SCAP!!!

Uhh...SCAP stands for Stupid american College Admission Prodedures...cool huh?? LOL

Yesterday my father enlightened me on the way a student gets admitted into an American college or university. I had a vague idea of this because I lived here for a couple of years preparing quite well for the SAT during my stay. Unfortunately, my B grade in PE (running a mile in 10 min. was the cut-off :(( ), as pointed out by my parents, was one of the reasons for me coming back to India after spending 2 cool years in US. A sudden cultural change in me also was a, maybe the, reason for this. IT happens, we can't control it. We can't avoid being influenced by the people here. Not just here, as a matter of fact, anywhere in the world. And we have to get used to the people here and their living styles, those changes might sound exciting to the kids but not to parents ;) . This happened in my case as well.

Anyway...what I heard from my father was quite shocking to hear. Students appear for the SAT in their 11th grade :P and their applications are sent to colleges in Decemeber / January...depends on the colleges. SO, whatever they learn in their 12th grade doesn't count at all!!! What is this?? The core subjects that students learn in their final year don't even count for their college entrance??

Its raining now!!! WOW...it feels so good to see these beautiful droplets of water splashing on the window and sometimes on my screen as well :)

Coming back to the admissions...there is discrimination among people when it comes to fees. The people are divided into two groups, Locals Non-Locals. Locals are the people who belong to the same state. The Non-Local fees are almost double the Local fees!!! Sounds sooo crappy X-( !!! . And the weightage of the SAT score and GPA (from high school) don't have a fixed weightage to decide upon on the admission...they vary from college to college...so a student can't be sure of getting a seat in any college until the final results are declared!!

Father asked me to write the SAT as well...as I had a good chance of getting into a nice college here. However I said, "Vaddu nana...nenu IIIT lo chaala happyga vunnanu...please let me stay there...:)".

Indian system is the best, no doubt about that!!!

Have to go now...and close all the windows....

No more CS :((

This is probably the 13^th or 14^th time I've taken this decision, however, this time it will be the final one. Oh yeah! No more getting away with the false promises.

*Break*

Phew!! Just escaped another of my father's lectures right after dinner ;) . So, as I was saying, I have decided to quit playing CS from today onwards. I even uninstalled the game from my laptop (have done this loads of time :P ) . I am going to miss this game sooo much :(( . The beauty of this game lies in the realistic surroundings it creates around the gamer. All the events that take place in the game are governed by the laws of nature. And this is what got me addicted to this game, sadly not anymore. I spent about $60 on this marvelous game and looks like all the money will go waste :( .

CSS is the advanced version of CS v1.6 and CS-CZ. The engine used in this game was the same one used in HL2. So, it inherits the same rag doll physics principles wherein every particle in that (virtual) world behaves like it should as if it were in our (real) world. The rag doll effects are simply superb and are worth lots and lots of praises.

Anyway, I have taken a serious resolution and am very keen in sticking to it till the end ( I didn't define the meaning of end here :P, just kidding).

Another shock...

What’s up with this strange static electric discharge? I can’t understand it! And I am so freaking out because of this thing as it looks like I am the only one who gets these shocks.

It all started when I went to my parent’s place for winter break. I touched the car’s door handle outside the airport for the 1st time and received this sudden jolt that threw my hand back!

*Break*

Ok, I am back after a good lunch and a good lecture from my father ;)

Lunch was GOOOOOD as usual, and today being a Sunday it was chicken and pulav. After lunch, it was movie time. I watched FOOLPROOF, had in my laptop for 3 months but never the time to watch it! It was a good movie, nice plot and the direction was cool with unexpected ending. I should watch more movies now! Make a habit of it maybe as I don’t have any expect for a few (who am I kidding?).

It was CSS time again after the movie, of course. I don’t know what would have happened to me if CSS wasn’t there. I would have been stuck with some crappy game like AOE.

No sooner had I started playing it, parents woke up and came into the living room, just to find me “wasting (I don’t think so!!)” time. I should have seen this coming .

My father then started off with his famous lectures. Rohith and Ravi know about this very well. He lectured me even while chatting in Yahoo! Come to think about it, they are worth hearing. They might sound mean and used to make me wish I was never born. However, I have realized (couple of years ago, so to speak) that they are too good to be ignored (chaala matter vundi vaatilo ;) ). People have a lot to learn from those lectures, I pity those who don’t have the opportunity. He lectured about his days and then told me what I should do and what not to do. He does this every time, except that the durations and complexities of the lectures increase year after year.

Anyway, coming back to the stupid static electric discharge, the stupid discharge is following me everywhere. It has become a habit for me now to use my handkerchief as a medium between my hand and any metal surface I touch. This is sooo weird and uncomfortable. This happens in IIIT as well!!! In the mess (it is a MESS, lol), I get these stupid jolts when I touch a water jug or my own freaking plate!! I keep asking my friends, who apparently haven’t any encounters with “IT”, to touch the jug before I do, just in case.

I don’t know the reason behind this and I am very, very, very much interested in getting to the bottom of this, but I don’t know where to start from! I am so confused and angry that I don’t know what to do about this.

I don’t know how long this will last…

Thai food again? NO WAY!!!

Tonight happened to be the last day I ate Thai food in my life, unless of course I go to the Thai restaurant, ‘My Thai’, in Fremont, CA in future ;). No more Thai food after the horrible experience we had today. Today is Poornima’s birthday, she turned 16. And it was her wish to have dinner at a Thai restaurant. So after an extensive search, we finally found a good restaurant close to our place. We were having the idea that it would be just like ‘My Thai’. However, the menu card itself was so confusing that we immediately realized that we were in the wrong place. But there was no backing off now, as it was my sister’s birthday right? We couldn’t find any rice or noodles ;) in the menu. When we asked the waitress, she showed us another card which listed the various noodles and rice dishes they served. We didn’t understand it at all! Based on my extensive GK in food, we ordered some dishes; I don’t even remember the names :(. The food was horrible, full of vegetables, no chicken at all! I was damn sure that I had ordered chicken and not veggies. After a thorough search, I found few strands of chicken (they did look like that) meat sticking to the stupid baby corns and mushrooms (boiled :(( )! I felt so sick when eating all those boiled vegetables. Finally we returned home empty stomach. I didn’t even feel like complaining, I was too dejected to do so. Spent $60 for nothing!!! That sucked. Anyway, we all learnt a lesson and will make sure that we won’t make bakras of ourselves from next time onwards :P

Blogging in the airport???

Well, well, well...another IIITtian went down with the blog fever. In the past 1 month...quite a few of my friends started blogging...couple of them very interesting I must say!! One of them even made me famous :)) Thanks (really??) to Badri a.k.a Apocalypse...people know me better as Sloggerika rather than Rahul Sarika. Why Badri?? Just because I sat in my room 24/7, why did it occur to you that I was slogging, especially CO?? If I really had the capacity to slog...I would have been expecting a decent GPA this sem. My intermediate total of 420 (nice number eh??) would have been somewhere close to 450 at least?? Like I care about these exams anyway...was just trying to support my arguement :P). So what was I doing in my room if I wasn't slogging?? Well, I was playing Counter-Strike, Counter-Strike and Counter-Strike, during the exams as well...yep, that’s true!!! I am so damn addicted to this cool game that I can't imagine even a single day without playing it.

So, as I was sitting in the Frankfurt airport waiting for my flight to Newark (5 hrs. of waiting :(( ), I got this idea of beginning my blog instead of starting in summer. I was like...’free internet + 4 hrs laptop battery = some useful work?? ‘The journey until now has been comfortable, better than the experience I had in Air India! My friends, Rohith, Shashank, Samba and senior#2 a.k.a Yaso (senior#1 being KAP) accompanied me to the airport. It was so nice of them to see me off, imagine waiting for a fight ALONE for 2Hrs!!! We talked about the usual stuff, being ourselves as usual. We happened to see Jayaram sir too; he must have come to see his relatives off. He is such a cool guy. He is one of those few people who need not demand respect, they get it automatically.

Sooo...coming back to the airport...my flight was scheduled to leave at 0120Hrs...After saying goodbyes to my friends, I entered the airport for check-in. Immigration and Customs followed check-in and finally I was in the departure hall, waiting for my plane. Due to "unknown" reasons, the flight got delayed by 45 min. Finally, I boarded the plane and found myself sitting next to an average looking gal ;). It wasn’t even my seat...a mother came up to me and requested me to exchange seats with her daughter. Shwetha, that was her name, was a BTech grad in Telecommunications from Bangalore. It was her first trip on a plane and was kind of scared. I helped her to get familiar with the procedures and stuff. She then told me that she was going to Boston; to her husband (I was like, ‘WHAT???? OHHH...OKK...’ she looked too young to be married!).

We talked about a lot of things until it was time for the in-flight movie "Spanglish". I heard a lot about this movie but never got the chance to see it. So this was going to be treat for me. Last time they screened "Kal Ho Naa Ho", which I had already seen and was in no mood for shedding tears: P. Spanglish is a cool movie! The movie is about a Mexican mother, Paz Vega, who tries her best and eventually succeeds to preserve the Mexican culture in her daughter while living among "whites" (really mixed up family) after getting out of the miserable life in Mexico. This is a problem faced by us Indians as well, my parents had to face this problem...every parent does....we are talking about “THE USA” here!!! The actress was gorgeous...very very very beautiful. The cast also had Adam Sandler (that guy from Big Daddy and 50 1st Dates with Drew Barrymore??). The movie was a good one...I must get my friends to watch it :)...

A long nap followed the movie and woke up in time for breakfast (by the way, the food sucked big time, except for the paneer...yummy!!!) with the usual omlette and fruit. Then they screened a Hindi movie, starring Kareena Kapoor, Fardeen Khan and that hero from Ishq Vishq Pyaar Vyaar (I don't know this name, some XXX). The story itself was sick...Fardeen khan, a hacker, steals Rs. 5.5 Billion (yeah right!!) which belong to a mafia don. To get that bad guy off his back, Fardeen and Kareena (apparently lovers) trap XXX in this scam. XXX recovers from a serious injury and kills Kareena for framing him for the robbery in the name of love. I think he dies in the end as well....I was too fed up with the movie to watch its stupid ending. Yuck!!!

Soon after that the plane landed in Frankfurt and Shwetha and I said good-bye to each other and went off in different paths (she was going to gate 28 and I was going to gate 31).Ahhh....so my first blog finally comes to an end...its 1010hrs now....German time....have to wait for another 2.5 hrs....damn!!! Could do with a McDonalds burger eh? And then pass the remaining time by going through Sairam's Chip and Digit magazines....

Really boring ...hope the second part of the journey is good and interesting...


*Apr 16th : I just found out that XXX = Shahid Kapoor....thanks to a crazy fan of his ;) LOL