Joy!

Winter

2007-12-10T11:12:00.000+05:30

Surprise, surprise.

I am in America now. In Rutgers University doing a double major in Physics and Journalism. I haven't lived in America in many years. Since 8th standard to be exact. That's...umm...(despite the fact that I am taking advanced calculus classes, clearly, my counting skills could use some improvement)...7 years I think? A little less than that. Anyway, you know how you think you remember something, you think you know what if feels like and how it works, but when you actually experience it again after years and years, it's all wrong, all different? That's what this is like. Forget the rest of it...the friends, the academics, all that rot. I'm talking about the weather.

When I left India, I thought I had mentally prepared myself for the drastic weather change. This is what I remembered of the winter.

1. It is cold. And unlike the Chennai winter, cold goes lower than 20 degrees Celsius.
2. You have to wear a lot of clothes. Many layers. Gloves, thick jacket, a hat to cover your ears from getting frostbitten when it's really cold, and so on.
3. If you're traveling by car, you have to start the car and turn on the heater a couple minutes before you're actually leaving so that it'll be a comfortable temperature when you get in.

And that's pretty much it.

Here's what it's actually like.

1. It is not cold. It is freezing. It is beyond freezing. It is terribly, brutally freezing.
2. It is very, very windy. Everywhere you go outdoors, there is a strong, cold, biting wind blowing right into you. When you're walking against the wind, it's difficult to even breathe.
3. The above point holds even when you're wearing so many layers of clothing that it's difficult for someone from a slight distance to tell that you're a human being and not a huge lump of clothes someone's decided to use to build a makeshift hut in the middle of the street.
4. You can never feel your hands, your feet, the tip of your nose or your ears. Ever. You need to constantly be rubbing your hands together to be able to use them at all. And your toes? You can forget it.
5. Your car will not move unless you start it at least half an hour before you want to leave. Yes, engines actually freeze.

Basically, it's awful. Granted, the snow is really, really pretty if you're sitting indoors and watching it fall outside while drinking a nice big mug of hot cocoa, but otherwise, yay for Chennai weather! (Yes, I'm home in 10 days :D)

Much lowe!

A Fairy Tale

2007-10-25T08:30:00.000+05:30

In the bowels of the valleys where I live the smell of anger comes in bouts. The smell rides down from the mountain sides on great horses wearing heavy armor and large blades; the smell drives at us with the sound of hooves pounding on soft valley soil. My father could scent this smell twenty-four hours before it came, but when he was hungry for something angry, to him the smell of war was everywhere. The day he left to find the source of the scent was the day he left me all alone.

I forget sometimes what people tell me to do or not do. What they tell me slips away into the backwaters of my memory where it drowns in all other memories forgotten.

"I can go anywhere I want to with a turn of this ring," I boasted to the group of asinine country men.

"Sugar and spice," the old woman beckoned as she held out palms filled with cinnamon falling between her fingers like sand. As she sprinkled it across the floor my head swum up in a dizzy spell of hunger. I could no longer control my feet moving towards the cheap gimmicks of an old woman.

"What weighs you down will make you drown," he said with a loud crescent shaped grin. I believed him. I may have been a fool but with my head thrown asunder by the crashing tides of water I took off my shoes and bag and threw them across the stream on the other bank.

From the corner of my eye, I saw the man from the mountain open his razored jaw and draw a poisoned needle from underneath his tongue. I watched the needle fly from his finger through my father's ear and out the other, turning all his fluids into ones of pure jade and stone. Then the foreigner strapped my jaded father to his back and continued to ride into forbidding wastelands.

"Let me go to find what I seek," I said.

After I took the needle from its place, I pryed my father's bones from the floor and put them in my satchel.

The fairy placed a single seed in my palm which I immediately planted and tended to for months. For days, I watered the seed, showered it with words of encouragement as it grew into a young sprout, and gave it proper space and care as it blossomed fully into a magnificent red rose that granted any wish that I whispered lovingly into its soft petals.

As I approached the top of the mountain a white spectacle blinded me for an instant. When I blinked again I saw a white dragon shifting over the mountain like a layer of foam riding ocean waves. I could tell by its movement that it was a territorial creature; I could tell that it would fight me before allowing me to press further.

Forms circulated around my body on all sides and I could no longer breathe. Lungs tight and waist constricted I watched as my skin turned into the color of soil. I could no longer distinguish my body from the mountain's.

When he placed his hand upon me he let out a great cry and then vanished into the earth.

The handsome man presented a room full of gold, silver, and precious jewels. "All of this is yours," he said. My mind was in a whirl: there wasn’t a dream in the world I could not obtain with these riches. Heaven was as close as the sparkling gems I beheld all around me.

With each step I took, the people of soil tried to clench my feet harder and began to pull me down.

As I felt the creature take me into her jaws I saw my father come, from behind a tree. From thirty feet away he shot the creature and the jaws fell lose, emptying me onto the floor. The skin on my chest had impressions of teeth marks, but no blood appeared.

Mother could not recognize the sound of my footsteps at the door.

"This man," he pointed at me, "this man killed our father. See the blood on his shirt Mother? See it? The smell is like one of our own."

"As a child, my son could dance along the soil so quickly that the men who died and live in the ground could not catch him. Prove this to me now,"

Everyone then stared through the guise of the false man beside me. The person, who acted as a substitute for my accomplishments, began to bite his nails in a rampant manner.

My mother's embrace rendered the burns and boils on my skin pristine.

A girl with snow white hair came to the house later that day, looking for the man with the leather-bottomed shoes and coat of dragon scales. She told me she was betrothed to that man who had taken her creature form and made her human. She reminded me of the mountain. She was beautiful.

http://www.brown.edu/Courses/FR0133/Fairytale_Generator/gen.html

Morning has broken.

2007-03-07T00:39:00.000+05:30

Morning has broken. Somewhere in New Zealand, that is. Over here, it's 12:48 AM. Morning technically, but the feeling is somewhat lost without the sunshine, birds chirping, roosters crowing and the like. I am awake because I am supposed to be working hard for submission, but I was suddenly overcome by an acute desire to blog, and since I haven't been feeling urges of that sort in a while (as you can see by the sky-high frequency of my posts recently) I decided I might as well.

So hello. It's been a while. Things are different, yet the same. What do I say? It seems like at every given point in time, my head is about to burst with thoughts, with things to say and questions to ask. My life right now seems to me like one big muck-up. Like a scene gone wrong in a play, like water spilt over a painting, like a sustained off-key note in a song. Everything I do seems to be just a little bit off. A little too much to the left, a little too bitchy, a little too late, a little too close. I don't know what it is. Is it a phase? Or is something really wrong?

Am I forgetting who matters, what matters? Have I got my priorities all wrong? But then, who gets to decide? Not me, apparently. The universe seems to be protesting vehemently against all the decisions I take. I suppose life becomes easier when you know what you want. Problem is, I haven't got the slightest bit of a clue.

I'm having fun though I think. Lots and lots of new people to talk to, to laugh with. Lots of new ways to have fun. Many new discoveries, many new nonsenses :). All in all, I'm having a pretty nice time. It's nice to mess up once in a while I guess. I just want some direction. An arrow or a finger pointing right or left, close or far, early or late. At least I'll know where I'm going. Or if I'm going anywhere at all.

Excuse my rant. I promise a more fun post next time. Which will be soon, hopefully.

(Hai) Ku.

2006-11-21T16:02:00.000+05:30

Haiku are a bledgy lot of fun to read and write, and a great way to spend a fine arts period in college. Dingbat (Sonali) and I wrote these earlier today (with the exception of Someone’sku). Have fun!! And if you read or write any nice ones, pweez do send them to me! :)

Beachku –

Sand between my toes

Twinkling stars within my reach

It’s fun being me

By Me

Terraceku –

The inky blue sky

And its dark blanket of night

Cold whispers of wind

By Dingbat

_______ku –

Confuzzled, befused

Life is an oxymoron

Olamacheeka!

By Me

Someone’sku –

An early morning

Dressing in my warm grey flannel

Follows me to work

By Someone

Psychoku –

Eyes shut, silence screams

The tip of my nose feels cold

I really need a hug

By Me

Movieku –

Hugs and kisses in

Glorious Technicolor

Pass the popcorn, please

By Dingbat

Morningku –

The alarm is going off

I’ve already pressed snooze thrice

It’s time to get up

By Me

Plutoku –

Melting chocolate

Eyes and floppy velvet ears

Dog breath in your ear

By Dingbat

Magiccarpetku –

Wind whips through our hair

City lights beneath our feet

And drycleaners tag

By Dingbat

Café Mochaku –

Hold it in your hands

Feel its warmth seep into you

Chocolate coffee

By Me

Badgerku –

Clap! Badger badger

Badger mushroom, mushroom! *breathe*

AAAAGH!! Snake! Badger * snort*

By Me

Mommyku –

McKinley water

Scent of a tea flavored rose

I love you, Mommy

By Me

Sadnessku –

Chocodip softies

beckon. But my empty wallet

stifles my reply

By Dingbat

Hide and Seek

2006-10-27T20:31:00.000+05:30

where are we?
what the hell is going on?
the dust has only just begun to fall...
crop circles in the carpet
sinking, feeling

spin me 'round again
and rub my eyes,
this can't be happening
when busy streets a mess with people
would stop to hold their heads heavy

hide and seek
trains and sewing machines
all those years
they were here first

oily marks appear on walls
where pleasure moments hung before the take over,
the sweeping insensitivity of this still life

hide and seek
trains and sewing machines (you won't catch me around here)
blood and tears
they were here first

ransom notes keep falling out your mouth
midsweet talk, newspaper word cut outs
speak no feeling
no I don't believe you
you don't care a bit,
you don't care a bit

hide and seek

By Imogen Heap

101 things that make life worth living

2006-09-16T22:05:00.000+05:30

Chumbawumba (nice word)
Blowing the gel out of gel pens
Being loud at inappropriate times
Smelling the rain and drinking hot coffee at the same time
Hot chocolate just after getting soaked
Feeling your stomach hurt after laughing too much
That feeling of being in a movie
Everything about the beach
Hearing the right song at the right time
Hugs when you really need them
Knowing that someone understands without having to tell them J
Pink Floyd and terrace. Actually, ANY good music and a terrace.
Waking up really late after one hell of a crazy night
Purple sugary marshmallows
The first sip of Coffee Day hot mocha
The stage minus stage fright
Singing
Freaking out innocent passersby on the road
Lying on the beach at night staring at the stars
Road trips with friends
Sleepovers with no sleep involved J
Realizing your crush likes you
Being a bitch
Olamacheeka, swee and drrrrrey
Canceling out huge terms in a really big sum and getting a one digit answer
Dancing in the rain
*Sparkly purple stuff*
Swinging really high on swings and singing tunelessly
Feeling loved
Foodfights with gooey food
Making people laugh
Being part of a winning team
New clothes!!
Doggy kisses
Being happy-high
Smelling nice and knowing it
Going into random stores, trying on stuff, taking pictures and then leaving J
Playing practical jokes on teachers
Laughing for no reason at all
And going on and on laughing for insane periods of time until people think you’re mad
People thinking you’re mad
And then laughing at them
Big Bear Hugs!! J
Chocodip ice-cream
Seeing someone you love after a long time
Hearing a song you love after a long time
Going crazy!
Making eye contact with a cute stranger
Laughing and crying at the same time
Wish you were here
Crying when you see or hear something really beautiful
Looong walks with friends
Blowing BIG bubbles
Wearing prettiful clothes
People playing with your hair
Waterbeds!
Cheesy pizza
Cold water when you’re parched
Exchanging lame-o-supremo jokes and laughing until you cry
Peeing after holding for a long time
Dressing up
Taking a nice bath just before going to sleep
Bonding with friends in silence
Knowing you aren’t the only one
Bunking classes
Doing well in an exam
And realizing you’ve scored highest
Gossip
Mushy parts of a movie/sitcom/book
Knowing something no one else does
Scoring a goal/basket by fluke
Being the *best*
People remembering you as ‘that girl who won that competition’
People you don’t know recognizing you
Having long late night phone conversations J
Having a lot of cash
Presents!
Having NO work to do
People calling at midnight to wish you a happy birthday
People coming over at midnight
Surprise birthday parties – planning one or having one!
Knowing you did the right thing
Tripping on someone
Being tripped on and laughing at yourself with everyone else
Having a shoulder to lean on when you’re crying at a movie
Going to school again, seeing all your friends and special places in school…the nostalgia
Doing something nice for someone you love
Being in your happy special world
Being wicked
Being absorbed in your drawing/writing
Reading a really good book
Cuddling up in a quilt with a good book, hot chocolate and good music when it’s cold and rainy outside
Lazy afternoons with friends (Movie + AC + appy + pizza) J
Going fast on an open highway with the windows down and the music up
Jumping on a trampoline
Cotton candy and ice-cream
Pani puri
Compliments J
Secrets!

100. Dancing like no one’s watching

101. Making lists

(Note: This was written by Sodu and I during a seminar thingy. Rather productive, don't you think?)

Much love!

How to sprain your ankle

2006-09-01T21:56:00.000+05:30

I sprained my ankle yesterday. Ouch. It hurts. Anyway, the point is that since I've experienced it so recently, I remember the process quite clearly. And you know me, forever wanting to be of assistance. So here's a step - by - step guide to spraining your ankle. Just in case.

Disclaimer : Any excess pain or other injuries may occur. These instructions are followed at your own risk.

1. Join BSc Visual Communication at MOP Vaishnav College. You will have to climb five flights of stairs to get to class every day.

2. Bunk a lot of class so you have just about 80% attendance (minimum requirement).

2. Wake up late.

3. Forget about a submission and try and finish it in the morning.

4. Leave the house in a mad rush at 7:43 in the morning (you're supposed to be in class at 8) without even fastening the velcro part of your floaters properly.

5. Reach college at 7:59. Realize you have exactly one minute to climb up five flights of stairs.

6. Run up the stairs like a maniac.

7. Get the strappy thing of your floater to get caught in the side railing of the staircase somewhere between the third and fourth floor.

8. Don't realize that your floater's gotten caught, and continue climbing.

9. Realize that your floater's gotten caught just a little too late after suddenly feeling a flash of mind-numbing pain in your foot.

10. Swear profusely under your breath for a few seconds and then with a great deal of difficulty, hobble up the remaining stairs to class just in time to get attendance.

Bleargh.

Of Apples, Alcohol and a Pinky

2006-08-22T00:28:00.000+05:30

It's pretty late at night right now, almost one o'clock. I'm really sleepy. I'm yawning continuously and my eyes are half closed. I'm trying to keep awake so I can get started on my drawing submission, but it doesn't look like that's happening.

I want an apple. I like apples. Usually, I like them cut so I can eat them easily without getting my hands mucked up, but right now, I want an uncut fresh apple.

I also want Aditi back here from Calcutta. I miss her. I want pinky so that I can thaachi nicely!!

Does anyone know the words of the nursery rhyme "Sing a song of six pence..."? Please please send them to me...! And also, please suggest some good books for me to read. I'm dying for a nice book. Dying!

Did you even remotely understand this post? I tend to blabber when I'm sleepy. And I'm sleepy now. Hence the blabberation.

Guys are pigs.

Bye! Much much love!

Jinjax.

2006-08-01T14:20:00.000+05:30

Heyo!

I'm back! I'm going to start blogging regularly again. :-)

Anyway, college is good fun. I miss my friends like crazy, but I'm having fun all the same :). Now here's good news - the theory I have for Viscom is so much more blabberable than science ever could be. What fun!!! I've never found so much joy in exams! *wink*. I'll let you know how it goes...

I wrote my first Sanskrit exam today. It was quite a learning experience *wide grin*. Tips for writing language exams (Hindi, English, Tamil and now Sanskrit) will follow shortly.

Oh and by the way, any topic suggestions for posts? I'm running out of stuff to blog about. Do let me know...

And it has just struck me that I have an exam tomorrow. I shall now go study. Let me know if you need any help :-D. I'll be back soon!

Semma Lewinks!

Boo

2006-06-11T13:09:00.000+05:30

Hi!

Scared you? I bet you didn't expect to see anything here. It's been so long, after all.

Update on my life:
I didn't fail the boards. I didn't do too well either (above 80, below 85), but that's okay. I got into college. I'm going to be doing B Sc Visual Communication at MOP. Joy! I'm excited. College starts this friday. I just hope I don't get ragged too much (fat chance).

You must be wondering why I decided to do Viscom after all that talk about physics and math. I guess I've always been interested in it, it just never occured to me. I'm happy though. Just rather scared, because I've never really tried drawing, and that's a big part of the course. I suppose I'll learn.

So many of my friends are leaving Chennai for college! I've been quite upset, especially after some of my best friends Aditi and Shishir left for NUJS in Calcutta. But I guess it's all for the best. Things change, it's okay to be upset for a while, but I know I'll make new friends. I also know that these friends that I've made at school will be my friends for life. So, really, I'm not that upset anymore, though I couldn't say how much I miss (or will miss) them if I tried.

That's that. I've been rather busy lately, first with college admissions, then with a trip to Mumbai, and then with a relative's wedding. I actually have a lot more to say, but I shall say it later. I'm not feeling too well today, so I'm going to go sleep for a while.

Do comment.

Much love.

Suspense

2006-05-23T00:56:00.000+05:30

I'm waiting for the board results. I'm terrified. It's at these times that the worst possible scenarios run through your head. What if I fail? What if I don't get enough to get into any college? What if...the possibilities are endless.

It's excrutiating. I can't stand it. The CBSE website says results will be out at 8 AM, but CNN IBN said they would be out at 1:30. In which case I have exactly half an hour to live.

AAAAAARRRGH!

PS. If my results are decent, I'll let you guys know. If I don't, please don't ask.

Ka

2006-04-09T15:19:00.000+05:30

I'm ka with you.

Ka.

Of laughter

2006-03-31T22:56:00.000+05:30

I laugh too much.

Really. I do.

Perhaps its some sort of problem.

The only problem with that is, I like laughing.

So is it still a problem if I don't want it to be solved? I donna.

Donna. Don a. Don't na. Don't no. Don't know.

Is that how it works?

I donna.

Somehow, I don't feel like laughing right now. And trust me, that's a rarity. You can ask any of my friends, they'll confirm.

Want to know why I don't feel like laughing?

Too bad. Keep wanting.

It's a secret. I like secrets. Which is why I sometimes act as if non-secrets are secrets. Actually, I'm doing that right now.

Ha.

That's the thing with writing. I'm not laughing. I don't feel like it. And at any rate, I'm not finding anything funny right now. Still, I can make all of you think that I'm laughing, that I'm in a madly laughy mood.

How?

It's simple. Two letters.

Ha.

See?

Ha.

Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

2006-03-17T18:37:00.000+05:30

YAY!!!!

I'm done! I can't believe it! DONE!

No more board exams! No more biology EVER! No more chemistry!

What joy!!!

I can't believe I survived this year. I can't believe it's over. It's a whole chapter of my life that's closed. It seems so abrupt. That's it? A (rather bad) chemistry exam, and it's over?

I'm not making much sense today. I'm too hyper.

I'll stop getting on your nerves now. I'm on the verge of going completely insane. I'll post when I can sit in one place for more than five minutes. For now, I'm going to go jump around.

BWAHAHAHAHAHA!

I LOVE LIFE!

Holla

2006-03-10T13:59:00.000+05:30

Hi everyone!

Here's news.

I'm still alive!!

I can barely believe it myself. I have only 2 more board exams to go! Math tomorrow, chem next week. Then freedom! For a few days at least. Then its back to the grindstone - entrance exams and the like.

Anyway. I'll be blogging more once the boards get over. I can't wait! YAY!

Much love.

Poplin Petticoats

2006-02-12T14:27:00.000+05:30

This is the exact advertisement that I saw at a store for...er...'Poplin Petti Coats'. I swear.

Aristo and Co

Mfrs. of:

Eve’s Choice

WASH “N” WEAR POPLIN “PETTI COATS”

MAIDENS WOULD LOVE IT BECAUSE:

1. It is made form the Softest and Coolest Poplin for perfect freedom-perfect fit.

2. It gives the Saree a New Fresh Look.

3. It is in Umbrella Six Piece Style.

4. It is in wide range of colours and match perfectly with any kind of colour Saree.

Now

Supreme

In Improved Quality

Zip

2006-02-09T13:39:00.000+05:30

Hi everyone...

Sorry - I've not been able to post on my blog for a while now. Been rather busy with exams and the like. Not that I've been studying exceptionally hard or anything, but still.

Board practicals finish tomorrow. Whew! Hopefully, I've got 30 on all of them, which means I need only 5 marks to pass the boards. What joy.

Our farewell was amazing. Seriously. I love my class so so much....

And now I have to go. I'll post again soon. Promise.

Much much love...

How to do blabberation.

2006-01-11T16:25:00.000+05:30

Kapow! *hi*

Yes, exams are going on. Yes, I'm doing phailinks. Whee! The only thing I seem to have gained from these exams is refinement in the art of blabberation. And as always, here I am, ready to impart the knowledge to all of you. One area in which blabberation is useful is when one doesn't know the answer to a question asked, particularly in an exam or test. This post will be pertaining to this form of blabberation. So here goes...

1. When blabbering in an exam, it often happens that one has no clue about the answer to a particular question. In such a case, it is important to remember to connect the answer to the question is some way or the other. This is ususally done by using words present in the question.

For example:
Q: What is meant by "switching circuit" in a telephone system? (1 mark)

A: A telephone system is a circuit that is good in switching.

Note: The more the number of words from the question that are used in the answer, the better.

2. Sometimes, it is a good idea to guess what is being asked for while answering the question. With the help of this information, we can change the way we phrase the answer and increase the likelihood of getting some (*cough*) marks.

For example, consider the following question.
Q: How are optic fibres used in communication? (1 mark)

At first, we may answer as follows
A: Communication and optics are used in fibres.

However, this answer is wrong. To increase the accuracy of our answer, we read the question carefully. Now, when reading the question, we must note the position of the question mark (?). In the question in consideration, the question mark comes after the word communication. Therefore, the last word in the answer should be communication. So a more accurate answer would be

A: Used in optics, fibres are communication.

3. Use abbreviations. It makes the teacher think you know more than you do. Don't be afraid to get creative. The weirder they are, the better. The teachers spend time trying to decode your abbreviations, and if you're lucky, they'll think you know more than they do and give you marks for it.

For example:
Q: What are the hormones produced by the pituitary gland? (2 marks)

First, examine the question carefully. It is a bit challenging to keep repeating the words in the question in a way that would make sense. Moreover, when a question is asked for 2 marks, it is almost certain that the teacher is expecting an answer with words that aren't there in the question. It may happen that you don't know any words that are applicable for this question. That's where the abbreviations come in. A satisfactory answer would be:

A: The hormones produced by the pituitary gland are ADKIRHFVAGZMU, IYEHDB, KYDGAQ, HDGCBY, and EYENWOGX.

4. When you are asked to provide a reason for a particular phenomenon or property of a substance, there is one and only one way to answer. Think of a reason that makes sense to you. Write the exact opposite. You'll almost definitely get marks for it.

For example
Q: Semiconductors are doped. Explain why.

The first thing that comes to mind is that semiconductors get doped for the same reason that anyone else gets doped - for fun. Now, think of something that is not fun, that is the complete opposite of fun. There's your answer.

A: Semiconductors are doped so that they can study. That's why.

5. The above methods are most useful when answering short answers for 1 - 2 marks. However, to answer questions for more than 2 marks, it is vital to know how to extend the answers for a minimum of 3 - 4 sentences. For this, there is only one thing to do - blabber. Blabber shamlessly. Write anything that comes to mind. Use abbreviations. Use them all.

For example
Q: Define catenation and illustrate it with reference to sulphur chemistry.

A: Catenation is the secret country of cats. This can be illustrated with reference to sulphur chemistry. The sulphur chemistry of cats is a part of catenation - it forms the JQPAUTXV, the AOAEHNH and the UIELVUWBQ. The chemistry of cats is like sulphur and is stinky-poo. In fact, sulphur chemistry is the stinkiest of all the stinky-poo cat chemistries. In catenation, there aren't only chemis trees. There are all sorts of trees. That's why its a very beautiful secretest of the secret countries. It spreads joy and happiness all around with the help of sulphur chemistry and adorable coochie-pie kitties. Cho chweet.

That's the basic idea of blabberation. It gets better with practice, and if you're in the 12th standard, you don't need to worry, because unless you're really padips, you'll be getting one heck of a lot of it.

Anyway, I shall go now. Going to study (*wicked grin*). Much love. Comment!!

happy new year!

2006-01-03T15:57:00.000+05:30

Hi peoples!

I know I wished everyone a happy new year in my last post, but that was written before the new year started, so apparently that 'happy new year' doesn't qualify.

So here's to all of you. Have a wonderful year! I hope all of you get what's best for you, and what you want if they're the same :D. I'm in a bit of a preachy mood right now.

All of you writing the boards with me - I know it doesn't seem like much of a new year right now, but this is one of the most important years in our lives. No one has the least bit of an idea about where all of us will be next year, what we'll be doing, what we would have become. Things are going to change whether you like it or not, and soon. So just take a second to look around you, count your blessings and tell your friends that you love them.
And make sure you FREAK OUT once the boards get over. Especially all you science students...if you're finding it half as hellish as I am.

Ok dudes. Have fun, and keep smiling!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Much love

Words of Wisdom

2005-12-31T19:47:00.000+05:30

Apple

Bapple

Capple

Dapple

Epple

Fapple

Gapple

Happle

Ipple

Japple

Kapple

Lapple

Mapple

Napple

Opple

Papple

Quapple

Rapple

Sapple

Tapple

Upple

Vapple

Wapple

Xapple

Yapple

...

Zapple

Typework by Kaushik of Kaushik's Magical World Of Nonsense Fame

Oh, and Happy New Year

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STOP!!

2005-12-29T14:27:00.000+05:30

I've had it. Enough of the exams. Enough studying.

Enough.

All of us (my friends and I) used to be a happy bunch of people. Now we're all...bleargh. There's no life left in us.

I hate it. Hate.

Seriously, I've had enough of the exams, enough studying, enough pretending to study. Enough of it all.

I think I'm going to stop studying. Take a look at the world and see if its still going round. Enjoy my last few days of the year.

Actually, I think not. Physics tomorrow. Have to go study.

Bleargh.

Ta.

Studying for Dummies

2005-12-14T14:44:00.000+05:30

Its exam time, people!!

Having a tough time studying? Not knowing how to complete 300 years worth of studying in one night? Don't take tension!! I shall now teach you how!

Disclaimer : These instructions are solely for those people who have no intention whatsoever to pass. Follow at your own risk.

1. Don't worry.

2. Eat a lot.

3. Sit with books in front of you. Sleep with eyes open.

4. Sleep with eyes closed, preferably using book as pillow.

5. Take frequent and long breaks from the hard work.

6. Make frequent phone calls to friends and talk for long periods of time about how impossible it is to study 300 years worth of portions in one night. Then talk about random nonsense.

7. Paint nails.

8. Go out. Movie and meal works.

9. Did I say sleep?

10. Fail exam.

Sounds great ah?

Trust me, it is.

I've been spending large amounts of time trying to study for my exams, and then failing them. Then I realized this is a much more fun way to accomplish the same thing. I highly recommend it. :-D

If anyone has any better ideas (for passing), do let me know. Maybe there's some hope left.

Much love, dudes!

Looking all around me...

2005-12-02T22:03:00.000+05:30

I had an interesting conversation with a friend of mine a few days ago about the world we live in, and what we see in it. Because every one of us lives in the same world as such, but what we see and percieve in the people and things around us is what makes us who we are.

So what do I see? What is MY world?

Right now, sitting in my room, I see my textbooks lying in the corner, the shruti box on the table next to me. I see a closet overflowing with clothes. In the next room, I can hear the maid (Valli) singing some old tamil song. My world right now.

In the afternoon, a friend had come home and the two of us spent the afternoon on the terrace up on the tank. Amazing weather, beautiful wind. Futile attempts to study organic chemistry. (My terrace, for those of you who don't know overlooks the backwaters of the Adyar River...the estuary that is. It's quite lovely.) We gave up after a while, and just sat (wishing for cyclone) and gazed out at the water, the wind, the crows. My world then.

What did I see? I saw beauty, I saw nature. I felt happy, at peace with the world. I saw children from the slum playing in the wind, contemplating the prospects of rain. I saw the grown-up people from the slum looking worriedly at the sky. And suddenly I felt confused, scared.

Its nice for people like me, sitting warm in their homes to appreciate the beauty of the rain. Personally, I LOVE getting wet in the rain. But would I like it if I was forced to? I doubt it.

Suddenly, in the same place that I had seen such beauty a few seconds before, I saw poverty. I didn't know what to think, to feel.

______________________

2005-11-27T20:26:00.000+05:30

I'm 17!!!!!!!!!!!!!

17 years old that is. I feel pretty much the same. But different at the same time. Know what I mean? I keep thinking about how such a huuuge part of my life is getting over. In less than a year now, I'll be a legal adult. Wowee!!

2 weeks left of school. Yay! And SOB! God I'm in such a mixed up confused state....

Anyway. Was going to blog more but i have to go eat dinner now. Pizza! (hehe)

More later. Ta!

Much love...

Dabaal!

2005-11-19T14:38:00.000+05:30

Heylo people!!!! :-) I'm back! Hope you didn't miss me too much...:-D

Been busy, though now if I think back, I have no idea what I was so busy with. School's getting on my nerves. Now, I'm almost happy to be leaving! On the other hand, its very scary knowing that school's over FOREVER. I remember being a little girl, looking at all the people in the 11th and 12th, and feeling that I'd never get there - 12th standard seemed eons away. It seemed that school life would never end. And now, here I am, with a measly 3 weeks left of school life. Sigh...life will never ever be the same again.

The good news is, I've pretty much decided what course I'm going to apply for after I finish my 12th. Any guesses? (and all you cheap buggers that I've told - no saying anything) I chumma submitted an application for the pmpd exam. I certainly don't want to be a doctor, but it wont hurt to just write the exam.

So thats that. I've actually got loads to blog about, but I have tuition in a little while so I'd better get going. Will blog later. Tata!

Much love...

Aditi

2005-11-06T20:59:00.000+05:30

I got this in a foward. Quite an interesting read...

The meaning behind my name "Aditi":-

In Hindu mythology, Aditi was the goddess of the boundless sky. Her name means "free from bonds" or "the unfettered" or "Limitless" and the Vedas hint that she was once all-encompassing. She undoubtedly pre-dates them, and was once the goddess of the past and the future, the seven dimensions of the cosmos, the celestial light which permeates all things, and the consciousness of all living things.

Aditi, is called the free one, because in Sanskrit her name means "boundless," and is considered an archaic Mother Goddess, depicted in Hindu, Vedic literature. She represents unlimited space and consciousness, hence infinity or eternity.

According to the Rig Veda Aditi is said to be the wife of Kasyapa or of Brahma, and the mother of the Aditya, under whose constraint the universe is made possible; and she also personifies death because she consumes everything. Aditi, therefore, represents a caution already present in the Vedas about contributing the origin of the universe to a personal agent, such as a god. No other consort is mentioned in literature. She is also considered to be the mother of Hari, and other legends have her the mother of Indra. No human physical features of her are drawn, though she is sometimes identified in the guise of a cow.

Aditi was believed to be a guardian goddess of prosperity and could free her devotees of problems and clear away obstacles. She does not appear in later Hindu traditions Rigved. I, 98, 10 says that "Aditi is the sky; Aditi is the air; Aditi is all the gods and the five tribes; Aditi is whatever has been born; Aditi is whatever shall be born."

Pchang!

2005-11-05T13:53:00.000+05:30

Heyo!

Missed me? :-) I had gone to Mumbai with my mommy. Its a really great city. Very different from Chennai. Its so...alive! Had a lottt of fun - met lots of people, shopped a bit, ate LOADS of pani puri (yum! slurp :-D). Now me back in Chennai, feeling nice and refreshed. This break from school and all related work was something I really needed. The weather is beautiful. I'm feeling calm and joyful inside.

Its starting to dawn upon me that there are less than 4 months left for the boards. Yikes! I'd better get to work...especially after my abysmal performance in the first term exams...
Also - I don't have much time left. Have to start making decisions about college...where to apply, what courses to apply for...

As of now I have nothing much to say. Will blog later.

Much love

bleargh

2005-10-27T21:03:00.000+05:30

Ugh. Me sick. Fever, cold, cough...the works. :-(

Stupid peanut, always getting wet, wet, wet in the rain. The thing is, I just can't seem to help it. It seems so obvious. Its like...err..."At night it gets dark". Similarly, "If it rains, one must get wet". I guess thats ok. The problem being that "If one is soaked to the bone, one must dry her hair so she doesn't die of some sort of sickness" does not seem to enter my head. Duh!!! Aaaargh...

So yesterday I had a fever of around 102 degrees (farenheit, for all you dumbasses that are invariably going to ask). There was a chem test at school which I had tried studying for. She had told us day before that the test was going to be in the last period, so with great difficulty I lifted myself off the bed and dragged myself to school one period earlier, to find that the class had written the test in the 7th period. Pizzin' off, is it not? :-D
But never fear!!! My stories have happy endings. The teacher let me write the test in the last period anyway...

Got rained in. No school today or tomorrow. Joy!!!!!!!!!! Bwahahahaaa...been lazing around at home.

My mommy's in Mumbai. I miss her!!!!!

As is obvious, I'm still devoid of inspiration. Give me ideas....please...sorry for such a boooring post....

Much love...

whew

2005-10-23T08:49:00.000+05:30

Hey everyone...

It feels like its been a really long time since I blogged. My comp had crashed for a while. I'm so happy its back.

My mom's gone to bombay this week. :( She left like an hour ago and I'm already missing her. It's going to be a loooong week...

I saw Iqbaal on Thursday night...I loved the movie. Naseeruddin shah's acting was amazing...

Anyway...right now I have no clue what to blog about. I need inspiratrion!

Bleargh.

Today...

2005-10-16T21:12:00.000+05:30

Today is Sunday, October 16th, 2005.

Millions of babies took their first breath of air today. Millions of people took their last breath today. Today may have been a very special day in the lives of many, many people.

But for me, what is today? Just another day. Just another ordinary day. Eat, sleep, study for a while, go for tuition, and then here I am, back home. Blogging. After today gets over, it will disappear. Sunday, October 16th, 2005 will disappear into the nothingness that most of the days of my (almost) 17 years of life have disappeared into. A few years from now, I won't remember today. Heck, a few days from now, I probably won't remember today. Why? Because I haven't made today something for me to remember. I have not lived my life today in a way that will make me look back upon this day as...anything.

Its not that I want to remember today as the day of a particular occurence or incident. That I can't expect. And I'm not looking for fun either. I want each and every single day of my life to stand out because of a feeling. The feeling that I could not have lived that day any better. Or any more. The feeling that I could not have given myself any more in life because of the way that I have been throughout the day. The feeling that I have given the world my 100% all through that day.

But how? Everyone needs to eat, sleep. I definitely need to study. I do whatever I have to, I waste some time. Even if I think back, I don't see what I could have done differently today. Wake up earlier? Study more? I know that I will not go to sleep tonight feeling satisfied with my day. I know that I will feel that there is something missing, that there is something more that I could have done. But what is that something? I have no answer.

The more I think about it, the more I realize just how short life is. The past few years of my life have gone past in a flash. The next few will too. Where will I be? What will I be doing? These are questions that only time can answer. And I'm not in a hurry. But my fear is that I will wake up one morning, say 15 years from today, and I will think to myself that I have not given myself what I deserve. That I am not being what I can be - what I'm capable of being. And that October 16th, 2020 will be another day that disappears into nothingness. Without that feeling.

'Live' - its a funny word. Most people don't live. They just exist. I don't want to be one of those people. I want to live. LIVE. I want to give myself everything I can. And by doing so, by making me more, I want to give the world everything I can.

Excuse my rambling. There are too many thoughts in my head. I don't know if this post has made even a bit of sense.

I once heard that every single person starts dying from the moment they're born. It's true. Think about it.

How to be a good teacher

2005-10-05T21:23:00.000+05:30

Greetings, everyone!

I've realized that the teachers in our school have quite a tough time. Being a good teacher in any of the Chennai schools is not half as easy as it seems. And as all schools ensure that the students have the very best of teachers for all subjects, their requirements in hiring teachers are extremely specific. So I've decided to tell all of you what exactly these requirements are, just in case you want to give it a shot....

Disclaimer: This post is just for fun. Please don't take offense.

1. Communication skills of teachers are very important. Teachers should pronounce certain words in specific ways. For example,

square : skwa-yar
point : po-yint
a : ye
example : yek-jaam-puL
bubble : bubbuL
organic : aar-go-nic
thrower : thro-yer
unit: yoo-nich
nine: na-yan
have: ghawe
globalamine: go-paal-a-min

Also, the vocabulary of teachers should be such that certain words are replaced by others
A few examples are:

the word 'lengthy' should always be used in place of 'long'. The usage of the word 'long' is strictly prohibited. "Your exam paper will be long" or "Don't write very long answers for 2 mark questions" will not be tolerated. Instead, a true teacher would say "Your exam paper will be very lengthy " or "Make sure the answers for 2 mark questions are not lengthy"
words such as 'difficult' or 'hard' must never be used. Instead, they use the word 'cumbersome'.

2. Teachers should be willing to pour their hearts and souls (if they possess hearts and souls) into increasing the students' self esteem by using particular phrases or statements which never fail to serve this purpose. A few of these are:

"This is the worst class/batch ever!"
"With this attitude, all of you will surely fail the board exam"
"This attitude reflects on your poor upbringing."
"All of you are useless specimens in the class"
(In dramatic tone) "I call this sum...the DO OR DIE sum"

Occasionaly, they must ask amazingly thought provoking questions such as:

"Have you no shame?!?"
"Do you think I am a stupid?"
"How can you forget to do your homework? Do you forget to eat? Do you forget to come to school?"
"Shall we postpone your test? I have guests coming to visit. I have to go home and prepare paal payasam. I will not be able to set a question paper"
"Why do you come to school, man?"
"Why do you lie on the bench? Do you not possess a vertebral column?"
"Does this classroom look like a park to you?"

3. When the teacher wishes to gain the students' attention, she must only do so by banging her duster/marker pen on the bench in front, and screaming "Here! HERE!"

Note: The use of the word 'here' is mandatory. No other words can be used. The only modifications that can be made are in the volume or tone of the word 'here'.

4. The teacher must make the utmost effort to destroy any hint of interest that the student has in a subject. (This qualification usually comes quite naturally to all of the teacher)

5. The teacher must possess no knowledge whatsoever of the subject she is appointed to teach. (This is optional. Some teachers do have a hint of a clue about their subjects.)

6. The teacher must have an innate hatred for all students that she teaches.

These are only the main requirements. There are some more which, obviously, are of much less importance, such as the educational qualifications of the teacher, etc etc.

So thats that. Some very important information for all of you. Please keep it in mind.
Life's ok otherwise. Holidays....been wasting loads of time. I'm really dreading school opening again. Its hell from here onwards, as I have been assured of by many people (thanks, pk). Anyway, I shall go now...tata...

:D Please comment!!!!!!!!!
Lotss of love...

hahahahaa

2005-09-30T17:40:00.000+05:30

I just had an interesting conversation with a friend (whose name I shall not reveal). She was asking me how to change the "carcass" of her printer.

Me: "You mean 'cartridge'? 'Carcass' is a dead body."
Her: "Oh, yeah, cartridge! But a dead body is a 'cork'."
Me: "'Cork'? You mean 'corpse'?"
Her: "Uh, yeah."

HAHAHAHAAAAAAAA!!
I LOVE YOU! You're too funny....muah!

What else? Exams are over. Finally!!! I've done quite badly in everything. Ugh. Chemistry was by far the worst. The question paper might as well have been in Chinese for all that I understood of it. Anyway, I shall be happy not knowing my marks until school starts again.

So thats that. What else do I have to say?? Nothing much really. I'm back to being confused about life. What do I do? I'm starting to seriously doubt whether I'll pass my board exams. So now, I'm looking for alternate career options. So far, I've got autorickshaw driver (the problem being that I don't know how to drive) and onyx box cleaner (which I think I can eliminate as a friend of mine told me that only people who have passed their 12th standard qualify). So...sigh...anyone, everyone...I need suggestions!!!!

Major doubt - why exactly do we have to do this bukwaas project for the board? The whole thing is for 5 marks. I mean...hello! Please! We spend hours slogging over it - doing the experiments and writing a book about it. And all that work for 3 marks, the other 2 marks being for viva. For God's sake!!!

Other than academics, I'm still joyful :-) Feeling excited/nervous/sad/nostalgic/a million other things as the end of my school life draws closer and closer. I'm terribly upset about leaving school, and I know I'm going to miss it like MAD, but I can't help feeling excited about stepping out into the world. The REAL world. I don't know where I'll be and what I'll be doing with me life seven months from today. Its a very crucial decision and I hope I make a good one.

K. Extremely random post. Sorry...please comment!! Love you all...!

blahness

2005-09-23T11:04:00.000+05:30

Did you know that the name of the phobia of long words is Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia?

I found that too funny...

Bio was...hahaha...quite weird. Really vague paper. Its possible that I've done decently. On the other hand, its equally possible that I've done miserably. So...we'll see.

Tomorrow chem - 11 chapters. Aargh!!! Anyone who has actually passed 12th standard...please tell me. How are you supposed to study organic chemistry? Its so completely pointless. Even if you spend hours on it, you never end up knowing anything. Stupid bukwaas. And the best part is that the whole of organic chem is only for 7 marks in the board. But you still can't chuck it. Irritating....

Anyway...
Anyone and everyone who has ever set foot into Chennai has seen at least a few of the fantastic signboards and profoundly named stores here. Here are a few signs that I've seen or heard of that are just hilarious...

1. At an AC Veg Restaurant: The manager has personally passed all the water served here

2. At a Hotel : Visitors are expected to complain here between 9 an 11 AM daily.

3. At a Dry Cleaner's Shop : Drop your trousers here for best results!

4. At a washroom in a restaurant : To stop drip, turn cock to the right

5. At a tailors shop : Ladies may have a fit upstairs

6. Detour Sign: Stop : Drive sideways

7.Clothing Shop Entrance : Here speeching English

8.Notice in a Bar : Customers are requested not to have children in the bar

9. Doctor's Office : Specialist in women and other diseases

10. In front of a public toilet : Uranals Hir

I love Chennai!!!!!!!!!!

yekchaams

2005-09-21T10:36:00.000+05:30

Blech. Exams going on. So far only practicals are over - monday physics and chem, and yesterday bio pracs. Actually, pracs went pretty well. In physics I got a lottha experiment - convex lens, and combination of resistances and glass slab were my activities. Full golmal only, but I did pretty well. Faked my glass slab - too much of a pain to actually do it. Even lens...I was getting some bukwaas values so I made up my own (yes I know, I'm an angel). My viva went off surprisingly well - no high pitched screechy screaming. :)

Chem was the usual. One volumetric analysis, one salt analysis, one food test. My titration mixture was much much more pink than it should have been, but I had mugged up the calculations for the volumetric while eating lunch so that was ok. For some reason, I'm always one of the first people to get my salt during salt analysis (not that I mind....). Zinc Sulphate. Food test was stupid. Testing the given sample for the presense of glucose. I think the viva during my chem practicals this time was possibly one of the dumbest vivas ever. She hardly asked me anything! She asked me one question, which I think I answered partially correctly, and then she said "Ok...go...". Obedient as I am, I went.

Bio pracs also...not thaaaat bad. Now, for all of you that don't know, my bio teacher hates me. She just can not stand me. So considering that, it went pretty well. She asked me bloody tough viva questions, and generally screamed at me a few times, but other than that...I survived, so that itself is saying quite a bit.

So much for pracs. Now we enter hell. Tomorrow bio theory. 16 chapters (these CBSE buggers are insane), out of which I've barely finished 5 as of now. Each chapter is huge. God knows what I'm going to do...: (.

After bio, chem, then physics, then english and finally math. God help me.

Now I must study. Chow.

smart answers to stupid questions

2005-09-17T09:48:00.000+05:30

Bang-sewer, everyone! Exams start on monday and here I am, blogging away. Im such a fool.

Anyway...I was telling a friend of mine about some of the questions we NRIs were asked in the US by the brainiest of brainy people there. And the answers we provided. Quite funny, actually. And all of you know how sweet I am (*wide grin*). So here they are for you.

FAQs

1. Q: Do you speak Hindu?
A: Yes. I also speak Muslim and Christian. I know a bit of Jewish. I'm multi-lingual, you see...

2. Q: Are you a Hindi?
A: (try and guess....)

3. Q: What's that dot on your head?
A: In India, archery is practiced very commonly. Women wear a dot on their foreheads so that their husbands can practice their aim properly.

4. Q: Are there elephants in India?
A: Of course! In fact, there are so many elephants that people don't use cars. Elephants are the most widely used means of transportation, though they are rather expensive to maintain.

5. Q: Is there a lot of tea in India?
A: Yeah. There's so much tea that people are constantly drinking tea. And since its so hot there, water boils spontaneously. So people don't even need a stove to make tea. The tea can be made sitting on the road with a glass of water and some tea teaves. In fact, people don't drink much water in India. They drink only tea.

6. Q: Is it true that most Indians have pet tigers and snakes?
A: (need I bother?)

And so on...

Pretty good fun. There are actually many more such questions, but I should go study. Will blog later. Please comment....

Much love...

Written In High School Essays

2005-09-13T17:56:00.000+05:30

Hey everyone. Here's a foward a got. Some stuff thats actually been written in high school essays. Its damn funny. Take a look.

Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two sides gently compressed by a Thigh Master.
His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances like underpants in a dryer without Cling Free.
He spoke with the wisdom that can only come from experience, like a guy who went blind because he looked at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it and now goes around the country speaking at high schools about the dangers of looking at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it.
She grew on him like she was a colony of E. coli and he was room-temperature Canadian beef.
She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that sound a dog makes just before it throws up.
Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.
He was as tall as a six-foot-three-inch tree.
The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn't.
McBride fell 12 stories, hitting the pavement like a Hefty bag filled with vegetable soup.
Her hair glistened in the rain like a nose hair after a sneeze.
The hailstones leaped from the pavement, just like maggots when you fry them in hot grease.
Long separated by cruel fate, the star-crossed lovers raced across the grassy field toward each other like two freight trains, one having left Cleveland at 6:36 p.m. traveling at 55 mph, the other from Topeka at 4:19p.m. at a speed of 35mph.
They lived in a typical suburban neighborhood with picket fences that resembled Nancy Kerrigan's teeth.
John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had also never met.
He fell for her like his heart was a mob informant and she was the East River.
The plan was simple, like my brother-in-law Phil. But unlike Phil, this plan just might work.
The young fighter had a hungry look, the kind you get from not eating for a while.
He was as lame as a duck. Not the metaphorical lame duck, either, but a real duck that was actually lame. Maybe from stepping on a land mine or something.
The ballerina rose gracefully en pointe and extended one slender leg behind her, like a dog at a fire hydrant.
It was an American tradition, like fathers chasing kids around with power tools.
He was deeply in love. When she spoke, he thought he heard bells, as if she were a garbage truck backing up.
Her eyes were like limpid pools, only they had forgotten to put in any pH cleanser.
She walked into my office like a centipede with 98 missing legs.

Too good no? K will blog later.
Much love!

Physics

2005-09-08T22:53:00.000+05:30

As long as I lived in the US, the physics I studied was very basic. I was properly introduced to the subject only when I joined BVM (in the 8th standard). In the 9th and 10th standard, I developed quite a strong liking for the subject, and this is partially the reason that I chose to take science group in my 11th and 12th standard.

Now that I am in the 12th standard, and have undergone almost 2 years of (somewhat) in depth study of physics, I am rather confused at the approach to the subject. The whole point seems to be to derive some sort of relation between anything and everything (especially in topics pertaining to electricity, magnetism etc). Thats all we do in physics - somehow derive an expression or equation of some sort between 2 or more seemingly unrelated factors.

But is that the objective of the subject? To relate things? Every day, we are taught the values of different 'constants of proportionality'. I for one really have no idea what we are expected to do with this knowledge, other than use it to solve a large number of 'numericals' for the board exam. It seems very vague to me. Is that what physicists do? Derive loads of expressions so that more numericals can be solved? Discover several constants of proportionality, using which more and more expressions can be derived? What is it that they are trying to do? I have been studying physics (or some mutilated form of it) for over 4 years now, and all I am left with is a bunch of expressions.

I understand the importance of physics in out lives. I understand that what we are studying is what enables us to enjoy all the facilities that we do. What I don't understand is what we are supposed to gain and how we are supposed to apply what we learn. What do we do with the expressions that we are deriving? Where and how do we use them?

*Exams starting on the 19th. Blech*

Music

2005-08-30T19:01:00.000+05:30

This is the article I wrote for my school magazine. Since many of you people don't have access to the magazine, and me being as nice and sweet as I am, I decided to publish it here on my blog. Do comment and tell me what you think...

Music

What is music? Where is it? Music is (according to Webster) a combination of pleasurable sounds. But music, to me, seems like so much more. Music is all around us. In rhythm of the fans whirring around and around in the chemistry lab. In the sound of pens scribbling on paper in an exam hall. Music can be found everywhere. Music can be not only heard, but felt, and sometimes even seen. It’s the whole atmosphere that a piece or composition creates for a person that defines it. That’s one of the most beautiful things about music - the fact that one doesn’t need to know the story of a musician’s life or what he/she was thinking when they wrote or performed a piece of music to experience what they are feeling. One doesn’t have to know or understand the lyrics of a song to be able to feel the depths of the emotions of the singer.

When people ask me how I got involved with music, I think to myself – I didn’t get involved with music, music got involved with me. Once I got a taste, there was no turning back. Once music gets inside of you, if makes everything you feel a shade more beautiful: jokes are funnier, sunsets are more beautiful, and flowers smell sweeter. And music makes it easier to find the beauty in even sad situations.

The best thing about creating music is just that – creating music. Every time I sing, I get to experience how amazing and powerful music is. Every day I get to wander in and out of thousands of different emotions and experiences and discover how they affect both me and other people. In a way, music is like love – it’s blind. Not jealous or resentful. Music is absolutely and purely beautiful.

It seems to me though, that nowadays, people are getting so carried away with the technique and skill involved in music that the underlying emotions are lost. A song written to convey feelings of devotion and love is now just a medium for an artiste to exhibit his or her skills. Perhaps it is because of this that the general public is unable to appreciate classical music. Sometimes, I am unable to feel any trace of emotion when listening to some of today’s classical music performances. This makes me wonder – what is it that the connoisseurs of music appreciate about these performances? The skill? The purpose of music (as I have stated before) is for the musician to be able to express his/her emotions to the audience. If no hint of emotion is present, then the so called ‘music’ is like a body without a soul.

The true beauty and timelessness of music is found in the underlying emotion. Emotion can transcend time, language, social mores, and personal history. It is part and parcel of the spiritual well in all of us and it calls on us to be true to ourselves.

My Chemistry Tuition

2005-08-26T00:12:00.000+05:30

Hi everyone!

I just got back from chemistry tuition. Since my tuitions are such a big part of my life (15 hours of tuition per week), I thought I'd give all you people who are jobless enough to read my blog an insight into my chemistry tuition, so you may also experience the joy that I do throughout my 4 hours of chemistry tuition per week.

My chemistry tuition is located right above a milk kadai. As I near chemistry tuition, I am greeted warmly by the aroma of spoilt milk wafting through my nostrils. As I approach the gate, this smell becomes so overpowering that I am forced to pinch my nose as hard as I can to avoid passing out. I reluctantly enter the gate and then run up the stairs as fast as possibly can I despite the feelings of nausea and dizzyness that overcome me. On the rare occasions that I don't pass out due to these overwhelming sensations, I proceed to leave my footwear at the doorstep and enter the house.

The room in which the actual 'teaching' is conducted is roughly the size of a Maruti Versa (not exagerating). There is a bathroom attached to the room, which is suprisingly as large or possibly even larger than the room itself. There is some sort of device attached to the ceiling which spins around and around making loud noises (the tuition teacher continuously refers to this object as a fan. This has always puzzled me, as even though it looks somewhat like a fan, its function seems to be in no way related to a that of a fan). There are 21 students in my batch. The last three people to arrive are privillaged enough to be seated in the bathroom as the 'classroom' is so stuffed with people that a fly would have a tough time finding a place to sit.

Now, you must note that there are several pros and cons to sitting in the bathroom. I've listed these below.
Pros:

The tuition teacher never has enough space to maneuver herself into a position in which she can actually look into the bathroom while teaching. Hence, one can sleep peacefully and happily.
While sitting in the bathroom, one can see the whole class, and can make eye contact with one's classmates. One can laugh to one's heart's content at any jokes cracked without the teacher realizing it.

Cons:

There is a large window in the bathroom through which the lowely smell of sour milk is let into the room. This induces feelings in a person very similar to those experienced while entering tuition. Hence, sometimes, people pass out while sitting in the bathroom, but are mistaken by their classmates as being asleep.
There is no 'fan' in the room. Hence, the rhythmic clacking is absent, and so there is no device which lulls one to sleep.
There are spiders in the doorway (ewwwwwwwww!!!)

Anyway...once she starts teaching, my eyes slowly close. Its as if suddenly, there are heavy stones in my eyelids and I just CAN NOT keep eyes open. I try my hardest to force them open, but it doesnt work. With my eyes closed, I try to take down notes in my notebook. The teacher keeps looking at me and asking me if I understood. With a great deal of effort, I force my eyes open, look at her and suprisingly, manage a half nod. And so class proceeds. Invariably, l awaken sometime in the middle of tuition, when she announces a test. I very enthusiastically join the rest of the class in their attempts to persuade her not to conduct any such test. Once this discussion is concluded, and a test date is announced, the stones somehow work their way back into my eyelids, and I gradually fall back into my usual state of half-sleep. Each 2 hour class feels like a year - at least.

Now THAT'S what I call learning!

Creativity

2005-08-21T10:40:00.000+05:30

Wondering how to be creative? Click here. Hahaha....

Some quotes I find amusing...

2005-08-19T20:35:00.000+05:30

Hey everyone....
I got a great fwd with lots of quotes which I found rather amusing...Ive copied a few of them here...enjoy!!

"I invented the internet".
- Al Gore, former U.S. Vice President

"Sure there have been injuries and deaths in boxing - but none of them serious."
- Alan Minter, Boxer

"I think that the film Clueless was very deep. I think it was deep in the way that it was very light. I think lightness has to come from a very deep place if it's true lightness."
- Alicia Silverstone, Actress

"How to store your baby walker: First, remove baby."
- Anonymous Manufacturer

"You guys line up alphabetically by height."
- Bill Peterson, Florida State football coach

"Men, I want you just thinking of one word all season. One word and one word only: Super Bowl."
- Bill Peterson, football coach

"The internet is a great way to get on the net."
- Bob Dole, Republican presidential candidate

"I get to go to lots of overseas places, like Canada."
- Britney Spears, Pop Singer

"Most cars on our roads have only one occupant, usually the driver."
- Carol Malia, BBC Anchorwoman

"I think the team that wins Game 5 will win the series. Unless we lose Game 5."
- Charles Barkley, NBA Basketball Player

"China is a big country, inhabited by many Chinese."
- Charles De Gaulle, former French President

"Most lies about blondes are false."
- Cincinnati Times-Star, headline

"It is wonderful to be here in the great state of Chicago"
- Dan Quayle, former U.S. Vice-President

"It's time for the human race to enter the solar system!"
- Dan Quayle, former U.S. Vice President on the concept of a manned mission to Mars

"Strangely, in slow motion replay, the ball seemed to hang in the air for even longer."
- David Acfield

"I haven't committed a crime. What I did was fail to comply with the law."
- David Dinkins, New York City Mayor, answering accusations that he failed to pay his taxes.

"Chemistry is a class you take in high school or college, where you figure out two plus two is 10, or something."
- Dennis Rodman, NBA Basketball player, on Chicago Bull's team chemistry being overrated

"Weather forecast: precipitation in the morning, rain in the afternoon."
- Detroit Daily News

"The doctors X-rayed my head and found nothing."
- Dizzy Dean explaining how he felt after being hit on the head by a ball in the 1934 World Series.

"The world is more like it is now then it ever has before."
- Dwight Eisenhower

"A billion here, a billion there, sooner or later it adds up to real money."
- Everett Dirksen, Congressman

"Boxing’s all about getting the job done as quickly as possible, whether it takes 10 or 15 or 20 rounds."
- Frank Bruno, Boxer

"The streets are safe in Philadelphia. It's only the people who make them unsafe."
- Frank Rizzo, ex-police chief and mayor of Philadelphia.

"I have opinions of my own --strong opinions-- but I don't always agree with them."
- George Bush, former U.S. President

"It is white."
- George W. Bush, when asked what the White house was like by a student in East London

"If it weren't for electricity we'd all be watching television by candlelight."
- George Gobel

"I cannot tell you how grateful I am -- I am filled with humidity."
- Gib Lewis, speaker of the Texas House

"Does the album have any songs you like that aren't on it?
- Harry News, music reviewer

"I do not like this word "bomb." It is not a bomb. It is a device that is exploding."
- Jacques le Blanc, French ambassador on nuclear weapons

"We're going to move left and right at the same time."
- Jerry Brown, Governor of California

"I have a God-given talent. I got it from my dad."
- Julian Wakefield, Missouri basketball player

"Traditionally, most of Australia's imports come from overseas."
- Former Australian cabinet minister Keppel Enderbery

"I don't diet. I just don't eat as much as I'd like to."
- Linda Evangelista, Supermodel

"He's a guy who gets up at six o'clock in the morning regardless of what time it is."
- Lou Duva, veteran boxing trainer, on the Spartan training regime of heavyweight Andrew Golota.

"Pitching is 80% of the game. The other half is hitting and fielding."
- Mickey Rivers, baseball player

"I'm a 4-wheel-drive pickup type of guy. So is my wife."
- Mike Greenwell, Baseball player

"If only faces could talk..."
- Pat Summerall, Sportscaster, during the Super Bowl

"Solutions are not the answer."
- Richard Nixon, former U.S. President

"Permitted vehicles not allowed."
- Road sign on US 27

"A bachelor's life is no life for a single man."
- Samuel Goldwyn

"SAFETY FIRST: Please put on your seat belt - prepare for accident."
- Sign on backseat of Taxi

"If history repeats itself, I should think we can expect the same thing again."
- Terry Venables

Still

2005-08-16T19:42:00.000+05:30

Something's happened to me. My life is stagnant, still. Im stuck in it. There's nothing happening. I feel the same things I felt last month, last year. I feel the same but everything around me is moving so fast. Its August already, I have 4-5 months left in school, left in the protected world I'm living in, and then BOOM! I'll be done with school. Everything will change. The life I'm living, the way I'm interacting with the people in my life today...they will all just be memories to look back on and reminisce about somewhere down the road. God know where I'll be, what I'll be doing one year from today.

I'm trying to decide, to come to some sort of conlusion about what I want to do. Its just not happening. If I don't think of anything else, I'll just do B Sc physics. But I'm terrified about what's going to happen to me. Because the more I think about it, the more I realize that its not going to be anything great. Sucess comes with hard work, and that seems to be something I'm incapable of nowadays. Believe me, I'm trying. I'm trying to study, to practice, to do SOMETHING with my time. But as far back as I look, all I can remember doing is sleeping, wasting time. Sleeping in class (school and tuition) and hence, throwing all the time I spend there (and the fees) down the drain. And the worst part is, when my mom tells me to study, I get irritated. I sit there with my books open, staring into space, dreaming. What do I dream about? Some nonsense. None of its going to happen at the rate I'm going. I want to do well. And I used to think I was capable of it. But even if I do manage to put in a bit of work, I end up doing pathetically in the test or whatever it is that I'm working for. What am I doing with myself, my life? That's a question only I can answer. The fact that I can't answer it makes me want to slap myself.

My relationships with the people close to me have been changing too. Its been a rough road at home. I cant relate to some of the things my mom says sometimes. All she wants is for me to do well, and since what I want for myself isnt too different, it really confuses me where all the conflict is coming from. I guess she knows what it takes to be what I want to be, to do what I want to do. Its worrying her that Im generally sitting around when there's so much to be done. I'm trying...

Some of my friends, the ones I used to think were the closest people to me, who knew me the best...some of them seem to no longer be who I thought they were. I think they still care, but whatever it was we seemed to share, to have in common...looks like thats dissappeared. I love my friends with all my heart, but...there are no such things as substitutes for people, and it breaks my heart to think of how much things have changed in some ways. Everyone's so grown up, so mature. So clear. And then there's me, clueless as always, blinking at the world. What's wrong with me?? Why can't I grow up too?

I'm cribbing too much. Im so lucky...I have everything a person could want, and I have the audacity to complain about it. I suppose I'm just confused. I'm sorry about this post. Ive just been thinking about these things for a while. I need to get my act together, to stop thinking so much and to DO, to be more thoughtful and caring, to work harder...to take responsibility for myself. Please, God, let me grow up.

Respect your Elders

2005-08-09T19:26:00.000+05:30

How many times have we all been told "respect your elders"..?? Today I was thinking about this. And I wondered..why? Why should we respect our elders? Just because they're older?
I asked Chinmayi...and she told me that we 'respect' our elders because age signifies experience and we respect the experience they have, and the lessons they have learned just by being a part of this world longer than we have.

I don't know. Respect can not be felt on command and I don't believe in giving false respect. Everyone deserves a certain amount of respect, but beyond that, I don't know if people should be respected just because of their age. Respect is earned more by using your experiences and knowledge in the right way than just having experience and knowledge and not putting it to any good use. Elderly people don't have any more right to respect than anyone else. They should deserve the respect we give them.

Raving Mad

2005-08-06T07:35:00.000+05:30

Dear God! Get a load of this.

"An India connection with the London bombings has emerged after police named two of the potential suicide bombers who tried to blow themselves up on the London transport network last Thursday.

The devices the bombers assembled were in plastic food storage containers made in India, each six-and-a-quarter litres in size with a white lid, which were then put in dark-coloured rucksacks."

Read the entire article here

This story is attributed to an Indian newspaper, but quite obviously, the Paks weren't too upset about it.

Like DUH! (as our dear American friends would say). Now, isn't that obvious? Since the bombers' dabbas were made in India, can there be any doubt about them being Indians? I mean, what a fantastic theory! Is it possible? Can the evidence get any stronger?

Paksitan is now starting to clutch at straws. Because of their own insecurities, they are trying to pass the blame on to other people and countries, and trying to deflect attention from the focus that rightfully is falling on them. 'The bombs were assembled in food containers made in India" is quite clearly a sign of their desperation.

Cause of Autism

2005-08-05T07:55:00.000+05:30

I just read an extremely distressing article about some research conducted in regard to the cause of autism. I am just going to paste the article here. Please read through it.

"

Deadly Immunity
When a study revealed that mercury in childhood vaccines may have caused autism in thousands of kids, the government rushed to conceal the data -- and to prevent parents from suing drug companies for their role in the epidemic.

by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

In June 2000, a group of top government scientists and health officials gathered for a meeting at the isolated Simpsonwood conference center in Norcross, Ga. Convened by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the meeting was held at this Methodist retreat center, nestled in wooded farmland next to the Chattahoochee River, to ensure complete secrecy. The agency had issued no public announcement of the session -- only private invitations to 52 attendees. There were high-level officials from the CDC and the Food and Drug Administration, the top vaccine specialist from the World Health Organization in Geneva, and representatives of every major vaccine manufacturer, including GlaxoSmithKline, Merck, Wyeth and Aventis Pasteur. All of the scientific data under discussion, CDC officials repeatedly reminded the participants, was strictly "embargoed." There would be no making photocopies of documents, no taking papers with them when they left.

The federal officials and industry representatives had assembled to discuss a disturbing new study that raised alarming questions about the safety of a host of common childhood vaccines administered to infants and young children. According to a CDC epidemiologist named Tom Verstraeten, who had analyzed the agency's massive database containing the medical records of 100,000 children, a mercury-based preservative in the vaccines -- thimerosal -- appeared to be responsible for a dramatic increase in autism and a host of other neurological disorders among children. "I was actually stunned by what I saw," Verstraeten told those assembled at Simpsonwood, citing the staggering number of earlier studies that indicate a link between thimerosal and speech delays, attention-deficit disorder, hyperactivity and autism. Since 1991, when the CDC and the FDA had recommended that three additional vaccines laced with the preservative be given to extremely young infants -- in one case, within hours of birth -- the estimated number of cases of autism had increased fifteenfold, from one in every 2,500 children to one in 166 children.

Even for scientists and doctors accustomed to confronting issues of life and death, the findings were frightening. "You can play with this all you want," Dr. Bill Weil, a consultant for the American Academy of Pediatrics, told the group. The results "are statistically significant." Dr. Richard Johnston, an immunologist and pediatrician from the University of Colorado whose grandson had been born early on the morning of the meeting's first day, was even more alarmed. "My gut feeling?" he said. "Forgive this personal comment -- I do not want my grandson to get a thimerosal-containing vaccine until we know better what is going on."

But instead of taking immediate steps to alert the public and rid the vaccine supply of thimerosal, the officials and executives at Simpsonwood spent most of the next two days discussing how to cover up the damaging data. According to transcripts obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, many at the meeting were concerned about how the damaging revelations about thimerosal would affect the vaccine industry's bottom line.

"We are in a bad position from the standpoint of defending any lawsuits," said Dr. Robert Brent, a pediatrician at the Alfred I. duPont Hospital for Children in Delaware. "This will be a resource to our very busy plaintiff attorneys in this country." Dr. Bob Chen, head of vaccine safety for the CDC, expressed relief that "given the sensitivity of the information, we have been able to keep it out of the hands of, let's say, less responsible hands." Dr. John Clements, vaccines advisor at the World Health Organization, declared flatly that the study "should not have been done at all" and warned that the results "will be taken by others and will be used in ways beyond the control of this group. The research results have to be handled."

In fact, the government has proved to be far more adept at handling the damage than at protecting children's health. The CDC paid the Institute of Medicine to conduct a new study to whitewash the risks of thimerosal, ordering researchers to "rule out" the chemical's link to autism. It withheld Verstraeten's findings, even though they had been slated for immediate publication, and told other scientists that his original data had been "lost" and could not be replicated. And to thwart the Freedom of Information Act, it handed its giant database of vaccine records over to a private company, declaring it off-limits to researchers. By the time Verstraeten finally published his study in 2003, he had gone to work for GlaxoSmithKline and reworked his data to bury the link between thimerosal and autism.

Vaccine manufacturers had already begun to phase thimerosal out of injections given to American infants -- but they continued to sell off their mercury-based supplies of vaccines until last year. The CDC and FDA gave them a hand, buying up the tainted vaccines for export to developing countries and allowing drug companies to continue using the preservative in some American vaccines -- including several pediatric flu shots as well as tetanus boosters routinely given to 11-year-olds.

The drug companies are also getting help from powerful lawmakers in Washington. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, who has received $873,000 in contributions from the pharmaceutical industry, has been working to immunize vaccine makers from liability in 4,200 lawsuits that have been filed by the parents of injured children. On five separate occasions, Frist has tried to seal all of the government's vaccine-related documents -- including the Simpsonwood transcripts -- and shield Eli Lilly, the developer of thimerosal, from subpoenas. In 2002, the day after Frist quietly slipped a rider known as the "Eli Lilly Protection Act" into a homeland security bill, the company contributed $10,000 to his campaign and bought 5,000 copies of his book on bioterrorism. Congress repealed the measure in 2003 -- but earlier this year, Frist slipped another provision into an anti-terrorism bill that would deny compensation to children suffering from vaccine-related brain disorders. "The lawsuits are of such magnitude that they could put vaccine producers out of business and limit our capacity to deal with a biological attack by terrorists," says Andy Olsen, a legislative assistant to Frist.

Even many conservatives are shocked by the government's effort to cover up the dangers of thimerosal. Rep. Dan Burton, a Republican from Indiana, oversaw a three-year investigation of thimerosal after his grandson was diagnosed with autism. "Thimerosal used as a preservative in vaccines is directly related to the autism epidemic," his House Government Reform Committee concluded in its final report. "This epidemic in all probability may have been prevented or curtailed had the FDA not been asleep at the switch regarding a lack of safety data regarding injected thimerosal, a known neurotoxin." The FDA and other public-health agencies failed to act, the committee added, out of "institutional malfeasance for self protection" and "misplaced protectionism of the pharmaceutical industry."

The story of how government health agencies colluded with Big Pharma to hide the risks of thimerosal from the public is a chilling case study of institutional arrogance, power and greed. I was drawn into the controversy only reluctantly. As an attorney and environmentalist who has spent years working on issues of mercury toxicity, I frequently met mothers of autistic children who were absolutely convinced that their kids had been injured by vaccines. Privately, I was skeptical. I doubted that autism could be blamed on a single source, and I certainly understood the government's need to reassure parents that vaccinations are safe; the eradication of deadly childhood diseases depends on it. I tended to agree with skeptics like Rep. Henry Waxman, a Democrat from California, who criticized his colleagues on the House Government Reform Committee for leaping to conclusions about autism and vaccinations. "Why should we scare people about immunization," Waxman pointed out at one hearing, "until we know the facts?"

It was only after reading the Simpsonwood transcripts, studying the leading scientific research and talking with many of the nation's preeminent authorities on mercury that I became convinced that the link between thimerosal and the epidemic of childhood neurological disorders is real. Five of my own children are members of the Thimerosal Generation -- those born between 1989 and 2003 -- who received heavy doses of mercury from vaccines. "The elementary grades are overwhelmed with children who have symptoms of neurological or immune-system damage," Patti White, a school nurse, told the House Government Reform Committee in 1999. "Vaccines are supposed to be making us healthier; however, in 25 years of nursing I have never seen so many damaged, sick kids. Something very, very wrong is happening to our children." More than 500,000 kids currently suffer from autism, and pediatricians diagnose more than 40,000 new cases every year. The disease was unknown until 1943, when it was identified and diagnosed among 11 children born in the months after thimerosal was first added to baby vaccines in 1931.

Some skeptics dispute that the rise in autism is caused by thimerosal-tainted vaccinations. They argue that the increase is a result of better diagnosis -- a theory that seems questionable at best, given that most of the new cases of autism are clustered within a single generation of children. "If the epidemic is truly an artifact of poor diagnosis," scoffs Dr. Boyd Haley, one of the world's authorities on mercury toxicity, "then where are all the 20-year-old autistics?" Other researchers point out that Americans are exposed to a greater cumulative "load" of mercury than ever before, from contaminated fish to dental fillings, and suggest that thimerosal in vaccines may be only part of a much larger problem. It's a concern that certainly deserves far more attention than it has received -- but it overlooks the fact that the mercury concentrations in vaccines dwarf other sources of exposure to our children.

What is most striking is the lengths to which many of the leading detectives have gone to ignore -- and cover up -- the evidence against thimerosal. From the very beginning, the scientific case against the mercury additive has been overwhelming. The preservative, which is used to stem fungi and bacterial growth in vaccines, contains ethylmercury, a potent neurotoxin. Truckloads of studies have shown that mercury tends to accumulate in the brains of primates and other animals after they are injected with vaccines -- and that the developing brains of infants are particularly susceptible. In 1977, a Russian study found that adults exposed to much lower concentrations of ethylmercury than those given to American children still suffered brain damage years later. Russia banned thimerosal from children's vaccines 20 years ago, and Denmark, Austria, Japan, Great Britain and all the Scandinavian countries have since followed suit.

"You couldn't even construct a study that shows thimerosal is safe," says Haley, who heads the chemistry department at the University of Kentucky. "It's just too darn toxic. If you inject thimerosal into an animal, its brain will sicken. If you apply it to living tissue, the cells die. If you put it in a petri dish, the culture dies. Knowing these things, it would be shocking if one could inject it into an infant without causing damage."

Internal documents reveal that Eli Lilly, which first developed thimerosal, knew from the start that its product could cause damage -- and even death -- in both animals and humans. In 1930, the company tested thimerosal by administering it to 22 patients with terminal meningitis, all of whom died within weeks of being injected -- a fact Lilly didn't bother to report in its study declaring thimerosal safe. In 1935, researchers at another vaccine manufacturer, Pittman-Moore, warned Lilly that its claims about thimerosal's safety "did not check with ours." Half the dogs Pittman injected with thimerosal-based vaccines became sick, leading researchers there to declare the preservative "unsatisfactory as a serum intended for use on dogs."

In the decades that followed, the evidence against thimerosal continued to mount. During the Second World War, when the Department of Defense used the preservative in vaccines on soldiers, it required Lilly to label it "poison." In 1967, a study in Applied Microbiology found that thimerosal killed mice when added to injected vaccines. Four years later, Lilly's own studies discerned that thimerosal was "toxic to tissue cells" in concentrations as low as one part per million -- 100 times weaker than the concentration in a typical vaccine. Even so, the company continued to promote thimerosal as "nontoxic" and also incorporated it into topical disinfectants. In 1977, 10 babies at a Toronto hospital died when an antiseptic preserved with thimerosal was dabbed onto their umbilical cords.

In 1982, the FDA proposed a ban on over-the-counter products that contained thimerosal, and in 1991 the agency considered banning it from animal vaccines. But tragically, that same year, the CDC recommended that infants be injected with a series of mercury-laced vaccines. Newborns would be vaccinated for hepatitis B within 24 hours of birth, and 2-month-old infants would be immunized for haemophilus influenzae B and diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis.

The drug industry knew the additional vaccines posed a danger. The same year that the CDC approved the new vaccines, Dr. Maurice Hilleman, one of the fathers of Merck's vaccine programs, warned the company that 6-month-olds who were administered the shots would suffer dangerous exposure to mercury. He recommended that thimerosal be discontinued, "especially when used on infants and children," noting that the industry knew of nontoxic alternatives. "The best way to go," he added, "is to switch to dispensing the actual vaccines without adding preservatives."

For Merck and other drug companies, however, the obstacle was money. Thimerosal enables the pharmaceutical industry to package vaccines in vials that contain multiple doses, which require additional protection because they are more easily contaminated by multiple needle entries. The larger vials cost half as much to produce as smaller, single-dose vials, making it cheaper for international agencies to distribute them to impoverished regions at risk of epidemics. Faced with this "cost consideration," Merck ignored Hilleman's warnings, and government officials continued to push more and more thimerosal-based vaccines for children. Before 1989, American preschoolers received only three vaccinations -- for polio, diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis and measles-mumps-rubella. A decade later, thanks to federal recommendations, children were receiving a total of 22 immunizations by the time they reached first grade.

As the number of vaccines increased, the rate of autism among children exploded. During the 1990s, 40 million children were injected with thimerosal-based vaccines, receiving unprecedented levels of mercury during a period critical for brain development. Despite the well-documented dangers of thimerosal, it appears that no one bothered to add up the cumulative dose of mercury that children would receive from the mandated vaccines. "What took the FDA so long to do the calculations?" Peter Patriarca, director of viral products for the agency, asked in an e-mail to the CDC in 1999. "Why didn't CDC and the advisory bodies do these calculations when they rapidly expanded the childhood immunization schedule?"

But by that time, the damage was done. Infants who received all their vaccines, plus boosters, by the age of 6 months were being injected with levels of ethylmercury 187 times greater than the EPA's limit for daily exposure to methylmercury, a related neurotoxin. Although the vaccine industry insists that ethylmercury poses little danger because it breaks down rapidly and is removed by the body, several studies -- including one published in April by the National Institutes of Health -- suggest that ethylmercury is actually more toxic to developing brains and stays in the brain longer than methylmercury.

Officials responsible for childhood immunizations insist that the additional vaccines were necessary to protect infants from disease and that thimerosal is still essential in developing nations, which, they often claim, cannot afford the single-dose vials that don't require a preservative. Dr. Paul Offit, one of CDC's top vaccine advisors, told me, "I think if we really have an influenza pandemic -- and certainly we will in the next 20 years, because we always do -- there's no way on God's earth that we immunize 280 million people with single-dose vials. There has to be multidose vials."

But while public-health officials may have been well-intentioned, many of those on the CDC advisory committee who backed the additional vaccines had close ties to the industry. Dr. Sam Katz, the committee's chair, was a paid consultant for most of the major vaccine makers and shares a patent on a measles vaccine with Merck, which also manufactures the hepatitis B vaccine. Dr. Neal Halsey, another committee member, worked as a researcher for the vaccine companies and received honoraria from Abbott Labs for his research on the hepatitis B vaccine.

Indeed, in the tight circle of scientists who work on vaccines, such conflicts of interest are common. Rep. Burton says that the CDC "routinely allows scientists with blatant conflicts of interest to serve on intellectual advisory committees that make recommendations on new vaccines," even though they have "interests in the products and companies for which they are supposed to be providing unbiased oversight." The House Government Reform Committee discovered that four of the eight CDC advisors who approved guidelines for a rotavirus vaccine laced with thimerosal "had financial ties to the pharmaceutical companies that were developing different versions of the vaccine."

Offit, who shares a patent on the vaccine, acknowledged to me that he "would make money" if his vote to approve it eventually leads to a marketable product. But he dismissed my suggestion that a scientist's direct financial stake in CDC approval might bias his judgment. "It provides no conflict for me," he insists. "I have simply been informed by the process, not corrupted by it. When I sat around that table, my sole intent was trying to make recommendations that best benefited the children in this country. It's offensive to say that physicians and public-health people are in the pocket of industry and thus are making decisions that they know are unsafe for children. It's just not the way it works."

Other vaccine scientists and regulators gave me similar assurances. Like Offit, they view themselves as enlightened guardians of children's health, proud of their "partnerships" with pharmaceutical companies, immune to the seductions of personal profit, besieged by irrational activists whose anti-vaccine campaigns are endangering children's health. They are often resentful of questioning. "Science," says Offit, "is best left to scientists."

Still, some government officials were alarmed by the apparent conflicts of interest. In his e-mail to CDC administrators in 1999, Paul Patriarca of the FDA blasted federal regulators for failing to adequately scrutinize the danger posed by the added baby vaccines. "I'm not sure there will be an easy way out of the potential perception that the FDA, CDC and immunization-policy bodies may have been asleep at the switch re: thimerosal until now," Patriarca wrote. The close ties between regulatory officials and the pharmaceutical industry, he added, "will also raise questions about various advisory bodies regarding aggressive recommendations for use" of thimerosal in child vaccines.

If federal regulators and government scientists failed to grasp the potential risks of thimerosal over the years, no one could claim ignorance after the secret meeting at Simpsonwood. But rather than conduct more studies to test the link to autism and other forms of brain damage, the CDC placed politics over science. The agency turned its database on childhood vaccines -- which had been developed largely at taxpayer expense -- over to a private agency, America's Health Insurance Plans, ensuring that it could not be used for additional research. It also instructed the Institute of Medicine, an advisory organization that is part of the National Academy of Sciences, to produce a study debunking the link between thimerosal and brain disorders. The CDC "wants us to declare, well, that these things are pretty safe," Dr. Marie McCormick, who chaired the IOM's Immunization Safety Review Committee, told her fellow researchers when they first met in January 2001. "We are not ever going to come down that [autism] is a true side effect" of thimerosal exposure. According to transcripts of the meeting, the committee's chief staffer, Kathleen Stratton, predicted that the IOM would conclude that the evidence was "inadequate to accept or reject a causal relation" between thimerosal and autism. That, she added, was the result "Walt wants" -- a reference to Dr. Walter Orenstein, director of the National Immunization Program for the CDC.

For those who had devoted their lives to promoting vaccination, the revelations about thimerosal threatened to undermine everything they had worked for. "We've got a dragon by the tail here," said Dr. Michael Kaback, another committee member. "The more negative that [our] presentation is, the less likely people are to use vaccination, immunization -- and we know what the results of that will be. We are kind of caught in a trap. How we work our way out of the trap, I think is the charge."

Even in public, federal officials made it clear that their primary goal in studying thimerosal was to dispel doubts about vaccines. "Four current studies are taking place to rule out the proposed link between autism and thimerosal," Dr. Gordon Douglas, then-director of strategic planning for vaccine research at the National Institutes of Health, assured a Princeton University gathering in May 2001. "In order to undo the harmful effects of research claiming to link the [measles] vaccine to an elevated risk of autism, we need to conduct and publicize additional studies to assure parents of safety." Douglas formerly served as president of vaccinations for Merck, where he ignored warnings about thimerosal's risks.

In May of last year, the Institute of Medicine issued its final report. Its conclusion: There is no proven link between autism and thimerosal in vaccines. Rather than reviewing the large body of literature describing the toxicity of thimerosal, the report relied on four disastrously flawed epidemiological studies examining European countries, where children received much smaller doses of thimerosal than American kids. It also cited a new version of the Verstraeten study, published in the journal Pediatrics, that had been reworked to reduce the link between thimerosal and autism. The new study included children too young to have been diagnosed with autism and overlooked others who showed signs of the disease. The IOM declared the case closed and -- in a startling position for a scientific body -- recommended that no further research be conducted.

The report may have satisfied the CDC, but it convinced no one. Rep. David Weldon, a Republican physician from Florida who serves on the House Government Reform Committee, attacked the Institute of Medicine, saying it relied on a handful of studies that were "fatally flawed" by "poor design" and failed to represent "all the available scientific and medical research." CDC officials are not interested in an honest search for the truth, Weldon told me, because "an association between vaccines and autism would force them to admit that their policies irreparably damaged thousands of children. Who would want to make that conclusion about themselves?"

Under pressure from Congress, parents and a few of its own panel members, the Institute of Medicine reluctantly convened a second panel to review the findings of the first. In February, the new panel, composed of different scientists, criticized the earlier panel for its lack of transparency and urged the CDC to make its vaccine database available to the public.

So far, though, only two scientists have managed to gain access. Dr. Mark Geier, president of the Genetics Center of America, and his son, David, spent a year battling to obtain the medical records from the CDC. Since August 2002, when members of Congress pressured the agency to turn over the data, the Geiers have completed six studies that demonstrate a powerful correlation between thimerosal and neurological damage in children. One study, which compares the cumulative dose of mercury received by children born between 1981 and 1985 with those born between 1990 and 1996, found a "very significant relationship" between autism and vaccines. Another study of educational performance found that kids who received higher doses of thimerosal in vaccines were nearly three times as likely to be diagnosed with autism and more than three times as likely to suffer from speech disorders and mental retardation. Another soon-to-be-published study shows that autism rates are in decline following the recent elimination of thimerosal from most vaccines.

As the federal government worked to prevent scientists from studying vaccines, others have stepped in to study the link to autism. In April, reporter Dan Olmsted of UPI undertook one of the more interesting studies himself. Searching for children who had not been exposed to mercury in vaccines -- the kind of population that scientists typically use as a "control" in experiments -- Olmsted scoured the Amish of Lancaster County, Penn., who refuse to immunize their infants. Given the national rate of autism, Olmsted calculated that there should be 130 autistics among the Amish. He found only four. One had been exposed to high levels of mercury from a power plant. The other three -- including one child adopted from outside the Amish community -- had received their vaccines.

At the state level, many officials have also conducted in-depth reviews of thimerosal. While the Institute of Medicine was busy whitewashing the risks, the Iowa Legislature was carefully combing through all of the available scientific and biological data. "After three years of review, I became convinced there was sufficient credible research to show a link between mercury and the increased incidences in autism," says state Sen. Ken Veenstra, a Republican who oversaw the investigation. "The fact that Iowa's 700 percent increase in autism began in the 1990s, right after more and more vaccines were added to the children's vaccine schedules, is solid evidence alone." Last year, Iowa became the first state to ban mercury in vaccines, followed by California. Similar bans are now under consideration in 32 other states.

But instead of following suit, the FDA continues to allow manufacturers to include thimerosal in scores of over-the-counter medications as well as steroids and injected collagen. Even more alarming, the government continues to ship vaccines preserved with thimerosal to developing countries -- some of which are now experiencing a sudden explosion in autism rates. In China, where the disease was virtually unknown prior to the introduction of thimerosal by U.S. drug manufacturers in 1999, news reports indicate that there are now more than 1.8 million autistics. Although reliable numbers are hard to come by, autistic disorders also appear to be soaring in India, Argentina, Nicaragua and other developing countries that are now using thimerosal-laced vaccines. The World Health Organization continues to insist thimerosal is safe, but it promises to keep the possibility that it is linked to neurological disorders "under review."

I devoted time to study this issue because I believe that this is a moral crisis that must be addressed. If, as the evidence suggests, our public-health authorities knowingly allowed the pharmaceutical industry to poison an entire generation of American children, their actions arguably constitute one of the biggest scandals in the annals of American medicine. "The CDC is guilty of incompetence and gross negligence," says Mark Blaxill, vice president of Safe Minds, a nonprofit organization concerned about the role of mercury in medicines. "The damage caused by vaccine exposure is massive. It's bigger than asbestos, bigger than tobacco, bigger than anything you've ever seen." It's hard to calculate the damage to our country -- and to the international efforts to eradicate epidemic diseases -- if Third World nations come to believe that America's most heralded foreign-aid initiative is poisoning their children. It's not difficult to predict how this scenario will be interpreted by America's enemies abroad. The scientists and researchers -- many of them sincere, even idealistic -- who are participating in efforts to hide the science on thimerosal claim that they are trying to advance the lofty goal of protecting children in developing nations from disease pandemics. They are badly misguided. Their failure to come clean on thimerosal will come back horribly to haunt our country and the world's poorest populations.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is senior attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council, chief prosecuting attorney for Riverkeeper and president of Waterkeeper Alliance. He is the co-author of "The Riverkeepers".

Source: www.commondreams.org

Shall we prance?

2005-08-04T22:01:00.000+05:30

Today, I was accused of prancing. Do I prance? . Do you prance? Before answering the above questions, I must ask you a very fundemental question. What is prancing? I know Black Beauty pranced, so is it something characteristic of only horses? When humans do it, are they attempting to move like horses? Can humans do it? Maybe the dictionary will help us understand what exactly prancing is. I shall check the dictionary and return shortly.

prance :- (prns)
v. intr.

1. To spring forward on the hind legs. Used of a horse.
2. To spring or bound forward in a manner reminiscent of a spirited horse.
To ride a horse moving in such a fashion.
To walk or move about spiritedly; strut.

v. tr.

To cause (a horse) to prance.

The act or an instance of prancing.

Wow...that answers a lot of questions. So now, we know that humans can prance! Very thought provoking, isn't it? I just found another definition. Here it is:

prance

n : a proud stiff pompous gait v
1: to walk with a lofty proud gait, often in an attempt to impress others; "He struts around like a rooster in a hen house"

2: spring foward on the hind legs; "The young horse was prancing in the meadow"

3: cause (a horse) to bound spring forward

4: ride a horse such that it springs and bounds forward

Now, getting back to the questions asked in the beginning...

Do I prance? I think so. Despite reading all these definitions, I'm not exactly sure what prancing is. When I think of prancing, I picture Kogi skipping (prancing) around our school grounds. If that's what prancing actually is, then I do prance at times. I can not even visualize a horse prancing. I don't know the difference between galloping, cantering, prancing..etc.

Do you prance? How would I know? Maybe you do, maybe you don't. If you don't, try it sometime. I find it quite a joyful exercise (if what I think prancing is is actually prancing). Comment and tell me wwhat you feel about prancing.

PS Please don't get too scared after reading this post. I am in an extremely crazy mood right now. Probably, I will feel embarassed about this post and remove it from my blog sometime in the near future.
Now, I shall go prance.
Ciao!

My mom's centre : V-Excel

2005-07-30T11:45:00.000+05:30

I visited my mom's school today after a really long time. I really can't express how proud I feel of her every time I enter the place. For those of you who don't know what my mom does, she has started a centre called V- Excel for mentally disabled people, including people affected by autism, down's syndrome, mental retardation, learning disablilties, dyslexia and emotional and behaivioral disorders. Its just too beautiful. The school is so colourful and lively. She's helped hundreds of children and parents, and has given many 'disabled' children the oppurtunity to live a life of their own, to work and earn and sustain themselves. The need for such organizations in India is unimaginable. The organization has grown immensely since it was started in 2001 and still, there are innumerable people who need to be helped, who perhaps can not afford it, or who are unaware that there are services available to help them. (Website : www.v-excel.org)

The statistics are terrifying. About 91 out of every 10,000 people (almost 1%) are affected by autism, and this number has been rapidly growing. The cause for autism is not known for sure, though it is believed to have something to do with the levels of toxic substances such as lead and arsenic in the air, and there is no known cure, though autistic people can be helped with therapy and special methods of teaching. There is very little awareness of these disorders in today's society, and funding for autism research is minimal.

I respect my mother for the work she does, and I know that she is doing a huge service to mankind. I can only dream to be half the person she is. Probably, I will not enter special education, but during the course of my life, I hope that I too will be able to reach out and help at least a few people, in what ever way that I can.

Life

2005-07-25T18:44:00.000+05:30

ITS RAINING IN CHENNAI!!!!!! Anyone who knows me even remotely knows that I just LOVE the rain. There's just something in the sound that the raindrops make when they fall, the wet smell and of course the feeling of the cold drops of (supposedly) pure water falling on to my face that excites me like nothing else ever can. In the course of the past week, it has rained every day, and I have faithfully gotten quite wet every single one of these days. Saturday night Chinmayi and I went up to the terrace and got completely drenched. Anyone who had seen us would have thought we were raving lunatics. We were jumping, dancing, singing...wow!...I had an amazing time.

Sunday was the laziest day ever. In the morning we (chinmayi and I) went for a swim at the club. It had been ages since I had stepped into a pool. I thoroughly enjoyed myself. Went for lunch to Beach Palms. The food wasn't too great, and I'm not too big a fan of Chinese food anyway.

Its raining again now. I so badly want to go up to the terrace, but I shouldn't. There's a massive physics test tomorrow on the magnetic effect of current or some such nonsense. It seems so pointless, the way my life has been. I shuttle from tuition to school to tuition but I honestly don't think I'm learning anything at all. I think I'll go now and try to study. Feeling guilty. I'll blog later.

Education

2005-07-09T10:53:00.000+05:30

Until now, I've been defending the Indian education system without really giving the matter much thought. But come to think of it, the system does suck. Its an extremely lousy system. A system which causes people to commit suicide can by no stretch of the imagination be called a good one. Granted, it has its plus points, but the cons of the system are so many that these can easily be overlooked. Then why am I here? Why didn't I just stay in the US if that system was more beneficial than this one?
It amazes me that my friends who seem to be so against America itself seem to think that it would be better for a person to grow up in the US than here in India. The education system, if isolated and looked at only from the academic point of view is better in the US, but there are many more factors which contribute into moulding the character, ability, resourcefulness and intelligence of a person. The educational environment in the American schools inculcates very different morals, values and standards than those in India. It is because of these basic differences that I feel extremely grateful that I now live here in India and not there in the US.

gossip

2005-07-06T15:54:00.000+05:30

Why do people gossip so much? What is it that they gain by spreading rumors about people about whom in reality, they know nothing about? I am not claiming to have never gossiped. It is actually quite entertaining. But people need to know where to draw the line. I don't think they realize how hurtful it can be. Trust me. I know.

confusion

2005-07-03T22:10:00.000+05:30

It's been a while since I blogged. Life's been ok. I've been thinking a lot. About everything. About my friends, family, school...about my future...about music, academics....about myself. Thanks to Dhruva's blog, I'm thinking about poor people in Africa. Basically I'm in a highly confused state. I was probably less confused before I got into this thinking spree (couldn't think of another word). Everyone is always thinking. Its a fact. Sometimes, you think harder than others. The topics I have mentioned are extremely suitable for hard thinking. Once you start thinking about any of the above mentioned things, you can't stop. The harder you try to think about something as inane and nonsensical as the things you're usually thinking about, the harder it becomes to stop thinking about the sensible and frankly, quite scary things that you usually don't think about. I don't know why I want to stop thinking about these things. Probably, some time in the future when I am thinking about nonsensical things, I will think to myself - "Instead of thinking about this nonsense, why don't I think about somethink sensible?" But quite obviously, sense does not come to me on demand, and when it does come, it scares the shit out of me as it is doing now, and leaves me resolving to study harder, practice harder, try to improve myself as a person. I will study for at least 2 hours in a day, I tell myself. I need to do well, its 12th standard, my life depends on the results of the board exam. I tell myself I will wake up by 5:30 or 6 every morning and practice. These resolutions usually last for about a day. Then, somehow, they manage to worm their way out of my life, leaving me as useless as I was before. So now, I think to myself, why resolve? You promise yourself you will do all these things, but you never do. Where does that leave me? Resolving to keep my resolutions. Ha...quite a vicious cycle, isn't it?
I'm confused. Confused about everything. Confused about my family, my friends, my future. Myself. 'What will you do after the 12th standard?' everyone asks me. 'What will I do after my 12th standard?' I ask myself. God alone knows, and I have a suspicion that even he (she?) isn't too sure right now. Medicine? No way. Engineering? No. Viz Com? Nah. B Sc Physics or Chemistry? Maybe. So that leaves me with....well...nothing. Nothing concrete at any rate. I want to sing, but as much as I resolve, I never practice properly. Do I have what it takes? Maybe. Can I count on it? No. So now what? All I know is that whatever it is that I do, I want to do it in Chennai so I won't have to leave my music classes. So now, I'm left with 'after the 12th standard, I will stay in Chennai'. Not too encouraging, I must say. And I'm singing 'joyful, joyful'.

bonjour again

2005-06-28T19:04:00.000+05:30

Hi again!
It's me, Aditi (peanut) again...in case you've forgotten. Its been a while since i blogged, so I just thought i'd say hi to all of u who are still part of the blogging world. School's in full swing with LOADS of tests and assignments to do, all on topics I am supposed to understand but actually don't have the least bit of a clue about. The inter-school cultural event that our school hosts (Kalanjali Ventures) was on Friday and Saturday and I had a really great time. Jimmy (Chinmayi) came to judge the light music event...i hope she had fun...
Since this is our last year in school, i hope we do really well in all the culturals. I want to sing well...at least win the music event in one of the culturals...
MY DAD'S IN TOWN!!!!!!!!! = D =D...im sooo happy...the last I saw him was in october some time...its too cool having him here!
Im seriously having some major doubts about whether im gonna get past the board exams. I really don't understand anything in any subject despite all the million tuitions im going for (except math...thank god for Vasantha Miss...she's the BEST) I really don't know what im gonna do...
anyway...i should go study...there's a massive chem test tomorrow(of course, in phy and chem, you do really badly regardless of whether you study or not)
I'll blog later
Love u all!!!! MUAH! (sorry im in a weird mood)

started school

2005-06-06T22:46:00.000+05:30

Hi everyone = )...school started today, and believe it or not, it wasn't too bad. Actually, (I cant believe I'm saying this) it did feel kinda nice to be back in school with everyone. Today was my last first day of school!! Seriously, I can't believe it. 12th standard is going to be soooooo busy...the year seems so long now, but I know that just like every other year, this year is going to just fly by...and then voila! What do you know, I would've finished school! Perhaps the 4 years of my life so far have been spent here in Chennai, the most part of which was spent in our very own BVM. Despite all the cribbing I do about life in general (read my previous blogs), I really really love our school, and I am going to be extremely sad to leave it. I did love living in the US, but I've had a superb time here, and I don't think I would have ever enjoyed life there as much as I do here. I'm so happy we came back to India. I recently spoke to one of my best friends in the US, and its almost scary. The conversation went something like this:
My Friend: "Like, OH MY GAWD!!! Adi, I can't like believe its you! I haven't talked to you in like...forever!!!"
Me : "Yeah I know! So...how are you??"
Her : "I'm good...u?"
Me : "Yeah I'm fine. School is starting soon.... (and blah blah...). So you tell me...how's xxx ?(xxx being a friend of ours there)
Her : "Yeah...he's good..."
Me : "Oh ok...how's everyone else there? How's school?"
Her : "Everyone's good. School's...well...ya know...i guess its good..."
Me : "Oh ok. Is there anything thats not 'good'?
Her : "HAAHAHAHA!! You're, like, the FUNNIEST!! Yeah...well..everything is good...u know..."
And so on...
Seriously, I can't thank my parents enough for bringing me back here to India. I'm loving the country more with every day I spend here, and now, I'm quite certain that I will never settle anywhere other than India. Life here is just so full. There's nothing missing. It's so...right!
So here I am now, just having started my 12th standard. I'm really quite nervous about this year, and generally nervous about what life has in store for me. But its more of an excited nervousness.
So I guess we'll see....

Why bother with school?? We've got tuitions!

2005-06-01T22:13:00.000+05:30

My chemistry tuition starts again tomorrow after a 3 week long break. Physics starts on saturday. From now until the beginning of March '06, I've got physics and chemistry tuition twice a week for one and a half to two hours, and math tuition four days a week.

And so, now I'm wondering, with so many tuitions, whats the point of going to school? Aside from the attendance required to write the board exam, I see no logical reason. Tuition is supposed to supplement what one learns at school, but that's far from what's happening. Tuitions don't supplement, they teach it all over again. From A to Z. And often, I hear, different chapters will be taught simultaneously at tuition and at school. So why bother with both? The general consensus is that tuitions are much more beneficial, but because of the reason mentioned above, it is necessary that one attends school. The point of going to school is to be taught everything that is necessary to pass the board exam. So why has it become a necessity to go for tuitions?

hmmm...

2005-05-30T19:10:00.000+05:30

Well...I don't have anything to say today. I'm pissed off...in a really pathetic mood. And the worst part about being pissed in the way that I am right now is that since I'm not pissed at or because of any particular thing, I'm pissed off at everything. Right now, every single bloody thing I see is getting on my nerves. The stupid MSN chat window flashing at the bottom of the screen...ugh i wish it was alive so i could kill it. It's soooo HOT in chennai. I feel like killing someone. UGGGGHHHHHHHHH!!!
ok im going to go find something to kill. God, please help me. bye...i'll try blogging later in life...

hello

2005-05-29T18:45:00.000+05:30

Hello again. Here I am, blogging away. Again, I don't have a clue as to what to blog about, but I'm going to generally blabber in the hope that some form of sense will emerge somewhere in the middle. I know I'm hoping in vain...but anyway...where was I? It doesn't really matter, does it? Since I'm generally going to blabber anyway. But if you think about it, you need some sort of a topic, even to blabber about. Hmm...what to write now?

Ok..well...my audition went quite badly yesterday...as in I didn't sing extrordinarily badly or anything, but there was no mic and there was a mridangam and a violin and all that, so I really don't know if the judging lady heard me, with my great volume. Anyways, we'll see...otherwise...major music mood today...i practiced a lot...

Hmmm...guess what else?? My dad's coming!!!! = D On June 24th...I can hardly wait...!! And...my mom's off to Manglore tomorrow, so I'm staying at DC mostly. It's the last week of the holidays and I'm depressed. So everyone had better plan something and we had better meet up and do something fun before school.

Nothing else. Actually, Dhruva was somewhat right about carnatic musicians. I think carnatic music is really awesome stuff but I do listen to...non-carnatic music, but many many people I meet that are really INTO carnatic music are pretty much closed toward other kinds of music...or at least western music. Its quite weird. I don't understand how people who call themselves musicians can just dismiss other forms of music like that. Many of them haven't even heard the slightest bit of anything thats not Indian Classical music. Maybe they don't think its inferior or anything, but I guess it just doesn't appeal to them. I suppose they are quite put off by the kind of stuff one sees on MTV and the like...music videos and all that.

At the function that was held at the end of my music camp, we were given a talk about how we should behave as 'upcoming carnatic musicians', most of which was extremely valuable information about what kind of practice we should do and stuff like that. However, there was this bit about how as carnatic singers, we should not wear 'jeans-pant' and 'ooru sutthu-fy', and how we should not waste our time listening to 'vendaadha english paatu'.

I really don't know. Maybe they are right, maybe too much western music does prevent one from doing well in classical music. But I, for one, genuinely like a lot of western music, and I find it as worthy of appreciation as any classical music. This does not mean that I love classical music any less.

So there it is...another (successful ???) blog. Please comment and tell me what u think ok?? Though I have a feeling i pretty much suck at this blogging buisness.
ok bye!!!

??

2005-05-28T12:50:00.000+05:30

I really don't know why I'm blogging. It's just that everyone seems to be blogging, and from the look of it, it's good fun...so why not? The only problem being that I don't have too much to say...actually, right now, i don't have anything to say, which would probably explain why im jabbering away like this. I've got LOADS of work to do...school is starting next week and I have 5 assignments to complete, none of which I've started. I've got an audition at MOP also this evening...god knows what I'll sing there....
Anyway...I have a feeling that for me, this year is going to be nothing short of complete hell. School, physics tuition, chemistry tuition, math tuition...not to mention very rigorous music classes if I do happen to get past the audition this evening for which I should be practicing right now...for that matter, even if I dont get past the audition, there's no way I'm gonna stop my classes so...ugh...I'm actually quite freaked out about the 12th standard. I really hope I do well. This is the first time since we came to India that its almost the end of the summer holidays and I really don't want to go back to school. Usually, by this time in the holidays, I'm thoroughly bored and actually (though i don't think I would have admitted it) wanting to go back to school. Maybe it's because these holidays have been so busy, or maybe its because of the promise of a mind-blowingly busy year coming up, but right now, I'm not too excited about the prospect of going back to school.
But I'm not complaining. We'll see what comes. Right now, I'm quite bored and in a very weird mood. I have to go to DC for lunch in a while. Kogi said he'd come...
Please tell me about any good books...I have nothing to read...= ( ok I guess I'll go now...I hope you had fun getting bored by my blog...