Accounting, thou art a formidable foe

Tis true. Thou art a formidable foe. But alas, I have bested you. Tis now in your best interests to leave me be, pray forever. 

Last Accounting Blitz of my life

It is no secret that I hate accounting from the depths of my being. It is, therefore, with great pleasure that I announce the almost completion of all my accounting in my undergrad life. I am currently in the middle of finishing up all the A325 coursework for this semester, and 6 hours in, these are the things I have learnt:

1) I hate Accounting. I want to see it die.
2) Slacker radio = Never Bored. Even with accounting open in front of you
3) Library gets very very quiet at around 3 am, and revs up again at 5am. What happens to everyone for 2 hours?
4) It is impossible to sit still and work if Single Ladies comes on. I had to do the dance, balance sheets be damned.
5) If you do the single ladies dance at 4:30 am, people do not stare. They understand.
6) Lo Carb Monster stops working after the 3rd bottle.
7) Spreadsheets < Pen and Paper. Fact.
8) I hate accounting. I want to see it die.

Xoxo,
Dying Sri

The 8-step plan to writing papers

There's nothing remotely fun about the thing that I have to do for the next 24 hours: intense paper writing. I have, and I kid you not, more papers due tomorrow than I have had all month. Did I say month? I meant semester.

I have a 15 page gem due for marketing, a 20 page case brief due for telecommunications, a 1 page paper for accounting, two more 3 page papers for two other telecommunications classes, and one 200 page book review, all due by 6pm tomorrow. Being the go-getter I am, I haven't started any of these.

*sigh*

I believe what I have done here is very metaphorically "painted myself into a corner". So, I created a game plan to deal with this intense paper situation:

Firstly, as always, energize:

Yes, that is yet another energy drink I let poison my system during and leading up to finals week. It's not my favorite, but I did give my Monster away to a friend. So, three week old Full Throttle, ftw.

Secondly, get the most awesomely meaningful shirt on. Pick one that is sophisticated, meaningful, and in general, extremely kickass:

No Stresspassing. Nuff said.

Thirdly, do not start conducting a photo shoot session because you found old 3-d glasses while digging through your closet:

I got these while watching Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs. It was also the night I went just a little bit overboard and painted all my nails bright *bright* pink. Speaking off...

Fourthly -  Just because you remembered how awesome your nails look being bright pink, do not go paint all your nails pink:

Damn, they look good. Don't they?

Fifth(ly) - Turn the lighting up. Well lit areas = more concentration. Fact.

Do not blind yourself. Very very important to NOT blind yourself.

Sixthly, turn off the John Mayer. Battle Studies is an awesome album, and no matter how much Edge of Desire speaks to you, or Heartbreak Warfare makes you tear up, it is not an appropriate track for paper writing.

Push the pause.

Go on, do it.

Now.

Seventhly, turn on your get psyched playlist. Some Gaga, some Ke$ha, some other stuff:

What? I do not know how did britney got in there! I do not! I swear! (\0_0/)

[Does that look anything like a person with both arms in the air to anyone but me?]

Eightly, and lastly -

STOP WRITING A BLOG POST YOU FOOL, YOU HAVE MULTIPLE PAPERS TO WRITE.

Sri, out.

Infectious Enthusiasm?

It's 4:45 am, and I am one of the many nocturnals typing away into a computer.

At the main library.

Peachy.

Just, peachy.

Oh well, I have a paper due tomorrow, a presentation, another paper, three exams, one final, two finals, three final papers, and two actual finals within the next two and a half weeks. This can only mean one thing: energy drinks are going to see a spike in their profits, as I see a fall in my savings account. Energy is never created nor destroyed, just transferred from one's wallet to another.

Anyways, I have been here working away on accounting for about 5 hours now, and I am proud to say that by now I feel like this:

Funsies, right? Not so much. So, I reach for that mighty energizer: Lo Carb Monster. Rawr.

It's the big monster size, and it should work, right? No more need for faces like these to populate the library!

Gone are the sad pouty faces! Monster transports you to distant lands! See????

Gone are the woes! Gone is the lack of energy, motivation or drive! Let's all jump up and down!

*starts to physically enunciate (yes, another phrase I made up. Like it?) the very embodiment of energy*

*whole library joins in*

Or not.

The great TV experiment of 09 - Thanksgiving break

Perhaps the thing I was most excited for was the intense TV experiment I had planned for myself. It had been really hectic right before break, so I fell behind on my weekly TV watching. Also, I like to tell myself that I watch most of these because I'v fallen into the habit of them and it wouldn't kill me if I stopped watching one.

So, in an effort to test my "I can quit anytime I want theory", I decided to stave off these shows for a month. Any show that I didn't feel like catching up with after said month, I was going to drop till rerun season. These are the shows I started off with:

Californication

Community

Cougar Town

Desperate Housewives

Family Guy

Flash Forward

Ghost Whisperer

Gossip Girl

House

How I Met Your Mother

Lie To Me

Modern Family

Private Practice

The Big Bang Theory

The Middle

The Simpsons

The end of the month long TV rehab was yesterday.

Which ones lived?

Which ones bit the dust?

We shall see!

The Art of Communal Solitude

I am currently partaking in what has become a ritual in today's age. I am sitting, laptop open, iced caramel machiatto in hand, right by the window in a Starbucks. I had what qualifies for a bad day yesterday, and I decided I just wanted to be alone for a while. Now, I live in an apartment all by myself where I have all the things I need (including coffee, specifically from Starbucks), and yet, I got dressed up, left my very very *very* comfy bed, took two buses, and voila! Here I am sipping a 5 dollar brew overlooking an exceedingly busy street.

So what is it that brought me, and another 20 odd humans, here, in the middle of the day? Free time? Everybody, me including, are busy typing away on their laptops or reading books and such. Coffee? I've been sitting here for about an hour and a half, my drinks reached the point of being mostly water, and this is true for the 8 people in my field of vision. The need to get work done? As far as I can see, three people are on farmville, two are intently staring out the window, two are on the phone, and I am reading John Mayer's twitter page.

Carrie Bradshaw once hypothesized that all the people sitting in Starbucks were not being pretentious, they were all people mid-fight. Wise words, true, but I have a different hypothesis. The reason we gravitate towards places that are inherently crowded even when we are looking to be left alone is because it's no fun to be left alone, alone.

Think about it. I wanted to not have to deal with anybody, and where did I land up? One of the most popular caffeine peddlers right next to campus during lunch. That, in itself, is an oxymoron if there ever was one. However, here I am. Because while I want to be alone, I don't want to avoid humanity. And even if I did, as I successfully am doing now, it's a subconscious desire to almost never want to be completely alone.

This, and I am copyrighting this, is the art of communal solitude. We all wanted to be alone, whether to finish a paper, read a book, harvest stuff on farmville or stalk celebrities on twitter, we all wanted to be alone. So we all came together, overpaid for a cup of coffee, sat down in the leather couches, plugged in our headphones, and commenced being completely alone, together.

Communal Solitude.

(If they ever sell out, Starbucks should definitely factor this in as a part of their intangibles. Yay for paying attention in accounting)

I'm Better!

YEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH

Tales of the Flu victim

As of this friday, I have officially become one of the many diagnosed with a "flu-like" illness. Since I am now essentially in forced isolation for a week, I have a lot more time on my hands. This doesn't help the fact that I don't have any will to live left, but well, at least I have TONS of time on my hands. It's times like this, when I'm sick and just want to curl up and die, that I really really wish I hadn't picked a college so far away from home. Needless to say, I would kill for a little bit of my mom's home cooked anything.

But, well, she's 13 time zones away, so I decided to help myself. I decided to whip out my famous lasagna with soup, essentially the same as regular lasagna, but instead of cheese I use condensed soup. I know it sounds like it would be a gooey mess, but hey, you would be surprised what a little cornflour can do. Also, my tonsils are swollen, so a little lumpy lasagna sounded great. So I dragged myself out of bed, defrosted, washed and assembled the requisite ingredients, heated the oven, set the timer to an hour, and flopped back in bed.

Usually, the entire apartment starts smelling like soup within the first ten minutes, but it had been about 40 minutes and I realized that I still couldn’t smell it. It was weird, though I just assumed the fact that I had tissue papers stuffed in both my nostrils was contributing to the whole lack of smell. Every inch of me was hurting, so I really didn't want to have to get up if I didn't need to. I assumed, as the weak often do, that everything was fine.

Another 15 minutes go by and I remember that if overcooked, the thing starts to taste like my famous burnt lasagna, so I decided to go the kitchen to check on the dish that should have been bubbling right about now, my stomach screaming in hunger.

So I walk in. The oven light was on, the timer had another 5 minutes.

The dish was sitting, untouched, on the kitchen counter.

As it had, for the past hour.

Damn you, Nyquil.

Reason number 2456 to come to IU - COBRA STARSHIP

If there was ever a reason to love IU, this thursday was it. Now, I am fully aware of the fact that this post is going to make me sound like a 15 year old high schooler, and probably make me lose any pseudo intellectual street cred I have going on right now, but dang it, it is worth it. I love Cobra Starship. And I have, and I always will. Probably, but well, for now, always stands. They may play teeny songs that really only should identify with a high schooler, a thing I haven't been for over 3 years now, but, well, I like them. And if that means sometimes having to fight off the occasional girl with braces for the last CD at the store, well that is my cross to bear. Sometimes, you just have to indulge in your guilty pleasure.

And that is what I went to do.

So, over the summer, there was a contest over at PINK, and IU won a free concert by - wait for it - COBRA STARSHIP and, if that wasn't enough, GIRL TALK. That concert was this thursday. Was it epic? Yes. Very much so. The stage was set, there were VS models by the plentiful, DJs who kept the show going between acts, the weather and the foliage was beautiful. Hell even the guys from the bands were like "we've never been here before, but what a beautiful campus! This is like the definition of Fall" Yay, yellowing leaves!

Ok, so we started off with a DJ, went on to the local band, then the Starship landed, and finally Girl Talk blew it up. Somewhere in the middle of getting crushed by the crowd, and screaming so hard that I'm fairly certain I have done irreparable damage to my throat, I realized something - this is why I came to IU. Because at IU, it doesn't matter whether there are swarms of ladybugs (check), rain in the middle of and almost throughout an open air concert (check), waaaaaaay too many people trying to get to the front (check), and there are a million people standing between you and the autograph you really want (oh dear lord, check), if you stick it out and play your cards right, you end up getting not just the autograph, but a picture and a hug from Gabriel freaking Saporta.

YES. YOU MAY NOW COMMENCE BEING JEALOUS.

China - The wrap/warp up

Well, the last few blogs were obviously a little deceptive - they sounded like I was blogging out of Beijing, all the while I was slogging through my multiple killer-classes this semester in good old b-town. That, unlike what Paul Rudd seems to think, is not Beyonce, but Bloomington ( don't get that reference? Don't watch as much SNL as I do).

Anyways, as I said a millenia of blogs before, blogger.com was blocked in China, and I wrote those pieces (mostly) in Beijing. I had other pieces, but now, looking back upon them, they seem really trivial. Blogs that pretty much say something like "OMG, there's Peking Duck here! And like really good Chinese Food" really don't look as great in retrospective. So, I put up the ones that sounded philosophical, thought out, or, at least, a little less like it was written by Kanye West when he interrupted all of China.

Coz he did.

You know it.

20 years later: Protests considered taboo

BEIJING – Twenty years ago Thursday, China was at the center of world attention for all the wrong reasons.

It was June 4, 1989, and the seven-week-old student protest occurring in Tiananmen Square had just been brutally crushed. Tales of police brutality were pouring into Western media, often live, and the unofficial death toll was reaching the thousands.
It was a tragedy that reverberated around the world.

The people’s protest
The protests started April 22, 1989, after many Peking University and Tsinghua University students were put off by the Communist Party’s lackluster response to the death of revered pro-democracy and anti-corruption official Hu Yaobang.

The day after his funeral, students marched into Tiananmen Square to mourn. Though largely lacking in general direction, the students soon began to chant for more democratic reform and for open negotiations between student-elected leaders and the government.

By May 4, 100,000 students and workers had marched into Tiananmen and had added the demand of free media to the want of reform. In the days that followed, the government rejected the dialogue, and the leading newspaper of the day, People’s Daily, tried to sway the public toward the government by calling the students “small segments of opportunists” who were “plotting civil unrest.”

On May 13, students began a hunger strike, which was largely
covered by Western media that had been invited into China to cover Mikhail Gorbachev’s state visit.

By May 27, the Goddess of Democracy, a foam and papier-mache statue that was modeled after the Statue of Liberty, was erected in the center of the Square. Directly across from the statue was a large portrait of Mao Zedong, the chairman of the Communist Party of China, that hung from the gate of the Forbidden Palace.

Having been run out of Beijing by students, residents and workers, the army was ordered to clear the square by force.

Toll of tragedy
The timeline of the events from the evening of June 3 to the morning of June 4 remain unclear, as official accounts vary greatly from the student accounts.

Officially, no students were killed as the square had been cleared before the tanks were let in. Civilian accounts put the death toll near 3,000.

The army ambushed the square and opened fire on the protesters. Although some students used Molotov cocktails – improvised gasoline bombs – to retaliate, they were largely unarmed.

The tanks quickly crushed protesters, the Goddess of Democracy and all other structures constructed by the students.

By 5:40 a.m. June 4, the square was cleared, and government officials released the following statement: “Tiananmen Square has been returned to the people, but the square is off-limits to the public.”

Protestors remember; schools forget
Thursday marks the 20th anniversary of the protests, and the death of the pro-democracy movement in China.

The square is unmarked, and the incident, locally known as the “June 4th incident,” is a taboo topic.

There are no statues, no memorials and no public remembrances of this occurrence. Discussing the event in mainland China is illegal, and most Web pages pertaining to the protests are blocked.

Chinese officials unblocked the Wikipedia page (English) on the protests in April, but a Chinese version remains blocked.

As the topic is not discussed in schools, there is an entire generation growing up in China that has no way of learning about the protests except from their parents, many of whom choose not to discuss it.

Many of the protesters, especially the student leaders, were prosecuted, jailed and even executed.

“We were sent away from the city, into the rural areas, to get some perspective,” a woman at Peking University who had participated in the protests said. She wished to remain anonymous because of the sensitivity of the subject.

Eventually, students were allowed to return to their colleges and continue their studies. In effect, the movement died quickly.

“We realized that the time was not right, for the movement,” the woman said. “In the rural areas, no one knew what had happened in Beijing. The country was too wide, too divided, for such a movement to be successful.”

Today: a different kind of red
The families of the victims have been trying to get the government to admit fault and allow an official commemoration of the protests.

The participants have largely gone on to integrate themselves into mainstream Chinese society, some even pioneering China’s economic reforms.

Many still support democracy but are less aggressive in its pursuit. They see economic reform as a gateway to a possible but distant realization of democracy in China.

In Hong Kong, 13 students are participating in a hunger strike to commemorate the Tiananmen protests.

Today, the square that witnessed one of the bloodiest protests in the history of student rebellions is draped in a different kind of red.

There are red flags along the central pillar of the Monument to the People’s Heroes, and guards in red and green monitor the square from all sides. To enter the square, visitors pass through a security check.

Tiananmen – literally translated “Gate of Heavenly Peace” – hasn’t seen conflict since 1989.

The square is open to the public, but 20 years after it drew the world’s attention, many question whether it has truly been returned to the people.

Not your father's China

BEIJING – Let me start by making it very clear that this was supposed to be a rant about how China has managed, being the nifty little go-getter it is, to conduct capitalism under the guise of a communist socialist state.

This, however, is not that intended rant.

What changed? I came to China and realized that it has openly and very publicly been moving toward capitalism since 1978.

Surprised? I literally fell off my chair when I learned this.

This, with the inherent quality of ranting, is going to be a discourse on how the world’s largest communist country, is, in fact, much more capitalist than you might imagine.

The political reforms started in 1978, when Deng Xiaoping, widely considered the most powerful public figure in China from the late 1970s until his death in 1997, pioneered a shift toward privatization.

Since then, China has adopted a gradualist approach to economic reform, instead of abolishing socialism in one swift move. Hallmarks of the program include a market-oriented transition and what my professor described as a “strong opening policy.”

Implemented on a piecemeal basis for the past 30 years, China has emerged from being a non-entity to a major player on the world global market.

It boasts an estimated 10 percent gross domestic product growth rate and contributes 14.5 percent to overall global output, as compared to 22.5 percent by the United States, according to statistics presented by my professor at the Guanghua School of Business.

And the United States had about a 250-year head start in developing its economy.
Many scholars cast doubts on these figures. After all, the data is published by the Chinese Statistics Bureau, which is, like everything else in China, controlled by the Chinese Communist Party.

Could these not be fictional numbers that are just fueling the perception that China is successful and thus furthering the communist party’s propaganda? Much like Henry David Thoreau, scholars often bawl, “rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.” Scholars have a flair for the dramatics. I have to admit, I was one of them.

The miracle that is China seems too good to be true; everything seems to have worked out way too perfectly to be practical and, well, human.

A 30-minute drive through Beijing will quell your doubts. China is the glowing example of economic reform done right, and done well.

Its GDP figures are evident in the streets of Beijing. The predominant form of transport may be bicycles and crowded buses, but the glittering high-rises the Chinese call work spaces are proof of the booming economy. The shiny new streets are proof of the infrastructure dollars China claims to invest.

The fact that China hasn’t seen a social uprising since Tiananmen 20 years back is proof that the people are either content with the economy or are too busy shopping to bother.

Flippant, yes, but true.

You will not believe the rush in their supermarkets, stores that rival even the biggest malls in America. China seems to have found the fabled “it” factor, and the “it” is capitalism.

You know how the latest “Star Trek” movie has the tagline “not your father’s ‘Star Trek’”? Similarly, the economy present in China today is undeniably not your tried and true version of Marxist-Leninist Socialism.

And if the new “Star Trek” is any indication, China is going to blow our minds. The world’s greatest communist state is, in fact, a glowing example of capitalist victory.
It’s not communism, folks, it’s Communism, Inc.

Chinese Proverb - A book tightly shut is but a block of paper.

Censorship is rampant in China. And this isn't a big secret. In my time, I have lived in India, the world's largest democracy, USA, the paragon of human rights, and Oman, a Sultanate. I have some experience living under authoritarian rule, as Oman would qualify as one. But China is a whole different ballgame. The censorship here has gotten people killed, whereas in Oman only vocal and public blasphemy would do that. I used to joke that about 3 minutes before I get on the plane out of Beijing, I was going to Google things like "Communism sucks" or "Democracy rules" or "Tiananmen brutality". That way, they can't get me, and I'll know what the information available to a young Chinese is. The truth however, is simple. You do not take these chances while in China. While researching for an article, I realized that Wikipedia did not have any pages on Tibet, or the Dalai Lama, or the Democracy movement in China. There was an article on censorship, but all its links were blocked. The new york times was blocked, as were all blogs. When talking about this with my professor, I found out that these were blocked because they were becoming voices of dissent. And no one can stand dissent in the CCP. There are cameras everywhere. In the college, in the hotel, on the street. Just imagine what that is like. For someone growing up in China, apart from government mandated education, the internet also presents an idealized society where the children only learn what they should, and never know about the concept of dissent. How would that be, to wake up one day and not have "freedom", "dissent" or "democracy" to exist? Well, like Natalie Imbruglia once sang, I shiver! Also, iTunes is blocked. So much for downloading some Imbruglia.

Chinese Proverb - If heaven made him, earth can find some use for him

My local Chinese friend from IU, or my Guanxi Friend, introduced me to her cousin. Her cousin is a recent NYU Grad, a native Beijinger who moved back to Beijing despite multiple offers from top firms in New York. She now works as a business consultant at one of the premier firms of new China, or China 2.0 as she calls it. We had an interesting discussion about the differences between China and India, and China and USA. The biggest difference we discussed, however, was the difference between the two types of Beijingers. There are people like her, innovating and leading. People who live in what i call the shiny parts of Beijing. She works in a tinted glass corner office in a high rise, has power lunches, and lives in a chic apartment overlooking the olympic fields in Beijing. Then there are the follower Beijingers. These are the ones who live in the narrow alleyways of the older, duller, districts. They are the ones who work in the factories, in the shops and streets, or at best in the small central cubicle. They do, and they live. These are the main crux of the workforce of Beijing, and China. These are the people that are the reason that China is called the "workplace of the world". The innovators in China get the work to China, the followers actually do, albeit in obscurity. There exists a giant income gap between them, and this is causing an immense disparity in spending power. Being a marketing major, I have to wonder how big a challenge this poses to marketers. Who do they target? Even basic things like Coca Cola are too expensive at their American Prices for the followers. Does that make Coke a luxury product in China? And McDonalds? These are immensely pertinent questions that must be considered before stepping into China.

Chinese Proverb - Don't open a shop unless you like to smile.

I went shopping for a few items to a charming little shopping in Sunlitan today. the name of the mall was Yeashow, and it is the biggest and best place to get fake anything in China. They have everything from designer bags to clothes and electronics here. I was out with a friend of mine from IU, a chinese international student who I knew from tutoring at IU. I had told her I was going to be in Beijing and she had offered to come by and show me around. I had gone shopping before this, and everywhere I went, I noticed a different demeanor amongst the shop owners. Now, instead of starting to haggle for a Coach purse at RMB 1000, they were saying things like "350, friend price". What was this friend price? Was my extremely amiable face causing me to get great discounts? After a more english-adept shopkeeper explained to me that since I was with Chinese people, I was a friend, and they would not try to sell me things at the tourist price, I realized that I was witnessing Guanxi first hand. The power of personal connections, that purportedly runs businesses in China, was happening here, in front of me. True, none of us knew anybody personally, but just having a local with me was getting me special treatment, is it any wonder that Western companies that come parading into China with the best of their western minds fail miserably?

wǒ tīng jiàn wǒ wàng jì. wǒ kàn jiàn wǒ jì zhù. wǒ zuò wǒ liǎo jiě - You can only understand something by trying it yourself.

The first few moments of my life in China were surprisingly contradictory. I don’t know what it is I was expecting, but grassy knolls I was not. The airport was surprisingly grassy, and this would be the backdrop of my “Wow I’m in China! What the hell am I doing in China? But I’m in China! AAAAAAAAAAAH!” moment. China was, at this time, over reacting to H1N1, and had made us go through thermal scanners and had us go through thermal scanners, all the while with smiling eyes behind N95 masks. There was supposed to be a bus at the airport between the time of 3pm-6pm, and as I walked through the arrivals into a sea of Chinese faces, I saw no one with the promised sign of PKU/DBIC. Given my current mental state (AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!), this worried me no end. As I walked up to multiple help desks and asked for their help to locate the bus, I was met with the same bewildered expression. No one spoke any English! You think they would, being the help desk in a major international city, but no such luck. I’m pretty sure the lady was talking to me loudly and slowly, alas in Mandarin. I was doing the same in English to her. Finally I had a passenger who spoke English and mandarin come up to me and help me out. He didn’t know much, and the whole encounter was fruitless, but I realized something. They help, they are willing to help. You have to ask, but somewhere there will be a pseudo translator willing to help you.

I finally ran into TJ and Chris, fellow IU students, and it was the single happiest event of the entire trip. Being lost and alone in a foreign city is not nearl as adventurous as Hollywood makes it out to be! We ended up taking a taxi home, even though it was 5:00pm, as the bus was nowhere in sight.

Later at the hotel we found out that the bus had gotten there at 5:30, instead of 3, and had waited till it was half full to come. Welcome to China!

So, summer's almost over... (The Excuse-Filled Blog)

Ok, I know I said that I would right a bigger blog and wrap up my semester after I finished packing. And, technically, I am writing this *after* I am done packing. Only problem, that was three months ago. Oops :(

Well, for one I only finished packing about three minutes before I was supposed to get on the shuttle, and if I had waited to write a blog then, well, lets just say this would be an infinitely less interesting blog. And secondly, well, as I stated in one of my very first blogs, google sucks.

**rant warning**

You see, google, in an effort to personalize the world, decided that everyone in the middle east is not only proficient in, but prefers everything they do on the net to be in arabic. So, when I landed in Muscat and tried to go online, much to my surprise I was faced with every single detail of the page being in Arabic. Login? Arabic. Logout? Arabic. The little new post button? Arabic! Also, the layout was back-asswards. And when the thing would tell me things like "You've entered the password and the email in the opposite fields", IT WAS IN ARABIC! How was I supposed to know what on earth they were saying? ( At this point, if you say babelfish, congrats, you are much smarter than I was) So, I pretty much decided I'll wait till I get to China, and there it'll possibly be in English, globalized world and all.

/**rant warning**

So, I went to China. Which was awesome, but that's another topic for another series of blogs. There, however, not only was Blogger not in Mandarin, it was blocked! And there goes my entire idea of a "Life of Study Abroader - Beijing".

But well, I finally figured out that not only will China not get the almost Live coverage I waned to give it. So, I wrote some, and took some pics, and observed some funny things, some important things and some weird things. And that is what the rest of my blogs over the next few weeks will be about! Till then, ciao!

Look there's a senior!

It's the end of yet another year, and I have to say WOAH. Did this year fly by or what? I'm leaving in about 2 hours, and I haven't even *begun* packing, so of course I'm writing a blog.

Makes complete sense.

Ok, I'm going to be super productive and have this entire place (my apartment and possibly the universe) fixed in an hour. Will write a longer post then, yes I will!

So, I guess it's finally Finals Week.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

*crash*

Riding the weather roller-coaster

Bloomington's weather is weird, to say the least. When I first came here, I used to get so excited when it would rain. It doesn't rain much in Muscat, and it didn't rain much in Delhi, so rain was always welcome. This, however, was before my first of many falls in the rain. So the fact that it is raining again today, as it was yesterday, and promises to do tomorrow, is no ray of sunshine (see what I did there?). See, if there is one thing you need to know about Indiana weather, it's this:

A x% chance of rainfall = 100% chance of rainfall, x being any number between 10-100.

It doesn't matter if weather.com says 30%, it always translates as RAIN! Pretty much like a 90% chance of rain in Delhi usually translated as no rain. I like rain, I do! But my only umbrella broke two weeks back, and I'm tired of wearing my thick jacket to avoid getting drenched. Somehow rain seems to reach its peak jut as I am about to leave, and stop right after I enter shelter. The only way to save yourself? Layers. Many many layers. Like onions, or Ogres, green cute funny Ogres who have a slight accent and are married to Ogress' called Fiona, and live in a swamp with a smartass smart-ass called Dunkey and know a prince who sounds like Justin Timberlake and

I digress.

Where was I? Oh yeah, the weather. It is awful. And confusing. And unpredictable. Let's just hope we don't have any more snow. Don't laugh, it's possible!I mean with the laws of probability no longer applying and rain becoming highly selective in its timing to whichever city I move to, I'm starting to wonder if I should take all this personally, weather gods.

*at this point of time, Sri was struck by a giant thunderbolt that completely avoided all the much taller trees and metal rods near her, and the only sound was a resounding MUHAHAHAHAHAHAHA*

SPRING IS HERE!!!!!!

OMG, for the first time in months, I don't have to wear a jacket!!!! Could I be more excited (read it like chandler said it)? It's a friday, the weather's all sweet and sunny, all I have is 6 gazillion papers/projects and 4 finals till I officially become a senior! I'm excited, scared, well, no excited. It's funny, really, I can't wait to graduate and step into this 'real world' everybody seems to be functioning in, yet I really do love being in college. It's fun, relatively safe, and you get summers off. I guess that is the distinction between real world and not: whether you get summers off. I have always had something to do every summer - classes, jobs, internships, horsing around. But this time, for the first time, I think I'll be able to do what I have wanted to ever single summer since the end of high school.

Beach. Cold Drink. zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz's

Usually, under the Indian schooling system, the school year runs from april through march, so summers are usually filled with holiday homework and assignments like "What books you read during the summer" and such. So this school year ending in may, so free four months is a miraculous concept to me. I spent most of my freshman year promising myself sun soaked afternoons on the beach, which never really came to fruition. I was here taking summer classes, and then I was being a semi-productive member of society with a job. Last summer, it was two summer sessions of classes, followed by a job. This summer, zilch. For the most part, at least. So june-july-august? Beach, woo hoo!!! While not having a set internship is bumming me out, there are *some* benefits to this entire recession scenario.

What? I'm an optimist! And we need more of those these days..

I'm going to China!!!!!

OMG, the most amazing news came through this week - I got accepted to go to CHINA for a study abroad program this summer!!!!!!! Largest Communist country in the world, here I come!

Here's one of my poems..

It's written in pentameter, hence the weird line breaks. Be gentle.

These are the trials of our times

“I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness….”

Allen Ginsburg

Recession is the big bad wolf under the bed

that actually ate your grandma, while Bernie made

off with her house, home, clothes and bone. The reign

of four letter words is over, foulest

of the foul are three lettered: AIG. No one

can find the bloody box we were supposed to be thin-

-king outside of. Must’ve invested with Bernie.

It started on a bull, so money flowed

freely and jobs were plentiful. The philosophy

major, the beat poet, the drop out with the crack problem:

they were all employed with six figure

salaries, hired to walk the street and sell

their wares. Wallets thickened, skins too.

Souls disappeared as the dream of sticking

it to the man was replaced with a fat 401(k).

Global warming, terrorists,

Vampires are supposed to now sparkle??

The apocalypse is nigh, horsemen are here:

Spears, Miley, Joe, Nick, and the other jonas.

And then we have their leader, the face of this doom,

Bernard Lawrence "Bernie" Madoff, aka buffoon.

50 billion in a Ponzi scheme that vanished,

left his blood thirsty investors famished.

Had he succeeded, he they would have heralded.

Named it after him, the "Madoff Method"

Made the rounds lecturing the world.

Ah! But the icing on the cake and all that fun,

Bernie Madoff was turned in by his son.

Spring Break 2009: The obit

Now that classes have restarted (my first class will have started by the time this gets posted), it's time to officially bury spring break 09. It was a good week (or 10 days, counting extra). It was much looked forward to, and will be remembered time and again. Through anecdotes and blurry stories, we shall once again visit this wonder of all wonders again. We had fun together, you and I. We did what we set out to, and you made it possible. Nobody can doubt your potential, and it is very sad that you have been taken away from us so quickly. You have taught us many things, break. How to forget we go to school, how to live without any worries, and how to escape the world. But most importantly, you have taught us to hope. It may be a recession, but it is never a recession when it comes to being on spring break. Thank you for enriching us so.

We have to now let you go, and we shall look forward to the coming of your cousin, spring break 2010, as a way for you to live on. But for now, so long, spring break. I wish you didn't have to go.

Pointy green horns and blood shot red eyes

Over the past few years that I have answered the question "What do you do?" with "I'm in college", I have begun to realize a few things: sleep is a luxury, adrenaline really does exist, and college students are recognizable from MILES. Bloomington is essentially a college town. But when your living on campus, the town recedes from your mind, and your existence becomes campus-centric. And by campus I don't mean the physical building and lawns, but its psychological definition. People you hang out with, things you do, places you go - they are all very different from, say, a townie.

Which is why every time I ride the 3 bus to the mall, I feel like I've stepped out of bloomington. The same trip on the E bus, which is a campus bus, or the 9, which is a city bus that serves mostly students, is so not the same thing. It's the reason I love bloomington during the summer, the hustle bustle of the college dies down and the town starts to shine. I remember my first winter break here, when my mom and little brother came to bloomington to visit. They reached here the day after finals got over, and we went for a walk the next morning. The campus was deserted, the millions and millions of squeaky sneakers and snow coated uggs that usually pound the pavement were absent, and the campus was beautiful. (I have to write a poem for my class, I get wordier and more descriptive as it gets closer to wednesday.) So, instead of the haggard student, we saw the nice bearded man with the dog. And the snowflake lights they put all over Kirkwood. And the quiet beauty of downtown.

This particular memory came to me recently, while I was waiting for a bus back from Krogers. For some weird reason, I had decided to go grocery shopping at 2 pm on a friday, and there were no students in sight. Kroger is a common grocery haunt for students who live off campus, but not at 2 pm on a friday! But here I was, my over-descriptive brain spewing out nine hundred different ways of saying "I want to go home", and I was waiting on a bus. The bus guys usually need to see the student id to let you on the bus for free, and I had mine tucked into my pocket for easy retrieval. After I got on the bus and hobbled onto a seat, I noticed this other guy getting onto the bus. He didn't have his id out for display when he got on the bus, but the driver let him on anyways. He was a student alright.

How do I know? All he had bought from Kroger: Bread, Ramen and the biggest jar of peanut butter I have EVER seen.

Might as well have had pointy green horns :)

See if You Like this

Alarms. Ringing.

Sun. Rising.

Cars. Honking.

The world is starting to summon me.

Snooze. Snoozing.

Blankets. Slipping.

Dreams. Forgetting.

Weren’t dreams supposed to set us free?

Work. Reports.

Classes. Homework

Readings. Exams.

Tina Dico song playing on the radio, 105.9 – B:

I’m going to close my eyes, and count to ten.

And when I open them, again, everything will make sense to me then.

If finance interests you...

My sleep cycle is all over the place. I haven't been able to get a full nights sleep for over a week. I have way too many projects due this week, and groups in five of my six classes ( except poetry. I'd actually appreciate a poetry groupwork right now. Anything that wouldn't be so "real world"). 

The one I actually am excited about is this project we are doing for one of our finance classes. We have to go sign up for this website called StockTrak, an online investment portfolio manager. It gives us a million dollars, albeit imaginary, to invest with. Personally, I'd love to invest in the market. Yeah yeah, I know how nothing is going right with the market, and it hit a 20-year low yesterday and blah blah, but this is the perfect time to do one of two things:

1) Buy historically overpriced stocks that are at a low now, but will expectedly regain their value

2) Short sell stocks. You literally have nothing to lose.

For the first, take the example of  Berkshire Hathaway. I don't have much information on this company, but what I do know is that it was trading at around 135,000 this summer. Even though now it is hovering around 75K, it's potential is huge. If you have time (read 8-10 years), buy this stock and hold on to it. You may see this dip to much lower levels (if you can predict these, then wait and buy then - win win situation), but it will rise. 

As for short selling stocks  - why not? The market is slipping. Almost every company has seen its stock price drop. Short selling is the best and safest way to turn profits. A short sale is when you "borrow" shares and sell them, so you have an account that you have to settle at a later date. Let's take the example of Apple. On the 9th of Feb it was trading at $102.51 per share. If you short sold say 1000 stocks on this day, you would be 1000 shares in debt, but $102,510 richer. Today, the stock was trading at $86.95. All you would now need to do would be to buy the 1000 stocks you owe for a low low price of $86,950. This will settle your account of 1000 shares in debt. And you just turned a profit of $15,560. In two weeks. In other terms, you just made more than an entire year's worth of in-state tuition in two weeks. Or my rent for the next two years, in about two weeks. What do you need to do this? Probably just an account on e-trade and a few thousand for the margin. 

Why the long nerdy tirade on investments? Because I AM learning in my classes, despite what some of my grades might suggest. And because my dad reads my blog, and maybe this way he will agree to loan me the money I need for the margin. 

Kelley's not just teaching me how to survive on an hour of sleep. I know what I'm talking about, dad. Trust me. 

Weekly Poem#4

This weekend we celebrated valentines day, while I celebrated a multitude of other things: Stay in bed all day day, Singles Awareness Day, Happy Bailout Hallmark day, If I see another happy couple on the streets I'm going to scream day... you get the point. So, in keeping with this mother of all non-holidays, here's a poem that goes against all love poems by Pam Wagner (who, in all honesty, I had not heard of till my googling "Anti love poems" about 10 minutes back). 

(Sidenote: If anybody reads this and says or even thinks "grapes are sour", I will squish you. Much like a grape.)

Against Love Poems

Let Love Turn its Cheek

Love is a stranger, a curse, a gift
I have not given or taken,
neither in drabs
nor in abundance,
demanding soft collapse of skin on skin
flesh quickened, anticipation
I cannot parse or feel 
but as a worm writhing in palms 
of human curiosity
the parching sunlit desert
that sucks and kills.

I feel bereft
not of love's sheer
agony, leisures, pleasures, joy 
but of the touch
of earth's crumbling warmth
wormy between my fingers
the sweetness of gravid loam 
buttered with seed,
hopeful root hairs rooting in darkness, 
star-nosed moles blindly
snuffling out the delicacy
within each clod.

Love is, if only, a word
twisted, double-tongued,
bladed to cut more than it cleaves, 
an avowal of falsity and pomp,
of circumstance always changing,
like lies, rotting fruit,
an overblown cabbage rose.

Send me instead friends
of the aspens quaking-yellow patience, 
spruces loyal-true,
a dark, moon-drowned sky
prickly with stars that neither love
nor claim to know my name.
That will do.
While the earth still slides around the sun
they will neither die for me, 
nor remember me when I'm gone.

Let love turn a moldy cheek
and over in its grave.

I got sent home from class :(

I've been slightly sick over the past few days (weeks?), and I finally decided to go see a doctor yesterday. I figured it was a routine cough running it's course, but when my voice started to resemble Kermit's and I ran through an entire bottle of NyQuil without any respite, I figured maybe help was needed. With the health center being so close to the business school I figured I'd just go in to see the doctor, and be off to classes. How long was it going to take? 40 minutes? To be safe, I scheduled my appointment with the doctor an hour before class. Much like most things in life, this didn't work out. The pharmacy was backed up, and I reached class half and hour after it started. The doc told me I had a flu-like disease, and I was to get rest and some very potent medication. I left the health center thinking he had completely overreacted to a few coughs. He had not. How do I know? As I walked into my class, the first thing my prof said to me was "Are you sick? Go home! Lie Down!"
I thought he was kidding.
Nope.
He actually ordered me out of class, and told me to make sure I was wrapped under a blanket immediately. I had to go to work right after class, so I went there. Pretty much the same conversation happened there, and I figured I must look like a corpse if every one was treating me like a pariah. So I did what they wanted from me. I went home, curled up with some hot soup.
That was just about when my computer crashed.
CRASHED!

Being 20.

So, it's been about 2 weeks since I have given up being a teenager. People say old habits die hard, and this being a teenager habit has been especially hard to kick. I had been plagued with these visions of what I would now have to do now that I am in my twenties. Get a car, find a job, buy a house, have a life etc etc. Fortunately, none of these big heavy ideas have come to fruition in the past 14 days of me being 20. 

Since IU had a snow day the day of my birthday (while everybody likes a day off, the actual snow was a bummer), I had a lot of unexpected free time. And by free time, I mean time I should have spent catching up on the insane amount of work I have, but hey who works on their birthday? Anyways, I figured 20 was a good number for me to quit some of the habits I had had for a long time. Like, when my birthday would be about a month away, I would start to mark of dates on a calendar. I'd set up countdowns counting the number of hours, minutes, seconds to the exact point of midnight. But one of my bigger traditions was one I started around my 15th birthday. This was 2004, just about the time the 10 year sitcom run of Friends was coming to an end, 10th grade was upon me and most of my friends, people I would die for, were either leaving, or moving away to different sections. The night of my 15th birthday, I came up with an idea. I decided I need a theme song. I have a song playing in my head when I wake up  anyway, I figured it might be good to have a feel good song of the year. Something that I can listen to when things are rough, and it will always remind me of how sweet and optimistic I felt the night of my 15th birthday. I ended up picking "I'll be there for you", the theme from friends. Yeah, not that imaginative. But, over the last 5 years, this concept evolved into more of a song of the year, something that sets the tone for the entire year. 

This year I didn't make a calendar. I didn't set a countdown. I was physically dreading this big event, so much so, I didn't even pick out my song. When a friend asked me on 27th midnight what my song was, I just said, "I think I've outgrown that."

But here's the weird thing. I hadn't. Turns out turning 20 is pretty much like turning anything else. The initial shock of being 20 was done, and now I'm just excited. I may not qualify as a teenager anymore, and I'll never be able to use the "I'm just 19, how would I know" excuse. Pretty soon, people are going to care whether I have a full time job, what car I drive, how big my apartment is, what my life goals are, et cetera,  et cetera. But for the moment, all that is long term.  For now it's a brand new day. Keeping in tone with that, this is my birthday song: Brand New Day by Joshua Radin. 

 

Weekly Poem #3

Here's the Vikram Seth poem I consider to be one of his more memorable works:

Round and Round

After a long and wretched flight That stretched from daylight into night, Where babies wept and tempers shattered And the plane lurched and whiskey splattered Over my plastic food, I came To claim my bags from Baggage Claim Around, the carousel went around The anxious travelers sought and found Their bags, intact or gently battered, But to my foolish eyes what mattered Was a brave suitcase, red and small, That circled round, not mine at all. I knew that bag. It must be hers. We hadnt met in seven years! And as the metal plates squealed and clattered My happy memories chimed and chattered. An old man pulled it of the Claim. My bags appeared: I did the same.  Vikram Seth

 Seth makes this poem very very relatable. Who hasn't been on a flight with the inevitable crying baby and the turbulence that strikes just as the hostess hands you your drink. And then, haggard, tired, worn out, you reach the baggage claim. And then the entire mundane experience turns brilliant. A sign of a blast from the past. A meeting, a friend you hadn't met for seven years. You get excited, images of the past, and what you will say to her start running through your head. You replay your first opening line, where the rest of the evening will go, what all you will discuss, everything that will happen. And then, just like that, the entire idea disappears. An old man, comes out of no where to claim his bag, and takes away all these thoughts with him. With the slight tinge of embarrassment, you too make a hasty exit.

Speaking of exits, ciao!