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.