Once upon a time....

I want to get back to writing, but words don't come to mind. I think I am pre-occupied with finals and projects right now. I can't believe that this quarter is going to end in a couple of weeks!! And with nice warm weather and BBQ season around, who would feel like sitting in the room blogging? :D

We are playing this game in the dorm called 'Assasins'. It is an awful lot of fun!!

here is what each player gets:

"You have a new assignment. Your task, should you choose to accept, is to find
and eliminate the target detailed below. This target should be considered extremely
dangerous and armed with all manner of weaponry (such as clean socks and plastic spoons)
and cunning. They are also working on an operation for a rival- should you complete your
mission, you must take on their mission and complete it so as not to arouse suspicion. Be aware-
you may not be safe. Should you die during this operation, please send a message back to base.
Once you have read this information, destroy it as appropriate to keep it confidential."

Also, the rules of the game require that the assassination cannot be seen by anyone else, so technically, you could use your friends as bodygaurds. But, I got killed on a second day by my predator in midst of our hustling cafeteria, where I had least expected to be assassinated without being seen. I also escorted one of the girls on my floor to her room to prevent her assassination, but found out later that she had not survived too long after I left her.

Here are some descriptions of the murder if you have the time to read them. They are extremely hilarious for me anyways :-P... (The name of my dorm is Sargent)

#1.
I am writing to report to you the untimely, tragic assassination of the late Jennifer Berman,
resident of Sargent Hall, Room 329. Jennifer was brutally murdered in a freak laundry drive-
by, however the identity of her assassin remains highly classified information at this time.
Though there were no witnesses to this tragic event, Jennifer's spirit has come back to report
the details of her passing. As Jennifer innocently walked down to the laundry room in
Sargent Hall to gather her freshly dried laundry, she thought to herself how greatful she was
that it was Friday, and how excited she was to find out who her target would be for the dorm-
sponsered game of assasins. Jennifer entered the laundry room humming to herself, thinking
what a great place this would be to catch her target. She turned to begin removing her
laundry from the machine, when a familiar voice called out her name. Jennifer leaped into
the air, as she had thought herself to be the only entity in the room. However, when she
caught her breath again, she turned to see a familiar face, and unsuspectedly began to make
friendly conversation. Jennifer continued to remove her laundry, until BAM!!!! she turned
once again to find herself face to face with her killer. She screamed for help, but it was all in
vain. The clean sock came like a bullet to her chest before she had the chance to save
herself. As she stood in utter shock, her assasin delivered the finals words that Jennifer was
to hear: "You are two hours late." It seems that her killer had stalked her doing laundry
earlier in the day, and had waited two hours at the crime scene for Jennifer to retrieve her
dry clothes. This tragic event serves as a lesson to all residents and guest residents of
Sargent Hall. Your dorm has been transformed from the safe haven that you once called
home to a battlefield, with assasins lurking every corner. Just remember...In the laundry
room, no one can hear you scream.....


#2. Flashing News::

Shreya Trivedi was found assasinated in Sargent dining hall this evening before having her last dinner. She was merrily picking up some fruits when she heard a friendly voice greet her and touch her back. As she turned around and smiled at her friend, he revealed the deadly sock that had touched and killed her. Shreya desperately looked around to find a witness who had seen the killer with his rolled-up sock, but in vain. It was a pity to be terminated in a crowded place like the dining hall, and she lived just long enough to pass on the name of her target.

This breaking news has been brought to you by S.S.A. (Sargent Secret Agents) to alert residents that they will be killed if they don't watch their backs.

P.S. The spirit of Shreya Trivedi will haunt the dorm and not be at peace until she gets justice. Keep the search on!!


#3.
S.S.A (Sargent Secret Agents) has breaking news!

It has come to their attention that the President of Sargent was assassinated on Friday evening.
The autopsy revealed he was stabbed in the abdomen with a very large knife, possibly a butcher
knife. The killer is still at large, though intel suggests he was kept alive long enough to reveal
his next target. President Taylor was 18 years and 17 days old. He will be missed. Stay vigilant.

#4.

I realized that I never got back to the story from the weekend when I got to fly thanks to my brother's interest in aviation. So here it is, with a few interesting anecdotes and pictures. We made a six-hour journey to get to SIU in Carbondale, close to the southern border of Illinois. And guess how brilliant I acted that weekend? First of all, I was supposed to leave for home Friday afternoon after my classes, so that we could all drive up together for this career fair on Saturday. But instead, I got done with classes, and waited, and procastinated, and procrastinated, until I finally got yelled at 11 p.m. to drive back home immediately. I finally left my dorm at midnight, and made it home at 2 a.m., just in time to start the arduous roadtrip to Carbondale. I ended up going without sleep for over 24 hours that day, my second all-nighter in this lifetime. Phew!!... :-P

So we finally made it to our destination at 8:30 a.m., and got my brother registered for flying with the university pilots. I joked about flying with my brother, and they seriously signed me up for the ride too! So leaving out all the minor interesting stories, we basically flew in a glider (seen in the pics below) at over 2300 ft!! And I clicked pics of the bird's eye view while my brother handled the controls as per the pilot's instructions. But it wasn't mind-blowing until the pilot started playing zero-gravity tricks! He dived the glider nose down in a free-fall condition, so that all of us (including the papers on my lap) inside where being pushed away from the earth with equal force, just as Newton's third law of motion would have predicted. But boy, oh boy, that was some scary adventure. For a second, I was afraid that my heart was going to fly off into the space haha....


And once the two-three rounds of zero-gravity were over, I began to feel air-sick. I was glad that it was time to land and get back on the comfortable earth. Soon after landing, my brother and parents went on for a campus tour while I pulled out my books and started solving exercises with a weary head. My family returned after three hours of touring, and decided to head back after having some lunch. It was now time for the dreadfully long reverse road-trip, but we switched drivers and navigators every two hours, and even my brother was permitted to drive on his driver's permit. The confidence of being able to land a glider successfully and weary family members who could not hold up the argument worked to his advantage of taking over the driver's seat.

It was 7 p.m. when our exhausted family finally reached home. We were all glad for a productive day, good family time in the car, and more than anything, coming back to the comfort of home.

OMG! My friends have been so ecstatic ever since they found out that this British Bhangra group (RDB) is performing at the university! I have never been to a concert or a live (famous) band performance before, so this will be exciting, I hope.

I wonder if I will be able to talk to them in person for the radio thing, because then the whole of Chicago can listen to them! :)

"Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes.That way, when you criticize them, you're a mile away and you have their shoes."

Will be back to blogging after Wednesday... :)

I am so brain-dead right now! Have been working on this C++ code for more than 7 hours now. It is the de-bugging that is getting annoying. Small mistakes in the code that I cannot find argghhh... I thought about starting from scratch, but even that seemed like too much work *sigh*

Anyways, I am already late on this assignment, and can hand it in for 10% penalty by tomorrow evening. Also need to get up early tomorrow to study for the physics quiz in the morning and lab in the evening. Have two more exams coming up on Wednesday of next week! And also have a big homework due then hah!

I wish I were more efficient at acads. :-(

:( :( .. I got done with all my midterms today. And am horrified at my performance in all of them. I literally feel like the dumbest person on campus!! So ashamed of myself that I do not even want to disclose my marks. Life just sucks currently uhhh...

I do not understand what is wrong with me? For example, yesterday, I slept for 10 hours last night, even though I had slept enough the day before!! Unacceptable! Especially when I needed more time to prepare for the exam today. But I took relief in the fact that the midterm grade could be dropped if I did better in the final, and so ended up weaving hopes to do excellent in the final. Why am I so irresponsible???? what should I do to improve? Is it just not my cup of tea; should I just give up? (hopefully, no)


i don't know what else to say. I so don't know what to do with myself. Period.

Thanks for your comments, you guys... it makes blogging a much more joyful experience when you know that others like to read and respond to your entries...

Anyways, I just logged in to say that I will not be blog again until the weekend, just because there is a lot going on. I have a quiz tomorrow morning, a lab due tomorrow night, and two exams on friday morning, none of which I am well-prepared for. :-P

The entire day Saturday is booked for my brother's career fair trip to fly with a pilot at Southern IL University. Sunday I will have to drive back before noon for the radio show (yes, it will actually happen this time :D) and then spend the rest of the afternoon cramming Greek and latin words for a midterm on Monday. Also need to worry about the homework due on Tuesday.

Time flies!! And I might need to too.... :-s

If I were a girl, I'd despair. The supply of good women far exceeds that of the men who deserve them.

-- Robert Graves

-- Katharine Hepburn

-- H. L. Mencken

An ideal wife is one who remains faithful to you but tries to be just as charming as if she weren't.

-- Sacha Guitry

-- Arthur Schopenhauer

The course of true love never did run smooth.

-- William Shakespeare

-- Mother Theresa

-- Gloria Vanderbilt

-- Henny Youngman

I married beneath me. All women do.

-- Lady Nancy Astor, attributed

I am very excited about living in the dorm next year. My roommate and I just came back after picking one of the biggest rooms on our floor. What is more is that we have two big windows facing the east side, which give us a beautiful panorama of lake Michigan (which is more like a sea than a lake!!).
How lovely will it be to be awakened by the first rays of the sun every morning! Or to stand by the window and sip hot chocolate on a breezy evening after a heavy day of classes?

This is probably what they call SWEET Life! :)

I have:
3 homeworks, 1 lab, 1 quiz and 3 midterms over the next week. And I really need to do well in all my classes since this is my senior year. God help me! :-s

Me and my roommate have this habit of sleep-talking, only hers is worse than mine. She will even wake up from bed at random hours of the night (3 am, 4:30 am on several occasions) and start getting ready before she looks at the watch and realizes that she should be sleeping for the other half of the night.

She is actually muttering the words, "Well, thats all I have for now" in a stern tone right now. She is fast asleep and only her sub-conscious brain knows why she sounds so tense. I don't want to sound mean, but she scares me sometimes :-P...

My professor for visual science class, a jovial British man who recently lost his wife to cancer, asked us if one of us would like to write a wikipedia article about vision, because a lot of the material covered in class is based on latest research, and there does not exist an appropriate textbook for it in the market.

Seems like the idea struck a chord in me. I was quite intrigued at the thought of being an author for an article which would be read and searched by millions of students and curious learners. I also know that it will not be too difficult to be approved as the author as I will probably be one of the two people considering writing this thing out of a class of ten. I have always wanted to write for our engineering magazine, but never found the time and motivation to churn out any 'sample' articles. I would have all these ideas for the articles, but unfortunately, they never materialized on paper.

However, I have already set my mind on writing this article. I know that it is going to be time-consuming, but it will just as well enhance my resume, and maybe buy me a good recommendation letter from this prof. Moreover, I am fascinated by the material covered in class and was actually contemplating joining him in his research. But first of all, I need to brush up on the basics, research some sources of information touched upon in class, and find out what kind of information needs to go into the article.

Have any of you ever authored or editted a wikipedia article? Would you be willing to read and give me feedback on my article if I ever got around to writing it? I have not written essays or papers in a long time now, and I am highly skeptical of my writing skills at the moment. :-P

Guess what I have been wasting time on tonight? coding an html web-page. :'(

http://in.geocities.com/trivedi_shreya

In case you were planning to listen, the show has been delayed by 45 mins because of sports.. :-|

I just had a brilliant idea in this genius head of mine. Nothing academia related though, so don't stop reading! :D

Alright, so I am going to be RJing for our desi radio show this Sunday from 3-5 pm Chicago time. In the first hour, my colleague and I will be playing and talking about Hindi-Urdu pop songs, and the second hour will be playing songs requested by listeners. My friend came up with the idea of pulling a trick on my colleague, by calling in the studio and telling him how she loved his voice and would like to meet him for a date. So, I was thinking that it wouldn't harm if you all called in as well and said something similar to him!

For example, you could say that you found his info from shaadi.com and found him interesting. Honestly speaking, he is a nice guy who is still single, so it will be hilarious to find him sweating with so many people calling him. Shalin, you should call in too, and say you are interested in him lol... that would be super-funny :D...

You could also call in the studio at 847-866-9687 during our show and dedicate romantic songs for him lol... Any other suggestions to make this a fun show are also welcome! :)

Oh, and if you are not in the Chicago area, then you can hear our show streaming live at www.wnur.org.....

And last update for the day is that I am going to choreograph that dance, and also be in it with other Malaysian girls... :-P Youtube will indeed be very helpful in this regard, just like RedSoulcurry suggested.

In the meanwhile, if you admire college shows, then here is the video of the skit that we did for SASA show 2005. See if you can guess where I am... You will only find me in the dances, as there wasn't much role for girls in it anyways. We were showered with compliments after the show, but this video leaves out tiny parts of the skit, unfortunately. :(

Today was truly notorious. For starters, I overslept by an hour, which translated into not getting any reading done before my classes. Even after getting up, I did not feel very energetic, and I realized as I was walking that my muscles had gone sore from playing tennis yesterday! Baloney again! :-P

So I had just absorbed these two disappointments in the morning, when a third one appeared in my email. It was from the girl who was selling me the textbook at a really low rate, but now she had sold it to someone who had offered her twice as much! She was apologetic in her email, but it wasn't going to help me, especially since a text is very much needed for this class, and I fought with this seller on Amazon.com to cancel the order and not send me the book. He agreed to cancel the order, but has not yet given me a refund. So I cannot purchase the text until he officially gives me a refund!!! Also, just two days back, I realized that I had lost my $85 programming textbook, and could not find it anywhere. So that was even more money sent down the drain! :'(

Later this morning, as I was thinking about money miseries, I discovered that my tuition was past due and the university had not received any payment from my bank. On the other hand, when I checked my bank account, it showed that the tuition has been debited since last week. Talk about something getting on your nerves.....GEEZ!


And since we are on the subject of mishaps and misfortunes, how would you like it if God decided to add a little salt and pepper to your destiny? Well, I did ponder if that was really the case today when I stepped out to go to classes, and was horrified to see snow flurries and chill winds. I mean, it was summery and hot since last two weeks, and where did this drastic weather change come from all of a sudden? Two words: No fair...

Further on, it looks like I will have to ditch swimming and going to the gym in lieu of studying for the quiz and lab tomorrow.


Despite of it all, I can only say the following to end this dreadfully negative narrative:

"Har ghadi badal rahi hai roop zindagi;
Chhav hain kabhi, kabhi hai dhoop zindagi;
Har pal yahan jee bhar jiyo;
Jo hai samah, Kal ho na ho...." :)

I start smiling just thinking about the events of this weekend. It was in complete contrast with my Thursday mood, and more exciting than any of the weekends I have had in a loooong time.

So friday night, my two girl-friends and I went to this club in downtown Chicago called Zentra. They were playing hindi and English music downstairs and Hip-hop upstairs, and we also got in for free with RSVP! :) .. We also met up with three other mutual friends (2 indian girls and a gay guy)who had had alcohol before coming to the club that night. Anyways, so we had mainly gone because this was supposed to be a party with college crowd from UIC and DePaul universities and because they were spinning Hindi music. The music was pretty good as long as the desi DJ was handling the controls, and there was adequate space for us to dance on the floor without bumping into other people.

But it wasn't all happy-go-lucky night; there was a slight twist to the story. I was kind of afraid of running into this problem with just us three girls and it actually happened. Some of the stupid guys (who were obviously there for reasons other than dancing) tried to join our group and come close to us. Plus, there was especially this one guy (looked in his upper 20s - I am guessing he was a grad student) who was trying to talk to me the whole time we were there. This is what upset me somewhat, and spoiled my excitement for dancing. Anyways, my mutual friends were thankfully very protective and shoved him away; they even had to get a bouncer to ask him to leave the club as he was persistently disturbing us. He pleaded to the bouncers, and they allowed him to stay in the club, but he had to move away from us.

Oh, and guess what? Around the same time as this, the bouncers threw out one of our mutual friends (the gay guy) because he was totally drunk. I guess he was more drunk than those other two girls. As for my tthose two girls, I was pretty disturbed when I saw them grinding and making out. My other two friends couldn't stop laughing at my expressionless face as I was trying to hide my disgust for such individuals in the club. I guess I am way too conservative to understand what pleasure those girls would derive from acting the way they did. This sort of indulgence is one of the big reasons why I dislike going to clubs around here, but then again, I don't always have the time and convenience to go to these places either.

So we finally came out around 2 am when the music transitioned from Hindi to House, and were waiting outside for the guy to bring our car from valet when two drunk friends walked up to us. One asked for the time, which Shradha told him, and then after he had left, the other friend walked upto her and put his arm around Shradha and started talking trash to her. At this point, I was totally mad at his behavior (and guys in general for being such jerks), and asked him to move away. I gave him the look of death and asked him to get out of there. It worked, and he left feeling insulted!

And then, we were still not ready to call it a night, so we went to IHOP to get Hot Chocolate and Cheese-sticks. It was 4 am by the time I finally went to sleep, thinking what all we were going to have to do in order to be ready for the Saturday party.

Alright, so I can't write too much more now. But the Saturday night party was even more fun with games (Catchphrase, Dumbsheras/Sharads, Taboo, Antakshri etc), Indian food + yummy cake and music. It was Shreya B's 21st birthday party, and it was quite different than traditional 21st parties. I really have to leave now, and I might finish bragging about this weekend some other time. Till then, have a gnight! :)

You know how there are some days when you just want to be left alone? When you have the desire to run away from the civilization and people and go into hiding where no one can find you?

If you do, then you can probably relate to my mood today. Luckily, my roommate has been out since 4 pm today, and won't be coming back till 11 pm from her ROTC and baby-sitting job. But I am bored of my room, and so will walk to the corners of the library and find myself a quite place to study. It has hardly been the fourth day since school started, and there is a pile of assignments and reading to do already. (Well, I am equally to blame for wasting time watching a movie, taking a long lunch break with Shreya B, and napping for an hour)

I wonder if I feel so unsocial because of the pressure to finish my work, or because of the confusion created my observations about some random friends, or due to a combination of both!

ANyways, enough spilling of thoughts on the web.... My books are calling...

Wow! I am so glad to be back in school! I wanted to be done with co-oping and commuting for this term, and really needed a change. And since I was living at home while I was working, I did not get to see my friends much. I guess I missed college life and friends and school-activities.

So, just to brief my fellow blog-readers, and astray web-surfers, about my plans for this quarter:
A. I am taking 5 classes - one is independent study, the other two are EE classes, one BME class and Physics
B. I plan to work out more often - started with a jog around the lakefill today! :)
C. (Tentative) helping choreograph indian dance
D. Radio-jockeying
E. Not falling behind in classes, not sleeping in classes, Physics GSW, taking a yoga class maybe
F. More be-friending and more networking..
G. Staying connected with parents on a day-to-day basis
H. Staying connected with cousins on a weekly basis

And last but not the least, hanging out with friends. I have met all my close friends today and yesterday, and they were so sincerely excited to see me back on campus! While thinking about it today, I was relieved to find that I have finally got the friend circle that I was longing for when I initially came to Northwestern, and which did not quite exist until last year. Having the biggest room on the floor was nice, but sharing a slightly smaller room with an understanding roommate is even nicer!


Saying of the day - . "All we want is money, all we need is love" Tagline from the movie Apna Sapna Money Money