There's life out there!

Feels good to be back in civilisation. I spent the last few days in Aurangabad with my grandparents and a few other relatives. It's a small city somewhere in India, and while there's not much to say about the place (unless you're into old monuments and caves with religious sculptures and the like), I did enjoy visiting them. A lot of my cousins were there too, including the ones from Houston.

Honestly I never thought being at a farmhouse without electricity could be fun, but it was. Speaking of which, there was no power most of the time there, no internet because the computer was trashed, and the cable was out. We got some movies on DVD though and watched them when the power was on. That and karaoke. I didn't sing though. You don't want to hear me sing. Trust me.

[Edit: On another read that sounded like I was actually living at a farmhouse. I wasn't, we just happened to spend a lot of time there. And hey, karaoke at a farmhouse?]

Slept a lot though. The only time I woke up before 2 pm was when my 3 year old cousin Joanna woke me up at 9 and made sure I wouldn't go back to sleep. Oh, and I got sick too. The first day I had a sore throat. That hurt... a lot. It got better in a day though... but then I got a cold. That wasn't fun. I'm okay now though.

I always thought it was cool that my parents' wedding anniversary was on christmas day. They're not the only ones though... I just found out that two of my uncles' and aunts' anniversaries were yesterday too. Not only that, it was one of my aunts' birthday too.

I'm in Bombay now though, and my grandad (the other one) had a party today. That meant getting dressed up, and of course... mingling. It wasn't all bad though, I met some rather 'interesting' people. More on that later though, or not. ;)

Oh, and I got a bunch of Iron Maiden albums from my cousin (Yeah I have a lot of cousins...). That and I saw an Iron Maiden DVD in my uncle's room today. I had no idea he listened to that stuff.

This new laptop is pretty good too. The best part is the battery... 4 and a half hours at least. At least now I'll have something to do when I'm not asleep on the flight back to Houston. Farscape is pretty good.

That's all for now I think... it's 2.10 am here, and I'm not the least bit sleepy.


Now Playing: Iron Maiden - From Here to Eternity

Slow news day

So I've been doing pretty much nothing since I got here. Met a few guys from high school and ate at Subway but that was about it. And seeing as how I have nothing better to do now I decided to take a couple of online tests. You know, the kind that tell you what your personality is, or what kind of star wars character you are.

Edit: The HTML code they get you to paste really screwed up the blog layout so I'll just give you the gist of it. Apparenlty I 'scored as Upper middle Class. Your determination have soared you this high, yet not high enough to enjoy the luxuries of the upper class. Your most valued posession is your country club membership which is kept framed in the office.'

Right then.

That, and my 'dominant intelligence is interpersonal intelligence'. Which really means I'd make a good salesperson, counselor, business person or politician. Yay me?


Now Playing: U2 - Love is Blindness

I really couldn't be bothered to retype all of that, so I'll just summarize it.

Flight was good. Landed on time. Passport control queue was long as hell. Found bag at baggage claim, complete with locks broken. Was about to file a complaint when I opened the thing and found a piece of paper informing me that my bag had to be opened and inspected 'by law' by the US Transport Security Administration and that the locks had to be broken in the process. It was pretty obvious they had gone through my stuff. My hard drives had been removed from the bubble wrap. Oh, and shampoo spilled all over my clothes. They of course, are not liable for any damages as explained by the piece of paper I have torn and burned since.

A hard drive set off your bomb detectors guys? Or maybe you're all suffering from paranoid schizophrenia?


Now Playing: U2 - Mysterious Ways

Switch to Firefox. Now. You'll regret it if you don't.

Don't you just LOVE it when you type a fairly long post and Internet Explorer decides to delete it all from the text box?

Time to beat the hell out of this thing.

Owned the sludge

Maybe it wasn't that bad a day after all. For calculus and CS finals, those were surprisingly easy. Especially the CS one, I didn't see that coming (in a good way).

So I guess that marks the end of my first semester in college. It was surprisingly easy and laid back, but I suppose that would have something to do with the classes I took and my course load. Then again, CS 307 is anything but easy for an intro class, and anyone who took Psych 301 with Pennebaker will tell you that it's a high workload class with difficult tests, so I think I will give myself credit after all.

And I have a 16 hour flight on Saturday, with an hour long stopover in Amsterdam. Can't wait. (Note the sarcasm)


Now Playing: Paul van Dyk - Seven Ways 2003

Sludge.

So I spent 3 hours yesterday trying to figure out the concentration of sludge in a given lake and the rate of change of the sludge at a given time. Worked out a formula for the amount of water in the lake, the rate of change of flow of water, a formula for the concentration of the sludge, and all I needed was a formula for the amount of sludge in terms of time. I spent a good part of the morning on that, and felt really stupid until my TA told me I could just substitute the value of the sludge itself instead of a formula in terms of time.

That probably made no sense to you, but that's okay because it didn't to me either. But now I can officially figure out the rate of change of sludge, and the total amount of sludge flowing out of a lake at any given time. Yay me. The things you can do with calculus. They probably call this 'practical application'.

It'll be over soon though, the final is in an hour. That of course will be followed by the CS final where I'll spend three hours trying to work binary search trees, hash tables, queues (British for 'lines' apparently), heaps, maps, graphs and who knows what else.

Today is going to be fun.


Now Playing: U2 - Numb (New Mix)

U2 > *

I have a new appreciation for this band. I've got almost all their albums now, and having heard about half of it all, I can safely say I have a new obsession (apart from PlanetSide, The West Wing and Oreo cookies).

Listen to them damnit.


Now Playing: U2 - Gone (New Mix)

Random Stuff

So Chris and I started a blog earlier just for the hell of it. Something to do when I'm bored I guess (like this), which happens to be most of the time. He thinks it's going to die a 'slow and painful death' like all things text, but then again you'd expect that from a guy as optimistic as him. ;)

So if you thought this blog was random, feel free to pay a visit to The Center for Hippie Paranoia and Zoology.

Another blog I visit and post on is the Think Tank. Warning: Clicking the link will subject you to highly opinionated, very inflammatory and extremely incoherent material that may actually make you think. Or not.

Now Playing: U2 - Zoo Station

One down, three to go

So I didn't do that well on my psychology test today. It was good enough to get me an A in the class so whatever. That leaves Freshman Seminar (which should be done in... a bit under seven hours from now), Calculus and Computer Science. Speaking of CS, Peter just emailed me and it looks like that 0/20 is going to be dropped, so the assignment part of my overall grade isn't going to be as crappy as I thought.

Another scare I got earlier was when I was going through the folder with my passport, I-20, other travel documents, and tickets to Dubai via Amsterdam. Oh wait. No tickets.

So I spent the next couple of hours calling people halfway around the word trying to figure out where the hell the tickets were. After thirty minutes of running up my cellphone bill (well not really since I was only receiving the call - and free nights!) I found the tickets in a drawer right in the middle of a bunch of bank documents.

After two days of studying for and taking a psychology test, doing a CS assignment from scratch when it was really meant to be done over the course of a week, making and printing out a poster for my Freshman Seminar class, and the whole ticket thing, I think I'm going to take a break.

Back to The West Wing.


Now Playing: Nothing