'hello'? First thing I said was

"sorry I didn't realize it's early in the morning there."

"Yash! kaisa hai man? How are you doing?"

I was shocked! I wasn't expecting him to realize it was me.. because the call routes through any random point, so he might be seeing a local number, or a random 4 digit number or 'private number' I mean, no possibility of his cellphone going "yash gupta calling". And him recognizing me by my voice was simply amazing! He did mention it had changed a little, but still...

Anyways, he said that he just dropped off a friend at the airport and was now heading back to his hostel, that's why he was up. But he was in the local train, so the connection wasn't stable. The call dropped a couple times, but I called him back. And we talked about almost everything. We could have easily gone for more, but I had to get back to dinner and he was walking back to his hostel by now.

I got down an email address that he's still using and I hope to keep in touch with him from now on. I also thought its been a while, I should call up rohin. But I had to finish the food vironica gave me, that was a weird mashed potato and eggplant thing, but it tasted yummy...except for the eggplant part. I hate brinjal. Those who don't know brinjal, go to wikipedia! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eggplant

First Snowfall of the season

Oh! It finally snowed today! Winter is officially here. A typical canadian winter. Bring out your toques, mittens and snow boots! Its the smart thing to do! But I couldn't find my winter cap when I was supposed to leave for college! My dear adidas clima-warm cap that I bought last year. It served me a good 11 months, and now I think I've lost it. I might have left it in the college on monday or the workshop on saturday.  So I just went to college without a winter cap on. As soon as the wind started blowing in my face, and all the snowflakes started hitting me, I started thinking about the last winter and wondering how did I ever survive this weather!

I didn't stay for the whole of typography class. Its such a pain in the ass. I just waited till I got to ask him some questions I had in mind, and left. We also got briefed about the next assignment, which could be a typographic storyboard or a poster on the history of typography. Needless to say, I decided to do the storyboard. I got back home, fired up flash, and started making my animation based on the thumbnails that I had drawn in class. I will then print those frames out and trace over each of them on the bond paper. But for next week, I have to have the current assignment finished! Darn!

I went to shopping with vironica, And bought more okra. Vironica had been bugging me about winter boots and even I noticed that my toes were kind of wet and cold. So I said "what the heck" and decided to go to walmart and buy me a pair. I tried some really good ones on, and they were just 40 dollars! I was really amazed by how comfortable they felt. I would have bought them. But I figured I could check out some other places too before I actually let my money go. And when I went to look for a disc wallet, vironica went and grabbed a bunch of toques and gloves for me to try on. 

I figured I could buy another toque, ,even if I find my other one, what's the harm in having two. But I didn't want to buy gloves because I already have a few pairs. Plus, I'd rather buy mittens because they trap the body heat way better just because they have one thick compartment for the whole paw. In the end, I did end up buying nice mittens, I think they're called hot paws or something. Anyways, I am pretty satisfied with them, because I've already given them a test run, but will get to evaluate them better tomorrow morning. 

Pika Pika Comes to sheridan!

Oh, I would have felt so bad if I missed this. Seriously! I have been a big fan of light painting ever since I first got my camera. I had seen their animation with light painting when I was in india, and wanted to do something like that or myself! Finally, tonight, I did! A few days ago, alan cook posted information about this in his blog, cooked art. I immediately marked the day and time in ical. I was also going to put it in google calendar so that I could be reminded of it anytime, but I didn't get around to doing it. I also didn't sync my phone with my computer!

So at 7, I walk to the college for life drawing session. And I'm there, drawing away for a few minutes, when suddenly, out of nowhere, I remember about the lighting doodle project, and that it was supposed to start on "a monday" at 7 pm in A360. This is very unusual, because I don't usually remember things. So I decided to go out and check google calendar on my cellphone. But I couldn't confirm it. So I just decided to walk up to the room and check it out, if its not today, I'll just walk back and finish my drawing.

But I was lucky enough to get there in time. They had a really sweet setup! A video camera and a DSLR pointing to the people who are drawing. Both hooked up to the computer, the projector playing the live feed from the video camera on the screen. And the SLR being controlled by the software on the laptop. The people could see their place and where and how they are drawing on the screen, and right after the DSLR takes the shot, its shown on the screen so they can see it turned out. It was a really quick and excellent setup! The only glitch was that the DSLR lens was a wider angle than the video camera. 

There was also a live hookup with osaka japan using ichat on a ibook! They hooked up a camera which was showing them our side, and we saw what they were doing in japan. It was really sweet! Those guys were definitely more organized than us. Our side was just a room overfilled with people, and everyone was invading each other's space. Still, some cool animation came out of it. I wish they'd put it up on their blog or youtube soon so that I could show it to you. I was the spiral in one, and in the other one, I did a balloon flying up, and then it pops and falls down. I think that one was REALLY sweet. 

I really want to stop now, because the description without the images or video doesn't make much sense. But I was really excited about this. I even got an autographed dvd of theirs! Cool eh? later blog dogs!

OMG OMG OMG! its almost as if mom made it.

Yes, it tasted almost as if mom had made it, except for the fact that I made it. LOL. It's been about 11 months since I last had it. The day I was leaving for mumbai, my mom made it for me in pune. But arjun bhaiya and aniruddh bhaiya were hellbent on making me eat that filthy green shit. Boy was I pissed! But I had some okra nonetheless, and I guess I had been savoring that flavor ever since.

Now I guess I had had about enough of eating all the other crap that I get here, and wanted to make my favourite 'sabzi' again. So I bought some okra when we went to the Indian store a day before diwali. And tonight I was gonna cook it! Home-style! Oh! I was just so hungry, still very determined to cut the damn okra into the thin slices that's required for frying it and making it crisp. My hands were shaking, and the gooey-slippery fluid from okra wasn't helping anything. Mandeep came down, and saw me cutting it... I don't know what was going on in his head when he saw me like that. But inside mine, there were wonderful, delicious fried okra slices dancing around to 'tum bin jiya udaas sajna' (Okay, just for the hindi music challenged I'll translate...Without you I'm sad sweetheart(honey or something else, doesn't really matter))

The trick to this recipe is, like my favourite food blog author said, "to keep the flame high throughout and stir like your life depended on it." I poured out oil in a cast iron pan that was in the house, but turns out it was too wide and would require a lot of oil to kind of submerge the okra in it... So I transferred it to a less wide frying pan. Still, it was more like shallow frying it. I am not gonna give out the complete recipe, want to keep it like a family secret. LOL. Just kidding. I'm just too lazy to type it all out.

Once it was done, I tasted it, and was so excited, I had to tell the world! However, I wasn't ready to skip my meal and go blog about it. So I just called up sujata, talked to her about it, gave some to nick to taste, and went to have my dinner. There was paratha and aloo paratha to go with it. And with a wholesome amount of butter on it, it was as close as I could get to a home dinner. Mom would smother her chapattis with amul butter - My Fav! But I wasn't getting mom's chappatis here. That's something only she can make right.

But I am definitely looking forward to making okra again sometime soon. I might invite oliver and tanny for dinner too! lets see now. Till then...

Rain and Diwali don't mix!

I really had a lot to write about. basically good things about hmm... three teachers who I interacted with this week. But as of now, I just don't feel like it. I will get around to doing that tho, because these things that happened, that I realized, can never be forgotten.

So lets just tell you what I did today. I have been really working much harder as compared to the last few weeks. I actually finished a lot of assignments, I did the work that was required of me and I believe I improved some skills. (Or maybe I'm just being misled to believe that.) But on the other hand, I haven't been to life drawing, and I haven't been working on a portfolio drawing. That's pretty harsh. I should really be devoting my time to the portfolio more than to the class assignments, but I can't totally neglect from those either.

So after this wonderful festical is over, (note the sarcasm! diwali is no fun when its raining or snowing) I have to really get down to a good work cycle. I hope someone out there can help me out with this, because no matter how many times I decide to do this, I always end up failing. I need to be like, OK! when I say you will go and eat your dinner and come right back to the college, you WILL walk back to the college, no matter how cold it is outside, how hard its raining or snowing etc etc. (that's what happened today. it was raining, and i coaxed myself into not going. damn! what was I thinking?!

anyways, happy diwali to everyone out there, once again, I did go out and get some sparklers today, but the damn rain. hopefully, tomorrow night is better. I also got some spices and okra. I am gonna make chickpea or okra sometime soon. Like in the afternoon tomorrow.. or maybe tomorrow evening if we don't actually end up going out for dinner.

Happy diwali

Hi! I know diwali is still to come, tomorrow's dhanteras. But this post starts with the email naniji sent me wishing me "all the happiness and prosperous new year and diwali." She ALSO, asked me to not eat any meat in the next 5 days. I have had similar situations before too. In pune, taiji would tell us to not eat any chicken or eggs on particular days or particular times of the year. And even though arjun bhaiya kinda objected, we almost never ate any meat during those days. (note 'almost never'... I don't remember now, maybe we actually did go ahead and eat meat or eggs just because we had to be the 'rebels') 

So, no meat for 5 days here in canada... gonna be kinda difficult. Because whenever I get hungry in the college, I run to the caf and get a burger, or to the cage and get a slice of pizza. I am really gonna have to control my hunger now, or I could just prepare some food at home and take it along with me. I am even gonna have to give away the sliced deli meat I have for sandwiches... because I think it might go bad in the next 5 days. So I am totally welcoming suggestions for a vegetarian menu and recipes of the food I'd eat for the next 5 days. 

One thing's for sure tho, I want to make chole! I've had chickpeas for  while now, and I say I will get the recipe from my mom because I want to make it exactly like she made it, but its always so annoying talking to her when she goes blabbering on about the rest of the universe that has nothing to do with me! Topics that I have always hated hearing about. Like the 'Brindal' family. For those who don't know, that's what we called my dad's youngest brother's family. Anyways, I hope I can find a recipe somewhere online. Probably quickindiancooking.com has one. I will have to dig into the archives. 

Oh, and now I have more material! thanks to that annoying little kid nick. hehe. I offered him my chicken like I said I would, and he asks 

"since when do you celebrate indian festivals?" 

"Ever since I was born."

"So what about eating beef?"

"I thought we were talking about celebrating festivals. Eating beef is not a festival"

"No, but why can't you eat chicken?"

"Because of religion."

"I thought you weren't religious. So why do you celebrate festivals?"

"Because they're fun!"

"Not eating meat is fun?"

(Oh this guy is beginning to get to be a pain in the butt! Plus, I have to watch heroes!)

"No, eating meat is not part of the fun. We don't feast on dead turkeys or eggs. And someone asked me not to eat meat. so I won't. end of discussion."

And I got back to watching another awesome episode of heroes!

What's up with you P?

This morning was pretty unusual. First, I actually get out of the house early for my 8 o clock class and two, there was a sheet of white frost all over the grass! It didn't snow last night for sure! I guess it was just so cold and windy that the condensation on the grass blades and rooftops turned to snow. It looks pretty cool! 

I actually got to class early, and we ended up watching a long, boring, dumb video about the artist who wrote the book "I leonardo". We were supposed to be learning something about perspective from this!? We didn't have a model this week, instead, there were random objects. This part of drawing is just meant to compensate for the lack of a real technical drawing class. a.k.a. Imaging systems (or drawing systems as it is now called) The video mentions perspective for barely 2 minutes! As it wasn't already hard enough to stay awake! Damn! We weren't even drawing volumetrically, drawing in a structural manner.. we were just meant to shade and render the drawing. Useless!

Well, actually, that's not what I'm really pissed about. I was just ranting up to my main argument. Kerry kim is a little lazy. Even though he's one of the better teachers in my opinion, he's just kinda lazy when it comes to checking, marking grading stuff. The first drawings from him, we got back just before the reading week. That makes 6 weeks turnaround for the drawings we did in week 1. That's unacceptable. We deserve to know immediately where we stand, what kind of marks we are getting and what we need to work on. Like today, the assignment that he'd assigned to us a good couple weeks ago, was due at the beginning of class, but he was just like.. "aah, take another week. I'll collect them next friday." And when do you expect to mark them and give em back to us then? Next year?

Well, after my digital media lab class, there was only me and natalie and dan in the room, and as natalie came over to see my map, I showed her my halloween pictures. We had a nice conversation about halloween (this being my first year and everything, you know...) And she told me she knew a indian friend who got into animation. Whoa! Yeah, that's really big news. I would love to have more people from my side of the world in the program I'm studying in. It would be splendid. We could then room up together and... you know... do the regular stuff foreign students from india would do... celebrate the festivals from india, the national holidays and everything. Also, we talked about one other professor that I totally despise. He reminds me of vivek sir from creative i college. Although she doesn't share the same opinion of him as I, she did get one thing absolutely right- he's very blunt!

Now when I'm reminded of vivek sir, I'm bound to start missing pranav eh? LOL, bad bad thing to say, I know. But I was only joking. I was just walking back, and I felt like I REALLY should call him up. I had been feeling like talking to him on and off for a few days now, but I never got around to actually dialing because either I'd be busy or he'd be. Busy sleeping or working that is. But today, I was like, "fuck the time difference. Lets just talk." So I called him up and said

"I will kill you. I will seriously kill you for waking me up at this time! - is what you're saying right now"

"hehe."

I talked to him for a really long time today, and I was VERY VERY happy to have some real conversation with a friend. (oliver has gone and disappeared into a whole nother dimension) But then I asked how's his family, and the beans started spilling out.

"they're pretty worried about/because of me." 

"why?"

"I've not been doing so well... "

And he went on to explain about his problem with the synovial fluid in his wrists is depleting leaving a depression in the skin around his wrist joint. And he's gonna have to stop working for a while and do some special exercises and ofcourse, improve his diet and probably take some medications too. I was totally speechless. This was so beyond anything I had ever thought/imagined. I always believed in 'prevention is better than cure', better be safe than sorry' and such. I feel so bad about letting this happen to him. If only I had talked to him earlier, I could have found out about this at a time when I could have done something to make him stop 'screwing' himself up.

I google searched the symptoms and I found pages listing carpel tunnel syndrome and some other ones I'd never even heard of. Got to read some words I don't even know the meaning of - endoprosthesis...what?!!! I just hope he is not in danger of any of this, and his condition just heals as fast as he finishes his meals. All the best pranav, and hope you get well soon.

happy halloween

Happy halloween everyone! Yeah! Its kushal's birthday again! If you don't know what halloween is, lemme explain. Many years ago, on 31st october, a demon child named tonu a.k.a. kushal was born. And the people were so terrified of him, that to this day, people dress up in scary costumes to in remembrance of that unholy day. That's halloween in a nutshell.

So, I got myself a nice costume last night. Its a mask that bleeds and just a black robe like the one from the villain of scream or scary movie. I was first thinking I'd go dressed as some indian god, nick suggested ganesh. He said he even had a elephant trunk and ears...but not here today; Back at his home in london. So that was scrapped. I figured I'd like to go as avatar ang. The last airbender. But his costume would be little complex. Plus, this one was a really nice deal. Now I'm planning to wear that and go trick or treating tonight. I hope I get lots and lots of candy! Then I won't have to buy groceries for another week!

Actually, I did buy groceries last night, and I had a proper breakfast after a really long time! cereal and milk. Yum. And for lunch, I had chicken curry and rice that sandeep's uncle made. it was amazing! even while I was outside decorating the front of the house for halloween, I could smell it and I was getting hungrier by the second! Well, now that I'm satisfied, I feel like taking a nap before I go trick or treating!

Yay! for external hard drive

I finally talked to dad, and told him about the refund and that I was buying an external hard drive for backup purposes. He didn't really object to it... much. So now I want to post a kind of review/my experiences with the hard drive post.

I first decided to mount the harddrive on its stand and use it vertically. I slid in the stand, and tightened it using the hex key that was provided with it. First thing I notice as it starts running is that there is a loud resonating hum. I grab the hard drive with my hands, and it minimizes. I figure I didn't tighten the hex screw tight enough. So I stop it, and turn it upside down, tighten it, and start it up again! Not very noisy at all! My cd drive makes more noise than that!

But then comes the backing up. I decide to try and use the backing up utility provided in the package to completely copy my home folder. some 54 gigs of information! And as I let it run, I now notice the clicking noise that the hard drive head makes as its fetching and writing data. Damn! this thing is REALLY annoyingly loud! So I decide to make a youtube video about it. But the youtube video doesn't gather much views maybe because of bad tagging...

But nevermind that, next thing on my mind was to try and run it horizontally and see if the clicking noise of the drive head minimizes. I stick the rubber pegs that came with the hard drive onto the side of the enclosure. and lay it on the table. I start it up, and even when I'm not really doing anything with the data on the hard drive, the clicking noise is distractingly audible. So I guess I'll just put it back on its stand and DEAL WITH IT!

Sushi anyone?

Tonight, I had another weird dream! I am gonna be leaving for my workshop soon so I'll just tell ya guys the dream real quick.

I was in a japanese...no, I want to saay 'oriental' restaurant, eating some really weird things. But not weird as in gross or disgusting. I liked everything I was eating. Just that I don't know what they were. No, not sushi. The whole dining table was full of other delicasies. So, I like the food so much, that I want to compliment the chef...or something like that.

Then this really beautiful girl comes and stands next to me, turns out she's the chef! I am mesmerised! I kinda tell her to make something even more 'special' for me now. And suddenly, its like the camera pans around my dining table, and I find out that the cooking station is right behind me. Like it is usually in many japanese restaurants.

They're called open kitchen restaurants. you can see the chef making what you ordered. I've never been to one for real, only seen them on tv. I suppose they are really expensive..? I'm getting kinda sidetracked here. okay, getting back to the dream!

And then, the thing starts transforming from a very professional restaurant kitchen to a home kitchen! What!!!! Now she's in my house cooking for me? Could this really happen? I wonder what it means. (I know what the dream means, I'm not an idiot. I found a girl at a restaurant, she's a chef, I got together with her! Yeah! 'married her'; if you want.) But is this a sign saying that I should look out for a girl who can really cook? or does this just mean I should go to a japanese restaurant tonight? what do you think?

Camping part two

This place reserved for my camping post.

Numero uno. First day of camping

I have finally caught up with the world, had my rest, and have enough time to type up a new blog entry! I had news to catch up with, emails to read, discussions to reply to and funny videos to watch. Well, the last part wasn't entirely necessary, but made my time more enjoyable. ;)

My arms and legs are acing really bad. I guess three days was just the right time for us to be there. And as soon as the next day rolled around, my body started showing signs of fatigue. I haven't been moving much past couple of hours. Its almost as if I have had a little paralysis. But it is all worth it. That's how much fun it was. The first day we were there, we just put up our tents, the tarp, and made a fire. We had hamburgers for dinner, and we sat around the fire talking. we were nicely joking and laughing when this guy came and told us to keep it down. What a bummer! Even the park ranger came and talked to us, gave us the bullshit bout there being an older clintele around the park these days and we would be first given a warning and then kicked out if they complained about the noise levels again. Although that didn't stop us from having fun, we could have done without those restrictions and would have totally loved to freak out.

Chris ali the student union president, told us about one of his own camping story when the person on the other side kept complaining about them even though they weren't doing anything wrong. And in the end, as you'd expect, chris and his friends were asked to leave. And just before leaving, he went up to this gy who kept complaining and said

"you didn't want us here in the first place did you?"

"If you didn't do anything wrong already, you were gonna do something sooner or later!"

"I'm sure you've done some crazy shit when you were younger, and that's why you expect us to be like that. But you know what? we're better than that. We're more responsible than you ever were."

And that story was really inspiring. I'm not sure its true, but I believe it could happen.

We were talking what this could have been about, (the complaining) and guessed it was probably because of the language and words we used in our jokes. The husband was probably laughing his ass off, And the wife was the one who's like "that's inappropriate!" smacks him in the head and says "do something about it." LOL. gotta love nothing fights. hehe.

In case you didn't get it, its a reference to one of the jokes dane cook makes in his cd retaliation which we listened to on our way to the pinery. We had a dvd player in the rental van, so we were like "we'll watch a movie!" but since no one had a dvd, we just listened to dane cook. He's a silly bastard! Oh I gotta download more of his stuff.

The what-who-where?

Big Announcement: I'm going camping tomorrow! And won't be back till wednesday. So I figure this is the right time for an update.

Yesterday, I left for the workshop in a hurry. Vironica bought me a coffee from tim hortons and a muffin(yum) And then I got on the train. And after sitting there calmly sipping my hot coffee for a few minutes, my heart starts pounding really hard. RELAX! I'm not having a heart attack. It was the horror of realising that I didn't bring my wallet with me today! I was constantly thinking what I'm gonna do to get to St. Claire west. I remembered that just before leaving, I had put some change that was lying on the table, in my pocket. But that was just a dollar and 6 cents. If I had cellphone service, I could have called up someone from the workshop to ask if they could come get me. But I had surrendered my cellphone a long time ago.

So when I got to the subway station, I was ready. I was prepared. I had been mentally practicing a dialogue that I would say to the people and then they would either help me out or I'd just go ask the next person. But once I was down there, it was like I had come to some other dimension. Everyone seemed just so far away. So unapproachable. It was like everyone is going in super fast forward and I'm in slow motion. But I got over my hesitation. I saw a guy fumbling with a lot of coins. I went over and told him I lost my wallet and I needed to get to st claire west. He gave me about 15 cents and just walked away. I stood there, looking around..."what now?!" I saw a kid about 15 I'd say. I asked him if he could help me out with the rest of the money. I now needed 1.55 He had wrappers/packs of coins in his jacket pocket. He said this was going to take some time. He opened 'em up and gave me the rest of the money. YAY! I thanked him over and over again. Even when we got down in the station. He was going to eglington west. (Yeah,he said his name is michael.) We travelled in the same compartment, and I just said 'have a nice day' right before I departed at st claire west.

I told about it to gerard and he asked "did you get the guy's address?" I said "no, I didn't" He said that he'd have gotten down his address and mailed him back the money. Oh I would have loved to do that. And it would have been really great. But what if after taking his address down, I never got around to sending him money? I'm not saying I'm not gonna want to send him money just what if I loose his address or the postal department refuses to deliver coins... or just the letter gets misplaced or lost. He would be really disappointed then and be like "he lied. He was never going to send me the money I should have known it!" So I just think I did the appropriate thing. Let me know if you think otherwise.

Then today, I found out its dussera, so I talked to a couple people, wished them happy dussera. And wishing to you guys too. *_* Suju was online, I talked to her for a really long time. What was really interesting was that she brought up a little sms I had sent her way back in october last year.

'boo'

Yes that's all I sent her. You're going 'what?!!' AHEM! let me explain. There's a really funny story behind it that suju told me, as I had forgotten. And just to show how much I really appreciate that, and how much I enjoyed nostalgiating over it, I'm gonna make the whole blog post about our text messages and the memories from the days in India. I had already done a couple blog posts about smses in the past. So what will make this one more interesting is if I don't look into any of those or my cellphone message history, and just try and recall bits and pieces of sentiness and funniness.

Well, first this one that suju reminded me about. We(me and sumit) were in college, and sujata, the lzy bum, was staying at home. And we really wanted her to come. (Our days were incomplete without bugging sujata to death) So we started texting her, asking her to come to college. But when she refused, we tried the most common persuasive technique in the old book: threatening to carry out a life threatening, (FATAL) act of violence on oneself and not expecting to survive. But she wasn't the kind who'd relent. (think suicide bomber from al quaeida) So she said "alright, go ahead!" And then we smsed her back, alright, see you in heaven. And she, not taking us even a little seriously, said "theek hai. wahan mil ke bhoot bhoot khelenge.(oki.we'll get together and play 'ghost')"

And finally, I sent her 'boo!'

Moving on.... I had this habit of sometimes forwarding the message to many people at a time. Sometimes it was intentional, like talking about a prank I was gonna play on someone and sending it to the 'subject' him/her-self. Just as an experiment to see if they still play along or call my bluff immediately. But this one time, I sent a message about sahil to pranav's phone.
The back story:
Sahil had just gotten a cheap sms plan and was spamming messages to everyone. Including myself. Now when I recieve this friendship full, friendly, loving, etc. etc. sms from sahil after Ages, I think he's upto something. So My habit was reporting everything that's going on to my friends. Like keep a constant conversation going. So I sent pranav the following

"Sahil just sent me a unusually friendly sms. Something's up. He wants something from me."

And the next thing I know, I get a text from sahil again that read "If you don't want to recieve my smses, then tell me! why are you 'gossiping' to pranav about it?"

I just went huh what? Did I just accidentally also forward this to sahil? Oh how dumb could I be!!! Later when I talked to pranav, he said that sahil had his cellphone. And he read pranav's smses. Damn! Oh well...

By now, I'm dying to go through the REALLY REALLY old smses that I had sent and recieved. But I'm finding a way to control myself. Plus, I don't even have the really really old text messages. Like the ones I sent and recieved during the first month of college. Oh hey! I just remembered another one!

This was at the beginning of the class decoration contest. I had pranav's number by now, and we were communicating frequently enough. And in class, when we met the other girls and talked to them for the first time, he took down everyone's numbers to keep in touch with regarding the class decoration progress. Then that day, back home, me and pranav were talking about the ideas that everyone had put forward and which ones we could go ahead with. I think it was one of shruti's ideas that I wanted to talk about, but I didn't remember her name. I was (and perhaps still am) really terrible at remembering people's names I've just met. So I text pranav.

"the girl...whatever her name is... was talking about...."

LOL you catch my drift?

And the sms didn't end there. Pranav had to bring that up in class in front of shruti! Oh man that was embarassing. But really really funny now that I look back on it. aaaahhhh good days. good days.

Where art thou mine enthusiasm

Yeah, its been a while. I was spending my days in peace and happiness over the last 8 days. Enjoying and frolicking away since my previous post, but eventually, I broke down. I came running back to my abode and I admit I need help.

Last night, even though I had finally paid off the debt, gave the 700 dollars to vironica, and given 210 dollars to oliver to get me an external hard drive, I was mulling over something. But I don't know what. I don't believe there was something to mull over! I had been living with the guilt of loosing her bike for so long, and now I had made it up to her. She was going to go buy the new bike sometime soon. And if the weather permits, maybe I could take it out for a ride too. Plus, real soon, I was going to get the firewire 800 harddrive I had been lusting over for so long! Oliver is going to buy it in new yourk and bring it back here during the reading week.

Also, Leopard is going to come out on 26th and I will start using time machine and everything. I will first backup all my data on one partition on the external drive, then format my laptop, and install leopard on a clean slate! then keep my itunes library on the external drive and keep the laptop hard drive free for my applications. Its gonna be really sweet indeed! But even thinking about all that is not cheering me up. I'm just so LOST. I finished my stupid chicken nuggets dinner but was still lingering around flipping channels. Decided I've had enough, walked to the phone.

Looked at the time in my watch, and dialed pranav's number. I figured he'd either be sleeping or getting ready to go to college. The phone rang for quite some time, I realized he must be on his bike, heading to college. And indeed he was. I said I'd call him back some other time. I wasn't disappointed. Infact, just listening to his voice made me smile. I was feeling better for a while now. But I still wanted to talk to someone. I went upstairs and went online, but no one else was there. I waited for some time, then went to bed.

The morning was just as rushed as usual. 8 am class. I was late again! We did get our drawings from the class back, FINALLY! But we didn't get the self portrait assignments back! Oh How I wish I just got it back already! Another disappointment. Nothing I'd really like to say about the digital media lab class either! I was really hungry but I didn't bring my wallet today. So I just had to hold my hunger till I was back home.

I walked home and had a banana and some other snack. Vironica was to leave for philip's place in a while. She asked if I wanted to come. I guess she figured I needed some fresh air or a change of environment. But I said I'll pass. This is just not my day is it? And I've been sitting here since. Just pushing myself to finish this entry, let it all out. But I don't think its helping. I guess I'll just take a nap now.

Oliver's birthday

Oh, lets talk about last night first! Everything went according to plan, and even things that weren't planned went superbly. Met up with Oliver in front of second cup, Taruna showed up with the cake and wrapped present! We decided to cut the cake now, and hold off on the present till later. It wasn't a cheesecake like I was expecting, but it was delicious nevertheless. Got our hands all dirty gobbling up the cake! I tried taking picture with taruna's cellphone, but the light was very insufficient for the small sensor. Its times like these that I wish I had a digital SLR. See? I let my mind run free, and my paragraph meanders through the thoughts in my head. Very unlike the method we were told to follow for 'essays' in our english class.

The dinner was totally amazing! I'd never been to bombay bhel before. They had chats and pani puri on the menu, but we decided we'd have that at my place later. We decided to order chana masala, butter chicken and bhatura. The chicken was sooo tender, and the chana masala was not too hot, not very mild, but just right! It was fun watching oliver eat, he was like a little kid. He still hadn't worked out how to use his fingers to eat. LOL. We had long conversation as I, the slowest eater, tried to finish my food, waaay after everybody else was done. Then we decided to give oliver his present. I think he liked it. He was flipping through it very pensively, taking his own time. Taruna on the other hand was kinda bored I think.. hehe. I even saw that book on the desk in the pit where he was working today, so I think he's really referring to it.

After dinner, we came to my house, pani puri was out of the question as everyone was really stuffed! We sat up in my room, I showed them pictures of my friends, the caricatures I'd done, my books, AND my glow-in-the-dark bedsheet! hehe. Oliver was getting really sleepy, and I knew I should let them go or else he might doze off on the wheel and... Oh well. They left in time, and I went to bed pretty soon too. A full tummy really makes you very sleepy because your digestive system is taking in more blood now and the supply of oxygen to ur brain is reduced. Wow! what a perfectly boring scientific end to a delicious food related entry. haha!

what is "cooking"?

Last night, I tried making the kind of fried rice that my mom made for me. I even had a picture of it somewhere in my archives, I'll see if I can dig it up. I could remember the key ingredients turmeric powder and onions because, one : I called them onion rice, and two: because they were yellow. LOL. She also put in curry leaves,coriander, green chillies, sometimes sugar to counteract the hot flavor,(I really liked the sugar in it). So I figured that since I had most of the ingredients, (I didn't have curry leaves and coriander.) I might try and make it. The best part? No one was home to witness the potential horrible screw up.

So, I started out with oil in a pan and I realized I also need mustard seeds to put in the oil. My mom put that in with the cumin till they sizzled...as far as I can remember.... would be great if I could talk to her right now, but it was probably too early in the morning there. Then the onions, the spices, rice...everything went in, and the smell was making me salivate. I got a spoon and tasted it. Well, I was too scared of overdoing the spices so I put in too little. I added more salt for taste, we used a lot of salt in our home. I hadn't even put in green chillies because I figured I didn't want to make it too spicy. "I'm gonna put in red chilli powder anyways!", I thought. But like I said... my estimates with the spices weren't right. So I wanted to make it again. I'd do better next time.

So tonight, I figured I'd give it a go. There was still some rice left over from 'I dunno when' in the fridge. I chopped up half an onion, a reasonably big one too; one green chilli pepper, and brought out my spices. I heated up the oil, put in the cumin, let it start sizzling, put in the onions and green chilies, spices (bigger quantity this time!) and then the rice. The turmeric, onions and green chillies were really giving off a powerful aroma. I knew this is already going to be better than last time. I tasted it, and it was a little too hot for me, so I put in sugar to make it a little milder. But this was a fine sugar... I liked it when I could feel sugar granules in my mouth. Anyways, I ate it with some sambar sandeep offered me. Really good dinner!


yep! Found the image! This is the real deal. the one my mom made. not my stupid 'improvised' one.

Now for the main topic. While I was cleaning dishes, I was pondering over what sandeep had asked me while I was making my dinner.

"you were cooking in India or you learned over here in canada?" (Trust me, I' still making him sound better. He needs a LOT of practice with his spoken english. LOL)

"hmm...I've seen people cook all my life..."

"Even I've seen my mom cook before but I can't do it."

I wanted to say 'so you've never really observed someone when they're cooking you've just stared blank.' but I was trying to me more polite so I said,
"Well, I'm a very visual learner. I grasp things that I see very fast."

"I guess that's why you're in animation..."

Although I do agree about the animation part, I was thinking 'what really classifies as cooking? I could have said 'yes I've cooked in India before' if only I knew which of these the general public accepts as 'cooking'. Does cutting a vegetable for a food preparation count as 'cooking'? If someone only put the ingredients in a pot or vessel, is that cooking? How about lighting the stove, putting your pan on the flame? Or maybe stirring the soup or something. Making a dough or a batter?

What I think is that ALL of these come under cooking. And I've done these things in my house ever since I was little! I would cut Okra when mom's preparing my favourite dish, I would even (try to) chop onions even though it was the most dreaded task ever! I'd boiled potatoes, peeled them, mashed them...I've helped make dough for cake, wait, how's batter and dough different? I looked up batter in OS X dictionary and it doesn't mention batter as a noun. WTF? Ok, getting back on track, I've kneaded 'aata' and even tried making chapatis. I've even put all the ingredients into the 'kadhai'/wok myself and stirred it and everything. So basically, I've BEEN COOKING all my life....Just in parts.... with long breaks in between... hehe.

But the cool thing now is that I am in-charge of the whole process, from start to finish. And I am starting to realize more and more what spices affect the food in what way, and what I missed out on, or what I needed more of. Earlier, even though I could tell it doesn't taste right, I couldn't say what was missing. Like when mom asks is everything allright, I could just say yes or no. And those few times when I said no, I couldn't tell what was missing. "just needs more 'spices'." or "more salt." Now I feel like I've graduated, I've grown up, my taste buds have finally developed. I'm loving it.

Guess who's back?

When I last talked to Pranav, I asked him to go to my blog entry about food, and see what a disaster I had while cooking chicken curry. I just wanted to hear him laugh at my 'bad' luck and the antics. But he again proceeded to tell me that he doesn't read people's blogs. I assume, this is because he feels that blogs are a personal journal, which they're not; in most cases. For instance, the blogs of artists like stephen silver and david colman and Steven E Gordon that I mentioned to him. (Giggle) And yeah, I made it a point to emphasize on blog when I told him about them. Even my blog, is more 'creative humorous writing' than a journal. (Well then I'm SORRRRRRY you don't find my writing funny, Mister "I don't like sarcasm")

Or perhaps he's just had a bad experience. Like the time when I made a really impulsive post about ....well... you might as well go ahead and read it...

Yesterday I had planned to go to a movie - 'The Breakup' (Little did I know this was gonna be my breakup with some of my friends) with suju and pranav.But suju had to bail out at the last moment because of ganpati games in her society.

"No big deal I guess, this is just going to be like the previous times when there was only me and pranav."

We rode our bikes to inox first and found out the next show was at 11 pm!
"A little too late!", we agreed and went to 'E square' for the 9:15 show. We had some mix up on the way there, so i couldn't get done the tasks I was planning to do; Get the broken rear indicator on the bike fixed. (Yeah, if I'd done that, arjun bhaiya wouldn't have gotten the chance to freak out at me about how 'I never take care of the bike!') Anyways, we both met up at E square again, took our tickets and went upstairs to browse through books and cds at crosswords. (That's Indian equivalent of chapters) In there, he told me something that's supposed to be private but as you know, my big mouth and small brain are a recipe for disaster. I said it out as a joke to another friend. (Still holds the record for the biggest mistake I ever made!)
Pranav was obviously offended by this.. I never wished to offend him! That's my biggest blunder in a while. I know I cant undo it like on a computer, (Can I get any geekier?) but I could try to make it up to him. But I didn't have a clue how I'd do that either. I just let Pranav speak; therefore, he did! It was all the same - He still poured his heart out and told me everything like nothing ever happened a few minutes ago. (And he's still the same)

He shared some insights about some of my friends.. (Sahil Sahil SAHIL! I'm not scared of anyone anymore!)I could never have imagined that right now one of the things that he was going to say to me, would change my life for ever. Atleast a little. That one thing he said was that 'not all my friends like being with me'. He told me that our group isn't one group its 3 groups. I was really shocked after listening to all this. Now the thing going on in my head was
"Sure, he told me who from the group doesn't like to be with me and who he doesn't like to be with[much] but he didn't tell me what he felt about me!"

I was thinking, what if he doesn't REALLY like to be with me! (Nuh Uh! Now I know him better and can say that he'd have said it if he didn't like being with me) What if he's doing this for the sake of it. What if during my absence when I'm going to Akola, he totally forgets or ditches me. (It sounds so stupid today! that was just for a few days! Now I'm thinking how did I ever make up my mind to leave for canada and not see him for the next one year almost!) I didn't have the nerve to ask him that myself..let me just wait and see what happens. I couldn't sleep all night thinking how I'm gonna face 'him' now and should i start getting used to not being with pranav already..
This just goes to show how unprepared I was to have that conversation with him. He shouldn't have told me about the others..even if he thought it was for my own good, my tiny little heart couldn't bear being in so much pain..and i still haven't recovered from its effects thats why I'm posting this entry..

Ok, I really tried to just let it be the way it is... But I couldn't control it anymore, and I went ahead and annotated it with my usual comments and knick knacks, I hope they didn't bother you much.

Now, after the blog was written and everything was off my mind, Suju ended up reading it. I had sent an email to sujata about something, and as with all my emails, my blog links in my signature got the better of her curiosity. And for heavens-knows-what reason, she said I should remove it because Pranav might be offended. Well, as of today, I wouldn't remove any post for whatever reason, but back then, I REALLY cared, and maybe cared TOO MUCH about what my best friend pranav thought of it.(Well now I know he won't read it unless I tell him to, so I'm safe...LOL) So I asked him to go read it and tell me if its ok. And he went to a cafe, printed it out, read it at his house, and immediately called me to tell me to take it down.

I guess I could only thing of one thing about/in the post that could have made him 'want to hit me' (And he is a HARD hitter! I would never want to get on his bad side!) was that I thought and kinda projected out that he'd 'betray' me, or leave me, which couldn't be further from the truth. He's a really cool friend. And I look up to him, and want to be like him. (By the way, oliver, the reason why your post made me feel like writing this was because I wanted you to think about whether you are comfortable with 'someone' reading about 'some things' you've said on your blog. LOL look at me being all sneaky and secretive and everything... hehe...)

But maybe pranav was just going "I knew I shouldn't have said those things to that dumb rat!" or "You could have told me to stop!" I don't know. But I am not sure what the 'point' of this post is... Maybe while oliver's post (which I am not going to link unless I know from him that he's comfortable publicizing his blog.) is about his motivation, his goal, his path and a crazy dream; mine is about how my feelings get the best of me. And they always will... like when you said "don't worry if I don't respond at my computer sometimes it usually means I'm not there"; I said yeah, I know, but a part of me still wilts and dies; However, I'm not as quick to respond with a melodramatic blog post about it anymore. ;)

Time well wasted

(I know mickey is gonna have a smug smile on his face when he reads this post.) Boy it was an eventful day! I was up at 7 in the morning, waiting for pranav to come online. I was also hoping for someone from my house to come online. Because I was desperate to find the pictures of me and pranav in front of inox in pune. Last night, I talked to pranav, and he said he couldn't find those on his computer. We talked about when those pictures were taken and did I actually have time to transfer them from the camera to the computer. Pranav mentioned that last movie was on 5th january, the day when I left for Mumbai. I started laughing when I heard that. It just sounds totally insane for someone to go to a movie the day he's supposed to fly away, for the first time, to another country for a really long time. But pranav was persistent.

"You're laughing, but you did that."

"Yeah, I know! And it sounds so crazy!"

"Well, you were!"

"yeah... I was stupid.... but no, even today, I would do anything for one chance to see you; to go watch one movie with you."


And when he finally showed up online, at about 9:30 am, the internet cafe he was at, kept having power fluctuations which led to him getting disconnected over and over again! But first thing he said when he saw me, probably because I wasn't wearing a shirt, was that it seems you have started working a lot, you look skinnier

"Kuch jyaada kaam kar raha hai lagta hai, Patla ho gaya"

"Nahi yaar" "No dude"

"Sookh gaya hai yaar!" "You've shriveled up!"

"I didn't have breakfast, that's all I guess. Neeche jaake kuch banana bahut jaan pe aa raha hai." ... "Tu bata teri haalat kaisi hai? Pretty sure not better than mine!" "I'm feeling too lazy to go downstairs and actually cook something.... tell me, how's your health?"

"Nahi yaar, aajkal waise bhi maine kaam kam karna shuru kiya hai. Aaram bahut jyaada karta hu." "No bud, I've started working less. I take more rest."

"Well, that can be good AND bad..."
But what was actually going on in my head was that "this is REALLY good!" Because I knew he wasn't they type to slack off, even if he's working fewer hours, he'll finish all the assignments and homework and do his activities. He's not going to be obsessive compulsive about things anymore - the one thing that was driving him into bad health all along.

Then during was one pretty long gap when he was offline, I was thinking of getting breakfast and getting ready to go to college to meet up with oliver. And I would have left the computer and gone about doing my business, had sujata not come online. I was talking to suju about pranav, asked her to sms pranav and find out what the situation was, and she said He's still at the cafe. She was pretty pissed she had to me the mediator between us two, or maybe she was just acting up. But regardless, it was pretty hilarious! I like her being like that. But she had to go, so I wished her adieu and goodnight. And waited for pranav.

Later, when he showed up at 11 am, we got to talk for pretty long without any disruption. I showed him my character designs, and he gave me ANOTHER pointer, and I'm gonna go and try doing it that way. He uploaded his artwork, and I gotta tell you, Its some pretty neat stuff! I was thinking, he should be here instead of me. I would have shown it to you guys, but sharing it on a website/blog is not supported from deviantart because he put it into the scrap category. I tried telling him those were pretty good and that he should put it in his gallery, but he didn't do it. I also told him about my deviantwear order. I told him to enable the magnet and puzzle and stuff options when he is submitting his artwork as print in deviantart. I do that all the time for my works. Prints on paper is something anyone can do at their homes. But magnets and puzzles, mugs and that kinda stuff is something that is pretty difficult.

And, I also talked to oliver. I talked to him last night too... I think... well, chatted, kinda... In the last few days, he's always been busy with something or heading off somewhere. I just can't get a hold of him! I thought today's International Student's association meeting (ISA in short) would be a pretty good opportunity, but he slept in I guess. (I wouldn't be surprised if he said he was still taking his nap!) There were only 8 people at the meeting. But I guess it was good, I got to know everybody's names, (even though I don't necessarily remember them all now) and found out what events they're gonna be doing! Now I can't wait for diwali!

The English class was pretty fun too! Sitting right in front of me, before the class started, this dude and a chick were having a discussion about whether its easier for a guy to ask a girl out or for a girl to ask a guy out. And he turned around to us to ask the question:

"hey guys, listen to this - what do you think its easier 'for a guy to ask a girl out' or 'for a girl to ask a guy out'?"

We all unanimously said "for a guy to ask a girl out!"

Pretty obvious eh? But the girl was obviously unsatisfied with this "No way, No! Nah!"

And I immediately remembered this lecture of a guy called david deAngelo. When mickey was living here, he had made me watch this video. He would literally sit next to me and watch me watch it! And I said out :

"Well, its true. Women are genetically programmed to be more selective than men. Its biologically inscribed into us. Women make one egg a month or something, and men produce millions of sperm each day! Its even seen in the animal kingdom. In Every species its the males that fight for the female!"

And all this while, others were laughing, wow-ing, hooting, cheering. It was a riot! It felt great! The dude was like :
"He merged this with National Geographic!"

"This guy is my hero!"

"you're hilarious!"

Well, maybe some part of it is a little fabricated... but only to show you the impact of what I said. Now if you don't realize how EPIC this was, then I guess I have failed myself; that my writing sucks. But I don't care because finally, the problem was solved, by yours truly. And I was thinking, "well, so I didn't really waste those 3 or four hours of my life after all!" (Yeah mickey, this is where you smile smugly!)

Did I mention my neice minni found the photo we were talking about in the DECEMBER category of picasa on the old home computer in akola? Here it is!
Did I mention we watched? It was Happy Feet...as far as I can remember... Pranav, if you prove me wrong on this one...