April 30th, 2008 by galadriel

*Edited to format the post a little. Looks way too much like my Masters thesis.

Two tags and my crazy week has prevented me from doing them. But that week is finally over and I am free as a fiddle. (yeah, yeah, judge all you want, I’ll use whatever expression I want, this is MY blog. Booyah.)

Moving on, Pixie and Lavs tagged me and I shall finally do the honors. I hate not being the first one ot take it up, oh well, grad school.

• Last Movie You Saw In A Theater: Forgetting Sarah Marshall

• What Book Are You Reading: Right now, nothing, but there’s this Beatles biography that I want to start soon. Summer’s here, yayy!

• Favorite Board Game: Cranium

• Favorite Magazine: I don’t do magazines, it’s pointless trashy reading about stuff you either know already anyway or have no use for.

• Favorite Smells: Of spring, of flowers blooming, of the wet earth after the first rain, of my Mom’s sambar..

• Favorite Sound: Hearing my Mom call me when she’s online, of music, of water

• Worst Feeling In The World: Insecurity

• First Thing You Think Of When You Wake Up? Ah, crap someone turn off the Godforsaken alarm!

• Favorite Fast Food Place: Nan-king Express, Ganesh Bhel in Pune

• Future Child’s Name: Haven’t thought about it, but I have always liked the name Sridhar. I don’t know any good girl names.

• Finish This Statement. “If I Had A Lot Of Money I’d…” go to India every 6 months.

• Do You Drive Fast? Never above the speed limit.

• Do You Sleep With A Stuffed Animal? Does a hug-pillow count?

• Storms-Cool Or Scary? Scary as hell.

• What Was Your First Car? My one and only, my precious, my love, my Chrysler Sebring.

• Favorite Drink: Coffee.

• Finish This Statement, “If I Had The Time I Would …..” learn to play an instrument, read all the books I want to, watch all the movies I want to, travel, blah blah blah.

• Do You Eat The Stems On Broccoli? Eurgh, broccoli!

• If You Could Dye Your Hair Any Color, What Would Be Your Choice? I’d like to go wild. Pink or purple or green, perhaps? But I’d like to have a sombre Burgundy as well.

• Name All The Different Cities/Towns You Have Lived In: Chennai, Bangalore, Pune, Highland Park.

• Favorite Sports To Watch: F-1

• One Nice Thing About The Person(s) Who Sent This To You: Pixie is one of those passionate I-will-say-something-if-I-don’t-like-it types. Quite a reflection of me. Lavs is very demure, very peaceful and very pregnant!

• What’s Under Your Bed? Well, I only got a proper bed last week. Until then, my bed was on the floor. Right now my bed is a box with blankets and sleeping bags stored underneath. Elaborate enough?

• Would You Like To Be Born As Yourself Again? Yes, pliss.

• Morning Person Or Night Owl? Night owl, always the prowler.

• Over Easy Or Sunny Side Up? I don’t eat eggs. They make me throw up. Now you tell me.

• Favorite Place To Relax: Swimming pool.

• Favorite Pie: I haven’t eaten too many, but I’d have to say blueberry. As you can probably tell, I have what we call the opposite of the sweet tooth.

• Favorite Ice Cream Flavor: Triple Banana Split with nuts sprinkled on top, the kind you get only in Thomas Sweet, Princeton.

You pass this tag to - Umm, everyone I know has already done it, but if Rayshma hasn’t then she’s gonna take it up.

March 29th, 2008 by galadriel

I AM: therefore I think.

I WANT: to love and be loved (in a very M&B way. ).

I HAVE: to clean every single unwashed vessel before I go to bed at night.

I WISH: for a magic carpet.

I HATE: *****

I FEAR: losing people I care for deeply.

I SEARCH: on google.

I WONDER: if things will ever be the way I want them to.

I REGRET: having quit learning Carnatic music.

I LOVE: raindrops, snow, sunlight, grass, cats…

I ALWAYS: try to look happy.

I AM NOT: beautiful, neither am I stupid.

I DANCE: when people can’t see me.

I SING: all the time.

I CRY: myself to sleep.

I WRITE: when rayshma threatens to kill me!

I WON: the biggest battle of my personal insecurity a few months ago.

I AM CONFUSED: Phd or job?

I NEED: to focus on ecology and not do random tags.

I SHOULD: fix my schedule to a more human one.

THE LAST THOUGHT I GO TO SLEEP WITH IS: the stupid alarm’s gonna ring at 7 again!!

March 10th, 2008 by galadriel

Lavs and Pixie tagged me with 8!

8 Things I am passionate about

• Research
• Music
• Books
• Movies
• Sambhar *edited to add*(more like it makes me moan in pleasure <wink>)
• Traveling
• Driving

8 Things I want to do before I die

• Fall hopelessly, madly, irrevocably, passionately in love
• Publish a book
• Be an emeritus professor in some high ranked university
• See the Himalayas/Alps
• Travel the world and/or cruise across the world ocean
• See the 7 wonders of the world (I haven’t even seen the Taj, can you believe it??)
• Learn music from U Srinivas
• Meet Ilayaraja/A R Rehman

8 Things I say often

• Bitch
• WTF
• Damn
• Nobody loves me
• I’m sorry
• You wish
• I love you (to my mom, geez… people, I tell you)
• Ouch

8 Books I’ve read recently

• The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
• The Lord of the Rings (still reading it)
• Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
• The Autobiography of a Yogi
• Computer Vision
• The Design and Analysis of Algorithms
• Optical Properties and Remote Sensing of Fresh Water and Estuaries
• Data Structures with C++

8 songs I could listen to over and over

• Yellow – Coldplay
• Clocks – Coldplay (actually all Coldplay songs)
• Comfortably Numb – Pink Floyd (actually most Pink Floyd songs)
• Sweet Child o’ mine – Guns n Roses (most of these too :P)
• Summer of ’69 – Bryan Adams (—do—)
• Eleanor Rigby and Ticket to Ride – The Beatles (…)
• Mari Mari Ninne – Yesudas, from the movie Sindhu Bhairavi
• Brahmam Okatey – Sudha Raghunathan

8 Things that attract me to my best friends

• Strength
• Intelligence
• Sense of Humor
• Personality
• Smile (theirs and their ability to make me)
• Common interests
• Similar goals and wants
• Similar shirt size

Now, I do not know 8 suckers who’d be willing to take this up, so it’s open to all!

February 26th, 2008 by galadriel

Alright, I slack from posting anything real, but there’s her and quite frankly, I have nightmares about her whacking the crap out of me if I don’t do my pending tag. So, I might actually be back with a Death-Tag, only, I’ll actually be dead!

I am supposed to be talking about a near-death experience. (Un)fortunately, I have nothing too dramatic to talk about. So I’m going to talk about the accident I was in last year.

It happened about June last year. My professor had assigned something to me at the last minute and I had to get to lab on a Sunday. Satish was being very nice to me and agreed to drop me off because of the crappy bus system on a Sunday during summer break. We started from home and we decided to connect the new iRiver FM transmitter that I had bought as a gift for him. I was playing around with it, trying to figure out the controls and trying to connect it to the MP3 player. We turned on Suydam St and before I knew what was happening, I felt this humongous crashing impact, I heard a “crack!” sound and I saw the glass shattering. I saw the airbag deploy, it was a beautiful pista-green color and the fumes coming from it were strangely smoky. I sat there, dazed, strapped to my seat. My brain was telling me to get out before the fumes killed me, but I felt unable to move.

Suddenly, it occurred to me that Satish might be injured too. I looked at him and he was getting out of the car, I saw blood in his mouth as he was speaking to me, trying to make sure I was ok. He pulled me out of the car and I started crying. I do not know why, all I knew was that my playing with the FM transmitter was somehow connected to the fact that he was left without a car. I looked at the impact, which was on the passenger side because of having crashed into a parked SUV. All I could think of were the innumerable times we had all ridden in his car, gone shopping, gone to Long Island to attend the A R Rehman show, the look on his face when he first bought the car, his disbelieving incredulity when I made him go to the temple and get a puja done… and now the look of utter despair on his face because I, stupid me gave him the FM transmitter which played a big role in him being distracted enough to lose control of the car.

I sat there, where - I do not know and cried into the arms of a wonderful African American lady, who comforted me and kept telling me how it wasn’t my fault and it felt even worse because I knew, really, it was all my fault. It was then that I got a full look at the damage. And that was the moment when my entire life passed before my eyes, I knew that if I had survived a crash like that, God must like me a little. I said a silent prayer then and reinforced my belief in a supreme being in control of things.

The ambulance was here, the sound was giving me a pounding headache. People had gathered around and I saw cops. The paramedics got out of the ambulance and started checking me up. It was then that I realized that I was injured. I felt a burning sensation, all over my hands and face. My cheekbone was hurt and paining. My right knee had hit the glove compartment and had swollen to an enormous size. One of the paramedics strapped an extremely uncomfortable cast around my neck to prevent any neck injury. I was then wheeled into the ambulance and for the very first time in my life I traveled in a position that wasn’t upright.

I will not go into any recounts of my lying-in-the-hospital-thinking-about-the-error-of-my-ways stories, but it is suffice to say that I was made to go through a bunch of tests and pronounced shaken up but A-ok. I was given very strong painkillers and sent home. At this juncture, I must mention that I am blessed with the best friends ever. Satish, Gayatree, Guru, Ze Bee, Sankar, Rohit, Teda, Pooja, Harsh.. were all at the hospital and with me and that made such a big difference. Seeing Gayatree cry that day probably made me realize how much these people love me and how much I love them in turn. Even though Pallavi and Vikas weren’t at the hospital, just seeing them at home made it all so much easier.

I have never seen Satish cry, but I think he came as close to crying as he could that day. He really misses his car. I’m sorry.

February 21st, 2008 by galadriel

Haha, gotcha! It’s just a tag. From her. Long pending tag. She’s actually making plans to poison me when I see her!

1. Name Three Most Valuable Assets?
- Humor
- Intelligence
- Knowledge of your strengths and weaknesses

2. If you have the chance, what would you probably say to your beloved one?
You have no idea what you mean to me.

3. If you were to be stranded on a deserted island, who are the 3 blog buddies you would take with you?
- Rayshma: Well, not only do I think she’s wicked (a la me), she also wished to hear me sing. So if it comes to survival of the fittest on the deserted island, I believe I can easily murder the other three.
- Prashanth: Well, he needs to bring his Mom’s cookbook and I’m sure some of her talent is sure to have rubbed off on him. He cook, I clean, we all happy, life simple.
- UberT: Just because I can embarrass the crap out of him.

4. Where is the place that you want to go the most?
Tough call between French Polynesia, Bolivia and the Norwegian fjords..

5. If you can have 1 dream to come true, what would it be?
To have a job that I simply love doing, without ever having to get bored or disinterested.

6. Till now, what is the moment that you regret the most?
I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my life, but none of which I regret because they’ve made me learn a lot of things. The only thing that I do regret is having quit learning classical music.

7. What are you afraid to lose the most?
The drive to do good work. I’m rapidly losing it already.

8. What would you do if you found a briefcase full of money?
Depends on how much I need the money then.

9. If you meet someone that you love, would you confess to him/her?
No.

10. List out 3 good points of the person who tagged you…
Rayshma:
- great sense of humor
- smart
- very hospitable!

11. What are the requirements that you wish from your other half?
Hmmm… What can I say, I don’t think I can ever find someone who has EVERYTHING I ask for, but some of these would definitely attract me to him:
- Intelligence
- Sense of humor
- Bibliophilia
- Angliophilia
- Modesty
- His general demeanor has to be polite and gentlemanly.
- He has to be able to respect me for who I am.

12. Which type of person do you hate the most?
Liars, hypocrites, boorish, uncouth people, people who don’t read, people who can’t speak English, people who are insensitive and cannot appreciate the power of words/actions/gestures, people who have attitude problems, vain and conceited people, people who simply “don’t get it”, just.. people.

13. What is your ambition?
To be a professor someday.

14. What is the thing that will make you think someone is a bad person?
When someone simply refuses to see another’s point of view and continues to judge them based only on what they know and believe.

15. What is the one thing you would change about yourself?
I would like to be less impulsive and emotional.

16. Are you a shopaholic or no?
No.

17. What is your stress buster?
Hot chocolate and rain.

18. What should be done to people who make such long tags..
Make sure you’re not tag-married to them?

19. Do you think God actually exists?
I would not believe or disbelieve altogether something I have not seen or felt.

*replaced question*
20. If you could change one thing about this world what would it be?
Make sure every child in the world has the same level of education and living conditions as any other.

Rules: Remove 1 question from the tag and add your personal question. Make it a total of 20 questions, then tag people in your list, list them out at the end of this post. Notify them that he/she has been tagged.

I am tagging Prashanth and Sudipta (sorry, guys, everyone else has done this already!) to take this up.