Once upon a time....

:( :( .. 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

Sometimes I wonder if men and women really suit each other. Perhaps they should live next door and just visit now and then.

-- Katharine Hepburn

Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.

-- 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

To marry is to halve your rights and double your duties.

-- Arthur Schopenhauer

The course of true love never did run smooth.

-- William Shakespeare

We can do not great things - only small things with great love.

-- Mother Theresa

That is the best -- to laugh with someone because you think the same things are funny.

-- Gloria Vanderbilt

You can't buy love, but you can pay heavily for it.

-- Henny Youngman

I married beneath me. All women do.

-- Lady Nancy Astor, attributed

Also, would you date someone even if you knew that things were not going to work out?
I know several friends who go out with a crush despite of the fact that they would not be able to spend the rest of their life together (in case they really liked each other). Do you think that the joy of dating is worth the pain of break-up?????
(I am not judging anyone by right or wrong, I am simply testing a theory...)

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

Of late, I have been daydreaming about adventuring into the unknown woods and travelling to far-off lands. Maybe it sprouted from the discussions at work about the ironies of life. I really got down to instrospecting myself and my life when my carpooling buddy made the comment that, "When you are young, yo do not have any money to travel and when you have money, you are too old to be able to enjoy life. Money comes and goes, so we should enjoy life while we have the zest and the energy to travel."
So I tried to remember how little travelling I have done ever since I got to U.S. But then again, life got a little harder from the moment I flew into America, and touring around was simply out of question then. Although it seems like I sacrificed my recreational side in the face of a long lasting emergency situation, I had a good learning experience nonetheless.
And now that the waters haev become stiller, and my family has adjusted here better than before, I actually have a chance to go travelling. Organizing the trip to Niagara Falls last summer was one big triumph when it comes to my travelling portfolio. It was a fascinating road trip with my family and Megha's, and something that I will cherish forever. And now I want to do it again - only at a different place!! I do not know how feasible it is with a low bank balance and a long wishlist for other necessities, but I really really really want to break free of this routine and go to a marvelous destination. Rio de Janeiro or backpacking in Europe would be perfect, but Grand Canyon, Brooklyn Bridge, Wisconsin woods, or Chicago Botanic Gardens will work too!
Ideas, suggestions, info about dirt-cheap travelling packages and cash donations are more than welcome!

"My Karma ran over your Dogma" - Unknown

I am a very harsh critic when it comes to movies, and there are hardly any hindi films that I can count as my favourites. But when I saw this movie, it took me by surprise and I liked it so much that I watched it thrice in two weeks! Now that is a record, because I have never liked watching the same movie over again.



Director Shirish Kunder's debut film may not have done too well at the box-office, but it definetely impressed me. Shirish also happens to be choreographer Farah Khan's husband and was actually an engineer at Motorola before he plunged into writing screenplays and dialogues for Bollywood movies. If you are curious to read more about this man, click here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shirish_Kunder. His engineering career might explain his attention to details of The director has been very attentive about the careful about even the small things in the movies

Anyway, what caught my fancy in this movie was the subtle comedy, meticulously perfect character depictions, fashionably sober outfits, wonderful acting, picturesque backdrops, sparkling colors, catchy music score and a very reasonable storyline. Ofcourse Farah Khan's dances add on to the entertainment. Anu Malik's music is quite appealing and also more unique than his other albums. Sonu Nigam's vocals in the song 'Ajnabi Shehar' fascinated me beyond any expectations. And last but not the least, I loved the costumes of Preity, Akki and Sallubhai. I am looking into having similar skirts in my wardrobe for the upcoming spring season! =P

Just one word of caution before you go to see the movie, don't start the movie expecting it to be a mind-blowing film, because that will disappoint you. It is one of the rare feel-good movies of 2006 that can be watched with the entire family.

I have been wanting to write an entry since before Jan 14th, but somehow or the other haven't found the convenience and time to do that.

There are three topics in particular that I have been wishing to express about:
1. Jaan-e-Mann
2. The Work-scene
3. My 21st Birthday Extravaganza

I will get to writing it sometime this week, and post some good pics that I took. Got to go now.

checking off the things that I did like I had announced in my previous post:


1. finish building my website in Dreamweaver - have some ideas, but haven't found the time to implement them not yet started

2. record a tune for LotusBeat News Segment. might ditch doing this. have another idea in ma' head to replace LB news segment

3. Finish reading 'Reading Lolita in Tehran'. this will be my non-fiction books in years. got the book from the library, but dont feel like reading it. Instead, read a biography of Bill Gates, and the 'Dreamweaver for Dummies' :-P

4. volunteering at a local hospital DONE!

5. giving myself a refresher course in physiology and multivariable calculus. Does reading System Physioloogy text count?

6. joining a gym and working out every single day. Playing outdoor sports will be difficult in winter :( I did join the gym, but haven't been working out every day...

7. catching up on lost sleep, watching bunch of movies and recording lots of song CDs DONE!

8. helping out with more household chores, and spending more time with the family! DONE!

checking back on this list does make me feel a little embarrased now as I have, in reality, done fewer things than I thought... Baloney again!