Surprises =]

I've had quite a few of them the past few days.

On Saturday night, everyone went into a cleaning frenzy, and I was told that relatives are coming over the next day. Sunday afternoon, I opened the door to a fantastic bunch of friends. THANK YOU (vaguely in order of appearance) Simran, Saranya, Thiru, Reema, Subra, Abhishek, Rama, Amu, Sneha, Manraj, Serena, Aditya and Dhevy! And my family of course, Sowmya in particular, for liasing with them =]

I'm not sure if it's okay to put photos up here. I guess I'll put up a couple =D

We were supposed to be staring at Serena's imaginary spider on the ceiling.




It was a great day, thank you all once again! From Simran's story about me (plus the poem, hahaha) to Rama and Subra talking in Tamil, to Serena's music, it was all hilarious and memorable. And thank you for the gifts!



And Monday was another surprise. I was expecting to meet Raghav, and Bala jumped out ("like a teletubby") from behind the wall! Thank you so much you two! It was wonderful finally meeting both of you! And the present was excellent!



It's on display, da. =D



And then was the meeting with primary school friends Yagnya and Shalini. Yagnya brought Chicago over (she turned 18 in December, haha) and after watching that, we walked to the beach and talked and talked and talked. (We were talking nineteen to the dozen, literally, if I may add, because I was almost nineteen and she behaved like she was twelve. Haha I'm kidding, eggie.) And rushed home in time to open the door for Shalini, after which all three of us and my sister continued talking and talking- we hadn't seen each other for so long!

My face and my favourite Victorian tshirt got cake-smeared =( Luckily the camera's battery ran out of charge. But it was fun =D It was fun overall, I mean, not the cake-smearing part. Haha.

[Just look at my sister (in blue) and I. No stranger would believe we're sisters.]

And a big THANK YOU to everyone who smsed/called/emailed me! I was really touched =]


Probably going to VJ tomorrow to see the ICS juniors dancing for the CNY concert. Exciting times!

"The heat was as heavy as a broken heart."

I've never ever heard it put quite that way. That (the title) was one of the only good lines in that book.



I haven't mentioned quite a few things here, there was the SIFAS gang gathering, we watched the amazing movie Seven Pounds. There were the gatherings the Monday before the last, first with ICS and then with 05V14. It was great meeting so many people again.

And the New Year didn't receive any mention here either. It seems the same actually, just that I'm doing different things.

Met Dhevy on Saturday to go see what Shiva's Geetha class was like. It was an engaging conversation with highly interesting people! =D

Lunch with Laura last Monday! Talking to her was fantastic as usual =] Girl if you read this, I can't wait to read Gathering Blue! And that other book! haha.

Watched Villu yesterday with some of us Tamilians- Dhevy, Rama, Amu and Sneha. It was a typical Vijay movie; lots of comedy at the start and lots of exaggerated action at the end. I understand why his fans love him though- he's got charisma.

I've been reading a lot too, reading to my heart's content. Not forgetting listening to music- Folie A Deux is good! I'm listening to it as I type out this post, and it certainly makes an unforgettable first-impression.

I watched MAMMA MIA! The Movie recently, so those songs are still stuck in my head though.





"Mamma Mia! Here I go again.
My, my. How can I resist you?"

"'Well, blood is dirt,' I said."

Owen may not have given his war poetry universality. Sure, there's poems about the "Greater Love" between soldiers, as well as negative aspects of war in almost every other poem. However, I think the circumstances under which WWI, the war Owen fought in, were different. It was a completely unnecessary war. Owen expresses this by tearing down the romantic notions of war previous poets had held, and glorifying instead the sacrifices of each soldier.

But I believe there ARE other things to be admired about war. Like nobility. I refuse to believe that fear is the only main emotion on the battlefield. After all, not every war in history has been unnecessary. We're definitely better off without war, but if the situation calls for it, it isn't fair to say war is entirely futile.

This picture doesn't justify the need for war in any way. It just made me think that fighting to save other people (or other things, i couldn't resist this picture) is not all glory, as the Romantics would say, but not all futility either.

Facebook and other things.

(Doesn't the title itself seem like Facebook is taking over our lives?)

My sister insisted I join Facebook before the end of last year.

Managed to skive off that one.

I'm against joining Facebook for a couple of reasons. It seems to make connections so.. mechanic. People keep in touch because they happen to be able to, not because they want to. There's no longer any fun in keeping touch, there's nothing special about it. Every friend becomes a number on the list of Friends. Letters became emails which became SMSes, which have now become Wall Posts. No one remembers the excitement of receiving a letter. Or even an email.

And another thing that irritates me is that everything is so public. Even when you restrict your profile to friends, every friend can see what you said to every other friend. I've never been too comfortable with that.

And the photos! I don't like putting up photos of myself (That post some time back was the only time I've done it I think, and that was in a nostalgic fit.) but so many of my photos are already uploaded! But it looks like joining Facebook is the only way I'm going to get all the photos we took.

I give a lot of value to every type of communication. I save MSN conversation and read them when I'm free. I never delete emails. I manually copy out my phone's inbox, every single message. I'm afraid that if I join Facebook, I'll get the irresistible urge to start saving Wall Posts too. And that is an infinite waste of time, but I just might do it.

I guess there are advantages of using Facebook too. It's good for keeping in touch with friends you WANT to keep in touch with but are otherwise unable to do so. If you've lost their number, for example, or if they're overseas. And Shiva once told me it's good for networking and sharing ideas.

I suppose it boils down to using it with discretion, but I've seen it's addictive powers in so many of my friends. Perhaps I'll have to join, whether I like it or not, not because of peer pressure, but because it has become a medium through which even important information is passed on. Perhaps I will join, but not yet.


I changed the template because that monotonous brown was getting boring. And I added some things. The Calvin and Hobbes comic and the horse pictures have to go right at the bottom of the page, unfortunately.


Books I'm reading now:

-Oliver Twist
-Romeo and Juliet
-Macbeth
-Anne of Avonlea
-Emily Climbs
-The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (THANK YOU for the early present, Ser En!)
-The Lord of the Rings
-The Beethoven Medal

I really should start reading more non-fiction. It's quite embarrassing when most people I know are reading philosophical arguments or biographies or something equally non-fictional, or have read them, while I'm reading The Lord of the Rings again.

But I love fiction for passages like this:

"She does look lonely," said Diana softly. "We must come often to see her."

"I think her parents gave her the only right and fitting name that could possibly be given her," said Anne. "If they had been so blind as to name her Elizabeth or Nellie or Muriel she must have been called Lavender just the same, I think. It's so suggestive of sweetness and old-fashioned graces and 'silk attire'. Now, my name just smacks of bread and butter, patchwork and chores."

"Oh, I don't think so," said Diana. "Anne seems to me real stately and like a queen. But I'd like Kerrenhappuch if it happened to be your name. I think people make their names nice or ugly just by what they are themselves. I can't bear Josie or Gertie for names now but before I knew the Pye girls I thought those names real pretty."

"That's a lovely idea, Diana," said Anne enthusiastically. "Living so that you beautify your name, even if it wasn't beautiful to begin with... making it stand in people's thoughts for something so lovely and pleasant that they never think of it by itself. Thank you, Diana."

The Kite Runner

That was one of the first books I read after the A-levels. Do go and read it if you haven't already, it was fascinatingly genuine, and realistic in it's portrayal of harsh Afghanistan, a country ripped apart by internal strife, set on the fringes of the 21st century. Made me grow up a little too. The end is far from a happy ending, but it's a hopeful ending. And that beats a bleak ending any day.

I borrowed the book from the National Library, and it was in quite a bad condition. What irritated me further was that one of the previous borrowers had left pencil marks all over the book. I was about to erase them, but I realised that most of the marks were indications of words that reader didn't understand. He or she had underlined and/or circled words unknown to him or her. I was curious to determine the age of the reader, but it was puzzling.

How old could the reader be, who borrowed a book meant for teenagers and adults, who didn't know the meanings of "retaliate", "blemished" and "hippie", but knew the meaning of a certain ugly little word which sounds like the first syllable of the word "country"? *

(That reader stopped reading the book after the first few chapters, or gave up marking words; the pencil marks disappear completely and I doubt it was because there was no other difficult word.)

Perhaps swear words are common even in primary schools. Or, perhaps the reader was familiar with swear words rather than other words (then why borrow such a book?).

I definitely wasn't the second person to read that copy of the book, judging by its condition, so I was surprised to find a spelling mistake no one else had noticed, even though the same word appears twice in that paragraph, once spelt correctly, once incorrectly. The word that was meant is "aisle", and it appears right the first time, but a few lines later, it's spelt "isle". I triple-checked, but "isle" made no sense in that sentence.** This surprised me, surely discerning readers would have read this copy before? I hate vandalising books, but this disturbed me.

I added in the "a".



* I didn't think of this myself, it's all thanks to a certain Literature teacher from England, who told us that in some contexts, a description of a girl as a "country girl" has sexual references.

** This really is true. I returned the book quite a while back so I am unfortunately unable to quote the page number and paragraph. The other single-word quotes are accurate, though. I remembered those.

Simmer!

Special mention for SIMRAAAAAAAN!

Cos I couldn't find a picture of her earlier, except the anteater picture hahaha.

The Past Few Days and Recollections

Walking along the beach at night is as great as always. If only we could get to the rocks! India won the match, an opportunity for the Heroes of India to uplift the mood of the entire nation. Orchard Road isn't as spectacular as usual, a pity, I've always enjoyed walking down to see the different Christmas light-ups. The Day The Earth Stood Still was okay. Reminded me a lot of The War of the Worlds, and it was pretty short. But meeting the senior was great =] And Vaaranam Aayiram is an amazing movie. It manages to be sensitive, but with realistic depictions. Perhaps the love at first sight part might be unreal to critics, but the rest of the movie is great. It almost made me cry in the theatre. A lot more English in this movie than is usual for Tamil movies, though. Watching this movie with Shal was fantastic, and it touched her loads even though she wasn't watching it for the first time. There was a fire in one of the houses in Block 4 of Neptune Court. The whole flat was ablaze. I asked around but no one knew what caused it or whether everyone was safe.

I miss VJ:

07S43

05V14

Beyond Borders: Japan

Beyond Borders: Silicon Valley

The Indian Gang

And loads more, but I don't have the pictures. Yet.

This has been a disorganised post but I like it that way =]





"I will come and find you, and I will blow you off your feet."

Cold Days and Warm Hearts

The temperature in my house was 25 degrees Celsius yesterday. I love cold days like that, when the whole house seems air-conditioned and we wear jackets and watch movies or read books and munch on apples. Perfectly dreamy weather. Today is a great day too, 26 degrees Celsius.

Prom was great. Everyone looked wonderful! I'll admit it was mostly a costly photo-taking session, but I liked it. And Prom King and Queen were awesome too! Our table (Some of the Indians + Wilbur) was pretty fun! Simran sitting on my right and Dhevy on my left- much fun =] I don't have any of the group photos with me now, so another time! I love the shot glass souvenirs. "Viva la Victoria" and "sweet like a chic a cherry cola" - they couldn't have chosen better phrases!

(That's a bit of nail polish left on my finger. )

I like the Macro function on the camera, it makes details unbelievably clear.

Finally met Reema on Thursday for ice cream, it was ages since we'd talked, and we talked for hours. Then Sunday was bowling with the gang. We'd planned on ice-skating but it ended up being too expensive, so we went bowling instead. It was my first time, and I slipped and fell the first try =D cos I overstepped into the (i'm not sure what it's called) slippery part of the aisle. Besides, I was wearing a size 7 shoe on my left foot and size 6 on the right. That was pretty embarrassing, but after that, it was fun! I really want to go ice-skating some day though. Dhevy! Haha let's go!

I found this in my all-purpose notebook. It was written sometime during the A-level period, so hopefully that explains the dull tone-

I Love:

The sound of a cricket bat against a cricket ball.
The smell when you strike a match.
The feel of a firm handshake.
The taste of a salty seashore breeze.
The sight of thunderclouds rolling ahead.

I think that was written to momentarily distract myself.

I hope everyone's enjoying their holidays!