The Lost Pages

A chocolate a day keeps the doc away!

Found this piece of news about chocolates improving you health! Feels really good to read it!

posted by Vithal @ 23:25 0 comments

Well first of all, Happy Onam to all the mallus reading this. Enjoy folks! After reading Sankar's blog I too have signed up for Google's Adsense. Got approved for it. Lets see how long they are going to put up with me. Other than that, accompanied my roommate Venkat on his shooping trip to Old Navy. Alas!got my temptation got the better of me and I ended up buying more stuff than he did. Realised that clothes here can get real cheap during sales. Then went to the Atlanta Bread Company and had a veggie sandwich there. Lately me and my roommate(again Venkat) have been discussing psychology. Our main area of discussion has been counselling people. We almost came to an agreement that the foremost thing you need is patience. When the guy is confused, disturbed you need to let him speak and you need to listen!( atleast you have to act that you are!) When finally he gets tired, speak out. If its girls that you are counselling then JUST LISTEN! Don't talk. Was staring at the night sky today. Ever tried counting stars on a clear sky? Its fun if you have time to waste away. My top score has been 350 till now. But you start getting a little dizzy after a while. And talking about stars, if you have seen the movie "A Beautiful Mind", you will know this. Think of any shape - a horse or an umbrella or something and you can find stars in the sky that outline the shape. Sounds psychingly wierd to do, even more if someone else is watching you doing it, but its fun I guess. Planning to put my Clemson pics online sometime tomorrow. John Kerry is looking really strong. Expecting him to win. Have an early morning class tomorrow and have to go. Ending of with an interesting anecdote I came across In January 2003, enigmatic Wall Street wizard Andrew Carlssin was arrested by Federal investigators and charged with insider trading. Suspicions had been aroused at the Security and Exchange Commission by Carlssin's uncanny success in the stock market. "With an initial investment of only $800," investigators explained, "in two weeks' time he had a portfolio valued at over $350 million. Every trade he made capitalized on unexpected business developments, which simply can't be pure luck. The only way he could pull it off is with illegal inside information [about mergers or technological breakthroughs which were supposed to be secret]. Carlssin, however, had another explanation: He claimed to be a time-traveler from the year 2256. "It was just too tempting to resist," he alleged in a mind-boggling four-hour videotaped confession. "I had planned to make it look natural, you know, lose a little here and there so it doesn't look too perfect. But I just got caught in the moment." In a bid for leniency, Carlssin offered to divulge such "historical facts" as the whereabouts of Osama Bin Laden and a cure for AIDS. However, he refused to reveal the location of his "time craft" or to discuss its design, out of fear, he said, that the technology would "fall into the wrong hands..." [Though officials were dubious about Carlssin's claims, the SEC did admit: "No one can find any record of any Andrew Carlssin existing anywhere before December 2002." Nonetheless, they added: "He's going to sit in a jail cell on Rikers Island until he agrees to give up his sources."]

posted by Vithal @ 11:06 0 comments

Started of the day in a hurry, had to attend the 9 o'clock class today. Most of my "academic study" these days has been on card games - cause that takes most of my course on artifitial intelligence. I am actually compelling my acquaintances here to play the game with me! Going thru the news and found this interesting piece there about "Sweet Revenge". Looking forward to the weekend.

posted by Vithal @ 22:32 0 comments

The Week that was......

Well a lot of events have occured over the past week and i regret to say that very few of them are cherishable. For starters, my classes have started. Its been almost a year and a half since I've gone to a classroom and the feeling is eery. And I've got homeworks too! Yuck yuck and one more big yuck again!! Learnt how to make aloo-gobi and the tomato-daal-thadka this week. A very good addition to my culinary skills actually and my roomies(whom i consider as really good chefs) said I have a lot to pick up. No wonder those days when i have to cook the other three roomies quielty drop into the kitchen, look at what i am trying to cook, let out a subtle sigh and pick up bread slices and cheese and walk away! Its now that i realise why moms get mad at you if you don't eat at home! Had a rock concert at my college lastnight and I went to check it out. Was the first Indian there when some American,thoroughly drunk, sat beside me and seeing that I was Indian started of a conversation with me about the quality of Indian tobacco. All was fine until he started discussing cricket with me. Little does he know that I am one of those poor few Indians here that knows zilch about cricket and dont exactly enjoy discussin it! Had to excuse myself saying that I had a party going on at my home and the"dudes" back home would be expecting me and walked away sheepishly. Among the other not-so-fond incidents of the week is a "cherry" coke bottle leaking in my back pack and getting my ear-phones and my class notes totally drenched. Checking out cheap deals over the net for head-phones now. Thats about that and I am gonna go for a smoke. Thought of the day - If you end up in inevitable long walks alone, one way to keep your mind occupied is try calculating 153 times 765! Works wonderfully!

posted by Vithal @ 08:34 0 comments

Coupla suds in Clemson

Well it was the first i've been to a pub here in Clemson..well wasn't actually great the reason most likely for which is that I didnt have any of my friends around and I was with new acquaintances. And it was teh first time that i had to take my passport to a pub cause i had to produce my age proof.As if they could take me for an under 21!!! I sheepishly had to ask him for the strongest beer he had and he ended up giving me some drink that was much below my expectations.But since the idea was not to get hammered that night it was ok. Was with couple of seniors who had graduated andthey had this "Bars of Clemson" t-shirt which listed all the bars in Clemson and they were out ticking off each of the bars after being to them for the last time. Was their moment of senti! Thats about that and at the end of the day i decided it was a waste blowing money on beer here at Clemson cause there's no what you call "value for money"! Somebody upthere wants me to quit liquor really bad and i am getting the hint pretty hard. Thought of the day - At every stage of life it is quite important that you have something to look forward to. You need to have something to expect out of everything - tonight, tomorrow,next week and a decade from now. If you dont have anything you need to set something up cause the moment you dont have anything to look forward to, life is like,how do you say it, a black and white TV - its get boring pretty soon.One adage that comes to mind is "If you wanna sit on your ass and do nothing you have to be sitting very high" - i guess there's a story that goes with this too if i remember right.

posted by Vithal @ 07:09 1 comments

Convocation - never knew t'was so good!

I attended the convocation ceremony at Clemson last weekend. One of my roomies was walking out this semester. Boy! it looks great and the whole damn thing IS breath taking. Makes you feel like doing a couple of degrees more just for the sake of this day - when they say "Doctors of philosophy and the graduates of Clemson, please stand and be recognized" and you see a whole bunch of graduates in their colorful gowns standing up and "being recognized". Some of my roomies have taken pics of it, gonna put em up shortly. I wonder how great the "graduation excercises" - as they call it here, are gonna be. I actually saw an undergraduate student wearing a gown with shorts underneath. Looked like the dude just walked out of his bed that morning. Anyways thats about that. Its August and I have a bunch of birthdays to remember this month. Actually a lot of my friends are Leos and a majority of them have really lousy memories when it comes to remembering dates. Sorry fellas, but this is the truth. One birthday they dont forget is either theirs or their better half's. It's started getting really cold here lately and which is quite unexpected. And the Fall starting date is just round the corner, a fact which makes a lot of people on campus just sigh and walk away. Rush hour is coming up and ya have to get geared up for it. My destiny and my work beckons me to more mundane maters at hand.... "The End"

posted by Vithal @ 02:43 1 comments

The beauty of 29!

Well..I spent the last night playing cards with my neighbours till like 3 in the night. We started of palying bluff and moved on to rummy after that. That was when i felt the most what a wonderful game '29' was! Well 29 was a card game us fiolks used to play back in college (and after that too, whenever we met up). Such was the beauty of the game that we ended up playing the game 10 hours straight when we had the time. I find that a lot of people from north india know about the game as compared to the number of south indians. I really miss playing it!!! To all the 'dudes' out there reading this.. miss ya all!

posted by Vithal @ 04:07 0 comments

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzs.....

Well as expcted it was just another weekend.. nothing much to say about it actually..except that we had a birthday party at our place on the Friday night. It was one of my newly made friend's birthday. One thing that did amaze was that indian stduents here, could make such wonderful cooks. We had veg biriyani on that day, in addition to other side dishes. Now, me, a hard-core Hyderabadi as I am, raise the bar quite high when it comes to rating a biriyaani. But one of ur roomies took like 2 hours to make it and voila! we have a hit dinner. I am supposed to pick up on how to cook cause i've been given the tuesdays and wednesdays slot to cook. God have mercy on them. Friday night was long and we slept at around 4 in the morning. Its actually been a while since I've come from India that I was up so late. But it felt good, like i was going back to being my original self. ( I am a nocturnal mammal!!!) my dad always pulls my leg with that! I ended the day with a can of beer which almost tasted like water..budlight it seems.. but dude how "light" can you get with a beer?!?!!? I was actually trying hard to burp and i stopped after i realised it was futile. Sunday has arrived and I am back here at the lab. the initial idea was that i am gonna do something productive.. he he dunno how productive filling up a blog is goona be! Well thats about that..no thoughts for the day and i am back for a smoke.

posted by Vithal @ 02:52 1 comments