Hello USA

As the title clearly conveys, you all know where I am. But what you don't know is how much fun I'm having out here. That's the reason I wasn't able to post anything on my blog for the past couple of weeks. My college adventure is on its way even though it's a long way for classes to commence. I've taken part in the Seattle Challenge, Community Barbecue and whatnot. All these activities have helped me meet some amazing people from Germany, Sweden, Armenia, China and other parts of the world.

To state succinctly, it's a home away from home. It feels great to be here.

Excitement At Its Very Best

Okay I'm just gonna say it now. I am frigging excited for the new world that awaits me in less than 3 days :) And as it happens, when there's a big change waiting right round the corner, the seconds turn into minutes, minutes into hours and hours into....well you know. Not a minute passes when I don't calculate the countdown. The anxiety has taken an exponential rise to oblivion. LOL

There has been a series of dinners and get-together functions during the past week which summed up together, was exhilarating. A lot of farewells have also gone down the way either in person or through phones. The whole experience has been illuminating 'cause it has never happened before. Well that much goes for the activity outside of my house.

As far as the inside is concerned, it's bustling with activity and drama. Chaos has broken out here. But we have made some progress. Packing is finally done with luggage stashed away in a separate room ready to be tossed into the car when we leave. All my credentials are in one place which I had been thinking to do since like.....forever but was able to accomplish it in a little above two hours when the pressure was on. Due to all this, my book reading has come to a sort of standstill. Even though I do read, it's not the usual pace. Well anything for the big journey. Haha

Before I sign off, I would like to bid farewell (the first formal goodbye from my side :P) to all my comrades (:P) for their friendship and for being with me....I guess 24/7. I am gonna miss you all a lot. For now, that's all I can think of. Lol

College, here I come.

Confusion is an often too subtle sign of paranoia

I know it's just been a week since my last post but I am already trashed under stress because off all the activity that's been going around the house. Mum's been tossing some stuff into the suitcase in one room, dad's been talking about some going-away party for me in the other room and what the hell am I doing? I am sitting in my room trying to get a hold of what's going on which of course I haven't been able to do so far.

But that doesn't mean I'm not trying fellas!

As I don't have much to do while everyone else is busy doing what I ought to do (lol), I am rushing through some of the books that can't be stashed safely into my suitcase. Have read some widely-acclaimed books in the past week such as Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less, The Fourth Estate and The Inheritors.

Midst all this topsy-turviness, my laptop crashed somehow (well actually it was the charging adapter). The adapter is refusing to let through the 220 volts needed to charge the damn thing. So I have to spare sometime to get a new one, the thought of which is almost crucifying me. It'd be the third adapter in under four months.

One word. Shit.

Well I totally forgot to mention that I got a new external hard drive.It's a Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex Ultra-portable Drive 1 TB. The best thing about it is it's USB 3.0 compatible which really helps. Anyone else looking for a kick-ass portable drive, this is it.

I thought of a video but then settled with a snap :)

The lucky dot on the surface. Lol

To remind all of you, ETD for college is 13 days

And to upgrade your general knowledge, the title for this post is a random quotation by Anne Austin.

That's all for now.

Till the next post,

Adios.

A Long String of Events

Hola people. Hope you've been in the best of spirits. It's been a while since my last post and I won't be exaggerating the truth when I say that I had fairly forgotten all about my blog amidst all that's been happening around me. Well at least something is happening as I've been immersed in ennui for a month or so. Let's go through all that has happened in the past fortnight.

If some of my readers are unaware, it was my birthday last week i.e. August 9. That particular day is inscribed into my memory in stone. Why? Well first of all, my three particular friends were with me the whole time. We had loads of fun at home and at the restaurant where we went for dinner in the evening. Acknowledging the fact that everyone would be off to their respective colleges shortly, this was our last get-together which made the day extra special. Also thanks to my ubiquitous family for its wishes and support.

What was next in the long string of events? My mom's birthday which fell on the auspicious occasion of Rakshabandhan i.e. August 13. To be true, I forgot to wish mum until late in the afternoon when I realized that I had to do something to make it appear as if done on purpose. What would be better than a quickly arranged, small birthday party? I got mum a greeting card, a small cake and got together the whole family to wish her 'happy birthday'. It felt very fulfilling. Also as it was Rakshabandhan, I had a whole bunch of rakhis tied to my wrist as my sisters ripped me off of my whole goddamn money. Lol. Just kidding about the latter part!

What comes next? Well it was India’s 65th Independence Day during which I did nothing great except updating my Facebook status. And please don't argue about the fact whether it was the 65th or the 64th. Just google the damn thing (especially the boneheads who argued the whole day, some claiming it to be the 63rd). Once again, a very Happy Independence Day to all proud Indians.

Lastly, the ETD for college is less than 20 days. The anxiety is constantly on the rise.

Here are some of my birthday pics.

Killing time at my place

Went on this ride a lot in the old days

Another of the dozen pics on this ride

Inside the restaurant being formal :P

That’s all for now.

Till my next post, this is Twoccer signing off.

Abschied.

Grandmas! You can never get enough of ‘em!

Hey people! I expect you all have been in excellent spirits. I can at least say that I have been so with some occasional downers. As you would have previously read, I would be moving to USA in early September and thus, have a lot of people to bid goodbye. Well this wasn’t something which I had thought of just after booking my ticket to be honest. It actually came to my mind when I visited my grandma earlier this week.

It was a wonderful one-week sojourn. I mean it had its shortcomings but still, was worth cherishing.

One of the best things about my grandma is that she cooks awesome food. Wait! Not awesome. Awesome Possum guys! Almost every day I got some traditionally cooked vegetable (of which I had no clue) and it turned out to be a connoisseur’s treat. The unknown, however, delicious treats still catch me unawares. Also grandma’s place had this collection of old editions of some kickass books. I found some masterpieces dated older than the 1970s. 

All of the above mentioned pros made up for the technological rehab I experienced during my stay. You must be wondering what the rehab was about. No Wi-Fi access. I wouldn’t go as far as to say that I didn’t have my laptop or phone but still it was a fuss. 

All these aesthetic factors apart, the best thing that made this endeavor worth sharing was………my grandma. For me, she is this guardian angel who looks out for everyone.

To be succinct, I love my grandma.

I am sure all of you have felt the same at some point of time. 

Thanks for reading my thoughts. I trust they were worth reading.

Until next time, this is Twoccer signing off.
Despedida

The Final Breakthrough

Hola people, I hope you’re doing awesome.

I got to tell you that this is the first time I feel like blogging on and on. To be frank, all my previous posts were done out of an urge to sustain a continuity in the archives. You can yourself observe that most of my posts are a month apart or at least a fortnight apart.

Why do I feel this way?

You’ll know it in a moment.

It was the 14^th of July ’11 when I was scheduled to meet my uncle. Dad and I started for the place in the morning. My uncle had been busy with his last chores as his whole family was moving to USA later this month. Both parties were finally able to convene in the evening with exhaustion visible on all our faces. I guess you’d be wondering as to why there was such a need for a conference. Don’t start biting your nails guys! I was myself in such a semi-state. But I had concluded that this was my first critical talk about college, mind you. Finally my uncle sets in the initiative and the talks begin. To sum all of it in a couple of sentences, we discussed three focal things - my commitment to college, the whole financial stuff and housing. There was no room for error on anyone’s part and I am happy that I played out my role without reserve. It was a no-nonsense 15-minute session. After all this ended, we dropped off my uncle to the airport whence he left for home.

Well I was happy about all of it but it still wasn’t reason enough for me to be ecstatic. Two days later, a mail comes from my uncle giving the probable dates for my arrival in USA as he would be the one who would receive me at the airport. I forwarded the dates to dad so that he could finally book my ticket. And voila! My air ticket was finally booked for 4^th September ’11. I know all of this had to follow course after I had got my visa but still it felt great to hold the e-ticket hard-copy in my hands. What did all of it mean? It signaled that I had to start gearing up for college.

I can’t comment about anyone else but I know for a fact that I was on cloud nine.

After a millennium, I was finally going to USA for four long years. How does that feel for a start? :)

I am raring to go to meet all my UW friends in September. See you guys!

I hope this post made for joyful reading as it was certainly fun writing.

For now, this is Twoccer signing off!

Despedida.

Sheer Exuberance

A very prosperous day to you all. Thanks for giving my last post a thought. I highly appreciate it.

I have been very happy the last week or so. Jeez, I love this energetic feeling which was missing for a long time. Previously, you were told that I went for my visa interview which turned out to be a dream come true. Even though the visa officers say that visa has been approved, people feel hexed for a moment and can't decide for sure whether the paramount word was 'APPROVED' or .......'REJECTED'. Exiting the consulate, I had a somewhat similar feeling till I looked into the leaflet that had been given to me. The first statement was 'Your visa has been approved'. The statement was cemented into the corner of my mind. I know most of you must be thinking that I am obsessing you with the details but for a moment, put yourself in my shoes. 

Well I came back home and waited for the passport to be fully processed so that I could finally fetch it. But as it happens, the next couple of days were holidays which delayed my visa. Finally an email came on the 7th that the shipment had reached the requested location and it can be collected. We made a 3-hour long journey to the HAL (Hold-at-Location) just to be told that all the shipments had been shifted to some other depot w.e.f from 7th July '11. We kept our patience, noted down the address and left. This other building seemed a much better place than the one we had just been to. The attendant asked for my identity for verification. Once he realized that everything was in order, the package was handed over to me.

I looked at it for a minute going over all the effort I had put in for this small yet huge envelope in my hand. Once in the car, my hands themselves started working upon the package, loosening the stapler pins and ripping apart the glued paper strip. As I turned it upside down, the contents swished down onto my lap. If seen with a pedestrian eye, nothing was out of the ordinary among the contents. The documents that I had deposited during the interview had been returned to me in a very seemingly untouched state except for one thing. A page of the passport was occupied by a simple yet elegant piece of paper. My eyes were fixed at it for I don't know how long! 

It was sheer exuberance.

Here are some of the pics of the package which may seem banal to some. Please don't hide the feeling :-P

The envelope 

You know...just in case! LOL

Hope you enjoyed reading my train of thought.

Will keep you posted on further updates.

Till then, this is Twoccer signing off.
Abschied!

The Right Way

Hey guys! Hope you've been in the best of spirits. Well I've been feeling this way lately and I should say, it does feel good. You would remember I told you in my last post that I was having fun even though life had been downhill for me. When I returned home after my vacation, whiling away time became very difficult. Why? 'Cause there was nothing to do. I don't think a sound Homo sapien has the capacity to amuse himself the whole time by Facebook, movies, soaps, music, video games etcetera. In the end, everyone gets fed up one way or the other. For me, it was the same story until a new development took place.

Well, the new development was my visa process which kept me equipped with chores. I had to file for my visa interview which took a significant amount of time. Almost 5-6 days later, I had my visa interview. It was an interesting yet shaking experience. I mean, this was my last chance to prove my worth. So I was a bit disturbed. Although most of my friends had already gotten their visa approved, you don't feel confident till you yourself stand shoulder to shoulder with them. As is with all major things, you do a lot of introspecting and planning as to how will things work out during the final play. Documents and testimonials are a crucial part of the visa process. It took me a lot of time collecting all the needed credentials and I was amazed to see the countless archives in my grasp.

The time had come for the final showdown and I arrived at the consulate for the interview. The security officials outside checked my passport and interview letter and asked me to go inside. Inside, I had to pass through a thorough security check followed by document verification. After all this, I had to wait for my token number to be called for further processing. Never-ending time later, it was my turn to be in the battlefront. The first counter was for digitally authorizing my documents. The lady behind the counter was a sweet Indian lady with a nice sense of humor. Next was fingerprinting which was done by an American guy. All this was pretty easy. Here came the hard part! The interview. It was a little over 5 minutes when my number was called. The visa interviewer was a nice-looking American lady. She asked me a few questions to assert my confidence and fluency. Finally, I heard the words that I had so longed to hear. I mean I had dreamed every night about this day and its outcome. What were the words? And I quote, "So Dhruv, your visa has been approved. You can collect it after a few days." I couldn't realize what had just happened until I left the building. That was when I envisaged my moment of total triumph. It felt tremendously satisfying. All those days of  running here and there preparing for the damn thing had finally earned me everlasting happiness. I don't care if people found it a normal thing because visa approval is an everyday process for them. For me, it meant everything during that split second.

But after a day or two, I was back to my everyday routine again. Trying to loiter away time was again getting difficult. To top it all, my session was supposedly in mid-September. Can you imagine spending two months at home doing nothing when everyone else around you seems to be busy with their own agendas. That's my routine for you, my friends! But every once in a while, thinking about those beautiful words proves helpful.

I hope you find my thoughts worth reading.

Will keep you posted.

This is Twoccer signing off.
Arrivederci.

Light at the end of the tunnel

I don’t know where to start from. It’s been a helluva month. Someone has truly said,

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way - in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.”

You know how it happens that you get a rid of a problem when suddenly more complex problems arise because of your reaction to the former one. If you don’t know how it happens, I’ll describe it to you in the next post because that’s exactly what has happened with me during the past weeks. Some of you must be thinking I am so downtrodden most of the time. But guys, I have been having fun, no doubt about that. It’s just that my mind has been juggling with thoughts as I would be embarking for my college education in a couple of months. Thus it happens to be the best of times, the worst of times.

Since my last post, I haven’t had much time to sit and spill my thoughts for a new post. But there are only 24 hours in a day. You gotta adjust everything in the given time. I remember telling you about my tests that I had appeared in. What about them? Well the results were out in the last week of May. As I had said before that the results would be disastrous, please be soft on me. I don’t think divulging the exact details are important. Acknowledging the fact that the overall conclusion after these tests was bad sums it all up. This was the only moment since my birth that I couldn’t walk around with my head held high and presumably…….the last one. I know the embarrassment that I and everyone around me had to suffer because of my naïve decisions. My morale was at an all-time low. It was as if the Parasites from the ‘The Supernaturalist’ had sucked every drop of so-called life in me. The two weeks following the results were the most excruciating couple of weeks I had suffered in my eighteen years on earth. Well to give all this a break, my uncle had booked me a Hyderabad trip to visit his family who were leaving for USA the next month. I was a bit nauseous in the beginning about the whole trip but it turned out be an invaluable stress-reliever for me.

I hadn’t visited many places during the last two years and hence, this vacation was the perfect opportunity to let everything go and have fun. We were a gang of four maniacs who would wreck havoc in the whole house either doing something together or going on our own errands. A single post can’t describe the ball we had the whole vacation. So to put in a cluster of sentences, we saw a bunch of movies, went bowling and go-carting, played squash and a lot of X-Box 360. But people coined the term holiday implying that it’s a short-term get-away. So as days passed by, the evening came when it was time to go.

It was tough because I would not be seeing much of them after they leave for USA later next month. Well to hell with the sadness, we all have suffered too much of it lately. Let’s just keep thinking of the fond memories we shared together.

This is an acknowledging note to my lovely cousins that I had the time of my life after a very long time. Also I would like to thank their friends who gave the vacation a whole new funnier dimension.

Love you guys! Keep rocking.

Hoping to see you soon!

This is Twoccer signing off!

Arrivederci.

Deja de llorar!

Half of you people must be thinking what does the title mean? Well I know Google Translator is a great way to figure it out. But I would like you to be patient and just bear with me on this for a while. You'll have it all figured out in just a moment.

So this is how the story goes. Since my last post, all my tests were over and I was sailing in the land of complete freedom. Please don't be carried away by the word complete in the previous sentence. You can never be set free when you know you have gruesome results coming your way. Let's imagine it this way. You're in a 6ft by 6ft box locked from the inside but fortunately you have the key. How easy! Isn't it? Nah...why do you think my situation would be that easy. The box is closed inside another bigger box. Now even if you open the lock, you're still trapped. That somehow describes my condition. You're free but technically you're still bound.

We had our high school (known as intermediate in India) graduation results coming up. Now it's different in India from other countries. How? I'll tell you how. It's conducted on an All-India basis. You give your examinations which are then sent to the respective centers to get evaluated. Results are then published shortly. I hope I'm making some sense laying out all this boozing explanation. Bear with me please!

So everyone around me was nervous even if they didn't accept it. Rumor mill was that this time around the evaluating staff had done a pretty stiff evaluation and weren't giving away marks. Another was that some examination copies had stagnated somewhere in between and hadn't reached the destination so as to get checked. But they were rumors. Before the result, I had been away at my grandma's place having some last moment fun. Because in the inside, my own gut was cracking! People come on it's natural! My uncle had come in from USA to visit his mom i.e. my grandma. He too is very strict in educational and academic matters. I was interviewed innumerable times a day as to what I'm gonna score which worsened my condition. After two days in Gehenna, I said to hell with it. So I came back home and Judgement Day arrived.

This is an excerpt from the vivid day May 23 2011. 

Trrrrrrrr.....! Shit! The alarm goes off! It's 6 in the morning. No way I'll wake up now. 

My body finally begs me to wake up at 11. Mum has a sore throat yelling at me to wake up from bed. Well I do the honors for the sake of my family. First thing that happens - my friend's dad calls me and asks,"Son, what did you score?". It comes as a bummer. I somehow end the conversation without any damage. 

Now it's time for me to finally see what I have scored. I open my laptop, type in my roll number with a thumping heartbeat. And here it is. All my hard work summed up in one small table. At second glance, the table is good. And by good I mean excellent. I scored 91%! Most satisfying feeling in the world. I can't get words to describe my feeling. So I silently turn the monitor towards mum and dad.

In the end, all my relatives and friends are pretty happy with what I've achieved with some frowns here and there. Between all this I exclaimed to one of my friend on the phone, "Deja de llorar! It'll be fine". Yes you are correct. Stop crying!

That's all for now. Do put in your views below. And again thanks for giving my blog a moment. Love you all.

This is Twoccer signing off!

Adios :P