Sometimes I find happiness in being sad

Just like the weather went from +8 yesterday to -12 this morning, I went from being happy, to not so happy and then being happy again.. I guess.. The title itself is self contradictory. If I am happy, I'm not really being sad am I? But what I meant to say in the title is that when I'm quiet, and alone, and thinking about emotional things things that really influenced me, from way back when, I start feeling happy in the reminiscence of the 'good old days'. Its because I am so devoid of emotions and those moments here that whenever I get the time to just sit and 'think', I feel like I'm teleported to a whole different place. And that's my happy place.

I remember when I was in Pune, when I was younger, I was almost always around things that I was so emotionally attached to. If something happened between me and Arjun bhaiya, if something happened with me and my friends, I always had someone to turn to and talk about. No, more importantly, I didn't hesitate to talk about the kind of things with anyone. Uh... well, ok, even if I did hesitate.. a little... I did end up getting it off my shoulder. Now, I have accepted the fact that I'm gonna have to look after myself. For instance, when I found out pranav's house had been broken into, I didn't immediately pick up the phone and call oliver or Taruna. I figured, they have nothing to do with this. Why bother. This morning, when I woke up at 4 or 5 am, because of the loud noise the wind was making against my window, I didn't go around complaining about it to everyone. I think the me from before last year would have raised hell about it. hehe...

I miss times like when I was going to Mumbai for my visa application and I smsed sujata I was going for the interview, and she messaged me a 'good luck' message that really boosted my confidence. I called up Pranav when I got my package from VFS (I don't remember what it stands for) and I told him to 'wish me luck' before I opened the package while still on the phone with him. Like when my flight got delayed and first thing I did when I found it out was text my friends. I wish I could do the same again. Just run into someone and yell to her/him about how friggin hungry I am right now. Or maybe throw a tantrum about how bad this food tastes. Talk to someone about how anxious I am about whether I will get into animation or not...

Character rotation(x3) day is today!

I was so pumped up and determined to finish my character rotation today. I worked on the following this morning at home.

These are in order of rotation. from 3/4(yeah I decided to call it 3/4 because if I were to put a 3/4 between this and the side, they'd be too similar) to side to back 3/4 I don't have the back yet, because I don't have a good front yet.
This is a drawing I scrapped because the curve of the body wasn't emphasized as much. I would love to receive any feedback or comments on this.

Then, I felt stuck. I decided to call up oliver for help, and he readily agreed to help me out. We met up in the pit, and he showed me some really fundamental steps about drawing a character. Once I 'kinda' had those down, we moved on to 'how to start drawing a rotation'. Just then, Danny comes and looks at the character rotation I had from home, and says I don't need to have him doing anything fancy in the rotation pose. I could just have him standing like a lifeless puppet. Which I totally disagree with. I know it worked for h

im, it got him into animation. I also agree with the statement that I'm making it harder upon myself by having him do something. But the thing is, I have someone to help me with getting all of this right. And, this is my last chance to get into animation, and I will do anything it takes to take my portfolio one step further. I have seen some very good rotations, lisa's, Xiao you's And they both are girls doing something with their bodies. (Their characters, not themselves..LOL) And a static figure is just boring!

But then, he took my character design, and did his version of it, in the typical walk like an egyptian pose, which I think is SO VERY CLICHEd! But the legs he put on it were thicker at the top, like big fat thighs as if he still has a lot of 

his baby fat. And near the feet, they got skinny as the legs on my drawing.
I absolutely LOVE those legs! I'm so dumbfounded! "why didn't I think of that before!" Actually the reason why, is because I was referencing 'prince of egypt' and "the Emperor's new groove" movies for this. And I wanted 'kuzco legs' ...because I didn't know better!

But these legs will also help me get more of the structure down. Vince, in all these weeks, hardly ever mentions about the structure of my character. The point which Oliver kept stressing over. And I guess it finally got through when I realized that I could change my character design a little, (yet again) and actually have it look better. Vince has helped me make my character look better too, but he never said anything about the volume of the torso except for when he told me to put a sphere where his hips/belly is. I remember way way back, when I showed him initial drawings of the headgear, he had told it looks flat, and I can't quite figure out how it sits on his head. To which I responded by drawing from the prince of Egypt and figuring out a headgear design that worked. I'm so happy with whatever I accomplished in a couple hours today.

Taare zameen par at the worshop

Mom called me on skype again today. I told her about robbery at pranav's place. And she heard from divya that my artwork was good so she wanted to see my deviantart gallery too. It took a hell lot of time to just explain her to open firefox and type yashrg.deviantart.com in the address bar. I was SO FRUSTRATED! Then looking through my gallery, she saw the caricature of sagar, and started talking about taare zameen par.

She was talking about how the kid in the movie reminded her of sagar. Darsheel looks pretty much like sagar and just like Yuhan in the movie, Sagar has an older brother-Suraj who is much better at studies and better behaved. We had a video of sagar in the bathroom. Dancing and jumping around doing crazy things... Like Ishaan does about two times in the movie. All that being said and done, I still felt sad that mom didn't see how much I was like that. I would be dreaming away all the time, I'd do paintings of sea-creatures and underwater world. In school, I'd be looking out the window most of the time... Well, I guess she couldn't possibly know what was going on in the school with me. Plus, I didn't leave the bathroom door open when I was having a bath for people to come in and look. LOL.

I had taken my laptop to the workshop yesterday, mainly to show to vince the picture of my kitchen. I'm glad I did that, because then he got an idea of what my kitchen is like, and could better instruct me on what to do with my drawings. The other plus side was that I had the dvd of taare zameen par in the drive. So during the break, I was showing parts of the movie to others. It was good. I didn't recieve any negative reactions. I showed them the part during jame raho when he is dreaming on the breakfast table, I played the part of his math test, and also the song 'bheja kum' where all the letters come alive as little spiders and one crawls up on his neck, he smashes one on his table... They were really monumental scenes even if noone spoke hindi.

The noise level there was pretty high, and I couldn't turn up the volume of the songs high enough for the people to listen to it properly. But I think they would have liked to see the song 'mera jahan' because its all shot on the streets of mumbai. I personally liked it a lot because it reminded me of my school days. All the hawkers and vendors outside the school, where we'd spend anywhere from 50 paise to 2 rupees for a little something.... be it barf ka gola or bhel. The documentary footage that's played in the end when taare zameen par is playing was also a really really emotional part. And I think anyone who sees it will be mesmerized by the kids.

And did I mention the number of times I've seen the movie went up to 4? And it will definitely keep on increasing. for sure!

Happy birthday pranjali

I came back from the digital media class early today because I had a little stomachache. I figured if I get to my place in time, I could still call up pranjali to wish her on her birthday. I remembered last night that it was her birthday, but I was busy with my portfolio stuff so didn't end up calling her. It was round 11:30 pm IST and I tried her cell multiple times, but it always said she was busy on another call. In despair, I decided to call up pranav, talk to him for a bit. And he sounded very low. I asked what's up, and he said robbers broke into his house.

I was really shocked! He said they broke in from the kitchen, took all the valuables and destroyed almost everything else! I was SO  shocked and appalled! I didn't know what to say! I told him I am really sorry that this happened, and hope they get compensated for this or at least get their stuff back. I didn't think I should talk about anything else, it would be very appropriate, but I still mentioned that I was trying to reach pranjali, because its her birthday. I asked how everyone else is holding up. I'm pretty sure his little sister must be just terrified! I really hope they can put this behind them. I asked him to keep me updated on it.

I would do anything I can to help him out right now. I tried calling up sujata right after, but incoming calls on her cellphone were blocked. Dammit! I had a dream this morning. I was thinking about it constantly in the digital media class, and felt that I should blog it. The dream was about me coming to India really randomly, right before my portfolio submission date. I don't really remember seeing a clear reason why, but I boarded the next flight to India, and when I landed, arjun bhaiya's friends were there to pick me up. I also remember meeting sonu didi, tina and taiji. Thinking about the dream, I go, where are the others? What's the significance of these people in the dream. And oddly enough, I wonder, did I ever get my portfolio in to the assessment at sheridan? 

I think I'm gonna cancel the movie. I just wanna stay home. Talk to my friends. Send Pranav a bunch of emails that he'll never read. Listen to songs that will make me even sadder.

Portfolio progress report

Ok, the room drawing is REALLY COMING ALONG. I've done those kind of drawings so many times now that I just feel the whole process is getting speedier each time, and I am grasping new concepts that are helping me work things out. I am really sorry I didn't sit down and talk to mom, but I also thank her for that. Because then I went straight to work and spent a good amount of time on my room drawing. I also talked to dad about the extended warranty for my macbook pro and he said that's not happenin. So I am gonna get serious about documenting my computer bugs/problems and getting stuff fixed ASAP. I just don't want small problems to lead to something major because I neglected it.

I did a bunch of character expression drawings after seeing the amazing drawings on oliver's blog. I would say, I 'fixed' the face and headgear design. Through the months, I had deviated from my original design because I kept looking at how vince drew the head, but his method was just a quick gesture/idea of the head and not what the final should look like. So I'm happy to say that my character design looks as egyptian as ever!

I've been skipping life drawing for my drawing for animation part. And tomorrow there is no lie drawing. So at the moment, I am planning to go to see a movie with jon. But I'd really have to get a lot of stuff done if I want to not feel guilty about going for a movie. I asked mickey, but unfortunately, he can't make it. Well, there's always next time! Now I really should get some sleep. My eyes are burning!

Oh My God!

I finally met Mickey yesterday! And it was fun. We hung out, had pizza, watched the macworld keynote, and talked about the macbook air! Yeah.. that's the best we could think of.. after all, we're mac fanboys, or macboys as we say it. He mentioned a little package to me earlier, and I was thinking "Oh my god! What could it be!" But he was like, don't think, don't guess.
In the night, after he had left, I was feeling all lonely again. So I decided to call up Pranav. Tell him what an exciting day I had. But he didn't pick up the phone. I tried to sleep, but I was really restless. Its been a long time since we talked and I had to find out what he's up to. So I decided to call sujata, and hoped she could put him on the phone. But turns out, he didn't come to college. So I talked to sujata for a bit, and she was happy for me when I told her I met mickey, after five months Today! After finishing with her, I finally went to be at about 1 am... 

I'd been having a shitty day today. I don't like the 3d class this sem... I don't know if its just the timing, or the sitting arrangement. But I really hoped I got out of there asap! I was supposed to meet mickey again. I turned on my laptop in class, and found vaibhav online. I talked to him and found out he's working! I said I'd like to see some of his animation sometime and he said he'd mail me. Then dipika didi signed in, and I talked to her about pranav. She called him up right then, and asked if he can come online and how is he doing etc. Because he hadn't been answering his phone and hadn't showed up for college either, I feared something was wrong. But he made the same lame excuse "My phone was on silent." GAH! I emailed mickey, but didn't get a message back from him, so I decided to join jeremy, laura and stephen to the mall.

We had lunch, and spent an unusually long time at the mall! Which would almost always lead someone to buying a couple things.... Yeah! I was looking at bluetooth headsets that I could use with my macbook pro to talk to people on skype. Just the other night, while I was scanning and putting together my character design progress sheet, mom called up, and wanted to talk to me. And because I couldn't unplug the scanner or the tablet, we had pretty bad sound, and I had to yell and repeat a whole bunch of stuff. At 'the source', I didn't get a confirmed yes on whether those headsets would work with my mac. But at wireless wave, the girl was really confident in recommending me bluetrek bluetooth stereo headset.

I had never heard of the company bluetrek. So I didn't know what to expect. And the product cost 130 dollars, so I asked her what their money back policy was. Yes, I was almost certain I would return this thing. As always, I was so excited with my new acquisition, that I opened it up in the mall itself, and had it working with my phone by the time we were in the car. I wrote a little review on it, which you can read here. Its my blog on yahoo 360 which has a whole bunch of other technology related articles. And as you might notice, I rarely use it. But its times like this, when I have more to write than what will fit in one blog.... Ah! Alright, moving on... Now I have to go back to the mall to return the damn thing. But first, I had to go to see Mark Mayerson and show him my portfolio.

But he wasn't there, AGAIN! Maybe his times have changed this semester. I saw a little schedule on his cubicle that mentioned thursday morning as "office hours." So I guess I should try going in on thursdays. Now I debated between taking the bus to oakville place, or walking there. And I said, "its -10 out there, there is no friggin way I am walking there!" I proceeded to the bus stop, but I changed my mind and walked back home. Which, I was gonna find out, was a good thing. When I came back home, I was extremely drained out. I didn't feel like working anymore, so I put on tarzoon, shame of the jungle, and lay on my bed. Soon, I was falling asleep.

But then suddenly, the phone rang. I woke up frustrated, and tried to shut the damn thing up! I couldn't figure out a way to turn it off, so I just removed the battery! Now I had a headache. I tried going back to sleep, but the headache wouldn't let me rest. After a few more minutes, I walked downstairs like a zombie. I was totally disoriented. Still, I helped Vironica move Sandeep's stuff downstairs. I kinda feel bad for that guy. And I'd say its all because of his uncle. But I'm not in a position to do anything so I'll just shut up about that. The little exercise I got going up and down made me feel a little better... I asked vironica for her camera to take pictures of my life drawings.

When I was transferring pictures to my computer, mickey came online. And he asked me again about the package. But I told him, I had asked jon but he didn't know. Vironica has hardly been in the house these days. But she said we could go check the mail. And sure enough, it was in the mailbox! I was so excited! I opened it up the minute we got home. Oh my god! Its got dvds! He had told me a part of it was for vironica, so I gave her the card, Her favourite movie, and I picked up my card, and the two dvds- Superbad and Walt Disney Treasures! I am still in awe, how could he have picked up such perfect titles! I remember we watched superbad together, in the theaters TWO TIMES!

The card was really sweet. Made me laugh(smile). Which I hope was the reaction he was expecting... LOL. No, really it was really well thought out. And Vironica's card too, was really amazing! I didn't read all that it said, but there was a LOT going on in there. This thing made the whole crappy day seem all better. I still have a headache, but I'm not thinking about it all that much. And even now, when I look at the dvds, I go "Oh my god! As if I didn't have enough distractions already!"

What's it gonna be like when I get into animation

I had a long, long day on thursday. I woke up and got to work on my room drawing. Got a little late for the painting class because when I left home, I totally forgot the canvas and my brushes. Halfway there, I realized this, and walked back, picked up a large 18x24 canvas and a smaller gessoed canvas and made the trip to sheridan in record time! That's just because I knew Brian Mcphee is a really anal person when it comes to getting to being punctual. But since it was our first class, he let us loose. During the business class, I had an energy drink called full throttle. I had heard about it from oliver. And it actually didn't taste bad at all.

After the class, instead of going back home, I stayed in the pit, and worked on my hand drawings. Then went to 6 p.m. life drawing, and planned to stay for the whole 3 hours. But within 45 minutes, my hands got extremely jittery. I thought this was because I was hungry. But I think it could also have been the caffeine from the drink. I remembered the kid tweek from south park who's parents give him lots of coffee and he's always twitching and hyper..LOL. So yeah, I couldn't draw anymore. I decided to quickly run and get a hamburger. It had been a really long time since I had a burger. I ate it faster than ever! I guess it was the hunger AND the energy drink at work.  Now, I was again ready to sit and draw for the next two hours! And that's what I did! In the last hour, everyone else left, and I was the only one drawing. At times like this, the model usually wants to go home early and he did ask me if we should 'call it a night' but I said, 'no, lets do more.'

After that, when I came back outside, I saw oliver sitting there, working on a rotation pose for his character design. I sat there finishing my fries. Even though my shoulder and neck was hurting, I saw it was not time to sleep yet, so I wanted to work for some more time. I showed Oliver my hands, and he says "those are *&#$in good hand drawings!" I was REALLY excited. That was the nicest thing anyone has said about my drawings in a LONG long time! But I want to keep working harder. I want to be &%#in @#$%@in @%$#ing good! Hah!

So Later, when I was lying on my bed, recovering from the shoulder/neck pain, trying to sleep, I thought to myself, I have GOT to get into animation this time! I have improved massively! And once I get into animation, I will be the happiest person in the world! Little stuff like this neck pain will hardly matter. I'd look back at it and go, ah! it was totally worth it! I'd be working on a my animation in the studios at the school and I'll say to myself, this is what I always wanted!

Then there will be one of those classic dream sequence bollywood song and dance with me and my pencil. LOL. Seriously, I could care less that I, lets say, spilled paint on my good clothes... "I'm so happy I'm in animation, that it doesn't matter!" what? I stubbed my toenail against the desk? "ouch! But I'm okay! I am in animation!" Oh, did I spill my milk? "I don't care! I got into animation at sheridan!" Hey! That's my laptop you're running away with. "But I don't mind, I am in animation!" Aww... my flight got delayed! "Oh well, fuck that! I'm in animation!"

Yeah, that was just my little attempt to bring some humor back into my life. Because lately, I'd been feeling like my life has gotten really dull. I hadn't posted such a light hearted joking blog post in a while. Well, I'm feeling all better now, and I want to get to work before its time for dinner already. Oh, and here's a random piece of scanned artwork.

Bea tunes BPM estimate is bullshit

I have been trying to make a smart playlist in itunes that has all my upbeat songs so that they keep me awake and alert when I'm working late. But it hasn't been all that successful because not all my tracks, have BPM assigned to them. BPM, is beats per minute. Oh... that could have been a bad typo! beat sperm in LOL..

So I downloaded trial of a software called beaTunes. I was really impressed by its facility of cleaning up typos in the ID3 tags automatically, in a batch. It really helps organize your music a little better. But I wished there was a way to exclude podcasts from the search. Because a lot of podcasts keep changing the hosts or the people involved.. And I don't really care for the names etc, because they are organized by podcast anyways. 

But where this utility fell short was in the Beats per Minute category, which was my sole purpose in the first place! You see, in the analyze window, it shows you the option to 'Estimate BPM'. Instantly, I go, "Its a software, its a machine, its supposed to calculate the precise BP

M, not give me a shoddy estimate!" Actually, its best estimate would have been fine too, but where it really gets skewed, is the range drop down menu.

It gives me an option to specify an ideal range for the BPM of the selected track, or 'tracks'. First, how am I supposed to know the range of bpm? Isn't that what this software is supposed to do? Now lets say, I select a range that I 'feel' is appropriate, the software does its calculation, and gives you a BPM in that range. But there's no guarantee that its correct. If you change the range, and analyze it again, you get a totally different value! 

To test whether it gets the right value when given a correct range, I used a trial version of tangerine! to check the bpm of the song. It gave me, 157. So I set the range to 90-180 BPM and moved the quality/accuracy slider to precise. Still, the BPM I got was 98! So this whole BPM thing just blows! At least until the music distributors start mentioning bpm on cds or digital downloads/online stores. I wish there was a software that just went online and fetched the correct BPM from a database on the internet. Anyways, I guess that's my rant for today.

Nice Surprise, Mickey!

Well, maybe not that big, but apple has reduced the price of apple ipod touch in Canada by a whopping 10 dollars! Hehe.. I know... But I have long been waiting for apple to price products in canada competitively to the US. And when I heard that Canada recently removed the extra tax levied on mp3 players, I thought now apple will make some drastic cuts. But it was not even acknowledged. I just noticed it because of my awesome attention to details! I verified this by going to another website that had the prices of all apple products in canada from September. 

Yeah, that's my point, and I should have titled this post, apple cuts price of ipod touch in Canada, but I wanted to scare mickey ;) 

I guess I could also mention how the McMichael trip went... Hmmm... I wish I had a camera! The paintings were really amazing. I especially liked one of Miller brittain's flower series.. He did those paintings at about the end of his life. They were just explorations of form, shape and color. I want to say very minimal... I am not an art critic so I can't be very objective about it. but I really liked it. 

The trip to and back was really tiring. My back was really hurting when I was life drawing. I was feeling like crashing down! But I forced myself to go, and I stayed for the whole session...well, almost. But then walked back to the pit, just to say good night to oliver, before leaving, and we talked for a bit, about kites. Sujata reminded me it was sankrant. I could never fly kites, but just loved the weather this time of the year. Also, I think it was on sankrant that I got my OWN pc in akola when I was in 9th grade! 

yeah.. sweet memories.

Life's a bitch!

Yes genius, I am having a bad day. I just got back from the college, my second trip back and forth! I finished my class early this morning, and came back for lunch before going back with my portfolio to show it to Mark Mayerson. The walk isn't the bad part, I do that a lot. But what made it so bad is that I had to try grabbing onto my portfolio with my mittens. The stupid handle on that thing doesn't have enough gap for me to slide my glove into it. So I was grabbing onto it with my thumb and few fingers. After a while, it would get so painful, that I remove my glove and grab it properly. But then, my hand was freezing!

And after making all these trips, when I finally got to the office, and found mark mayerson's cubicle, he wasn't there! Whaaaat?!!! He's supposed to be here at this time! Someone up there is laughing their asses off watching this happening to me. I'm like a comic relief. This takes me back to my theory of this world being a television serial like "the truman show". I'm just so angry right now, I want to sit back and listen to angry music. Plus, I must rest my hands. No life drawing tonight!

I don't believe this!

I have reached 275 posts on this blog! 276 with this one. I am so close to getting a 300th post! Whoa! That's a milestone! I'm really excited about where this blog is headed. It could be a archive of my LIFE! oh well... maybe I'm going too far.

See? I am just so addicted to computer and computer procrastination! I desperately need a way out of this. I don't think its really bad that I come online check my mail, talk to people once every now and then, and update my blog. But what is REALLY silly is when I'm just sitting there, tabbing from one application to the other, clicking on random icons, or just staring at the wallpaper! Even when I start a task that I know the computer is going to take a long time to do, like backing up my data, I just sit there, watching the data increase byte by byte. I HAVE to find a remedy or this. I can't be wasting time these two months! If anyone has any solution, please let me know! I'm ready to try ANYTHING!

Of course there are a few limitations... my ipod shuffle died, and my phone can only carry so much music. And charged music is what keeps me pumped up! So I have to keep itunes going. Also, I don't have a phone, so IM is the only way for others to contact me in any urgency. so My skype and adium and ichat will be running at all times. Maybe there could be a little sticky on the desktop that reminds me not to sit there staring at the screen. Or maybe a twitter script that keeps telling me to "go work" or keep working. I don't know... K. gotta go now!

I don't want to give it away in the title

Good mornings begin with good nights. Its very true, makes sense. And if I can forget the erectile dysfunction medication advert where I first read this, I'd be much happier writing this on my blog. Anyways, the credit for this good morning, does not go to mom... or maybe it does... Because if she hadn't kept me up, I wouldn't have ended up talking to Abhinav at all last night.

I was really pissed, yet again, at mom talking to me about all kinds of random things! I could have been working away at my drawings or taking some much needed time off to relax and rejuvenate. So when she was finally done, I decided to go to sleep and cool off or else I'd be going off about it for a while. But just as I was about to hit the hay, Abhinav messaged me, and as expected, I started talking to him about my 'problem'. LOL. But then the topic moved away to more interesting things. And a few minutes into it, I was feeling much better!

There was actually a moment when I felt like hugging him! Damn the limitations of the virtual world! but as the conversation moved along, I decided I'd much rather blog about it. Kinda like a surprise for him. We talked about family, and incidents from when we were really young, to something more recent.... But which in my case happens to be about ONE YEAR AGO! .. God I really want to go back and visit India. Oh yeah! then we started talking about hand me downs and stuff, and I decided I'd give him my wacom tablet... hehe. Its all stickered up and got some marks on the back, I even wrote the date I bought it on the back, but I guess those are the things that come with hand me downs eh?

And after everything, I knew I was gonna sleep well. I woke up at 8 for my classes, and got ready. I didn't really have to hurry because oliver was driving me to the workshop today. I am so glad I got a ride! I hope this continues every week. I had a wonderful time talking to him all the way to and back from the workshop. While we were driving back, he was really tired and sleepy. He said he'd have fallen asleep on the wheel if I wasn't there talking to him. I really hope he was exaggerating, because I won't be there in the car with him tomorrow. I hope he drives safe and reaches back to his place just fine. I don't want to...

How much I like milk!

Yes! Just what I needed! Another reason to talk even more about the movie taare zameen par! Its the movie review post on The Fun portal, -my entertainment related blog. I recently got two comments on it, The first one talking about the solomon island story and the other one, just a ...well... blah! So I don't have much to say about balizee's comment, except for everyone has a right to voice their opinion. But pret actually provided some useful information. He pointed me to a wikipedia page that talks about the solomon island story about people yelling on trees to kill them/bring them down. I recommend you go here and check it out.

When I was talking about the movie to pranav, and even he was really touched by the movie. He said he could see a lot of resemblance between the movie and his life. He said his dad was pretty much like ishaan's dad. And today, while listening to the song 'maa', I realized even his relationship with his mom is pretty much like shown in the movie. He has to be the only dude I know who tells each and everything that happens with him to his mom. I remember his mom really wanted to see me because he'd been telling his mom all about me. So when I finally met her, she was pretty excited. And you can read what happened that day over here...wait... after a little digging around, I found out that I haven't mentioned that incident in this blog... 

Now I'm all confused and worried. I read my old blog posts... And I remember that the first time I went over to pranav's place was right after Sujata asked me why I liked Pranav so much. That was 6th October 06. We went there just to pick up some stuff for the greeting cards we were making for the exhibition/sale. And I met his sister Nayan, and aunty. Then aunty asked pranav if he'd like to drink milk. He was being a bad kid... he refused. Then aunty did what I'd expect every mom to do in that kind of situation. She asked me if I wanted to drink milk. She said "If you drink it, Pranav will drink it too." Damn! Its such a cliche, and it works every damn time! 

Now I couldn't refuse because I didn't want her to all of a sudden start thinking of me as a snotty spoilt brat! I would go from being ...like a really good friend to a fugitive.... At least that's what I feared. So I said, "ok, I will have some milk." And within a couple minutes, she brought two glasses of pure white warm milk. Back then, I hadn't had plain milk for about 12 or so yeas! I never liked drinking plain milk ever since I made the switch to 'drinking chocolate' additives like boost/bournvita or Milo. And that was around when I was in 1st grade. But now I couldn't be like "aah! I don't drink this, I think it tastes like crap!" No wait, I think it was more the smell of warm milk that bothered me.... Anyways... I took the glass in my hands, and took a sip! Mickey, I'm looking at you - this is what being a good guest means in India.

And I almost gaged! But I didn't spit it. I realized that this didn't even have any sugar in it... Which, I would have lots of, in my milk, back home. "Now what!" is what I started contemplating. I looked at pranav drinking his milk... And took another little sip. Then I think aunty brought in some dry fruits. And I saw raisins! "Oh! Raisins are sweet! I will just try dissolving raisins in my glass of milk!" Noooo.... I didn't really think that! How dumb do you think I am! I just took a handful of raisins, took a large gulp of milk, and stuffed my mouth with the raisins, and chewed them while swallowing the milk! It was hilarious! I'm so glad aunty wasn't there watching this.... 

Aaah! Good times! I can't believe I just wrote 5 paragraphs of this milk episode! So I'll stop typing and start drawing. Bye!

A good beginning leads to a good end.

Have you ever felt like this, when a day starts, that its going so good, nothing can go wrong? I had that feeling today after I was done talking to pranav and samrat. Wait, I gotta get out of these tight jeans... They're breaking my balls! ...AH! much better! I had been trying to get in touch with Pranav for about two days now, but either he jut didn't pick up the phone. (It was on silent he said...) So today, he signed into gtalk from his maya class. I didn't know he had internet access there too! And I feel kinda guilty for not calling up samrat after he emailed me his new phone number, but again, I don't think there's need for that anymore. We talked about taare zameen par and eventually ended up talking about school/junior college. It was so good. I wish this would happen every day!

My class wasn't till 3, so I made breakfast, eggs and bread with jam. Only one slice.... that was the last of it! Then started the laundry and got back to drawing eye expressions. I absolutely loved doing this. I was constantly going "I wish we did this in creative i college instead of drawing and rendering realistic people eyes." (I absolutely loathed almost all assignments back then.) Here are the scans of the pages I did. I still haven't gotten around to installing photoshop again after I had to format my computer, but I can scan using the epson utility and save as jpeg. I open it in preview and crop it. because previewing and cropping in the scanner utility will take a lot more time.

Only second day of classes today

Hi, Yeah, with more stuff happening now that college has started, you'd get more frequent updates than I did in christmas break. Today I found out that the painting class had been switched to thursday. Also, instead of Sybil, we'll now be taught by Brian. But we had to sit through a short lecture by Sybil but it was alright. We were told about the field trip assignment and went over the course outline. I am pretty intrigued by some of the assignments mentioned. I also read that we'd have two model studio sessions, and it makes me wonder if we'd be allowed to make cartoony or caricaturish paintings like the animation students do...

Before Classical Mythology, I went to the mall with Jeremy, and had lunch at Thai express. The pad Thai wasn't nearly as good as I had hoped. LOL. We also visited EB games and HMV. Talked about games and consoles etc.. I made a point about whether the zapper attachment for the nintendo wii has a built in battery and a more powerful vibrator to kinda simulate the gun backfire/recoil. It would just take realism to the next level. And even though I am not into computer gaming a lot anymore, (since I moved to mac) just the gizmo factor of the new Alienware curved widescreen display that was on show at CES 2008 made me drool! If you haven't seen it, go check it out here!

The classical Mythology class started out pretty boring. Even looking at the professor made me feel I'm gonna really regret this. But things soon turned around and as we got discussing a lot of things, and expressing personal stories etc...(I shared 'how Ganesh got an elephant head'  story) the class actually got really fun. The professor is actually a big star wars geek! LOL. And he gave all of those who hadn't seen the movie a homework- 'watch the star wars movies!' I think I'm gonna get around to watching episode 4,5 and 6 some day. I have only seen the Latest 3 movies. Well, that's a discussion for some other day! But for today, I just wanted to get back home and do this blog entry!

One year anniversary!

Well, I was in the college for the first time, exactly one year ago, on 7th January 2007! I've been documenting my experiences, my ups and downs ever since. And I hope to continue to bring you updates from my life and Sheridan college for the next 4 years. Its almost portfolio time again, and I'm feeling pretty good about all the work I got done in the last few days. And I will continue to work as hard as I can and hope to get in.

Today, was the first day of the new semester of college. And I am pretty disappointed in it. I fucked up big time. I was just glancing over a book that had a few drawings of hands, and as I turned the page, it just started coming off! I just went WTF! I wasn't even tugging on the page that hard. I was really shocked and embarrassed. And then mark and Courtney killed me with their stare. I was gonna tell them who-ever bought this book ought to return it because this is gonna keep happening with its pages. I wish I could do something about it, and as sorry as I am about it, I just can't afford to buy him that book.

That apart, I still haven't figured out the state of my essential communication skills class. I don't know why I can't see it in my schedule and how I am supposed to add it. I emailed Silvia but she said she's not in the post of the registrar of Visual and Creative Arts anymore. Damn! I will now have to try and contact Bilal or maurice. I hope it all works out.

And since today was the first day of the CES 08, I got to read about a lot of cool new technology stuff. I almost forgot to tell ya, the other day, I had a dream in which I was walking around a store or exhibition floor looking at humongous flat panel displays. And I hope to make that dream come true some day... So if you're interested in reading about the stuff I find really cool, check out my google reader shared items.

Lastly, the poll is only up for two more days, and there's only one vote so far. Pathetic situation eh? haha!