hanging by a moment

ok this is a very random post. finally we are done with the second case, which im happy to say i did most of the hard core simulation stuff. well, im happy now if we get a bad grade theres no saying how my feelings on this will change. actually its quite definite i will not be so happy. secondly, i bought my black graduation dress. all it took was an hour to decide. dont know why pple complain that girls take forever to shop. its so not true. in an hour i picked out the dress and the jewellery. am i invincible or wot? and thanks to super duper thanksgiving sale, i got my dress for 40 bucks. 50% off. so made my day.

im getting overtly enthu about this graduation dinner. since there is so little to look forward to in the next few weeks. i really hope its not a preset name card thing and that they place u randomnly. there are some pple who i cannot have a more than two minute conversation with. theres nothing wrong with them. more likely something wrong with me. its just i dont know our planets are not aligned and most of the conversation is filled with ummss....eerrr.. or you racking your brain to find something to talk about other than school and homework and the truckload of homework you have. ok i repeated that again. i dont know i guess u just dont click with some pple. or rather its the ice that never breaks rather.

anyway the latest update and from the pictures the restaurant doesnt seem like a super formal place so i may be overdressed. but at least i have backup from my friends who are "overdressing" as well. so if we look like fools, we look like fools together. haha.

i need to buy presents for everyone as well. i really dont like giving pple gift cards coz i think its a very impersonal thing. but it makes it all the more harder to find something that pple actually like and will use. and sometimes my taste really does suck. i look at my pictures from 7th grade and im like what was i thinking. when was polka dots ever in. why didnt anyone tell me how stupid i looked! i cringe every time. neway there is the new wii which is out, which is supposedly the latest must have gizmo. dektei hai depending on my benovelent mood and unlaziness (if thats a word) if anyone gets that.

i finally saw yun hota toh kya hota. (what if). dont read ahead if you are actually going to watch this movie. i felt the movie started and then just ended. i know lot of pple didnt like it and some liked it a lot. but im kind of indifferent to it. the climax seemed a little too enforced. i guess naserruddhin shah wanted to show that our lives can be easily changed by just one event. and it doesnt affect just us, it affects so many pple. the movie is quite sad. some scenes are really good but some are just randomn.

i really want to see guru, movie loosely based on dhirubai ambani. i dont really know too much about old movies but i think this is the first of the hindi movie kind that will be about some pauper to business tycoon kind of story. i saw the simi garewal interview of aishwarya rai and no matter how much garewal asked, rai avoided. get over it already. jeez, unnecessary suspense. its all over the news on how they were spotted in a temple. so. big. deal. neway the show is totally pretentious. and both of them were annoying. and i cant believe garewal sings the opening part.

heres a song from the Guru via youtube. The music totally rocks. and i guess they do make a good pair. bahhhh! theres goes my hopes of ever being ms bachan. haha. just kidding.

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traffic has stopped and ure not moving anywhere..

today has been a very mood swingy day. whats a mood swingy day. well some things happen that cheer u up a lot and then some things which upset you a lot. and i mean a lot. and you are a bit upset at yourself as well coz part of it is ure fault. and part of it isnt. then there are some things which dont affect ure mood at all. when all this happens sometimes singing the song of the moment* out loud (no matter how offkey i sound) "mera bichara yaar" by strings from dhaani helps.

Dur ek gaon hai
wahan thandi chaon hai
jaana hai nadiya kei paar

karei mera intezaar
mera bichara yaar
mera bichara yaar

moment* : could be a second/minute/day and very rarely a month or year.

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the art of bs-ing.

so in bschool, one of the major major lessons that i have learnt is the art of bsing. the more talented you become in this art, the better it is for you. theres a fine line between lieing/ being unethical and all that and bsing. The ones who sit on that line are the ones who are the most successful. ive tried honing this talent in my interviews and even during projects. and im really sad to say that hardly quality matters now. if you write a 2 page paper versus a 10 page paper of utter rubbish. chances are you will get the higher grade in the former. this has been tried and tested.

while having dinner with bunch of friends who are mostly going to be placed on the trading floor. or at least are juggling between that and another path. im not on the trading floor but im still quite scared actually. hardly 8% of traders are successful, so they say. i have no facts backing this information. phir bee, we are all enthusiastic and think each one of us will be in that. and this is an observation a friend made that those on the trading floor are only there coz they are actually making money. so they have the right to lose it to get annoyed and to yell at you for any reason watsoever. coz one its their job which is on the line and two coz simply they can. the profit they are making for the bank gives them the right.

some banks even tell their employees when they hire them that they will be hiring pple to replace them. this brings tremendous pressure and constant stress on the employees. for wat ultimately some extra bucks? i dont quite understand this strategy. how does one build any kind of loyalty towards the bank. how does one feel like they belong there. basically how does one grow to love their job. shove the love. is wat i learnt today. its all about business. if you dont do well, if you cant meet expectations, no second chances. no one to back you up. there are a gazillion smart pple and if youre not smart enough they will find someone smarter.

perhaps, its better to just stay in school.

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boston chronicles part 3 final part

so this is the last of the trilogy. so we did see harvard university. its very nice. i dont know what it is, but theres something about that campus. you will see so many tourists visiting it. no one ever visits us here. mostly south asian families with their kids in tow. i always wonder who graduated from there, did the husband did the wife, did they meet in harvard. maybe one of them is enrolled there now. perhaps their parents are alumni there. i wanted to use the restroom and we couldnt find a single building open and we asked bunch of graduate students and they said no there are no restrooms around. Walking ahead we saw the library, which was OPEN and we are like the library must have a restroom, why didnt they tell us that. all the while thinking, harvard kids are pretty stupid. but turns out the library is only restricted to harvard students. how unfair is that. anyone can go to our university. it was the same in undergrad.


we went to see nutcracker which was so so. there were lot of kids doing ballet and it was really cute and i think some of the acts were pretty impressive. the story is lame though and it gets a bit repetitive after some time. and the actors have just one expression that of being super happy so it gets a bit too much. or if they do cry it is so fake. i dont know im not really a fan of overexaggerated expressions. the story is pretty simple, theres a girl who likes to dream a lot, her god father gives her this doll (which btw is very scary looking so im not sure why anyone would give that to an 8 year old). In the ballet the 8 year old is being played by a 25 year old. i dont htink id ever pass for an 8 year old. so i have no future in ballet. so neway, the girl starts dreaming that mice start attacking her. and its quite funny coz pple wearing weird mice costumes start doing ballet. she dreams that the doll becomes bigger and bigger and fights with the king mouse. yea the story is getting lamer by the minute. wat to say. haha. then finally the doll turns into this prince or something and takes the girl to his kingdom and then they have a party where all the subjects in her honor have performances. 8 year olds have way too overeactive imaginations.

at the end of the ballet we just wanted to eat somewhere good and decided to eat in little italy and have dessert at finale which is a dessert place and apparently the brainchild of two harvard graduates. surprisingly we asked 10 pple i kid u not and none of htem had heard of columbus avenue which is an important avenue in boston. it has all the main hotels and restaurants there. i was shocked. neway we finally find little italy, food average. finale was awesome though. im a total dessert foodie. chocolate cake can make my day anyday.

i reccomend anyone whose visting boston to make a trip to finale. yes, shamless plugging here.
take a look if this isnt tempting i dont know what is.

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the boston chronicles part 2

so where was i? yea the tour. so after we were done with the tour. we came home at 5 in the evening ordered room service and watched that 70s show reruns. im quite embarassed to tell anyone this so i guess i better blog about it. good thinking. haha. anyway ive never ordered room service.rationale is it sucks and its quite expensive comparatively to the rest of the places. in reality children, this is true. sorry i dont have a better story.

moving on to day 2. we woke up really late. after having elaborate plans of waking up at 7 and leaving by 9 max. we wake up at 10:00 and leave the hotel by 11:30. we took the train to harvard. finally its stopped raining and there were people outside. yay. im a big fan of subways, i love watching people and wondering what they are thinking. u know how pple have these if u had one superman kind of quality what would it be. and pple choose flying, being invisible etc. i choose being mind reader. so many problems can be fixed by this. anyway, we decide first to see harvard square and as stupid as this was i didnt really know where the square starts and ends.

ive actually been to harvard square before but it was dark and nite and i dont remember much and i even passed the same restaurant we had lunch at two years ago. this brings over a huge sadness in me and at the same time a huge relief. i dont know if such a feeling is possible. while passing the restaurant, i never thought two years ago while having my lunch id be walking below two years later and be at the stage where i am now. this is truly destiny.

neway, we had lunch at fire n ice. this is quite a novel concept. u have vegetables, diff kind of noodles, diff kind of meats, different sauces (all raw stuff) you put whatever u want in a bowl and ask the cook to fry it for u. basically u choose your ingredients and the cook cooks it for u. quite cool. but i end up putting all the wrong ingredients. however, it didnt taste so bad. but we were so hurried coz we had to make the broadway show 25th annual putnam spelling bee.

i know its sounding like im whining but it was not "hilarious" or the "funniest thing u will see all year". some parts were cool, like when they had audience come up and spell words and then suprisingly one guy in the audience was a good speller and he spelt all the words they gave correctly (they did give him cow to spell. defintion: its a cow. can i have it in a phrase: can you spell cow?) and then to get him out they gave him this super hard word which i cant even remember and he got out. overall it was ok prob 5/10 ive seen hairspray and that was truly hilarious.

to be continued..

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the boston chronicles - part one


so boston sucked. big time. i think we were jinxed from the day before. after watching happy feet. which made me so not happy. sure, the little penguins are cute. but theres only so much awwwing one can do. after that it gets old. i guess im just not into hip hop dancing and singing penguins (theres a sentence i never thought id ever use). im not against animation movies. i do enjoy them. i thought both shreks were witty and i thought monsters inc was cute and funny. i liked toystory and iceage. i even saw cars. which was a bit cheesy but watchable. but happyfeet was just way too kiddish. either that or my sister thinks im too old. watever. im so glad none of our guy friends came to watch it or we would never have heard the end of it. id rather have watched the old blond bond guy in casino royale. its just ironic, whenever you have free time youll have the worst movies to watch.

ok so moving on boston. we booked the package on orbitz and i actually chatted with one of the live rep on orbitz which was an omigod moment for me. i m easly impressed by new technology. wat can i say. i guess orbitz makes sense. but check this Salvatore Ferragamo has live chat help even at 1 in the morning. which is quite weird. i mean what can u possibly talk about a bag. im not into designer bags, but lot of my friends are and invariably im getting slightly educated about which bag is good and why. i have so much random information stored in my head. i actually went to the Ferragamo store on 5th ave in new york and there were more sales people than actual people in that store. once u walk in the sales pple size u up and instantly know if you are going to buy something. most probably they look at ure bag (or poor excuse of a bag namely the satchel bag that i usually hold) and they know that ure just a looker. the one time we went in the sales rep was like do u have any questions. and we were like no thank you, just looking. and then he was like cmon not even a small question! i really wanted to sit down somewhere after having walked for four hours nonstop but i dont think that would have been appropriate to ask. neway another issue i have is the following salesperson. i dont know about others but at least i like to shop without someone following me around in fact i get quite paranoid when someone does that. what if i pick out something and they are thinking "eww".

furthermore, it just makes me compelled to buy something. its quite a good strategy.

ok i digressed. so orbitz shows you the hotels and loads of fancy pictures. and i wondered why it would be so cheap but then i think maybe im just too cynical. right. wrong. the hotel was different from the pictures. i guess its ok. i mean from the lobby i was like omigod we lucked out. and the guy on the front desk was like we upgraded u. i was like double wow. when we go up it was such a small room. i wonder how the nonupgraded room would be, probably has bunk beds or something. haha. anyway we were like its ok, we are going to maximize our stay in boston and we'll hardly be here in the hotel. so big deal even if its a pigeon hole. so we set off and guess what every single place is closed on thanksgiving! apart from our saving grace aubonpain. there were these fancy restaurants which were having thanksgiving lunch. but we are too cheap to dish out 70 bucks for lunch! i have no shame to admit that.

so aubonpain it was. suprisingly there were a lot of pple in aubonpain. which makes me think of many business ideas. anyway, the icing on the cake was the downpour. it didnt stop raining for like 2 mins even. all shops were closed. raining like crazy. so we decided to do the smart thing. go back to the hotel? no way. we decide to take the city tour. the desk attendant was like huh are u sure. its kinda dark u know. and its raining. but we have no option and there were many us types who had no option either. but the tour was so bad, u couldnt see anything coz of the rain and no matter how much i wiped the glass from inside , the drops onthe glass outside kept adding up. finally i gave up and fell asleep. yea i go all the way to boston and fall asleep on the tour bus. the guide's voice was so boring and his commentating was worse. and he seemed to take it personally when pple on the bus started talking among each other. who can blame them?

finally he was like the girls from pitt do you want to get off here. here being the Cheers bar. The Cheers bar is based on the hit tv show Cheers( which I have never watched) . It had no appeal to any of us. Plus I wondered why did he single us out to get off at the bar. its like 4 in the afternoon. do we look like alcoholics. maybe he thought i was drunk since i was sleeping.

later on we learnt we got on the bus at that stop. haha. neway we were all confused and asked him to drop off us at the hotel. which meant we had to start the tour again! arghhhhhhhh..


part 2 to be continued..

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don..ko pakadna mushkil hi nahin na mumkin hai.. (its not difficult to catch don its impossible)

how cheesy does that sound. ok the heading above has no correlation watsoever with my post. and yea don released weeks ago. and im always the bearer of old news. at the diwali party(where you were supposed to dress up as some bollywood character) everyone and i mean everyone was dressed up as don. by lack of originality. and then there were the gazillion don jokes. "don ko 14 deshon ki police doondrahi hai" (don is wanted in 14 nations)..something like that and then someone goes well obviously since there are so many duplicate dons. at the end of hte party i was all ready to kill someone with my teer jaisi nazar (arrow eyes?? god knows if thats what it means) if they made one more don joke.

wat can i say im a party pooper.

neway, todays presentation which i had been stressing over for the last two weeks didnt go as bad as i thought it would. and our client team was pretty chilled out. after having sized up the client team over the last week and charting out their facial expressions, i expected some hardcore questions. but all they had were some clarifications on our case. moral of the story: some pple just look smart. but arent.

anyway not that my answers were awe inspiring or anything. but at least i didnt embarrass myself and thankfully i wasnt shaking like a bobble head continously. i decided to start of with some humour but then again no one really gets my jokes apart from my friends. either that or they are just humoring me. so anyway i experimented i tried to say something funny. i paused expecting some laughs. im seriously ok with giggles even chuckles hell even a smirk will do. well,no response. in order to not look more stupider(!) i then gave up andstuck to the content on my slides my voice getting monotonous by the minute . who am i kidding, this is boring me even. forget the rest of the class.

the funniest thing was one of the pple in the client's team was sleeping and he was sitting closest to the prof. hahah. aaj kal kei bachei. wat courage. i kept staring at him during the presentation. not to wake him up, hell the less u know the better. and obv the lesser the questions. but more so ,coz of the eye contact thing. this way im looking at him and it looks like im making eye contact but im not. and all im doing is thinking pls dont start snoring.

im goign to boston for thanksgiving. and having been warned that we will starve coz nothing will be open, i have packed pringles, chocolates and trailer mix. all set. however, my asian friends assure me that chinese restauranteurs are hardcore and wont be closed come wat may. i think its the same for most desi places. hopefully when ive moved to new york city, ill have a proper thanksgiving dinner for family and friends. turkey et al. i do think this is one of the nicest things in american culture.

so my goal in boston is to see the nutcracker and/or a musical . that and harvard square, obviously harvard (not that im in awe or anything =) just want to know whats all the fuss about). jk. im in awe. prob MIT if im really bored. boston harbour. and musuem of fine art. lets see how it goes.

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aashayein.

so our asset mgmt prof has gone mad. how do we divide 4 computers among 50 pple and 15 teams. for a homework thats due in four days. things are going to get terribly ugly. simply put it will be survival of the geeks. my ipod has conked off and this makes walking to school quite a boring process especially when no one picks up their phone. stupid service providers and their lack of minutes. makes everyone terribly paranoid not to mention stingy about minutes. i have guarantee on my ipod, hopefully they will fix it.
one of the important events of my graduation buildup is the graduation dinner wihch is supposed to be in some restaurant on top of some mountain. maximizing tuition fees. lol. i doubt the food will be any good and now i have to buy a formal dress coz everyone is going to. peer pressure. bah.

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transatlanticism

so yesterday, i went to this rock concert by this band called death cab for cutie. id post the pics but theyre too small and my cell phone camera sucks. anyway, they are a washington soft rock band on the lines of coldplay or U2 or something like that. the name is quite misleading. none of the band members are cute. its apparently some song from some album in the 60s. and from there they got their name. my knowledge is quite minimal. The concert was in the middle of nowhere, and I mean nowhere, we drove three hours got lost and stumbled into this forest of sorts. windng roads and hardly any cars or even street lights. and just trees and trees everywhere on both sides. reminded me of the blair witch project movie. not helping were pple in the car making ghost noises (not that any of us know how a ghost sounds, but yea watever im quite chicken). but we finally found the location, still in the middle of nowhere, probably this was the biggest event that town had seen since 100 years or something. all of asudden you have 2000 cars popping out from nowhere.

but neway they are really good and going in hearing only two songs of theirs i didnt really expect much. But I thought they were pretty good and so incredibly talented. Two of the band members not only sing, but play guitar, the keyboard and drums! The crowd was totally white . imagine a roomful of white pple wearing preity zinta glasses. we were the only coloured pple in the room. or at least one of the few ones. and probably one of oldest ones too. which is very sad. very undergrad crowd. so after two hours of headbanging (haha) and staring at everyone (if you dont know the lyrics of songs it gets kinda repetitive and focus invariably shifts) the band left and everyone stayed put shouting encore. the band came back and played four more songs and then left. Theres always a certain buzz in the air when you go to a rock concert.

i thought (when we were lost) wed be the only pple there, so I had psyched myself into getting their autograph since it would be easy to do so. However, by the time we came out they werent around and cars were jam packed and everyone wanted to get out. This is another thing I greatly appreciate, initially when we came in we had someone tell us where to park but at the end we were left to fend for ourselves. So there were major traffic jams. IF this happened in Dubai, pple would start honking or they would get of their car and start yelling at each other. But here, it was so peaceful and everyone just stayed put and waited for the person behind to back out.

all in all a great day.

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yei hi ishq di marzi

yei hi rab di marzi

this is love's wish

this is God's wish

- Teri deewani by Kailesh Kher

im sure ive blogged about this song in the past. but for some reason it always gets me thinking. i remember things that ive forgotten and i dream about the future. a very sufistic song that describes the love for, when i saw the video, one's beloved. But, I truly think the song is written for God. and the love of God. There are many things today I feel grateful for. I feel that sometimes I complain too much and I dont realize how fortunate I am. The minute I start enduring some tests,I complain to God and question why this is happening to me? but i dont realize it happens to all. If everything was so peaceful in life, when would one appreciate the happiest moments. Would there be any story to tell? Stories of inspiration, love, sadness, the courage after the sadness and finally kindness. I think not.

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and now for some sentiness








this week's senti scene. not from gangster. rest assured. but from one of my favoritest movies ever (saathiya). when vivek oberoi was considered(by me and others alike) cute.

suhani: lekin..mein tumsei shaadi kyun karoongi - (but why would i marry you)
adi: no no yei poocho kei main tumsei shaadi kyun karoonga. (no no ask me rather why i would marry u)
suhani: kyun.. (ok, why?)
adi: *sigh* isliyei kei.. (because...)
suhani: kya? (what?)
adi: kehdoon? (should i say it?)
suhani: *nods*
adi: becoz i love you
suhani: woh kya hota hai (what does that mean?)
adi: *looking confused now* kya? (huh?)
suhani: haan (yea?)
adi: i love you...umm... means i love you
suhani: means what?
adi: i love you...umm..main tumharei liyei kuch bhi kar sakta hoon. (i can do anything for you)
suhani: merai liyei train sei khud sakte ho? (can you jump off this train for me)
adi: haan...ruktei hi khud jaoonga (sure, as soon as it stops ill jump off)
suhani: aur tumharei khud tei hee main shaadi karloongi. (and as soon as you jump off ill marry you)


bhai wah, isko kehtei hai asli ishq! hahaah.

you can watch the video here

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYCGeOPn6y8

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bheegi bheegi

ok spoiler alert. dont read ahead if you dont want the analysis on gangster. ive been putting off watching this movie, albeit being told a million times on how I SHOULD watch it. wonderful acting. great songs. blah blah blah. firstly i cant stand the hashmi dude, so I avoid watching any movie of his. But I like shiney ahuja for some reason and so decided to give it a go. It has to be one of the saddest movies ever! the only person i felt sad for is shiney ahuja, the"gangster", kangana raut who is supposedly supposed to be in love with him and who double crosses him for akash has done a wonderful job, but I couldnt understand her character. This movie isnt truly about love its all about your dream. akash's dream to nab the gangster. kangana's dream to have a family. in the end no one wins everyone is a loser. some may disagree given the "happy" ending in the fields with her reuniting with shiney. the pros of this movie is that its quite realistic in the sense all the characters have shades of grey in them, and in the beginning i did feel a bit suspicious of the akash character being so overtly in love with her which didnt really make sense to me. the negative shades of his character and attributing them to his job and his ambition make sense and its very real i suppose. the cons: too sad. i guess im used to having desi movies ending happily ever after.

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world's apart

one realizes after days, months or even years that every decision that one took or didnt take was part of a bigger and greater and perhaps better plan. so by God's grace, I got two job offers. One which I really wanted the other one isn't that bad either. This week has been a roller coaster of emotions. I had a massive fight with one of my bestest friends and I have never ever fought with her before. it was on something so stupid i cant even believe we had an argument on it. and even though I dont want to face it, its true we are changing both of us and I can either accept it or ignore it. I also learnt that no matter one shouldnt always say whatever they feel, sometimes its better to hold your tongue ultimately sab cheez kehnei ki nahin hoti. its better to let go of things and i mean really let go. not hold them in your heart only to escalate into something more uglier and worse. but like all best friends we forgive and forget and everything is hunky dory again. which is the way they should be. the second emotion exhilaration in finally getting a job, that too in nyc!. knowing i can chill out my last month and half of school. probably this is my last month ever of being in school. i will never ever be in school again. i will never sit in the last row of a class and draw doodles on my notes or stare at random pple in my class or walk the usual path to the food trucks or to the library or curse out the common printer or read the bios of the people who adorn the halls or use my already abused locker or sit in the "silent" study room area or glare at pple who talk in the silent study room area or wait for the school bus late at night with sleepy eyes or talk nonsense stuff with friends at 4 am while doing group projects.

to be continued..

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