Thanksgiving Break: Part 3

After that mall adventure, we watched DOSTANA! Yes! It was very cool and very very funny. John Abraham was delectable. Then, I went home and finally showered, and the fam and I went to see The Nutcracker Ballet by the Commonwealth Ballet Company. It was sooo good. Forget B-nat. I have decided to become a ballerina.



We chilled at the Praneetha's after that (my brother was staying for a sleepover) and watched Paresh Rawal say "Heppy Burth-a-day" around 7 or 8 times in the movie Hungama. It is EPIC, I tell you. This epicness can be experienced at 2:20 in this YouTube clip.

Then, we went home, and even though I was INCREDIBLY POOPED, my mother tempted me with a Telugu movie and I stayed up until I finished watching it. I was completely out until 11:00 this morning.

Aaaand...I have just returned from an AP Physics C class reunion that occurred at Brueggers! For those of you who are unaware, I was a part of the greatest class ever last year. It was AP Physics C, taught by Mr. Rose and consisting of 9 students. It was so great that we all feel incomplete without it and needed to see each other again. Liz, Sam, Shreyas, Christie, Melody, and I met up today for lunch/chai and it was fabulous.


And that was my amazing week. It was so good to be home. Three more weeks, and then I get to come back, though only for a day before I fly to India.

Thanksgiving Break: Part 2

Pictures of my week are currently in other people's cameras, so I will wait for them to upload pics. Keep checking back. A LOT HAPPENED! THIS WILL BE A LONG POST!

Thursday was an incredible Thanksgiving. I woke up super late after the adventures of the previous day and bummed around for a bit, refusing to do any housework. At around 2:30, we left for Praneetha's house in Westford. Since it was only 3:00 when we got there, there was still a lot of cooking to do. Praneetha, Sammy (Sameera), and I decided to make gravy, except every recipe we found online involved soy sauce. There was no soy sauce in the house. First of all, isn't soy sauce an Asian thing? The pilgrims obviously made gravy without it, so why does there NEED to be soy sauce? Anyway. So after hunting around for little packets of soy sauce that you get from Chinese restaurants (we found, like, one) we walked over to Shruti and Sushmita's house to borrow some.

The gravy turned out excellent, though we might have put in too much soy sauce. :D
Next, we made mashed potatoes by taking potatoes and mashing them. We (rather generously) added oregano and basil and stuff to the point that you could smell the mashed potatoes from a mile away. But it also turned out excellent and our cooking skills were praised by one and all. There was lots of other awesome food and I ate a lot.

We watched Golmaal Returns and then played Rummy (what else?) with everyone. For some reason, in every single round, everyone's cards sucked. Praneetha and I indulged in a little under the table sharing of cards but were cuaght. We also tried texting each other but Laxmi aunty caught that too. I slept over at Praneetha's and we got up at 4:45 to take advantage of Black Friday at Rockingham Mall. I was incredibly tired (who would have thought? I thought I had mastered the art of functioning while sleep deprived...guess not) but perked up after a "small" Coke from Burger King. Here is a picture of Shruti and Praneetha hiding from the rain under a free tote bag from Aerie.

Thanksgiving Break: Part 1

PSU gives us the entire thanksgiving week off, so my parents came to State College last Thursday and invited me to spend the night at the hotel. We left on Friday morning (no, I did not attend classes) and it was snowing a lot. We got to Pittsburgh that evening and after some scariness that involved our van not being able to get over a hill due to the iciness, we got to Carnegie Mellon where Nipunn and Katherine go to school. We grabbed them and went to a Filipino/Thai restaurant which we later found out did NOT have fried ice cream, but it was already too late. I ate something pretty good that involved cooked jackfruit.


After dinner, I absconded with Nipunn and Katherine to Nipunn's dorm room where we played video games and got visited by sketchy guys. I guess that's CMU. We also visited Katherine's incredibly messy dorm room and got some hot chocolate. I was actually tired by the time I got back to the hotel room.

The next morning, we visited the Sri Venkateshwara Temple in Pittsburgh after following the most retarded set of directions. Even the GPS couldn't help because it told us to go up a street that didn't exist. But it was a large, austere, and rather cool place.

After that was a really really long car ride to Groton, Connecticut where we spent the night and then finally to Bedford the next morning (Sunday). Monday afternoon was spent at BHS talking to teachers, which took much longer than I had anticipated. Therefore I went to school during classes on Tuesday to talk to more teachers. It was very nice.

Right now, I am at Nipunn's house with some high school pals. Nipunn and I made a list of reminiscent things to do. Here it is:

Rubiks Cubing
Playing Rock Band
Watching my Arangetram DVD
Running to Bedford Farms for some Pumpkin Ice Cream
Watching our History Fair Video
Playing Carroms
Making Mango Pie or Mango Lassi
Watching Hungama (a Hindi movie)

I've beeing doing my best documenting all of this on Soreen's camera and I will upload the pictures ASAP.

Why gambling is bad.

Firstly, I redid my desktop and made it look awesome. Now I have the dock at the bottom, like all the macs do. Here are a few screenshots (click on them to see full size...its worth it):




So yesterday was do-whatever-Shivam-wants-day. This was Ramya's idea because she decided that we (by "we", she meant "Sowmya") boss Shivam around too much and we should have one day where he can pick what to do and we have to do it uncomplainingly. The day really only got started late in the evening when Shivam finally finished his webassign and after being really indecisive, decided that we play hearts. So we played hearts for four or five rounds and then Ramya got a phone call and left for a bit. Shivam thought it would be awesome to start a new game involving some stakes: whoever loses the game, i.e. reaches 100 points first, would have to commit a little dare (which I will not describe online). You can see the scoresheet for yourself. Ramya started out with some really sucky cards, but managed to prolong her defeat until 12 rounds later. Malinda also took pity on her at round 6 and started helping her. Shivam shot the moon at round 5. I ended up winning, but that was probably only because I was not being targeted.

(Wait till I upload it...)

After that amazing game, we decided to play another, with even higher stakes. The loser would have to be the winner's personal slave for 24 hours! We decided it would be even better if the person who came in 3rd place would have to be slave to the person who came in 2nd place too, for some added excitement.

Yes, you guessed it, I LOST. I am not even going to put up the score sheet; it was that bad. I got the queen of spades almost every round. But in the end, I was proud of myself for helping give 11 hearts to Shivam and making him a slave to Ramya, who came in 2nd place. We still have to pick the day, but I am going to be Malinda's slave for 24 hours. I'm scared, because she might make me go to classes or something. Eeek. But don't worry, because I won't be going down without a fight.

All in all, a very intense day. We are never letting Shivam pick what to do again.

*Headsmack* I keep forgetting! I got an addon for Firefox that allows me to type in Telugu. నా }msLRPv ఆవకాయ. PPretty awesome, కద ?

Freedom, awesomeness, and...neck spasms.

I was writing this blog post yesterday when I was rudely interrupted by a sharp pain in my neck that was so dizzying that I found myself on the ground. It was freaky enough that an ambulance was called for and I was forced to spend the rest of my Wednesday in a hospital where a few bottles of blood, CAT scans, and an enjoyable day were taken from me. The EKG and blood were to make sure I had no heart problem, which I already knew I didn't. In the end, of course, it was nothing serious, just a sprained neck. Turns out I had injured it while I was stretching improperly, but I hadn't thought much of it until that sudden spasm. All in all, it was a completely unnecessary hospital visit, nothing that a bit of Ibuprofen couldn't have solved. And now I can't even donate blood! Yippee. On the bright side, now I know why I fainted a few years ago in CVS and got a concussion--I must have gotten the same type of pain-triggered dizziness while trying on a brace for my sprained wrist. Mystery solved! I would have figured this out earlier except that concussions have the inconvenient tendency to erase memory.

ANYWAY

As I was saying before that rude and painful interruption, MY EXAMS ARE OVER. I have no more tests until finals week and fortunately, I don't have to bring my grade up for any class, so there is no added stres. However. If you had seen the state of us right before the OChem exam this weekend, you might have suggested that we be shipped us off to an asylum. "We" meaning: me, Ramya, Moksha (studying for Chem 110), Malinda, and Shivam. Of course Brent had finished studying for this exam weeks ago and went off to do non-ochem related stuff. But the rest of us were, quite literally, in hysterics. I have never cursed more in my entire life that I did that weekend. I screamed several times, threw carbon atoms at people, and broke things. In return, was physically attacked by Moksha and cussed at in Telugu. Here is an illustration:


Malinda, who was sick and delirious, kept asking questions like, "What is an aldehyde? What is a reaction? Who is organic chemistry?" and Shivam had his free will stripped of him yet again as three girls forced him to explain things. Eventually, we took the exam on Monday and ended up doing WAY better than we expected and regretting having stressed so much. In celebration, we watched Rang De Basanti, even though I had a Chemistry test the next day. Now that's over too, and as I had previously predicted, I have lost all motivation to study.

Tuesday evening was awesomely spent eating Indian food and listening to Indian tunes. We bought plain white rice from Uncle Chen's, plain yogurt from McLanahan's, and ate it with pickle that Ramya had in the fridge. We were joined later by Swetha and Arthi, who must have been attracted by the loud music and the spicy smells.


We plucked eyebrows, thought of names for our children, and watched people slap each other on YouTube until about 2 in the morning.


Now, I am off to Vedic Society and then The Dark Knight at the HUB. Nice, neck-free activities.

The joys of music, fridays, physics, language, and fruit.

I realize that my blog entries have been crappy lately, and many of you are desperate for news about my oh-so-interesting life (I know you read this, Ma), so I will try to write as much as possible. This is also so I can postpone studying for OChem for as long as possible.

First off, I would like to say that I officially love the Hindi album Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi, by Salim and Sulaiman. The movie stars Shahrukh Khan and some other random person. Have a look at the movie poster; he looks hilarious. Go get the album if you haven't already. I will now consider listening to Salim and Sulaiman's other album, Fashion, and will report on its quality in my next post.


First piece of amazing news: today was my last Chem 113 lab. This means that I get 5 HOURS back on Fridays, as well as some of my sanity. You are probably asking what I was thinking when I first signed up for it. Yeah, me too. Never again.

Second piece of amazing news: I got a 106 on my physics midterm. Yep. However, this may actually be bad news in disguise. Why? Because I had recently decided to start attending Physics class again, now that we have started to cover the topics I hate (and am therefore bad at), such as rotation and oscillation. That motivation is now gone. This can only spell disaster for the final exam.

Third piece of amazing news: I am relearning how to read and write Telugu. I thought it was going to be hard to pick it up again after teaching myself at the end of senior year, but it's only taken me a day or two and I'm actually loads better than I was before. The reasons why I resumed: 1.) I'm bored. 2.) I'm going to India in December. 3.) I stumbled upon a website containing a bunch of clips of Amrutham, my favorite Telugu comedy serial (sitcom, basically) and I want to know what the credits say.

Fourth piece of news which is amazing and yet also awful: It's 70 degrees outside. Why, oh why does it have to be so nice this weekend when I have to be stuck indoors, cramming for two tests? This was also the case three or four weeks ago right before the 2nd OChem test (remember those pictures of me frolicking in the sun rather than studying?) Life is very unfair in this aspect.

And finally:
I have made the resolution to blog more frequently because it's pretty embarrassing how Marissa, who goes to Caltech, can blog everyday whereas I only make a pathetic 5 or 6 posts per month. You will see more, I promise. However, I probably won't post again until Tuesday or Wednesday, when I resurface from my next two exams (Ochem and Gen Chem). So long.

In the meantime, check out the contents of me and Sharon's fridge! We are such healthy people! Too bad it's not actually true. The ones on the top rack are all the apples I stole from the dining commons, and the ones on the bottom rack are those Sharon got when she went apple picking in Jersey. Those are Sharon's oranges in the bottom bin.

Bye!

2nd encounter with Kal Penn: SUCCESS

EDIT: I'm adding on to my previous blog post because I really don't want to make a new one.

I don't think I could have picked a better time to come to college. Why? Because Presidential elections means famous people come to Penn State. In the past week, we saw Sarah Palin, Bill Clinton, and Kal Penn.

Yesterday was the 2nd garba, and though there were actually less people at this one, it turned out to be more fun than the first. But more importantly, there was KAL PENN. Yes, he was there, campaigning for Barack Obama, and let me tell you, this guy is a total G. I can't believe he came to State College a second time to speak with us, but he seems really passionate about the Obama campaign and definitely garnered a lot of support from the Gujarati crowd that was present at the garba. I got to shake his hand and tell him how I really liked The Namesake. I should have said "Where's the party, yaar" again but I forgot and he was being mobbed. I didn't get an individual picture with him :( but...


There he is, second from the left.

After he left, there was the usual garba dancing, then raas, and then at the end...BHANGRA. I was in my element. I had borrowed a fish-cut dress from Swetha (from Vedic Society) and it was really nice but incredibly hard to dance in. Next time I am SO wearing a churidhar.

...
And for my previous post about Halloween and stuff:

You couldn't have asked for better Halloween conditions. Warm, cloudless skies, Friday night...it would have been ideal for something innocent, like trick-or-treating. Unfortunately, these were also ideal conditions for the many thousands of college students to take over the streets of State College until 5:00 AM while wearing incredibly skimpy costumes (or none at all). But I can't say it wasn't fun.

Before the celebrations started, I went over to Karthik's apartment where we had homecooked Indian food, complete with bean and potato fry, mango (avakaya) pickle, dal (kandi pappu), ghee, and yogurt made from whole milk. My hand still smells like avakaya (of course we ate with our hands). I should go get some from the Indian store at the next available opportunity.

After that we went to a costume party at Naveen and Vinay's place. It was really awesome to see all the people I hadn't seen since the summer, and also second year progs I had never met before. There were FOBs, frat boys, people dressed as other people, people dressed as people without a lot of clothes on...etc. It was really fun until someone vomited on my leg. After a while, the fun decreased as there was much less dancing and much more passing out.

I'll get some pics up soon once my photographer uploads them.

It was a fun night, but I will admit, I couldn't help but feel a pang for wasting such wonderful Halloween conditions inside instead of going door to door and emptying peoples candy bowls, and scaring little kids.