Carthik Sharma

i was reading the reviews of Gunaah and Shakti, both recent releases, and then i came upon this article by Shailesh Kapoor. its about the increasing use of “unbecoming” words in hindi movies, and the perceptions regarding whats passe, which are now changing…this paragraph was a little surprising..

So, the “A” certificate is not enough, you see. There are many million families in India where the husband and the wife don’t share a relationship where they can watch such films together without any discomfort. In any case, within six months of their release, films like Gunaah and Shakti will be on satellite TV, and the certificate logic doesn’t apply there anymore. In fact, today’s teenagers are more informed about the sexual content in the films than their parents.

The second sentence, especially! It is true too, i know, and i remember wondering out loud when i was about 15, as to why people get married, there seemed to be no fun in it.

The times they are a-changin’

fridays are painful, when you know its friday, and when you know that saturday and sunday follow, when you know you will so much more time to kill, when you will have a tougher time keeping idle thoughts about the loved one out of your mind…

slept real early yesterday, at around 10.30. Not surprisingly, i woke up at 2.30 am!! i went to the loo, drank some juice(my roommate went to walmart and got all artificially flavoured drinks, and enough to last a month, i cant wait till we finish it so we can get good old orange juice and natural pulp, so i drink the artificial “juice” whenever i can, though i dont like it much), sat around, smoked a fag, and then fooled myself into beleiving it was bedtime, and it was, since i go to bed around 2.30 everyday, and then i woke up at 6.00.
i called home today, but not before calling harish and wishing him a happy birthday(he wasnt there, his answering machine should have relayed the info to him), but then later, sasi told me that the birthday’s on 27th. harish must be pissed off with, some great friend i am!! alright, so grandma was all happy to hear my voice, without the moderating presence of Appa around. She sounded very concerned, and asked me if I get drinking water regularly at home, whether i oil my hair, how much my power bill was last time, and she choked when i told her that the grocery bill for last month was around 400(for the 4 of us)! Appa, as usual, had had a sall tiff with her, and gone out. Grandma suspects he is back to his sharetrading habits. i dont find anything bad about that, true, he’s lost some money, but its his money…

yes, and sometime ago, i resolved to grow myself a ponytail (kidding, as always, i am sure i will go get a haircut when all that hair above the ears starts irritating me.)

i have to go an attend a meeting of minority student coordinators from all over florida, for the sake of my software engineering project. thats at 4 pm, and i just remembered it, thank God!

I dont feel homesick, and thats because its been raining so hard here. A lot of soul searching is on now, and a lot of things are getting clearer, and i like it! I am at peace with the world-at-large today, and thats because of so many things that have happened today, sasi sent me a beautiful poem, a girl in the bookstore counter called me by my name(she saw it when i opened my wallet, on the id card), and such…i hope each day is filled with these little founts of happiness, like this day is.

had a WILD birthday party at home yesterday, was my room mate’s b’day, so everyone was applying cake to his face, and a few guys cracked eggs on his head, i told you it was wild, and my roommate was chasing everyone all over the block, just to embrace them and share the yolk and cream )

I got my first paycheck today. I woke up late, and was praying it would come this week, i could’nt get it the last time because the secretary forgot to take a copy of a page in my passport. I bought this phone to call India, and i got only 16 minutes instead of the promised 30! Cant do anything about it, since i called a cell phone. Whatever. My expenses are getting out of hand…I brought 2000 dolls, and am left with 75+ from that, but of course, i paid my share in setting up the new house, and I saw NY, CT and Atlanta…

Well, to cut a long story short, I got a copy of Windows XP for free.

now for the story…
we had a career fair at UCF with over 100 companies. What was weird was a lot of companies were telling people, ” We are not looking to recruit people, and oh, we dont have any internships on offer either..”, and so i suppose their primary objective was to offload all the coffee mugs and trinkets in their offices. Yeah , i got a load of stress balls (for the unemployed, how considerate!), pens (for filling up all those forms..) and coffee mugs (to keep you company during the all-night job searches). Not that i need a job now, but someone should stop them from making fun of unemployed students looking for jobs. I heard that last time there were quite a few companies handing out T shirts. I guess even the textile(import) industry is facing a rough patch, because there were’nt any Tshirts this time around.

I went to the Microsoft table, and the lady was like “we cant give you any jobs or internships, but you could win a Tshirt or some software if you participate in the raffle.”, so i put my name on a slip and put it in a box, and bingo, at the end of the day, i had my own copy of Windows XP. Honestly this is the first time I am laying my hands on some shrink wrapped software (India beleives in free(no matter what you have to do to make it “free”, even piracy’s fine) software). Actually the lady (i never knew Microsoft hires folks for their looks) asked me to choose between a tshirt and the software(the software/softwear tradeoff!(was’nt that a real bad joke? like Y U C K?)). I was in a fix, until she told me the tshirt was L sized. Now if any of you want to buy the software off my hands, please let me know, ’cause i already have a unshrinkwrapped version with me, which i can always use.

I got the link for this from the infojunkies group.

It was on this day, 20 years ago, that the smiley first smiled, thanks to one Mr. Fahlmann, an IBM researcher..

read all about the origin of the smileys in this article at CNN

I guess i shouldnt stop posting just because there is nothing interesting happening. yeah i got an anonymous mail from an undergrad student who’s taking the lab that i’m handling, sayin i’ve got a cute smile, that “she”(the alias is a feminine name) likes the class, and that i have to “find” her. didnt reply, dont know what to do. not too sure about how the sexual harassment rules are applied in florida, i mean, i dont know if replying to a mail like this, asking the person to desist may lead to any problems…i just chose to ignore the mail. i guess its just some smartass guy pulling my leg.

alright, so that was something interesting, and then, what else, i miss the mosquitoes we had back home, strange , but true, i dont miss the mosq-bites, but i do miss the mosquitoes, i remember how killing them used to be a good way to waste time on the day before the exam , back at the college hostel, and all the time i could think that i am doing useful work, by helping control malaria and all those mosq-borne diseases. i remember killing about 75 mosquitoes in a night, with a rolled up “india today” which i finally had to throw away…those were the days…
then there was Joseph Sir, my math tuition teacher, who used to request us not to swat mosquitoes during his early morning(6 am) classes. he insisted they were all inmates of his “ashram” and were like his pets…

This day, i discovered the pleasures of listening to “online music”. Now i can work at the computer while listening to music!! I know this sounds childish, but dont you wish you knew the day you first listened to online music. i will remember.

yuck,
i mean my livejournal has gone from bad to pathetic. so has my life. sunday evening and i have to write three papers, and have no idea abouthow to get started since i have never seen a student assignment paper before. i will cook something up.
the problem is i am wasting my time, doing this and that, reading other people’s journals(my Appa would frown if he ever knew i was reading other folks’ journals ) well, well, i have been in the lab for a little over 5 hours now, and nothings been done. i plan to take a break, go out smell the flowers (yeah, the long slender ones that come in pack of 20 ) and come back, and try to be less creative and more studious..
but….i have to read that monster of a textbook first, well, well….

moral of the story : when you get to be the director of a graduate school, never give an admit to someone who does not deserve to be there, or has a livejournal, or has more than 3 email accounts.