the biting-your-teeth-hard phase.

Just three more days and I am going to be done with these haunting exams. I have been thinking about a lot of things to do after this and a dinner at the Couch tops it. Also want to try the Ferrero Rocher cake Shruti has been talking about. Cleaning up my room. Stock up the fridge. Shop for summer clothes and visit the New You shop. And a little beautifying. Aaah! I can't wait to get there.

Fourth year with all this.

Leaving PSBB was like a bad break-up. Took me months to get over it. And to top it, joining NLS was an awful follow on. Almost four years have passed and things have changed a lot with me. A lot. Some of it for my good and some for the bad. I have become very arrogant but the good part is I am not as stupid as I used to be. One more good thing is that I can now talk about anything with confidence and it wouldn't matter to me if I am making sense or not. Yeah of course, you can call that over-confidence. Nothing takes me over these days. Nothing scares me. Nothing threatens me. I have become ultra-flippant. Almost fifty papers and fifty presentations, five internships, countless exams, one lousy CGPA and a CV that would fetch me no job- all look petty now. I don't know if that is any good sign. I don't care about anything. I don't even know if I mean anything when I say I have an ambition. I mean I do have plans like I want to earn a bunch, travel a lot, pursue dance religiously, get my parents everything they sacrificed to bring me up and buy a beach house on the East Coast Road but I am not doing anything towards realizing them. One day I tell myself I must pursue higher studies in UK and the next day I want to join IIM. And a few days later, I want to take up bharathanatyam. I have even wanted to write the Civil Services and just be a house-wife on the very same day. I swing my ambitions like how Javagal Srinath used to bat! At least he did it with only his right hand, leaving his left hand to defend his skull. But I am afloat and have my hands full of things that don't match! Wait. Look at the way I am talking about my ambitions. Once again, I am very impressed with myself. I repeat I don't care about anything and I am living up to it. I think I am going to be this for the next eleven months. And then when I am finally thrown out of this place, I will get back to this post with an update that I hope to be something positive.

Hope.

Family reunion, new year, birthday (21st, if that would make it any significant), the new Vaio and my new phone. I don't know if I gave the year any welcome but 2009's start certainly had a lot in store for me. New opportunities and new openings. You know what I exactly mean by this? HOPE. And I totally believe in it. It felt good to be so pampered with company, gadgets and 365 MORE days, all to restore my spirit. Don’t know if it all makes sense but it does help to know you have a lot of life left to live. Live, here, is read as live and not merely exist or barely survive. In terms of consistency, I might not be hopeful about everything all the time especially when angry or sad or lost. But that's just an interim and I become hopeful about things as soon as I am out of that swing. I might sound extremely philosophical but hope is the only keeps me going. When I was a kid, I used to make up these random abbreviations. And I think I made this up in when in class VII (not so much of a kid but never mind!) but it still is true- HOPE means nothing but Hit Open the Positive Energy(!). So you hope and you do hope. With hope, you create resolutions. And when they don’t happen, you hope they could continue. When they do continue, you hope you do it. Hope motivates you and gives you another chance. But hope is not an excuse. It is, instead, an expression of positive thoughts. Don’t hope just to back-up. Hope to do and try to do that. And I am going to hope I do all these, this year:

1. Eat well and eat healthy.

2. Go for a walk every day.

3. Have only one cup of coffee a day.

4. Remember to keep in touch with people.

5. Sleep well. But also attend classes (!).

6. Do something about the hair fall before I go bald (!).

7. Stop whining on the blog all the time.

8. Learn to forgive without strings attached.

9. Respect opinions.

10. Control my temper.

11. Make sure I look to both sides of the road before I cross (!).

12. Dance whenever I get a chance.

13. Say “sorry” and “thanks” when I have to and mean it.

14. Travel to new places.

15. Find out new cuisines and try them out with friends. Get out of the addiction to cheese and cheesy lasagnas.

16. Try and learn a new language. German, particularly.

Eleven months to do all this is not bad enough, right? :D

The Feel-Good Factor. :)

After the disastrous terrorist attacks in Bombay, my parents (who live miles away in Germany) promptly gave me a ring to find out if I was okay. And a long long lecture about how I should strictly stay on campus, not interact with strangers or eat things they offer (yes! they still remind me about it), stock up my fridge with lot of food stuff so I dont have to go out anywhere and top up my phone card for at least 300 bucks so I can make emergency calls. I mean I was happy we, in Bangalore, were safe but it was even better to know how, no matter what, there are people who think of you and check on you. I am sure all of us have someone or the other somewhere in the world. I mean all of us and it is upto to oneself to figure out who, where and how. It is practically impossible to keep in touch with every single person we know all the time and we all know that. It is stupid to count your blessings that way. What really matters is to know we have someone around and that loneliness is just a temporary dump. :)