May 31, 2004

Memorial Day 2004

Remember the fallen...

May 30, 2004

A Short Play

I think I'll write a play...

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So...What Now?
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By Nirav Sanghani
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Cast:
Ralph
Sally

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[Ralph and Sally are sitting at a table in a coffee-shop]

Ralph: So that's it then. We're done. It's over.

Sally: Yeah, I guess so.

R: [sighs]

S: [sighs]

R: Pity, too. We would have been so-

S: -great together, I know. But it was-

R: -my decision, yeah. Actually, I thought it was up to both of us.

S: Hey, I told you my end. It's only up to you now.

R: Sure thing.

S: Did I detect sarcasm in that statement?

R: Perhaps...

S: [sighs]

R: What?

S: Nothing.

R: You always say that.

S: Say what?

R: "Nothing."

S: No, tell me!

R: I just did! You always say "nothing."

S: Oh.

R: Right.

S: So...what now?

R: Hey, I've got an idea!

S: That's a first.

R: I suppose I deserved that.

S: Yes you did.

R: We should just get married and skip all the dating crap.

S: Now, how does that work?

R: Never mind.

S: Okay. If you say so. [begins to hum tunelessly]

R: Hey, kid...what's that tune you always hum?

S: I wasn't aware I was humming the same tune. [begins to hum again, listens to herself] Wow! You're right.

R: So what is it then?

S: I don't know.

R: Oh.

S: Yeah.

R: So...what now?

S: I honestly have no idea.

R: As usual.

S: Wait...was that an insult?

R: Probably.

S: Oh, okay. Just checking.

R: Right.

S: I think you're over-analyzing this.

R: Am I?

S: Yes, yes you are.

R: Am I really?

S: Um...yes?

R: Oh, okay. Just checking.

S: Okay. So anyways, you need to look at the big picture.

R: What big picture?

S: You know, step back and look at everything as a whole. I mean, inspecting the nooks and crannies is good, but sometimes you just have to look at the whole thing, plain and simple.

R: But what if it's not simple?

S: It is, trust me.

R: You know, things aren't as clear for me as they are for you.

S: Just think about it for a while.

R: But I don't want to think! Wait...that sounded just like you!

S: And right now, I'm the one giving the advice...

R: ...meaning you stole my mind!

S: And enjoying it very much, thank you.

R: Just don't get it dirty or anything...

S: I'll take good care of it, don't worry.

R: ...though of course, I suppose the inside of your skull is exceptionally clean, not having had to hold anything before.

S: I'm sorry, what was that?

R: Nothing...

S: Was that another insult?

R: [smiles]

S: Grr.

R: [sighs]

S: This is getting pointless.

R: All of our conversations have been pointless, since...you know.

S: Yeah.

R: This is the hugest subject avoidance I've ever seen.

S: [nods]

R: So...

S: So...

R & S: ...what now?

----------

Thank you very much, I hope you enjoyed my short play. I know I enjoyed writing it. :-)

May 28, 2004

3. All of the above.

Gotta love those Freudian slips!

Life really is like a sitcom. I think mine's this bad UPN one that you think is the corniest show ever, but you still watch it just because you've got nothing better to do. My second season just ended...it got higher ratings than last year, but the season finale left something to be desired. I guess we're just going to have to wait for the premiere this August.

And it really is all in the timing.

May 27, 2004

Halfway Done

The title says it all. We're halfway done with high school. Yeesh.

So here's the rundown on exams week (starting Saturday, because that's when I started studying):

Saturday:
I met Luis, Maria, Joy, Brandon (Cogan), and Alicia at Barnes and Noble to study World History and Chemistry. The main thing that happened was that Luis got me all the correct answers to the old chem tests (which didn't help much anyways; see Thursday)...then Cogan and Joy left...Alicia showed up for around five-sixths of a second and left again...and so Luis, Maria, and I are left hanging around Starbucks. We played cards for a while; I learned poker (yay!) and, after not being able to get Pranay or Ha to come there to play Spades, Luis asked a random stranger if he knew how to play Spades...which I didn't want to teach, so we ended up playing V.C....the random person was Asian, so he won, of course. I had a Java Chip Frapuccino, which was excellent.
Then we gave up cards, and Luis quizzed Maria and me on World History...half the answers seemed to be "unrestricted submarine warfare"...don't ask.
Maria had to go, leaving Luis and I supremely bored at b&n. and hungry, we were pretty hungry too. (oh yeah, and maerilly was SUPPOSED to come, but she skipped out on us)
So we decided to walk over to the buildings in the parking lot of b&n, but there was no place there that we could afford. we ended up walking to First Colony Mall and eating in the food court, where I saw Amanda Comer.
Then Luis realized he was supposed to meet his ride at AMC First Colony about fifteen minutes ago and had to run, so I just waited for my parents to pick me up...after that I went to CiCi's with my family (yes, the stammtisch CiCi's). Went to sleep pretty soon after we came back.

Sunday:
I was SUPPOSED to be studying this day, but I had decided the day before that I couldn't study at home; it's SO MUCH EASIER to study at b&n. So again, I got a ride there from my dad. Also, I realized the secret to studying at a bookstore: you have to know what you're going to get distracted by...in my case (at b&n) it's ALWAYS that I end up picking up some random book and read instead of studying. So, in order to keep myself on track, I called Ha and got her to come keep me company. I was studying precal that day, and my plan worked tremendously well (see Monday).
We found a book that she'd known about called All in the Timing (title of my blog now), which has 14 one-act plays by a guy called David Ives. REALLY hilarious. we want to do 'variations on the death of trotsky' for reader's theater next year.
I had ANOTHER java chip frapuccino (thanks to Ha), which probably wasn't exceptionally good for me. She had coffee too, but I guess it didn't work too well, because after about an hour or so she nearly fell asleep. Anyways, so I did in fact get some work done.
Her dad got there, so she left. In about five minutes I had found a book on game design and was reading that for the next twenty minutes until my mom called and said she was almost there to come get me.
Also, I found a cd in the music section by Dispatch which I MUST buy soon. I just need money.

Monday:
Took PreCal and German. I thought this would be my hardest day, but in fact that ended up being Friday, ironically enough. PreCal was grueling, but not exceptionally hard. German was actually pretty hard. Got home, went to sleep, woke up, ate, went back to sleep.

Tuesday:
Multimedia and Compsci. Easy stuff. After compsci the girls were playing this game that resulted in a prediction of neil grabbing shalin's butt. Gross stuff. After multimedia I did an audioblogger post of blake spreading...he didn't spread his fastest, but oh well. After school I did pretty much the same thing as the day before: got home, went to sleep, woke up, ate, went back to sleep.

Wednesday:
English and World History. Both were moderately easy. The World History final was exactly like the review, thank God.

Thursday:
That's today, savvy? During Orchestra, we played Spades. The result? Mr. Soto and I thoroughly kicked Asif's and Naveed's collective butt. Of course, Asif blames it all on Naveed. I really should have studied for chem instead, because the next period, I got completely owned by the Chemistry final. 200 questions in about 1.5 hours. Pure hell. I should be okay...I can miss 56 questions and still make an A for the semester. Also, I ran out of time, so I called The Random Crap Rule, which states: If you write down Completely Random Crap on a test, you're bound to get at least ONE answer correct. I very much hope so.
Oh yeah, and I found out my PreCal grade: 98. NINETY-EIGHT! If it wasn't the last day of school, I'd get jumped by juniors; I completely wrecked the grade curve. mwahaha. So I guess studying at b&n worked after all.

Peace out, friends. Enjoy your summer, and DON'T BE SMART UNTIL AUGUST!

May 23, 2004

Gmail and B&N

So as some (or perhaps none) of you might know, I got into the GMail (google mail) beta test. Apparently people will go to great lengths to get a gmail account (which i got through blogger, but only some people can get that).
on gmail swap, a site dedicated to letting invitations to gmail be traded, people offer the strangest things. i've seen a human liver, a left index finger nail, an unused cd key for counter-strike, domesticated animals, and my personal favorite, "the last lingering shreds of my dignity" (scroll down if you clicked on the last one)
also, gmail accounts have been sold for over $150 on ebay. wow. i should've done that.

oddly, finals haven't really hit me yet. i'm off to b&n to study, but they still seem really far off...
mochacappafrappuccino!

...

just came back from b&n and a java chip frappuccino (thanks again!)
i'm not sure what just happened...a close friend told me that she did some soul-searching and is mostly at peace with herself; i think my inner balance just got thrown off...

P.S. ...yes, there is a dispatch cd there; it has two cds: around 20 songs from live performances...that's where i went when your (you know who you are) dad came...

ALSO!!! the new title of my blog comes from the title of a collection of short plays by David Ives. he's a brilliant one-act playwright...he wrote "variations on the death of trotsky" (which is my new subheading and also "sure thing", among others...really hilarious

May 18, 2004

Pratham Gala 2004!

So here i am, finally blogging about the gala.
Pratham: volunteer movement to help raise literacy among children in India (and doing a pretty good job of it too). every year they hold this huge gala (700 ppl) to raise money: tickets are $100 each, but it's more of a donation thing. for that you get a cocktail hour, followed by fancy dinner with hindi music, then dancing and crap.
[note: i just realized that my entire involvement in pratham stemmed directly out of mrs. lafleur's volunteer project; must thank her for that]
anyways, so i got to the Westin Galleria ballroom at around 2:00, shortly thereafter Manasy, the head of volunteers, arrived. we hung around for a while; she told me that she told ppl to be there at 2:30 (i was early) in hopes that they might actually arrive by 3. finally Mani auntie came with the crap that we had to put on all the dinner tables, which we started doing.
around that time meera, nupur, priya, silkie (?), and some other girls whose names i don't remember showed up (carrying boxes from the Cheesecake factory, no less).
also a fellow soph from Memorial high school showed up, nikhil, bringing the total count of nikhils i know up to 243. no, i'm kidding, it's just 6 or so.
so i'm like, cool, i finally know someone here, cuz meera and nupur and priya go to hightower (even though i didn't really know them, i knew OF them), and nikhil was cool too, although hungry. all the time. and i mean ALL the time.
so what happened next...hm....right, so then the guys, meaning nikhil, me, and the adult guys went up to the rooms that mani auntie had reserved for us volunteers to change. finally when we got back downstairs, they had food for the volunteers; some really kickass stuffed jalapenos that challenged even MY taste buds. wow...freakin' awesome. (there was more food too; the jalapenos just stick out in my memory)
so then i'm hanging around the stage with this guy who's like in his forties or something and who manasy said is with me helping with audio/visual crap. the audio DJ/mixer guy was named nadeem; he was pretty good.
then the a capella group from UT showed up, they're called HUM (click HERE for a link to their website, buy a CD) don't ask me why it's all in caps...it just is.
so they're pretty cool; i helped nadeem hook up their mics and crap. one of the singers says she knows me from somewhere; she looked familiar too, just can't place her face...hm...
so i ended up going to Mokund (?) uncle and asking what i'm supposed to do; he told me to keep the singers happy; which was perfectly fine by me, they're cool ppl. so i ended up putting them in the side room where the volunteers had eaten to hang around; then everyone seemed to forget about them until they were supposed to sing, at which point i had to dash backstage and around tables to get them...
but i'm getting ahead of myself.
next what happened was meera swiped us (me and nikhil) to help with flower arrangements. FLOWER ARRAGEMENTS. of all things...yeesh. nupur was showing us how to do it when nikhil got a cell phone call and left (he never came back) and i managed to sneak out too (sorry nupur...lol)
so that guy i was hanging around with? his name was like akshay (?) uncle or something like that...i only found out MUCH LATER that he was NUPUR'S DAD!!! i would've watched what i was talking about...yeesh again.
we found out that nupur's little sister goes to dulles middle school where she's taught by ellen townley, who's MY private viola teacher, so it's a small world after all, yadda yadda yadda....etc.
so next we have the thing starting and crap. ppl are getting drunk on whiskey in the lobby while i was running around doing all that stuff that i mentioned before...
finally we let them into the ballroom. they found their tables and stuff. apparently there was a big fuss about registration cuz there were so many ppl who just randomly CAME without telling us...but you'll have to ask one of the fish girls about that; i wasn't there.
so HUM performed...they're REALLY good...wow...i bought a cd for $5...definately worth it. (listening to it all weekend + today)
let's see...what's next...?
right, so then me and rest of kids are sitting around and eating dinner (FREAKING DISGUSTING) and after that was ice cream cake. then they started playing more dance-ish music and the OLD PEOPLE STARTED DANCING...SO SCARY!! someone said that she hoped they didn't get a heart attack...i concur...yeesh!
plus a bunch of them were half-drunk...including Mokund uncle, a VOLUNTEER! he was dancing with his whiskey, no less. so weird.
so Manasy wanted us kids to dance to get them started, but we figured they were already pretty well started (and they were) so we were just hanging out and doing random hindi dance stuff on the side...WISH WE HAD DANDYAS THERE!! nikhil and i tried to do dandya ras with our hands...didn't quite have the same effect (lol!).
slow-dance music came on...i had the extremely strange experience of seeing two girls DANCE AS IF THEY WERE LESBIANS!!! i'm still not sure that they AREN'T!
learned how to slow-dance (thanks nupur and meera!), so now i PROBABLY won't trip over my own or other people's feet..yay!
we slowdanced for a bit until faster music came on. by this time more ppl had left and the dance floor was clear enough for us (and three ppl from HUM) to do the 12-step garbah dance thing around the floor...fun, 'cept i kept on getting screwed up 'cuz they started on an off-beat.
tired and exhausted, but having just had the most fun i'd had all year, i headed down to the lobby to meet my mom who was picking me up (because SOMEONE couldn't take me HOME!...jk)
so peace ya'll....pratham gala was really fun...and i even left out a lot...
i was there for a grand total of 12 HOURS...wow...
catch ya'll later.

P.S. leave a comment! (click where it says 'comments')

May 17, 2004

wow...

pratham gala 2004 update still coming...someday...

but in the meantime take a look at this:

CLICK HERE

have fun

P.S. here's another hilarious link; courtesy of pk:
NOW CLICK HERE
freaking hilarious!

May 16, 2004

Woo Hoo!

So I'll post soon about the Pratham Gala 2004, but in the meantime let me just say GO BLOGGER!!! for making these new templates and for adding comment support! that's right, you can insult my posts quicker, easier and faster now...in other words, there goes my tagboard.
also, you can now update your blog via email...it's pretty cool!
'til next time...

P.S. each post now has its own page, on which it displays the comments and such. it's great cuz you can link to individual posts now...let's see xanga top THAT!

May 4, 2004

The Music Link

So I've realized that for some strange reason I associate people, objects, events, etc. with music. There's usually a story behind it too.

My sister: Matchbox 20 - Bright Lights
She and I are just turning down our street (she's driving) when this song comes on that we both like, but neither of us knows what it is. So we drive around our neighborhood for the next five minutes until it's done, then we went home and both rushed to the internet to find the name. It took a little while, but it was Bright Lights. Then we, uh, procured a version of the song.

Colin: Eagle Eye Cherry - Save Tonight
That guy can sing, even though it doesn't seem like it. This is the only song I've heard Colin sing.

Jordan: Dispatch - Two Coins
I just emailed her this song recently; she downloaded it and was trying to play it when this person in a chat room she was in started playing rap, so Jordan thought that I had emailed her rap music...she got it working eventually.

Ha: The Violet Burning - I'm No Superman
This song was on my blog, and apparently she used to go and listen to it all the time. I finally burned it on a cd for her. I'm just waiting until she gets tired of it, but that doesn't seem to be happening anytime soon.

When I think of more, I'll post them. The links are in my mind; I just have to hear the song somewhere first.

Another note:
My DBQ essay ended up to be SIX FULL PAGES, double-spaced. That's the best report I've ever written. Check out this sentence:

"Although Rhodes is quite biased toward England, one can analyze his justification of imperialism through English nationalism to uncover the core cause of the nineteenth century British obsession with colonization; they believed that it was their 'creed…dream…and mission.'"

It's just awesome! I didn't plan it that way; I wrote it and then I'm thinking "That's freaking unintelligable!".

It's the debate influence, I know.