A) Why can’t I drag and drop the stuff to shuffle my playlist in YouTube’s QuickList?
I am no technowhiz but with all that AJAX stuff out there, it should not be that difficult.
B) And I am loving WordPress 2.5.1! Very nice and clean interface (on the inside). Its a party in here once you log in. However, as always I am still facing some technical problems with the blog.
C) Twitter has been partially useful to me in the past and have been annoying to me sometimes but yesterday I realized the power and importance of easy access it provides to your social community. {More later, (maybe)} All I can say is that yesterday I was thankful to be on Twitter and more than that being a part of my wonderful school.
My expenditure on light bulbs far exceeds grocery and rent included.
Here is why.
Rough but accurate timeline of bulbs that (lived &) died in my room
Bulb#1 – when a friend visited. I was moving stuff around the room and knocked the lamp over. The bulb could not withhold the fall and crash
Bulb#2 – when I switched the lamp off and on really fast really early one morning
Bulb#3 – early evening, I came back from classes, switch on the bulb, decide to take a nap, switch it off, that was the end of it
Bulb#4 – suddenly bulb fuses
Bulb#5 – I was living temporarily somewhere for a couple of months, 3 weeks before I left for home, the light bulb fused
Bulb#6 – another bulb went kaput in the above mentioned house 2 days before I left it
Bulb#7 – I have a pretty paper lantern inside my office, poor thing is the only source of life and warmth in otherwise cold, scary but cool! office. The bulb fused one evening
Bulb#8 – I swear there was a 5 second delay between switch off and on, RIP again bedroom light
Aargh! My two semester capstone project… Where should I store it—> Fall 2007 folder or Spring 2008 folder or should I be able to somehow magically tag them.
Tagging tends to be disorganized, and somehow tags like Fall 2007 and Fall 07 get created. No; tagging will be too much work, besides it cant be done (right now).
So, do I break up my capstone in two different places. I am not sure how I think about it, as one long piece of work, or this is where I got till Fall and here I begin in Spring. Well, I did have deliverable which concluded my work in Fall. So, I can break it into two. But what about Literature and Research, that is certainly not possible to break in two folders. Additionally, I will be hopping up and down directory structure to find certain something. Document Organization and Management always seem to take a toll on me, and generally raises its head in Spring Sessions (though the numbers are small to support this assumption) as does extreme lethargy and want-to-but-can’t-care attitude. Maybe the snow and rain is to be blamed.
A particular set of my friends often indulge in the phenomenon of chain mails. Chain mails, where people Reply to All (the sender and receivers) and carry out a full conservation. These chain mails are between a set of friends and often full of inside jokes, lots of leg pulling, the general conversation of friends (not the obnoxious, ultra foolish kind which sometimes happen at universities).
So, in one of the chain mails with my friends which I am recently embroiled into is all about one oneupmanship in mastery of Hebrew. Two of my friends are arguing over the use of certain (and very basic) Hebrew words, and their usage. A lot of accusing each other to be using French and calling it Hebrew is also going on. So, ze ( ) thing is, the two of them are now trying to apprise each other of the pronunciation of the said words. And Hindi is being employed to clear out the dark pronunciation cloud.
All this happening over Gmail, and my sponsored links are in … Hindi. For all the fist fighting going on, Hebrew links would have been more informative, really.
Plain simple life is what I lead.
The plainness and simplicity of it does not mean, it is non-hectic or smooth in any way. In fact, it is more hectic than various calendars or schedulers or my own mind can contain.
Plain simplicity however means that I am generally out-of-topics to talk about and I marvel at the people who can speak non stop. Of course, I can discuss school work, but one of my previous lives have taught me enough not to do that and in fact stops me from doing that.
And, when I am made to confront and undergo certain situations, the first and the most nagging thought that pushes its way through my mind is, “But this happens only to other people or people on TV”. And I am neither. And such moments are thick. Every second passes really s l o w l y, in fact refuses to.
To recap, I was doing my laundry tonight. And, I generally do laundry in nights. And generally, I choreograph these nights to be the nights when lots of submissions are due. So, I pop in the clothes into washer and dryer really late and I have to stay up to retrieve them and hence in bargain, I study, rather than giving in and sleep. I can’t say for sure at all, but lets delve into some maths, really elementary. I have spent around 15 months in this country. So roughly, lets say, around 30 or so laundry nights. And in none of these 30 times, did my load of may-leak-colors and require-cold-water and have dark hues ever accounted for more than a half or even a third of the washer capacity. I always feel bad when I stuff this load into the washer. Not only it is a a waste of my $2.5 (the money which would have otherwise funded my coffee, in that coffee shop in that building where without fail, I always get the coffee I did not want or request and is expensive, the few times the original request has been repeated, the money was politely refunded after lot of fumbling through with the bill/cash machine which always breaks down, delaying me for my meeting. This happens with such a regularity, that I no longer care as long as my cup has some caffeine in it), but also water and electricity wastage. The washer runs for a full load wasting too much water and energy. And on every laundry night, I have done my bit to destroy the environment a little more.
Of course, it irritates me and so much so that in my last shopping binge, I actually bought clothes which would go towards this load. Well, I think it was a perfect shopping criteria. To say it made me happy to see a full load of may-leak-colors and require-cold-water and have dark hues today for the first time in my life, would be an understatement. In fact, I did a victory dance. Of course, no one else washes clothes in vampire hours. “Full value for money”, I thought to myself, water chugging down into the bin did not make me feel guilty. Till, a friend of mine complained that I promised to call him yesterday and did not keep my promise. Uh-Oh, some thought bubble bursted. And, I woke up my roommate who had not slept entire day yesterday (I think I am a bad influence on her), grabbed her very cool iPhone, and sprinted down the stairs, two at a time.
And there, it was. Moment stopped, I am neither person on TV or the other person. This can’t be possibly happening. A very confused me with a totally confused phone motionless for five minutes. The phone does not work. :’( Room heater was employed, till my throat could not be any more dehumidified. Now dismantled phone lies near the laptop heat vent. Maybe, I should throw it in the dryers in which the whites are tumbling right now.
My hand, very accustomed to phone is feeling the loss already. What good can being phoneless bring and I can’t buy a phone till I have mulled for hours on end, the very hours that I don’t have? I am also expecting an important call on Monday, something regarding the trouble I got into because of my phone. This, anyways, was not the solution I was looking for.
Aarghness happening, I feel worse now. What an irony. And I am not even one of those people.
I have been too quiet lately, but then everybody has been. I have been hardly getting blog feed updates these days. And since the time I started using this Automatic update/RSS/Feed thing, I have forgotten all the URLs. I don’t remember any except for a few (<5) which belong to friends who belong to my world for a lot of years now. But, I like to remember my websites, and their URLs. At least, the one which I read almost daily.
Somehow, I can’t account for my time. My bills remain unpaid, last dates fast approaching, important telephone conversations unconversed, house dirty(much clean now, yesterday took care of it), too many things taken uncare of. But, in this period many books have been read. Millions of time units have passed since I read my last book, it was about time. Feverishly, passionately, devotedly, very very single mindedly. Almost with the same dedication that was reserved for movies sometime back.
Still June can’t be called all that. This month of June is labeled as “intaking as much of Denver, Rockies and nearby as I could”.
Too many tales it has, and an equal volume of photos. However, my duty of uploading the photos to Facebook has been fulfilled, had I not been cameraless, Flickr would have been another added expected duty.
There have been stories of witches, and natural soda springs, of $365/- fines to sudden recollection of listening to “Shadows and Tall trees” very late at night a year back.
That was that, I was even able to see fireworks on 4th of July. Beautiful and spectacular they were. Little burst of lights, in all colors, high up in the sky, growing away from each other, burning a portion of sky with themselves, as growing blobs, as bursting globes and as big bang.
Life has been on that lines. The latest development being, I ate salad as part of dinner, not some sidey dish, but as main side dish, and that water is no longer for me now, meals come with beverages and those beverages have ice cubes. These three – salad, beverage, ice – may hardly signify anything worthy but in reality such is not the case.
“Turning local” is what I would call it, I hope feverishly, passionately, devotedly, very very single mindedly (for now), next on the list is not that faux American accent, where “h”’s are vomited with the competitive spirit of some Spit competition. Ewww!
June 2, 2007 at 7:16 pm · Filed under Happened, Is
I am surprised by the amount of daily domestic work I end up doing. I am living all by myself and very diligently attending to the household chores. Alright, alright every other day. But there is surprising amount of cooking, cleaning, scrubbing, tidying up to be done every day (or every other day). Even if I scale up the effort to what it was when I was living with two other people, it just is not proportional. Frankly, if it had been India, I would have hired a bai/mai (household help) till now but such is life. I have no clue how a person of humble habits and means such as me can generate so much amount of work.
Besides that, I have sort of settled in this house. To begin with, it was tough, there was just no one around, and I hardly got to speak anything the entire day. My friends Neha, Kavi, Harshal took upon themselves to retrieve me from the non communication shell I was being drawn into. Joint efforts have ensured that I get to talk a lot, almost talk-a-ton types and lately, the distraction of internet and daily supply of movies has made life much more hectic, and enjoyable. As far as daily supply of movies is concerned, there is one or one and a half which are going down my system. All this watching movie business has thrown a lot of situations where a word in a particular language would mean something totally different in other language and these situations have been hilariously funny. Such is also mingling of cultures and languages, it can only get very interesting. About talk-a-ton, I have been finally able to achieve my year long goal of getting those rollover minutes utilized which I do not know why gives me a happy kick inside. I feel like monthly bills of $45 are finally getting justified.
With a friend just arriving in this town, there is suddenly much more to look forward to. And then there would be two more friends, who would be here for a short trip, one of whom tried to strangulate me twice in past, the other one tried very hard to steal my dearest cap. My social diary has taken such a sudden turn [even if I get away without my funeral and with my cap], that I have decided to take a big step, suspend my movie subscription. And that would mean a lot to Kavi, because all her conversations begin by her asking me “Which one today?” which totally signifies this month of May for me.
May has presented to me a range of emotions and of all contrasts, I had strangers becoming my friends, I made one more place my home even though I have hardly got to be home at all this month, happy and disappointing moments. This really has been a yin-yang month. If I was effected, time ensured that I taste a totally opposite feeling too. Very nicely balanced.
The days keep getting more and more beautiful.
The warmth and cool breeze is something to experience after all that snow and cold (that can melt and vaporize your face away – something one would expect the heat to do it but extreme cold can also achieve)
So, the nice day bearing 80F stamp all over it makes it irresistible to be indoors. I duly and obediently took a stroll with a book; I am currently reading, in hand. Now those, who have spent a lot of time with me know I rarely ever leave house without keys/mobile/wallet. And the beauty and happiness all around me inspires me … to shop. I immediately follow my instincts which lead me to Barnes and Nobles. From there, I go off to Borders and finally buy something.
And all this while was not spent only enjoying but also apologizing to Emily Bronte, E.M. Forster and various others authors I have read ( but could not recollect :$ ). I love you and I loved your work, I really did, but pardon me when I thought that you overstretched it while mentioning how winters would make an invalid out of a man. Someone in the family would become sick with undiagnosable, someone would be “white as sheet” and then spring would break and picnic baskets would magically get prepared and small clearing would be found in woods and sheets be spread and so would be the food. The handkerchiefs would drop strategically and so on, and the “white a sheet” person would get the color back and that it would be great joyous family occasion.
I loved all that stuff, don’t get started on the how above written is terrible mish mash but I just could not understand how month of March could be just sooo heaven sent.
I understand now and I apologize.
Some days back someone just mentioned that one of his Turkish (?, not sure now) friend just could not eat cinnamon rolls here or any cookie or dessert which had a hint of cinnamon. In fact, it drove her crazy. Reason, in her culture cinnamon was used extensively for savory foods. And therefore cinnamon in desserts would make her go nuts. I experienced that when I ate a red bean (chili/kidney bean/rajmah/whatever) ice cream. It tastes ok, it is less creamy than an ice cream and yet not like those frozen candies. It tasted perfectly ok, it was an ice cream made of red beans and also had few beans sticking (hidden) inside it. Bonus! Everything was good, but I just could not eat it. I faced a mental block, I could not savor it at all, & it remained uneaten. On the other hand, I really liked the green tea ice cream (Mochis), no mental block there, not at all.
The One that I liked!
The One that I didn’t like!
The red bean ice cream reminded me of a particular incident from “the Magic Faraway tree” by Enid Blyton. This tree is gigantic and magical and it has a magical land on top of it hidden with clouds ( the clouds part is how I envision it). The characters ( Moonface, Tinks, and some children—> my poor poor memory) can climb upto this magic land (but have to be come down the tree before a certain time). Once they get into this land where they can get ice cream of any flavor they want, absolutely any and every flavor that is or is not, is available! One of them does not believe, orders a sardine ice cream and hey presto! gets it.
The sky outside, yesterday. A very pretty sight indeed! Even at midnight, it glowed with an evening glory. A very captivating dark hue of pink and blue and gray.
The snow outside, right now. With very very strange footmarks. The foot marks are eerie. They can’t be of a human. But they have to belong to a 2 legged creature, and judging by the step wise (at least 1.5 times bigger than my step size, this creature does seem frightening. Strangely the step size is smaller where they seem to start and gets bigger towards where the snow meets the cold unmarkable gravel of road.
Vending machine in Indy Airport, around mid of December.
I was left totally surprised when I saw it and I thought it was only Amer-I-gnorant me who was gasping, but it took the Americans by surprise too. Everyone was crowding around the machine and checking it out. Apple does know how to package stuff
Not only the idea of putting iPod and related accessories in a vending machine is thinking out of the box but putting this machine at the airport tops it. To facilitate the last minute Christmas gift shopping for parents/spouse when you flying to meet them!
) thing is, the two of them are now trying to apprise each other of the pronunciation of the said words. And Hindi is being employed to clear out the dark pronunciation cloud.
