Something is really beautiful about campus today. The weather is perfect, the carollineurs are playing something vaguely happy and its raining leaves.

Go outside!

Just when I have too many things to attend to--a book review for YSM, organizing UNICEF campaign, English essay, Math--I've decided to blog. I need to relieve my restlessness somehow and I figure writing randomly for half-an-hour should force me to......do something worthwhile.

And I don't have a picture this time; I've been meaning to take a shot of Harkness but I keep forgetting to.

-

There's this person, in one of my classes, who acts like everything that comes out of his mouth is some kind of a transcdental-intellectual-philosophical statement with meaning so deep that no one other then the teacher will be able to understand it. It's really annoying. I want to tell him that me makes no sense; apparantly being artsy gives you the liberty to be stupid and get away with it.

-

The chemistry test today was very difficult. I'm never able to accomplish the right balance in that class; either I study too much for an easy test or I don't study enough for a very difficult one. Sigh. I'm glad he's letting us drop one of our four marks.

-

Today, I ate beef.

I'm a vegetarian and a Hindu. These two generally preclude the consumption of meat of any kind, but especially beef (the cow is sacred in India). Some careless worker in the Branford Dining Hall mislabeled the burger patty's as "Vegetable Lovers Burger".

Thinking it great that vegetarian options were being more varied, I picked one up and began to happily consume it. Something tasted wrong. I asked the chef who informed me, cheerily, that someone had put the wrong label on it. Oops!

It feels awful to have violated something you've kept up for close on 18 years.

_

Everything kind of piled up this week; it's actually been kind of awful. I'm so swamped with extracurricular commitments (they caught up to me) and my schoolwork that I'm having a tough time managing things. Still, it's not as busy as high school.

_

I'm shadowing a neurosurgeon at the Yale New Haven Hospital. He is a very smart guy, and he often gives me long talks on various philosophical subjects. You can't help but listen to him because he's so frightningly intelligent; he has an unnerving way of making keen insights. Some novel notions he introduced me to:

- people who criticize science are stupid. The longevity of our lives and the comforts we enjoy are both attributable to the efforts of scientists over the decades. Further, scientific thought and method are essential in politics- and noticeably lacking today.

- philosophy has been usurped by literature. He blames this on Nietzche.

We also talked about Malcolm Gladwell's new book Blink which is actually really good. I suggest you buy it.

_

Our English teacher gave to us, as an optional reading, the book Chloe Does Yale. I heartily suggest that you do not buy this piece of drivel. Although sometimes capable of humour and insight, she is mostly awful. She tries to be titillating and provocative, Sex and the City style, but the novelty of an Ivy League sex guru quickly wears off. The reason we're reading it is to collect "data on love". Our next, very broad, essay assignment is to write something about love. I'm talking about the American notion of marriage and the Indian notion of marriage. Kind of, Sex and the City vs. Arranged Marriage.
_

Pictures may be edited in later!

Sterling Memorial Library Ceiling

I now have AIM. This apparantly gives me the quintessential American IM-ing experience.

I don't understand it at all. Why does everyone here have AIM? MSN is easier to use and its smiley-face collection is unparalled (you can add to your collection, also, by downloading them). Also, its interface doesn't look like a throw-back to early '80s HTML.

My dissatisfaction with it may also have something to do with the fact that I have one person on my Buddy list. I'll get my brother to sign up, maybe; he's always good for that.
-

I've been feeling like I'm not doing enough around campus. I had time, this last weekend, to do nothing but read for three hours. Something is wrong. Other people keep talking smoothly about how many leadership positions they're taking on; one particularly annoying person exclaimed with feigned angst to me yesterday, "I just have to stop something. I'm doing too much! But I'm having so much fun!".

So, feeling inadequate, I signed up to co-ordinate a project with UNICEF, became their webmaster, and signed on for two articles (one of them a feature) for the Yale Daily News. Why can't I just enjoy being relaxed?
_

Yale finally updated its website! On the main page there's always one big picture on the right side. The picture is randomly drawn from a bank of stored images kept on the website. It usually alternates between like 3 tired pictures. But they added more to the bank! Now there's a beautiful image of Saybrook, a shot of an Ivy-League-Lawn and a really stunning picture of Woolsely (which photographs well anyways).

I'm like the only one impressed with this.
-
Gilmore Girls is on tonight. Images of Yale have been few and far between. Not that I watch it or anything.

Last episode, or maybe the episode before last, they had a short scene where Rory Gilmore stood thoughtfully in some orientation room, as the freshman class milled around her. I didn't see an extra who looked like me.

_

I don't understand the carollineurs (or however you spell it) here. When I got the Yale tour, the guide remarked (with an indulgent smile) that the people who operate the bells in Harkness liked to play pop music like Britney Spears. But all I ever hear, around 5:00 PM everyday, is mind-bogglingly sober tunes.

They make you feel so oddly contemplative. And I've seen the music induce the Elijah-Wood-they've-stolen-my-ring look in other people. Just play something happy!

-

I don't get quantum computing.

My Clean Room

The rain stopped! Yale is beautiful again!

I also saw the sky for the first time in , like, two weeks.

-

Does anybody else have a problem with meterologists on the weather channel? I never understand what they're talking about. They will vaguely mention something about an approaching "front", and behind them will be looping videos of amorphous cloud-shapes extending somewhere( if you watch carefully!) over where you live. But none of it means anything to me. Just tell me whether it's hot or cold, raining or snowing, when and how much.

-

There are a lot of silly traditions at Yale. In Branford College, for example, you are not permitted to walk through a certain gate (it's a really majestic one too), and you cannot touch a certain stone.

However, all of those traditions were perturbed when prospective applicants flooded the campus for the admissions "open house." They walked through and over everything they were supposed to trip to try and avoid. The most egregious was one particularly oblivious family; they thought it appropriate to eat their lunch on the steps of the Skulls and Bones building. Did they not know what depraved rituals went on behind the ominous black doors which stretched above them? Did they not know that they had just offended an organization intent on world domination? I didn't want to get involved so I averted my gaze and walked on.

Seriously, these weird eccentricies have to end. I do twice the walking to get from Point A to Point B because I have to loop around half a dozen no-no spots. Apparantly, you don't graduate if you violate them.

-

John Edwards is coming! I'm very excited; I've already registered and printed out my ticket. Some of the girls on campus are getting riled up for different reasons. My friend in chemistry class told me he was"dreamy".

Speaking of celebrity visitors, guess who else came? Lynda Lopez sister of the infamous J.Lo! Her speech on all of the work she had done to rise to the ranks of TV anchor was attended by an overwhelming twelve people. I didn't go myself; I was just informed by an overly cheery YDN article.

I forgot to see Lemony Snicket when he came. I'm still upset over that one. His books are brilliant.

-

I had a phone conversation, over MSN, with Kiff (and her roommate). It was hilarious. I haven't heard her cackle in, like, months. Someone else initiate one of those newfangled voice convos with me!

Rainy New Haven

I am so tired of the rain.

No superlative could come close to describing the torrent of water falling on Yale as we speak; it's actually as though someone tipped a gigantic bucket over. Walking to classes or the dining hall was once a cheery stroll through gothic-land; now it is an impossible journey, mainly involving me scampering to avoid puddles and the sheets of water that come flying from cars cruising by. The umbrellas are like demolition derby. They bump and jostle, and you can't talk to anyone because manuvering them is too difficult.

I have no idea how I'm going to survive this week. The wonderful forecast on WB-11 was: "Rain all week!". The meteoroligist apparantly thought this was very cheery news. He smiled when he said it, and gave an indulgent chuckle.

Gah!
_

My room is clean thanks to Parent's Weekend. For some reason, I feel compelled to keep it that way. Twin, being perfect and all, always keeps his clean (he actually brooms it once a week and uses air freshner to keep things "crisp").

This morning I sorted through my papers. This involved straightening them and placing them in a uniform pile.

_

Martha Stewart tonight! I really love the new Apprentice show. For some inexplicable reason, I have also come to like Stewart herself. She is much more engaging then Donald Trump, and her boardroom firing sessions are much better to watch. In Trump's boardroom, everything seems to be teetering precipitously; his mood and decision can change with lightning speed. In Stewart's (more designer) boardroom, she smiles compassionately, and she mumbles some generous phrase (like "you are very talented"). She then writes them a letter (on the spot!). It just feels so much less tense.
_

Mid-term/evaluation season is over! This means I'll have some downtime before it begins again.....in two weeks.

The Good, The Bad, The Dog

Yale Mascot: "Handsome Dan"

They actually kept the skin (and fur!) from the original "Handsome Dan" (who lived in the early 1800s), and have stuffed it to make it look unnervingly life-like. If you are curious, you can see this stuffed masterpiece at the Yale Visitor's Centre. It was also featured on an episode of "The Gilmore Girls".

_

The good: I am learning how to write. If you've read through any part of my blog, you'll know that I am badly in need of conciseness. Well, my amazing English teacher has resolved to exorcise my writing demons. His techniques are very useful.

The bad: Unfortunately, the process involves a great deal of pain and wails of terror. These, of course, refer to swallowing pride and trying to improve myself.

_

Words look like things. The word ‘pervasive’ looks like a needle to me; when I see it, I think of a silver cylinder tapering to a stabbing point. When I see ‘the’, I think of a gap-toothed peasant. When I see ‘and’, I think of Atlas bearing the burden of the world on his shoulders (this also reminds me of my intense dislike of Ayn Rand)

How can already graphical objects still have visual connotations? How many dimensions to thinking are there?

I don’t know the answer; just thought I’d ask the question.

-

Yale is very busy right now. My parents just visited for Parent's Weekend, and the midterm exam season has begun in earnest. I came very close to pulling an all-nighter last night. But then I fell asleep......at 11:30 PM. Intense, no?

_

I went back to Target. Roshan wasn't there.

_

I spend way too much time on thefacebook.com. I don't add friends, necessarily; I just browse other people's profiles. My habit of people-watching has translated neatly to the online world. I can now name the interests, former high school attended and relationship status of someone I've never met.