I am done.

I am done. I cant believe it. One sem is over. I never thought i would be able to get stuff done, finish my assignnments in time. But then thank god i finished everyything onn time. I don't have much expectations with the grades part, will leave that for later.

some american lingo for you guyys..

something very good = awesome , its kick ass stuff
something done very cleverly = neat , sweet
bye = later
my teacher scolded me = my prof fired my ass
Everybody was shouting at me = my ass was under fire
alright= awrite
biscuits = cookies
Thanks very much = i really appreciate it
cycle= bike
car dicky = trunk
cola = soda
no = hell no
petrol=gas
ok thats it for now...later !!!!

music thanksgiving & more

I remember studying in school about thanksgiving, you know how a typical American family sits around the table, says a prayer and eats the turkey. But i never thought that at somepoint in my life i would also be a part of the thanksgiving celebration. My friend invited me over to his grandmom's place to celebrate thanksgiving. I agreed to go and decided to spend a day with an american family.
His Grandmom lived in a small town called Casey, three hours away from where i live. There were hardly any houses there and it looked as if most of the people who lived there owned large acres of land and did a lot of farming. His Grandma's house was big and spacious with the most amazing chandeliers i had ever seen. Her house was solid man. Pure opulence. One by one everybody arrived and i was introduced to my friend's family members. Initially i was finding it very odd to be there but then slowly slowly i got accustomed to the place and surroundings. The problem was that there are lot of customs which had to be followed and i did not know any of them
I was gettting scared that i might end up doing some thing really stupid.

It was 12 noon and was time for the big lunch. The table was set, the candles were lit and the turkey was out along with a dozen of other dishes. All of us held hands and somebody said the prayer. It was the first time i had acually done something like that. The Lunch included mashed potatoes ( prepared in the same manner as most bongs prepare it. ) The mashed potatoes were to be had with hot noodles on top of them. Then there was beans, veg salad, turkey , ham and lot of other things most of which i did not understand .
I just felt as if i was spending time with my family. I felt very homesick and remembered our get togethers back home. Lunch was done and it was time for desserts. There were whole lot of pie's and custards to eat. All of us were full but we were forced to eat by his grandma who after every hour would ask us to eat something or the other.
My friend's little cousin joseph took us around the place. Even though it was freezing outside we decided to go out. we went exploring the three big garages my friend's grandmom owned.It was filled with farm equipment, tractors and a whole lot of other crazy stuff. One of them also had a big truck. So there we were like small kids hopping from one garage to another checking out the antique stuff which my friend's grandfather had collected. It was nice and it was good.

oh ji !!!!

Voice from inside .....

Aye mere Khuda kuch karo abhi

mere unoh ka gussa kam karo jaldi

karte hain bohoth pyaar unko

bolo na ji kaise manaye tumko

kuch kaam kar nahin paa rahen hain

bas subah shaam tumko yaad karte rehthey hain

Aur ek ghante mein online aaoge tum

This " Hum " is nobody without you " Tum"

I want back the jodi of " Hum Tum"

I understand this shayari looks very silly

But baby this bunty is missing his Bubly

Aur kitne din tak aise tadpenge

Kuch karo khuda varna yahan ke

campus lake mein doob jayenge

Marna nahin chahthey hum

par nahin hain mujhmein aur dum ....

My first Tornado warning

My university is one of the very few universities in US to have a TV station and a radio station attached to it.I work as a student worker in the radio station which is in the basement of our building.


I mostly do archiving work which is basically at nights or sometimes i do reporting if i get time duing the day. It was yet another boring monday night and i was recording some stories onto a cd. At around 10.15 pm a alarm goes on, really loud.Being pretty much new to the place i didn't know what was happening, so i carried on with my work. Then after 10 min ( this thing was really loud i had to do something ) i came out of the room and checked for this really loud sound. I saw a small box something like a radio which kept saying warning tornado warning..." i was like what Tornado Wow !!! this is going to be fun. There was nobody around and i did not know what to do. I went out to the rooms outside and knocked the doors checking for people. One lady was still in her office and she came with me to check what was happening. I told her that this alarm has started saying severe weather for the Carbondale ( this is the place where i stay ) and other surrounding areas. She went upstairs checked with the TV station guys if they had recieved any warning. She came down and told me that the weather conditions had been such that there are chances of a tornado striking this city.
I had access to the TV news room which has all the equipment and the cameras. I told myself man this is the time, if a tornado hits take the camera and go out. But then luckily or unluckily nothing much happened. Everybody was very calm and said that this sort of alerts are quite commmon but is very rare for a Tornado to actually hit this city. I finished my work and went back home. The lady told me that where ever you are if you hear a sound as if a train is approaching just run to the basement of the building. I was awake all night....i waited ...for it to come but it never came. It rained heavily with strong winds and the severe weather continued till the next day. These rains changed the temprature. From hot days we are going to subzero tempratures. The winter has arrived.

Cornflakes Story...

Yes .. I had cornflakes both the time. Yesterday night i came back home from the lab at around 3.15. Was feeling hungry so i thought why not have some cornflakes. I got up in the morning did some work went back to sleep again. I was supposed to go to the department but i did not have the energy so i went back to sleep. I got up at 1.45. Wanted to eat something but then i realised that i had only 15 min left for class, so i ran for class. Finished with class then went to the radio station to work. By the time i finished it was 5.30. I was hungry i thought chalo bhai lunch kar lete hain par karen toh kya karen...? dopahar mein tho hum log ke ghar koi khana nahin bantha. so what is the next best option ..? you are right it was cornflakes.
Thankfully for dinner its not cornflakes as i made some good food today. I still haven't eaten though. Have to go back home and eat it. I am back at the radio station to do some archiving of stories onto a cd. So this is it my cornflakes story. A story i hope will end very soon....

By the way we have an off tomorrow. Its Veteran's day. It seems after a long time our university has decided to give an off.

what do you think of this letter...?

I am attaching a copy of a letter sent by my cousin in our family's yahoo group. Just wanted to ask you all, what do you think...?



"Hi !!!

Idd Mubarak to you, all at home and everyone in this
group.

Yes am happy with my new job. Though I do not get to
earn as much as I could have in the US or in Gulf, I
like what I am doing at work and also am having a
great time with bro, mom and dad and all my pals in
bangalore.

Recently, another roomate of mine came back to India
after working in the US for a bit and getting a H1. He
got into Intel here in Bangalore and is staying with
his parents - who are happy to have him back and plan
to get him married real soon.

Out of all the roomies I have had in the US, more than
half of them are back in india.

Rest everything is fine...

Regards and MTV enjoy...

J "

its monday !@#@$%#

Its monday and the rat race has begun.Assignments deadlines classes projects oh stop it . I have a 3 hour class in the evening, need to edit the nature music video and keep it ready by tueday 2 pm. Think a project idea for my final documentary for wednesday evening...the list is endless...its too too much...

festival time

Eid Mubarak....Happy diwali ...little late but thats ok...three assignments were due this week and it was crazy. Its only now that i am getting some time when i dont have to think of any deadlines ( few days only though...)

I did not have any feeling of diwali here. I missed the diwali night organised by the indian families. There were no tickets ( some dumb problem you could say..) Some of the houses where girls live had lighted candles on the door step. Few drunk indian guys buys bursted a few crackers and shouted happy diwali at like 3 in the night. Bas apart from this it was just another day.

Ramzaan was nice. we went to the mosque for our prayer clicked a few pictures it was good.Felt like haan bhai we are also celebrating something.But then its not like being in india when you come back home from prayer, shona has cooked lovely sheer kurma for you ..hmmm...The other sad part here was that i had to attend class that day . It was so damn boring and of course irritating. In the night one of the guys gave us a party. he cooked delicious chicken which we hogged like mad. all of us were like ghar ki yaad aa gayi bhai and stuff like that. If not events like these living in here would be impossible. This is what keeps us going....the indian touch ..being with indians ....i hate staying in the dept...i just wait to come back to the apartment where i stay....


Ramzaan is done and we have to start worrying about cooking again..Its back to turns of who is going to cook....its back to cornflakes in the morning and concept of no lunch straight dinner thing...hmmm...

shona cooks well.....i enjoy her food .....w r u...???

I am in love with

I am in love with ...no not the woman in the picture but with the fact that i am actually doing the edits myself . I am learning Final Cut pro and its easier than avid. I can do more than rough edit now with dissolves and other effects. I was experimenting with a lot of things in final cut like picture movement and other things. I actually have to submit a 7 min piece on Mae west ( yeah ..its her pic ) . I have till now shyed away from editing, i was thinking may be i wont be able to do it but now i am feeling confident about it. Need to practice more though...

Today shona was saying that CNN has joined hands with IBN..thats like great news...i wonder how the other channels might be reacting to this news...have the newspapers covered it....Lot of stuff happening in India...CNN is the only channel which can be compared to channels in india. Its the only channel that to an extent is not biased like the other channels. the local channels here are impossible...they are something like our very own TV channel of " amma " .....

what is life

what is life all about...? Is it just about crossing hurdles...? everytime you cross an hurdle or finish solving a major problem in life, something bigger comes up. Are we all taking part in a " hurdles race " which has no finish. Everytime we cross one , the other one comes up. There is no time even to pause for a second. Is this what life is all about...?

Based on a true life story

Arz kiya hai...

ho gaye hain "ji" tumpe khatarnaak tarike se fida

hona chahthey hain tumse shadishuda

par meri "mom" ko pasanad nahin hain yeh meri ada

unki yeh ada ko badal de...

kuch kar..... aye mera khuda ......aye mere khuda


wah !!! wah !!!......yeh wah nahin sachayi hain

dissapointed

I am totally disappointed with how the katrina 's piece has come...its not upto the mark...its not what i expected. Had so much expectations out of it and it flopped totally...sad..really sad

after a long time...

After a really long time had good desi indian khana. Last saturday we had a Ifthaar party hosted by somebody here. The hosts were from Pakistan so we were expecting desi food. let me explain you the system here first. everyday evening somebody or the other would get food to the masjid for ifthaar . For most part of the time its arabian food. We have rice and chicken.hmm chicken ...iss ke baare mein jitna kam kaha jaye uthna acha. most of the time its without any spices or salt or mirchi. i mean we are thankful that we get nv food but then u know after a point of time its get very difficult for the desis to eat it everyday.

This saturday was different, we had ifthaar a party . Big turn out at the civic centre where the dinner took place. now let me describe the menu we had podina ki chutney , raitha ( not like the one which " my some one" makes ...what she makes is out of the world ) we had Vegetable Biriyani, fried chicken , chicken gravy ( made in typical indian punjabi style and it tasted awesome..) we also had mutton fry which not was so good but then manageable and butter nans. All of us filled the plates like mad. fill your plate as much as you can the first time because yahan ki public ka koi bharosa nahin kab khana khatam ho jayega we will not know. sab pe plates were like overflowing but then ek kahawath hain " insaan dil bhare tak khana apne plate mein daaltha hai par paet bhare tak hie kha saktha hain " . We stuffed as much as we could and we enjoyed the food. There was a small table in between the ladies side n the gents side which had only cups n saucers and no food. abhi sab log intezaar mein hain mitha aayega ki nahin aayega and mitha finally came. We had choclate cake and a fruit cake along with ras malai , we had another feast. May god bless the people who organised the dinner and may they organise ifthaar parties like these more regularly.

hey

hey hey !!! finally i have uploaded a picture on my blog. It was easier than i thought. that picture was taken by friend moses in new orleans. Its me and my friend drew standing in front of the super dome in new orleans. Super dome....hmm....lot of bad things happened inside the super dome when people were there inside . So we wanted to go there and check . We were not allowed inside so took some shots of it from outside. This picture was supposed to come in our piece but then we decided not to have our pictures in the segment. We are actually still making some changes to the piece. We were supposed to turn in show at the tv station today but then we requested for some more time to make some final changes to our katrina piece. We have lot of expectations from this one but then all of us are scared that it wont live upto it. Actually the three of us have three different ideas as to how the segment should be and there lies the whole problem. But now since we dont have time to change or edit so we have left it to one guy to change it the way or polish the way he wants. so thats going on.....

And i want to write about some one....kya batayen uss some one ke baare mein. " dil ke gehrahiyon mein koi bas gaye.." was this a song did i just write...what ever but then some one some one some one...i need to talk to you....kya some one tum bhi na....saath samundaar paar karke tho aagaye par nahin patha tha ki tumko ithna zyada zyada miss karenge....oh some one...more about the some one later..

still working...

Still working on the Katrina story...its taking a really long time. ....i have been working on this from past five days , five nights not days i should say. working all night and sleeping at 6 in the morning , its been really hectic this week. We had actually finished the edit but then we decided to change it as there were lot of interviews and less of visuals. hopefully should come out as an amazing piece.Going to new orleans was one awesome experience about which i will write in a few days...
Just spoke to my baby now and was great...!!!! She has it in her to bring back the smile on my face and lift my confidence up at the time when i need it the most. I mean i dont know if she realises this or not but then she is really loving that by speaking to her , u will feel as if a tidal wave of love has swept over you..baby u r so sweet & caring...!!!

thought

To Articulate means to speak clearly right...? somebody could correct me on this if i am making a mistake. blessed are the people who have good command over thier language and get thier point through. And people like me are definitely cursed who really suck at saying simple things...

one of my assignments

Assignments , Assignments and lot of assignments. Just finished one today and have two more to go for tomorrow. I had to do a 3 min video with actors & stuff and it turned out to be pretty good. All of us can interpret the script in our way and we had many weird interpretations. one of my classmates actually shot a love making scene for his video. He had a like screen in front and a couple making out at the back. Overall the film was good but then the love making scene was a bit too long, i guess the actors got carried away....!!!! These guys are like too much....

tit bits...

Every time i try not to burn my fingers while cooking it does not happen. Everytime i end up burning one finger or the other. Either it is during while stirring the vegetables while its getting cooked or opening the pressure cooker ( we cook our rice in the cooker , yet to buy an electric one ). I dont know why , probably i am too involved in the cooking or may be i might learn through practice. We usually hav one proper meal in a day and that is usually in the night. Today i was very hungry so i thought i will make somethhing good to eat, but then ended up making some thing very weird. We get readymade bhendi here mixed with tomatoes. i thought i will make that with potato, i cooked n cooked n cooked. I added lot of masalas ( nothing worked ). Finally my friends got tired and said " leave it man lets just eat it" poor guys .. i do all my experimentation on them.

By the way i played cricket this weekend. We have a cricket ground which is of course used by us indians and nobody else. It was actually match Tamilnadu & Andhra Pradesh and Tamilnadu won hurray !!!! i did not get to bat but then its ok. It was good, playing in a ground, surrounded by trees ,very refreshing. Otherwise this place gets very vert depressing....away from home..all americans around...its really difficult to manage...We even have proper official tournaments. The Indian Student 's Association is organizing a tournament next week. Will just go and see , not take part. weekend is the best time, about that in my next blog....in the library now , have taken a lap top , have to return in five mins. its going to be 2 am so gotta get going...

On Kitchen

lot of first stuff for me here. I mean there are certain things which i never did back home. One of them was entering into the kitchen. I was so lazy that i would not even enter the kitchen to take my own food. I would expect somebody to serve me food in the plate and give it to me. Another thing i did not like about the kitchen was the sink . I could not imagine how people would put thier hand inside and clean the drain when its stuck with all those food particles .I would not even keep the plate inside the sink, i would leave it outside par abhi ............ woh luxury sab khatam ho gaya. The time i am at my apartment here i spend a lot of time in the kitchen. Here everybody has to take care of the kitchen, wash your own plates, wash the utensils in which you cooked and every other aspect associated with the kitchen.

Never in my life i thought that i would cleaning the sink and stuff. I was washing the utensils the other day and i thought to myself " arre bhai kahan aake phas gaye aur dekho kya kya kaam karna pad raha hai" . One thing all of us are learning is how to manage the kitchen..

Yesterday one of my room mates cooked nice tasty chicken. It was the second time we were having chicken in a month. This is like luxury here.( i mean nobody has the time to cook chicken here..) I cooked veg fried rice , it was like ok. One of the guys got ice cream , so like after a long time we had good food.

In a day we eat only once properly. We survive on corn flakes the whole day and night its the only time when we get to eat proper food.

Mr himself

This guy is called the Mr himself as he can see only him in life. He has a feeling that all the people in the world are going to cheat him or take money and all this nonsense. he is supposed to be the eldest but behaves as the youngest. this guy is doing his bachelors in engg. He was willing to stay with us.( including him we were 5 , so all was fine as were following the rules of the indian student apartment act that 5 should stay ) So he shared the advance rent , caution deposit everything. But then this guy is not as simple as he is. He is always lost in his own world. All he thinks about is himself, his money , his time everything about his life. He does not care as to what happens to others as long as he is fine. He is very particular about money , even a single dollar or that he will not leave 50 cents. All of us had problems with him , but then we said not all of us are perfect and we decided to stay on. But then he had problems in everything and i did not like it. i said listen if u wanna stay u stay if u dont want then leave. it was getting too much for all of us to bear with him. everytime he would accuse us saying we are rich guys and we have a lot of money and stuff. problems came and he left . We told him that we would give him his share the advance rent once the 5th guy comes. he said fine. But then now the 5th person wants to leave, tho uski tho waat lag gayi. everyday he comes to us saying paise dho paise dho. he says we swallowed his money and all this.he says he doesn't get money from trees ( as if we get !@#@ ) I got really bugged today and told him "look Mr we never swallowed your cash, stop accusing us all the time. we will give u the cash once we have it. we cant give you any money now " he got really pissed and threatened to dis connect the electricty ( the electricty connection is in his name ..i mean he is so funny ) i said bhai jo karna hai woh karo. this guy is like too much. he is real funny..