School begins

School is beginning in little more than a week- I feel completely unprepared.

No, "unprepared" doesn't mean "reading ahead" so I'm prepared or buying my school supplies- both of which I've done, in fact- but it means more importantly the things I had decided to have done by this time, but haven't finished.

I was going to finish, by the end of August,

- Physics 30
- College Personal Statement
- Extended Essay

What have I actually achieved?

-1 module of Physics 30 (there's 9 in total)

I feel like I've wasted this entire summer. Admittedly, that's a melodramatic statement- especially given summer's are designed to be wasted- but I still feel a nagging feeling of not having accomplished much.

Today, I sat down to make inroads on the pile of work I have, and ended up coming here to type in my blog and tell you exactly what I planned to do. Grade 12 is looking ominous.

_

I have a gmail account. This excites me to no end (finally, I can delete my hotmail account!). For those who don't know, Google's new web based e-mail confers several advantages- most significantly, 1000 mb of storage space. Anyone with hotmail or Yahoo is familiar with the frustrations of having to delete e-mails on a continuous basis- incoming e-mails are pulverized before they even arrive.

I really wonder what Hotmail exec's feel about this..... Yahoo for it's part has increased it's storage to 100 MB, I hear- that might keep some customers.

In any case, it's only in limited release now- you have to be invited in order to use it. I got 2 invitations in one day.

The point of this all is that you should all (all) e-mail me at roshan.sethi@gmail.com

Maybe you'll get an invitation ?

_

I wrote another story recently (not the one below) for a city-wide short story contest. Through some strange twist of fate I recieved 2nd Place- this excites me to no end. I may post the story on here- in fact, I may as well just entirely subvert this blog to Story Time.

_

I got the sixth book in the Wheel of Time series, The Lord of Chaos. It's one of the more popular Fantasy series- although the author, Robert Jordan, has got readers riled up by the slow pace. It's a pageturner of sorts- the author was one of those who was born to write. He seems to be able to hold multiple threads and storylines and weave them together in an intricate knot that is somewhat astounding.

Somewhat refreshing after having read a deluge of bad authors- Clive Cussler and Dan Brown. Both write so woodenly, apparantly shirking from the use of any prose whatsoever. They have cliched, archetypal dashing hero's (maybe I'm nurturing an inferiority complex) who hook up with different women every single book despite their love-torn dramas with each of them.

Even The Da Vinci Code is something of a sullied memory right now- I avert my eyes and my face crinkles with disgust everytime I see it. I remember approving of the novel shortly after reading it (in one of my posts here)- now all the farflung religious theories that are told with the scholarly authority of an eurdite, are about as meaningless as empty, brown paper bags.

_

I have nothing downloaded or pirated on my computer. Nothing.

It's a strange habit, I suppose, especially for my age. I went to an office store the other day to buy Microsoft Office (yes, I said buy) and the cashier gave me a quizzical look.

At least I know this one won't be infested with virii.

Broken Silence

I could tell someone had been in the house today.

There was a glass on the kitchen counter that I didn't recognize, blue with fishes on it. The phone was backwards in it's cradle, the cord dragging awkwardly over the front of it. Glasses I didn't know were on my desk, thick lenses with a steel rim. The fine china cabinet door was open a few inches. My journal was flipped open to its tenth page, the tiny hair I customarily used to sense intruders, boldly displaced.

Nothing was gone.

I walked around my house, running my hands lightly over things I knew someone else had touched.

It was as though the sanctity of my house had been violated; as though someone had opened a door, letting cold frigid air, sweeping away the previous warmth. I fairly quivered with anger as I inspected every room, looking for the tiny hints of someone else's presence.

The door to my house is usually unlocked- the people here, in our small community, would never thieve. We lived so isolated from the city, that we rarely ever have encounters with them. They come, sometimes, rash, brutish people who shake their heads with amused disdain at our tiny community.

There had never been a problem, though.

I talked to my neighbours- elderly, most of them- and asked them if they had seen anything out of the ordinary. Everyone, except Ms. Smith, shook their heads silently. Ms. Smith, lifted her frail, old head and looked at me with potent blue eyes.

"There was a black car," she said, knitting a shapless fabric, " It was in your driveway this morning." I sighed, and told her I'd look into it. She stared out her glazed window suddenly, and pointed with a trembling quivering hand.

"There!" she said, pointing at my vehicle," It was that color! Black!"

_

I was restless before I went to sleep that night, and surprised myself by locking the door. The rusted metal knob hadn't been locked in ages- I lent the full force of my weight to rotate the key, and heard a bolt snap into my place with a loud bang. Frowning, I stood back.

There was no alarm system, for obvious reasons. I would never know if someone entered. I bit my lip, considering the door. I was there a few moments, before swivelling on my heels and heading to the kitchen, returning with a bucket full of water. Hands shaking with apprehension (or was it excitement?) I leaned the bucket carefully against the door.

Standing up, I wiped my hands on my pants and smiled triumphantly.

I didn't sleep well that night. I layed on my side, staring at my alarm clock, and moving as little as possible so as not to miss a telltale sound from downstairs. The sound never came, but I stayed there the whole night, my body tensed and coiled beneath the sheets.

_

Morning came, sunlight streaming through the windows and illuminating my feet. The window was open, I realized belatedly, the curtain billowing out by some unseen force. Shivering, as I realized how frigid the air was in the room, I moved to close the window.

It wasn't open last night. The thought stopped me in my tracks, and I approached the curtain carefully. I pushed it aside, cautiously and closed the window with a loud bang.

Someone had been in the house. I knew this with startling certainty as I began to walk slowly around the house.

The phone was off the hook, a plaintive ,repetitive tone coming from it. The TV was on downstairs, blaring so loudly it was a wonder I hadn't noticed it. The tap in the kitchen was on, my plugged sink overflowing with water that seeped onto the floors. The blinds were closed, and the lights were on.

I collapsed into my sofa, and held my head in my hands. Who is doing this to me? Memory flooded back, and slowly I rose.

When I reached the front door, I found it exactly as I had left it last night. The bucket of water was leaning against the door, untouched. I let my angry fist loose against the door. Who!

_

The intrustions continued for a few days, and a few nights. I got used to them, the small things, my reactions turning from anger to raging curiosity to silent acceptance. I would clean up the messes the intruder left and lock the door every night, leaving the balanced bucket of water. I installed a padlock on the window in my bedroom- it didn't matter, every morning my room was freezing and the window open.

I considered calling the police, the small volunteer force in our community, but decided against it. The Intruder had not taken anything. Only come and gone, like a faery of the Old Stories. Besides, I wanted to solve this one myself.

Instead, I began leaving notes, written in my long, slanting handwriting. They were terse at first.

To Whom It May Concern,

I do not know who you are. Please stop entering my house.

Yours,

Sam

I taped this to the outside of my bedroom window, to the counter on my kitchen and all the doors.

The intruder responded with nothing. The next night, I wrote another message.

To Whom It May Concern,

Who are you? If you are to use my house by night, and disrupt my life, then at least tell me to whom have I lost my sanity?

Yours,

Sam

There was no answer. Nor to any of the five messages, I sent the next few days, taping them in more locations around the house. What do you get out of this? I asked once, my anger clearly reflected in the violent, stacatto movements of my pen. The paper was ripped sometimes, as I wrote the message over and over again, leaving it around the house.

Then I got a reply. I found it on a saturday night, after returning from work. Someone had obviously been in the house again.

Nightmares are perversions of dreams.

I crumpled it up into a small ball of paper that I threw with anger into my wastebucket.

_

The next day, I went to the public library in our community. It was open for only a few hours on Sunday- I had to run to make it in, before closing hours. The librarian gave me a disapproving look over the spectacles perched on the tip of her nose.

Heading to the nearest computer receptacle, I typed in the search field: Sleep Walking.

The screen returned nothing.

No Result(s) Found for this Search.

I left the library, stopping to give a stony glare to the librarian.

_

The idea came upon me suddenly in another few days. The intrusions were continuing, even gaining force. More was displaced, some of it causing permanent damage that was taking a toll on his cheque book.

I loaned the camcorder from a younger neighbour friend of mine who lived 5 doors down. He didn't ask any questions when I asked for it, just gave me a curious look. No doubt he was thinking about the rumours running down the street already. Old Sam's gone off his rocker already, I heard them whispering, gathering on porches with lemonade. At the bank, Lily, an old friend of mine had even had a word with me. "Sam," she had said, sounding anxious," you look worried. You haven't been acting like yourself lately. Is anything wrong?" She stressed the last question, her eyes suddenly flaring with curiosity.

I hung my head, slightly. Should I tell her the truth?

"My cat," I said, clearing my throat awkwardly," My cat died." She gave me a strange, disbelieving look.

"You don't have a cat Sam" she said carefully, considering her words.

"No," I said, meeting her gaze levelly and wondering why I had lied so badly, " I don't have a cat. Not anymore, at least."

_

I set the camcorder up by the window in my bedroom, hidden in shadows.

I slept comfortably, for the first time in a week, the sheets tugged tightly around me.

When I woke up, it was because someone was insistently poking me. Groggily, I muttered something about not poking me. The poking continued, apparantly unfazed by my admonitions. Blinking, I cast a blurry gaze upwards.

The dark, looming figure of a man was there, staring at me sternly. He was old, my age. He had dark hair that was cropped short, like mine. His eyes, the same shade of green as mine, were steely. Bushy eyebrows hung peculiarly over his striking eyes, looming over a wrinkled face.

Like me, I thought. He was dressed in a black trenchcoat, that fell to his feet.

I got out of bed without a word, and he motioned for me to follow.

_

We had a cup of tea in the living room.

It seemed like the most peculiar thing, but not a word had passed between us since he had woken me up.

I had made tea silently, and we had fallen onto the couches in the living room, sipping at our tea nervously.

I spoke the first word, carefully.

"Why?"I said, fingering the handle on my teacup.

"Because I could, " he said grinning widely.

The world came spiralling down into endless darkness, and then light, as my eyes blinked open.

The window was closed. The front door was open, the bucket of water had fallen and water was seeping out onto my front porch, falling through the cracks between the planks of wood.

The Return

Recently, my blog has closely resembled Traveler's Weekly, with melodramatic experiences of my voyages, which I'm sure meant very little to my imaginary audience.

Fortunately and unfortunately, I'm returning to my normal mold for blogs: thoughts waxing half-hearted philisophical, and the mundane, dreary life of an overachiever.

For the benefit of my friends (Ellen, this means you), I decided to profile some of the dumbest things I've ever said, that turned out to be inadvertantly humourous.

_

Did you know?: Shad valley is a program for students across Canada.

On the first day of Shad, things were more then a little awkward. Without my twin there to talk to, I was falling into the well-accepted mold of the Loner- people are wont to give this person a generous 3 metre radius. As such, I was more then a little eager to talk to someone, anyone.

"Where are you from?"

I looked up , delirious with glee that someone had addressed a question to me.

"I'm from Canada."


Apparantly, I didn't learn from my lesson from the muffled giggle of the person who had asked me the question. A few days later,

"I'm from Quebec, " the guy from quebec said to me, extending a hand.

"Oh," I replied, "I'm from Canada"

_

I'm back home, and after my excursions across the globe, forced to settle into something of a regular routine.

I have a job.

This is a startlingly unfamiliar setting for someone who is accustomed to voluntary efforts. It feels weird to be actually accountable for something- because when you're being paid for something, you had better be doing a good job.

Volunteering is accompanied by that sense of self-satisfaction; working makes me feel like a selfish, corporate-pig (did I mention I work in a cubicle?). Perhaps it's my usual self-deprecation kicking in.

_

I'm glad to be home.

Shad Valley

WHEN I finished GYLC, I didn't expect any other experience to beat it.

Shad Valley, however, met and surpassed any and all of my expectations. It was an amalgam of science, entrepreneurship, and the experience of innovation.

I can say with a great deal of conviction that Shad Valley changed my life. It rectified cultural rifts, eradicated my inhibitions, and opened up my narrow-minded perceptions- expanding my horizons until I viewed the glittering expanse of the world in its entirety.

As though an objective entity, divorced from the physical and emotional being of my body, I watched my remarkable evolution over the month of July 2004.

I have never observed so dramatic a change in anybody (much less myself) over a period of 30 days.

Yet I changed, certainly and inexorably. I feel as though I am a new person, grounded more in the empirical, and hardened in a certain sense by my time of complete independence.

_

I still remember the class, in october, when my Chemistry teacher presented a powerpoint about Shad and suggested we all apply.

I don't think I ever anticipated it would change my life- to be utterly candid, I viewed it as resume icing. That shallow comprehension of the program, is nothing short of disgusting today- Shad Valley was an unrivalled experience, that went beyond words on a paper.
_

EVERYTHING was different at Shad Valley. Even my conception of teamwork had to be razed to the ground, replaced with a newer, more realistic realization. What happens when youth leaders are placed together in a small group, and told to work together? In a group of the kind that entered Shad Valley, there are no followers- only aspiring leaders. To work like this, with the maniac shifting of power as an everpresent backdrop, was an entirely new experience- and yet something I learned from.

- Leadership is offical and unofficial- quite often the real power lies with the latter.

- Group histeria is a miserable experience ,that once begun will spiral until an inevitable, ugly conclusion. Avoid it at all costs.

- Reconcile the factions that will spring up in your group. Otherwise, nothing will be accomplished.

- Compromise. It pays huge dividends.

- In the heat of a situation, things will be said that are not grounded in veracity whatsoever- ignore them, and plow forward. Apologies can be saved for later.

_

ENTREPRENEURSHIP is all about sacrifices. I learnt that it was about sacrificing time, sometimes the ideal of a family, and inevitably, one's permanent sanity.

It is only for those with the greatest tenacity and the innate sense of risk- those not burdened entirely with an imbued sense of caution. It is for those that can throw away-and make- fortunes in seconds and minutes. It is for those who live by the second hand of the clock, for those who pay attention to the micro and the macro and for those who live with a solid understanding of the world.

I can't believe that a month could teach me enough to speak about it as though I were a seasoned veteran- and yet, in a way, I am. At Shad I founded a company, Terminus Innovations, and developed a product that may yet be commercialized- something I never imagined myself doing.

I remain uncertain, as to whether I will formally enter entrepreneurship as my field of chosen interest. The experience, however, was not futile at all- entrepreneurship is an exercise participated informally by each one of us, on a daily basis.

_

There was also an athletic component to the program- nearly two hours of recreation every day.For someone as athletically incapable as myself, it was my least favorite part of the program.

Activities ranged from climbing mountains (literally, as one Shad put it) to aerobics in the tennis court, on the hottest day of the month. As much as I love dancing and exercising to music , suited ideally for Raves, it was not my most memorable moment. In fact, if the whole concept of aerobics disappeared entirely off the earth, I can't say I would be unhappy.

_

The executive summary?

The best:

1. The Project - we had to design a product and write a business plan to match it.

2. Lectures

3. Raffi- the famous children's singer (of 'Down by the bay...' or 'Baby Beluga') who was a major benefactor of Shad UBC

4. The Camping Trip- rather conventional by most standards except for one unusual addition- the outhouse was covered with windows (our camping site apparantly treasured whatever remained of the Hippie age)

5. The Staff- so smart, so wonderful. One of the staff, Raj, had been clever enough to buy the domains www.vancouverolympics.com/net/org/ca as soon as the proposal went in. Now he's recieving offers with many 0's.