Blog update- Wooooo!

I woke up this morning and I felt something. I wasn't hurting anymore. My throat was feeling fine. The cold's as good as gone. I could enjoy my day off! But I was determined to have things done. Certain things that I've been putting off for far too long. I felt I couldn't do those things on my own, I needed someone to help me, make me do it. I had been trying to get Abhinav to help me. I mentioned "I need your help" about 4 different times to him, but he didn't respond "with what?" or "Just name it bro."

If I may go off on a tangent here, it reminds me of the story our painting teacher David Joron told us last Friday's painting class.

Last night, I went back to my studio to touch up a painting for my upcoming show that was almost done. The painting was basically finished. All I had to do was a quick coat of transparency. I called my wife, said I'll be home in an hour. Fourteen hours later, as I finished painting on it, it was already next morning. I didn't even realize it had been that long. And I didn't even get to sleep as I had to be places, do things.. so I didn't get my sleep and was a zombie for two whole days. Why am I telling you this story? To tell you that nobody feels sorry for you. No one!

Yeah, Back to my story now. Well, last night, after thinking a lot, I popped the same question to Sujata. And in the brief moment when her internet got disconnected, I came to my senses. I realized, she can't do anything to help me, I'm going to have to pick up the pieces myself. I should pull my shit together. But when she asked, I didn't want to disappoint her, so I sent her those messages she had missed. I thought to myself, lets give it a chance and see if she really can do something.

Today, I went and bought groceries. I finally have fresh food in the house. I made myself fried rice for dinner. And ate a lot more than I thought I could have.. I guess I was just super hungry! Maybe next time I'll cook even more. I am SO gonna need a bigger skillet for that LOL. The point is to make a meal I can store and eat again later. I am supposed to be having like 4 meals a day. And today I had just 2. Then again, I am just so lazy that I won't even walk out and get myself another helping of food if its not within arm's reach. Yeah, first thing I had this morning was Doritos (jalapeno and cheddar if you must know) because it was sitting on my table.

Hah! Anyways, I have other news to announce. I bought my own domain names for a year. yashrg.co.in and yashrg.com The first one redirects to my blog and the second one to my mobileme web presence for now. I might end up using the latter for my website that we are making in webdesign class. Let me know your views or opinions on the URLs.

Well, Time for me to sign off now. I'm so glad I got this off my chest.

Sports Injuries

This Friday, (Umm.. that would be 7th of november. This post has been sitting in he drafts for quite some time!) I was waiting in the learning commons for Sachin and Andrew to go play squash with. But both of them were busy with their class presentation project. And I ran into Donnie, the Indonesian. I would insert a photo here, but its just so hard to get a good photo of him. Anyways, He said he's interested in playing squash. I didn't mind, it would be fun to see how well he could play. And for once it would be nice to play against a weaker opponent.

We went to the squash court and started playing. Donnie was used to playing lawn tennis, so he'd wait for the ball to bounce off the ground first, and would anticipate it to bounce higher. As expected, he'd miss the ball almost all the time. There are some reflexes that one develops after having played a game for long. And expecting the ball to bounce a particular way, sqing or spin a particular way is one of them. That's why, I was kinda glad I hadn't played tennis a lot. I wonder if Suraj would be able to get a hang of squash very easily either.

I think the first injury was on the very first day, Donnie tripped and fell on his knee as he was running to hit the ball. The next day, There was a big red bruise on his knee... Oooh!

Still, Donnie and I kept meeting up for squash more often. Then I think this was thursday the 13th that we were playing squash, and I happened to hit Donnie really haard with the ball. I believe I was the one who served first, and Donnie returned and stopped paying attention to where the ball or I was. And he ended up standing right in front of me. I didn't realize that either, untill I had hit the ball really hard and it smacked against Donnie's Lower back. Damn!

He wasn't angry. It was all part of the game. And there have been so many other incidents like this over time. Once he was running towards the ball, and I didn't have enough time to get out of the way, and he ended up bumping into me so hard that I fell on the ground. This other time, I was running to hit the ball that was very close to the wall, and after returning the ball, hit the wall really hard. I wasn't in a position where I could absorb the impact with my hands, so my right shoulder took most of the force.

Just the other day, I was browsing flickr and stumbled across a squash injury photo. And found out there's a whole group of photos of squash injuries. There's also a broken racquet in there. I hit my racket really hard against the wall and the floor multiple times too. This is something I've learned over time, "You can't be afraid of the wall" Because in squash, many times, the ball is really close to the wall, and if you're scared to take a swing at it, you'll always loose.

Niagra Falls Visit

Sachin had signed me up for it last Friday itself. I hadn't even heard about it and might not have found out if it wasn't for him.

Last night I bought chips and bananas from rabbas to take with me on the bus. But this morning in the rush I forgot to put it in my bag. I didn't however, forget my tripod, extra battery and my new lens. You know what that means! I'm planning to take tons of photos. The weather is overcast, a little windy but not too cold. I walked to the SCAET building in my 'bluenotes' hoodie. I was the first one there.

I met Manish inside scaet building and we started talking about cameras and photography. I remember he had told me he has a D40 too. The bus arrived on time. As i was about to stand up and walk out, the camera strap got caught on the chair and my camera fell! It's like everything went into slow motion. I slowly bent down towards my camera, picked up and checked if the lens was ok. I should get a filter for it. And a hood. Sachin,Rajat and Bhupi were late. I had to do something to stall the bus! So I decided to take some pictures of the bus, instead of just asking Andrew to wait.

Here, I learned another lesson about the 50mm lens on my camera. That trying to take pictures of big objects will involve me having to walk really far away from the subject. I thought I was far enough from the bus but when I looked through the viewfinder, I could still only see half of it. Crap! Just then, the three musketeers showed up and we were ready to go.

I sat alone on the seat, Sachin and Franzi to the left and Rajat in the seat before them. To his right were bhupi and Manish on the seat in front of me. I realized If I wanted to take any photos of people in the bus, I'd have to go wide. So I put on the kit lens on again. I was going to do the lens switch about 3 or 4 times more throughout the day.

As we arrived at our destination, I could sense that it was getting cooler. And actually so, it was much cooler outside here as compared to oakville. Good thing I brought my sweater and cap. As we started walking towards the falls, I got my equipment ready to shoot. Tripod and everything. Shot my first pano from a bridge that was straight ahead on the falls. We could also see the American falls from there. But a better pano was from the higher vantage point.

There, I met a businessman from Germany. I clicked his picture for him and we got talking. He said he came on a business trip to Toronto and you can't come to Toronto and not go to niagra falls. I told him I'm a student here, originally from India. He asked me around Mumbai, I told him yes, a few hours away. He started talking about ACC cement in Mumbai. His company deals with them he said.

And here this blog post comes to an abrupt end because my iPod ran out of battery before I could save the next couple paragraphs I had written. And now I'm getting impatient to get it out there. Besides, there's no motivation to finish it. I mean who cares anyways!

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My Miserable Existance

Let's face it: It's not sudden, this has been a long time coming. I would periodically have these periods of down and lot of times I would even think of blogging it but I wasn't close to a computer. But tonight I can't wait anymore. Leaving two unpublished blog posts behind, I'm just going ahead with this one.

I've been sitting in my messy room for last 3 hours or so. It's 10 pm. Not going to go have dinner. Don't even feel like going to get some water for my parched throat and dry lips. Talked to parents and aunt and uncle over skype for a few minutes. Thank god for skype 'connection lost' errors.

I am lying on my bed, iPod in my hand, laptop barely within arm's reach and I feel.... I feel like I'm drunk without even consuming any alcohol. Somehow I feel it's a really comfortable feeling. I wish I had some booze so that I could heighten this relaxed feeling. Of not knowing what's going on, being completely numb.

Because I know as long as I'm conscious, I will only keep thinking about it over and over again. This one word I don't want to use on this blog.

So I'm just lying here, listening to my playlist..
A moment ago it seemed, it was yesterday you were here with me and everything seems to be OK ..
This wasn't what I wanted to be, a man in misery..
Mita do unhe.. Bhula do unhe..
And she will be loved..
Is it bright where you are, have the people changed..
Goodbye means nothing at all, makes me come back and catch her every time she falls..
For now we stand alone
The world is lost and blown
And I am master of a nothing place
Hate me today Hate me tomorrow..

Well.. It just keeps going.

Geolocate this post

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New feature at blogger.com

I was told that embedded comments feature has now been made available to everyone. The embedded comment form is more convenient for your readers because they can use it to post a comment immediately, without clicking over to a different page. It also looks better, since it matches your blog’s style and colors. But, I am having a little problem implementing it. So I changed my template, and removed a lot of customization.

I apologize if it still isn't working, I guess I'll have to remove EVERYTHING to bring things back to normal again.

Halloween at Sheridan

I brought in the painting I did the previous night but since a lot of other students hadn't finished their paintings, The teacher decided we were going to do the critique next week! Damn! In class we just watched a few videos on youtube. Of people painting objects and portraits, etc.. mainly with oils. I wish I could remember the names of the artists now.. We also saw a lot of work on artists' websites it was very inspirational for the 20 paintings project. And finally, we talked about our 'setups'.

I'm sorry, let me elaborate on that part. Students are divided into three groups and we get to decide what we want to paint for the next three weeks. Each group will discuss and finalize an arrangement to be made in the painting studio. Everything from how the stage is arranged, the props, the overall look of the background and even the models and their costumes is as per our will. That, in a word is the 'setup' that we're going to paint. Our group is doing a kitchen scene with two chefs. Mainly because I suggested it. It will be a nice diversion from what an other group wants to do.. A very colorful Gypsy theme.

There were a lot of people who came to college all dressed up for halloween. I took lots of pictures of people. I think my favourite was the dude who came dressed as facebook. haha yeah, you have to see it to believe it. A guy was dressed up as iPod. And I met two 'jokers' in college. Joker from the batman series!

Photography class was really interesting too. I haven't gotten around to uploading all the product shots we took in the studio, but this is one of them. Photo by yashrg

Just getting to see the kind of lights they use and learning how its all set up when apple is trying to make their macs look oh so sexy or BMW is making those irresistible car wallpapers. Although we were not working at the same scale as BMW. And just for fun, we clicked photos of the people dressed up in a halloween costume. We didn't really delve into portrait photography, I'm sure there's more to it. And now I hope we do get to learn something about portrait photography next week. Here's one of Sean's photos, after a little post processing in Lightroom.
Photo by yashrg

I invited Sean to the party. So instead of going back to Hamilton after class, he waited with me in learning commons. Sachin dropped by and we went to play squash. He also signed me up for the trip to Niagra Falls. I played three sets with Sachin and three sets with Andrew. It was fun. Playing with Andrew, I really learned a lot of new things. Can't wait to go again!

Before Hallowen there was..

30st October 2008: Today, I managed to finish one of my paintings for the painting class. It was the relationship painting based around the portrait painting I did as my last project. I did mention that briefly in my blog post here. That was a painting of Pranav standing in a towel, with socks and shoes on. Having a hard time imagining that? Go here. We were at Suju's farmhouse in alibag and all his clothes got wet at the beach. And they didn't dry till the time we were supposed to leave for pune again. So he had to ride in the car without a shirt or pants. We stopped at the nearest store and bought him a pair right there. It was hilarious.

Now, for the second part of the project, I had to take that person I had painted, and do a mind map of words that signify it. And using those words, I had to create a painting that would have some meaning to it.. How or what I feel when I think of him, should influence what the painting's like. Sounds like a really cool project huh? I think so too. I had originally thought this painting could be completely abstract. There's no objectiveness to what a color or shape means to someone. And even when talking about it to maggie, I said, this painting is going to be a bunch of angry black and red paint splatters or maybe depressing colors.

Mind map for painting
Originally uploaded by yashrg

But here, take a look at my word map. I did this in a couple of minutes, and looking at it, Ideas started flowing. I got so pumped up for this painting, I squeezed the paints out, turned on my laptop to look at reference images and got to work. I decided against doing something abstract and thought of meaningful imagery. After the big Landmark Logo and rubik's cube was done, I paused and realized I don't have anything else to put there. I can't remember how long my first stretch was, but I took several breaks in between and was working till the night. Slowly building up and putting in a photo frame with the remains of a torn picture, a phone with his number on it, a dart board.. But really, the juice had run out.

I was hoping to go to the Halloween pub night at the college. Sachin had expressed interest at first. So I called Rajat up to know what the latest plan was. And as I had imagined, it was off. Oh well, there's always the party Nicole's throwing at the apartment. And I also had to finish the outdoor painting by looking at the reference image from that day. But I was too tired at the end of the first painting to work on that. I would just have to hand in my incomplete outdoor painting.