Too Many I’s

                     

I was sitting in my room and watching the news last evening, when something struck me - call it a thought or an epiphany, the choice is yours.

To run through the basic background, there were about 7 blasts in the ancient city of Jaipur (Western India) last evening around 7:30 pm. The attacks were clearly meant to cause maximum damage to human life. The objective was not solely creating fear, but creating fear and hurting lives. About 60 people died and 150 were injured. It is not known if it was suicide bombings or if the bombs were planted beforehand. As sad as this case may be, there have been a number of such blasts before in various other parts of India.

I guess being so used to hearing about blasts or other such acts of violence, I was becoming a little prone to it. It does affect me everytime something of this sort happens, but it doesn’t come as a big shock. It was yesterday, while I was watching the news that I realized that nothing in this world hits most of us hard, unless we experience it personally. I am not saying that we don’t sympathize, because we do. But, do we take a step to help the situation or at least try?

Have we stopped thinking about the world as our own? Is mankind at the point where only the people we know matter? Every day, I see myself and others around me and our topics of conversations revolve around simple life talk, around what is happening to us and not to the world that exists all around. “I” am doing this, “I” did that, “I” thought this, “I” am going through this. The “I” has obviously taken a place before the “us” or “world”. If it was a family member that was hurt, you would go out of your way to help.. but if it is a person living 2 blocks down from you, who you have never spoken to… the self-driven aid is just not there.

I think, today this is going to change - at least for me. This self-centered nature needs to go away and society and people around us need to have a higher priority in my life. It is time to think about YOU and about US, instead of about ME. I know thinking about the whole wide world would probably be very hard and wouldn’t come easy… but it is time we all took a step towards it, by at least making an effort to think of people beyond ourselves and our families.

As for the blasts, I don’t know when people will realize that acts of terrorism such as these serve no long term purpose except creating fear and hatred and probably guilt - all of which clearly eat at the human soul. It does no one any good - neither the terrorist group, nor the people who suffer from its brutal consequences. It is time for a change, even if it is small.

Being In India

                         

Alright, so I’m finally getting rid of the jetlag.. slowly but surely. Today, was a good day overall. It has its moments considering that I woke up at 4am and had to go see a friend in the hospital. But, overall.. it was a rather good day.

I got to hang out with my cousin because he came back from work internship) soon. I am seeing him after 2 years even though I am the closest to him among all my cousins on my dad’s side. Nishant (my cousin) and I were, in a very special, sense brought up together because he is just 4 months younger. We learned to walk holding the same things, we learned to be protective and we learned to even have cousin fights together lol.

Anyway, hanging out with him was a blast. And right now, while I am typing this blog he is sitting here trying to convince me that his latest college love affair isn’t serious - telling me its nothing while he blushes and laughs lol.

I spent some time with my mom and my dog as well.. I didn’t realize how much I really missed them till now. After that I went out for an ice cream with some friends of mine. It was good seeing them.. we are planning to go to our school together and see the teachers again, just because now that we are all mostly out of Delhi, we miss the school corridors. Life was amazing at that time.. it still is if you seriously think about it.

My internship is supposed to start day-after. There might be some changes though… waiting on things to turn out the way they are going to, before I make some major decisions

Reached Home

                                                        

Okies, so as you can already tell… my flight landed safely and the pilots were not drunk! So, it is 7:39 am on May 11th in India. And, no.. I have not gotten into the habit of waking up early. I am just suffering from a major case of jetlag which I attribute partly to not sleeping enough on the flight. But anyway, currently I am sleeping all day and staying up all night. Apart from that, the trip has been pleasant so far :-).

My flight landed right in time and my family friends and family came to see me at the airport. The immigration and customs didn’t take long at all, and so I was out and about with my family enjoying my parent’s wedding anniversary. Of course, later in the night, dad and I watched a cricket match. It was a fun time. The 10th of may is a blurr since all I did was sleep.

Now that I think about it, it wasn’t a blur after 5 pm lol. My cousin got home yesterday too and he will be staying with us for about a month and a half, if not more. He will be doing an internship too… he starts today and I start sometime this week. Thankfully, they are being a little flexible owing to my crazy jetlag!

Anyway, my scattered thoughts should give you a basic runthrough of how my trip has been so far. I’ll keep posting more!

On The Airport

Thank God for wireless internet. I am sitting here at New York Airport, waiting to board my flight home (New Delhi, India) in a few minutes.

It feels like a million feelings are taking over right now. Three months of not seeing friends that I have come to love, and three months of amazing time with family.. cause just the most contradictory feelings ever.

I got to talk to almost all my friends before leaving.. the one’s I didn’t talk to will be missed dearly though (so will the ones I got to talk to though lol). The airport layover wasn’t too bad at NY, I didn’t get to see my friend.. but I did happen to make a new friend on the airport. We spent the whole day together.. he is from south India and is doing his medical training here. I guess airports will never lose their people-watching charm lol.

Last night was rather.. weird and eventful, but I need to leave in a few minutes, so I’ll blog about that from home

Love you all and miss you all A LOT!!!

No One

You see the pain that lies in her eyes

But, alas, her eyes are dry

You see the anger that burns from her gaze

The madness that sets her eyes ablaze

You see the fear that closes her eyes

The smile she wears is but a disguise

You see the hope that is finally dead

She cannot trust for her heart has bled

You see the love that lies within

But she shall never love again

You see death’s hand that has glazed her eyes

No one saw her die inside…

The Next Step…

                                           

It’s been a pleasant day for me. I just got done with my exams at 3pm. So, it’s time to celebrate the end of another semester!!! I also checked my final grade for software engineering and I am not flunking! I managed a B on it.. I guess that is the best I could have hoped for, considering the fact that my first exam had ruined my percentage to the point that there was no chance of getting an A.

So yeah, the semester is over and it is time to hang out with some friends who’re still in town and with others who are leaving for good! My thoughts may be scattered through this blog, owing to the fact that I am very drowsy at the moment lol.

But, this blog is for the memory of people that I met this semester who are leaving this school for good. It has been a pleasure meeting most of them really. I find it a little disturbing that college life consists of having your friends graduate, or leave, or transfer and every semester you watch another friend go away… hoping that you will keep in touch, but yet uncertain of its possibility. If I ever happen to lose touch with any of them who are leaving, I hope they know that they made a difference in my life… no matter how long or short of a time I’ve known them.

So, I am not going to get emotional over this, and I want to wish them all a happy journey in life whether we see each other again or not. Also, I am happy for those of you who are taking on a new phase of your lives even though I shall miss you all like crazy!

Love & Luck to those of you leaving Columbia and hopefully we shall see each other again sometime during our journeys!

Fun & Frolic (LOL)

                                  

Well, I turned 20… as expected lol. So, 24th April this year was a great day. I spent by 20th birthday having fun and smiling.

It was a great 23rd night for me, because I got calls from all of my family all through the night. Even though I didn’t get much sleep, hearing their voices and the hopes and joy they have for a “baby” they held in their arms 20 years ago is precious enough for me to quit sleeping for days. I miss my uncles and aunts picking on me, I miss their jokes, their laughter and the way our topics of conversation have changed over the years. I miss them all sooo much. But, more than anything, I miss my immediate family.. the day just couldn’t be complete without hearing their voices clearly in awe of how their baby has grown into an adult so quickly.

The morning started off with me walking into chocolates and balloons which my roomies left outside my door… I have to say, it was touching and it made me smile. It’s weird that I may not ever see them after this semester but there still is a certain different sort of bonding with them… which is usually only with people you live with. So, this will stay with me as a sweet memory of both Mallory and Allison because they rock!

I missed my first class, which really isn’t anything special - but this time, I didn’t miss it because I was asleep, I missed it based on a conscious “awake” decision! Of course, after that I met some friends at Russell house and got my first birthday hugs!!! YaY! We had a short but memorable conversation between random quick phone calls from India.

Anyway, math class was kinda fun because we didn’t really study and were just chilling and having a good chat. After that, I went out to lunch and then we went to the riverside and had a long nice walk. It was special to me, because I had never been to the river before and it was different being away from the regular city noises. Erik, of course, made it very very special for me.

He is another one of those people I would never forget because he’s the one who made me cut veggies for the first time lol. He made the day very, very special and put a smile on my face for hours!!!

Late afternoon consisted of meeting some other friends and hanging out with them… listening to people sing happy birthday on the phone on all the wrong and right scales and all the ”different” tunes, oh and of course, replying to “facebook” birthday wishes since I am now a facebook addict. I had to do it in order to quit playing World of Warcraft. They say the one way to get over addiction is getting another one (even though I didn’t consider myself a WoW addict).

The part of the day that the title to this blog refers to was later in the evening. A bunch of us hung out and I made them watch one of my favourite Indian movies (Jab we met).. The Indian touch to the day made it 10 times better for me and it was a blast seeing my friends reactions to actors suddenly dancing away in the middle of the movie!  (The subtitle to the last song contained the words “fun”, “frolic” and “lemonade” - which I didn’t really notice till now lol)

Mary, the sweetheart she always is, baked an awesome yummy cake and Kelsey, Wendy and Isabelle’s company made my evening amazing! Oh, and somehow I ended up with a lot of Snickers which I LOVVEEEEEEEE. I’m a chocoholic and I guess it shows lol. I am glad I have them all as friends, because without them the day just wouldn’t be the same.

Well, my birthday celebrations are kind of spread out through the next week, since I will be chilling with some friends I didn’t get to see on 24th, tonight and a few times in the coming week.

But, no matter how everything turns out in life and where we all end up in the future, I will always look back on my 20th birthday with a smile - because all it holds for me is a lot of sweet memories around a lot of sweet people! Oh and you all better spend the rest of your lives on planet Earth, cuz as long as you’re on this planet, I’ll find a way to keep in touch with you all no matter what.

Thank you all for being my friends!

Bagheera (my lil puppy bro) has turned 4 on the 25th, and he celebrated both his and my birthday with my family back home. Love you Bagheera!!!!!!!! muah!

Down Day…

                                          

This post is really not worth reading, and I might as well have put a disclaimer on it because this could drag you down. My suggestion may be not to read it, but I need to get this out.. so I am going to post it. My apologies for this random pathetic post.

I’m going to be 20 years old tomorrow and I should be happy and partying, but instead I’m just watching a struggle get harder in life. I am seeing it all coming to an end and as much as I know it’s true, I can’t say it out loud because it hurts too much. I’m tired of just about everything right now. Howcome life can never be what you want it to be and why in the world am I even trying to make it what I want it to be? It’s not like any of it is going to last. It’s just going to come to an abrupt end suddently and then there’ll be nothing to do or say.

People see me as someone who’s happy in life, laughing at silly things, smiling at just about everything… but there are times the smiles fade and you realize its really over.. that there’s no hope left. I guess it’s hitting home bigtime. I’m gonna quit.. this isn’t really worth it.

And no, I’m not writing this blog to be “popular” like most bloggers, I just want to be remembered… and to me there’s a big difference in both… it’s like leaving a piece of you behind… no matter where you’re headed or what happens…

How to pick a digital camera

                            

We’re currently in an age where you walk into Radioshack or other electronic stores and you see about 20-30 digital cameras on display… Most poeple just look at what the resolution is and pick the camera up.

After a good long time of being fond of new digital cameras, one thing I can tell you is resolution is NOT all that matters. The pixels you see on the camera labels basically define was I referred to as resolution and pixels, in basic terminology, is just the number of dots that represent a single image. Now, of course, more the dots … clearer and more accurate the image.

What else matters? The zoom! We all know what zoom basically means, in a digital camera there are actually two kinds of zooms - optical zoom and digital zoom. The difference here is major. Sometimes, we try to pick up cameras with a very high digital zoom but we fail to realize, that after a certain point of zooming, the digital zoon really doesn’t matter… not unless you are planning to turn the picture into a 10 by 10 poster.

If I went out to buy a new camera, I would look at high resolution, a good digital zoom, but a better optical zoom. Optical zoom is basically the camera’s capacity to zoom in on an object. So, unless you are trying to enlarge your image into a wall sized poster, it seems like a better idea to get something with a high optical zoom and a medium to high digital zoom.

So my order of preference would be the following:

- high resolution (basically really high number of megapixels)

- high optical zoom (the capacity of a camera to zoom in on an object)

- medium to high digital zoom (a medium optical zoom is as good as a high optical zoom for regular photography, since the difference would really not be noticed unless the picture is being enlarged)

Just though I’d throw it out there because sometimes when I walk into a store and see people not knowing what exactly to get, it makes me want to walk them through this lol.

Bagheera’s story

                                                        

This is a really personal topic to me. So, here goes the story about how I got Bagheera (that’s my dog - my bro lol).

Picture a 24-25 year old guy changing the side of the road he’s walking on because he sees a little cute poodle coming his way and is too afraid to walk past it. That isn’t a very uncommon thing in India. Often times people are very afraid of innocent puppies and would prefer to not have them going for a walk at all!

Now, with that background, there comes a weird kid like me who loves dogs. I remember spending a bunch of my weekends literally crying for a dog. Finally, my parents and I came to a common ground and decided that I will get a cute little puppy of my own if I got a 90% plus in 10th grade board exams, which is really a big deal in India. To cut the story short, I was in Canada when I got my result and I was thrilled knowing that I now get a puppy! On 10th june, 2004, the day after my flight back from Canada landed, two people came to our place with a basket and the cutest little thing in it. Bagheera was about 6 weeks old when we got him, his coat shining and his tiny body sliding under everything in the house. He had already declared it his family and home when he pee’d on mom’s favorite oriental carpet 10 minutes after arriving.

After the initial struggles, mom realized that she couldn’t really live without “her” Bagheera. A lot of people in our family were scared of dogs, my cousins would come and make sure they were 10 feet away from him, even though they saw him being held in mom, dad and my arms like a little baby. His canines were so tiny, they could probably not hurt anything and to top it all off, he didn’t even bark for the longest time - so I couldn’t really see a reason for anyone to be scared of him.

The hardest time for me, was when he was about 3-4 months old and the vet said he wasn’t going to make it - they gave him 3 days and it broke my heart. Dad was not posted in Delhi then, but he came home every weekend… so either mom or I stayed up all night with him, trying to feed him some cookies because it was all he ate and giving him water with a spoon because he could hardly move. After 2 days of multiple trips to multiple doctors and good vet hospitals, and multiple “he won’t make it”s , mom took him to the best vet in all of Delhi. I still remember her calling me from there, and saying Bagheera was given a shot and he is moving and walking around. Only I know how my heart leaped with joy.. he came back and began recovering. We found out it really was just an infection, a rare but not uncurable that certain pure breeds may get. He healed very soon, and was on the way back to being his naughty self again - back to being our family’s happy camper.

Anyway, he is going to be 4 on April 25th, 2008 and today, he is a happy family member - adored by everyone who comes home because he is so agreeable and loving. Of course, some people still fear him when he goes up to them to be petted or to just sniff at them… but he is part of my family and he is loved just as much as everyone is, if not more. Mom clearly says she loves him more and it makes me happy to hear it. It gives me pure joy to see him, to play with him, to watch him sleep next to me… with his head on my pillow, or watch him take a short afternoon nap with mom in the winters all tucked up with her like a little baby.

Strangely enough, he treats me like a kid… he never wakes me up, and dislikes it when others do. He sleeps next to me, hugs me, becomes my pillow sometimes and checks on me just about every 10 minutes if I’m sleeping and  he’s up. My little brother, acts like an older bro… he gets mad if someone yells at me, he licks my tears if I cry, he stays up with me if I am up late studying or reading. He is my best friend and I love him to death… there is nothing like his unconditional love.

He is the life of the family and he brings soooo much happiness to all of us. He hardly listens, but even his misbehaving is so innocent that it makes everyone smile. He knows when one of us is hurting, or when one of us is sick. When mom got a flu, he didn’t let anyone even enter her room when she was resting… he knows when one of us is feeling down, and he knows exactly how to fix it. Getting Bagheera was the best thing that ever happened to me… and I love him with all my heart. I can’t wait to go back home and play with my little buddy… He’s my life.