Everything that I hate and can crib about ;-)
And how Kavya Viswanathan got busted and got dissed (lol could not resist that ;) )
Oh well, when I’d first seen the book, just as it was released, I thought it seemed like a pretty neat book. I mean a good idea, probably well written and a good storyline. But I did not purchase it at the time since I already had like 3 books in a queue to read and decided to maybe purchase it after I’d finished those. I guess it was a good decision in hindsight. But the decision to borrow it from a cousin to read it unfortunately wasn’t.
After the plagiarism scandal broke out, I thought I might as well take a look at the book. So borrowed it from a cousin since the book was not available in any book stands due to it being pulled off the shelf because of the scandal. I’ve heard that the book, after the pull out, was selling for about 2-3 times it’s original price on EBay
Anyway, back to the book, I’ll not disclose the story of the book. But I’ll rant about what I disliked in it. Firstly, it does not really portray Indians in a very favorable picture. Now I don’t know any NRIs so I don’t really know how they live and behave. And another thing I did not like is the portrayal of the main characters.. They were, for my taste, far too artificial. The way their behavior is described, I just could not picturise them. Again, maybe US teenagers are like that, maybe they are not. I have no way of knowing that but they just did not suit my taste.
The humor is good in some places, especially the way the parents go about planning the whole charade et all. But it is not enough in my view to justify the entire book sadly :(
I was supposed to go for a friends wedding today. Unfortunately I had not booked my travel tickets earlier and when I tried over the weekend and today, there were just no reservations available :(
And I so wanted to go for the wedding. Well, I wish best of luck to her and hope her life turns out great :)
I always believe being frank to be advantageous. And with friends, I had always tried to be frank, even if it meant that sometimes I said something harsh, hoping that by saying the truth, I would prevent possible occurance of misunderstanding later.
But due to various reason, people going far(not in terms of physical distance), change in perceptions about people and a general disinterest, I had of late stopped speaking out to friends, not saying what I felt like saying or should say but instead kept it bottled up within myself. Heck have it bottled up even now!
But today, a conversation which started with some irrelevant topic got to the point where I spoke frankly to a friend, spoke about something that had recently bothered me and even pissed me off to an extent. And when I said it out, the reason due to which I had been pissed turned out to be so inconsequential because it actually stemmed from a reaction to something I had myself said, something which I now find extremely distasteful and idiotic. Nevertheless, once I realised the root cause, I realised it was my fault and that immediately turned my irritation to guilt and shame!
But it did do one thing. It cleared up the situation, erased any possible resentment and simmering billigerence and thus prevented any possible ugliness in the future.
And I am extremely glad :)
Yes, I will not reveal any info, but you know it ;)
I need to reorganize. I am wasting too much of my time and not doing enough productive tasks. As a result, I’m not doing justice to my studies, work and some other stuff I should and want to do.
For this, I’m thinking of implementing some steps to reorganize how I spend my time. First would be to severely cut down on IM, E-mails and IRC. Well almost I hope cos it’ll be tough to get off skype since we use it mainly in our office to communicate with each other and the people in the US office..
Next, I somehow need to convince my parents to allow me to ditch my cell phones. I have absolutely no need for them and consider them a huge waste of time and money. Plus they are extremely intrusive. Unfortunately, my parents disagree and are literally forcing me to keep them! :(
I have tried and they say fine ditch the phones and then get one exclusively for keeping in contact with us. :O Yeah right, that would be so much different.
Next would be to reduce my RSS feed subscription to those which provide me a better ROI for my time in reading them. I have a lot of unnecessary feeds which, if removed, would most likely not cause a loss! ;)
Yes, this will prolly make me less accessible but then that is one my secondary goals as well ;)
But I’m not yet certain if I should go ahead with this.
How things are not what they seem!
How situations are interpreted differently by different people!
Sigh :(
An actor called Rajkumar, Dr. RajKumar actually, a local actor, died today. Though we got the news at about 1430, It was not a big deal to me except that I got a half day off ;). But what I did not like, kinda pissed me off was the reactions of his so called fans.
There were reported rioting, tyre burning and apparantely calls for a bandh tomorrow. And all this because Rajkumar died. It’s not like he was murdered or killed in some demonstration but he died of natural causes. So what do these fans want to prove? That he should have been immortal? Or are they showing their fanboyism by mourning his death by stoning others burning tyres? What are you exactly trying to prove?
No I did not really like Rajkumar because he was a huge influence and in my opinion he did not always use that influence for the right. But that’s my opinion! And now with his death, he is only causing grief to people who are affected by these riots. A friend of mine narrowly escaped today. A stone thrown at her bus hit a window close to where she was sitting. I am glad nothing happend to her and she escaped unhurt.
Have you been bothered by spam calls and paper mails? I have. I keep getting calls to join some club, open a new bank account, a mutual fund account etc. I also quite regularly receive letters which ask me to sign up for some magazine subscription, enter some sort of lucky draw to win a prize, get mystery gifts, get a credit card etc. All of it, though not major, is a pain and sometimes extremely irritating. So some tricks on how to handle these annoyances and turn the tables back on them :D
(Extremely condenced and summarised)
First Trek, Experience – Not entirely pleasant.
So I’m back from the trek. I’ll let it suffice to say that while it was quite fun in the beginning, it turned quite sour for me on the first day, mainly due to my suffering severe leg cramps which would not allow me to walk at all. I spent about the entire afternoon of Saturday sitting and wincing in pain due to the cramps. The other part was the monotony of walking along the track unable to enjoy the surroundings, the scenery, the view due to the requirement of watching the track and where one puts their next step.
Walking on the stones which are filled between the railway tiers is not good for the legs due to the stones being loose and hence unstable.
Thus speaketh