Big Bigil!!

So.. I have been interested in playing flute lately, thanks to my friend hari! the total enthu god in carnatic... I was searching and searching for websites which give useful info for learning flute.. Most of them are about carnatic music, but vocal. There is this prof in RPI named "Shiv kumar" who has put hazaaaaaaaaaaaar enthu in making a website with all kinds of info for learning carnatic music, mostly vocal. http://www.ecse.rpi.edu/Homepages/shivkuma/music/

One of the seniors actually told me that he no longer puts enthu, since he is married and has kids and stuff. He has no time for it :(. I saw him in the department corridor I think, today. I wanted to go and gen talk to him about it, but didnt :-/. I was kinda nervous to talk to a prof generally about music and all. I was bulbing actually. I tried to do something else, and put my pen in my shirt pocket only to realize that there was no pocket. It was so shady... :)) He just looked at me and walked past. He must be tripping at me now :|

I met an american guy here, named Jeff, studying in the Electronic Arts department at RPI. He told me that he has even composed soundtracks for some english movies. I was like "WoooW! why the hell did this guy come to RPI?". He told me that he'll be meeting some professor at RPI today, who is some renowned flutist. He might not be able to teach, but he said he can try to get some contie who can teach flute. I was so happy :D

Anyway, basically I wanted to post something on what I was doing currently and keep you people informed. If you are wondering what "Bigil" means, you should probably ask some chennai tam d00d about it :)!

Greek city aint too geeky ....

I have been non-geeky things for a long time now.. Did you people notice that? :-? Let me go about outlining the things that have happened in the recent past. Guess thats what a blog is all about.

My flight journey was terrible, I should say... My flight was on the day next to that terrorist plot being foiled in UK. So, there was so much of security check everywhere that I felt like stripping completely and walking in the aiports... total pain!! every 10 mins there'll be a big queue and people have to remove everything from the pockets and the shoes also... then they'll check the boarding card and let me through.. argh!! Thanks to these idiots, I missed my connecting flight at Philadelphia and had to wait in the airport for 4 ducking hours.

After that life has been better, I stayed with the seniors :) Believe me I didnt miss my house grub AT ALL! They are expert cooks man! I even told those seniors, you people would probably make great husbands :P So, if theres any girl reading this.. probably you can look for husbands who did their post grads in US :)

And yeah, TA orientation and training has been taking almost all of my day time. From morning 8:30 to 4:00 PM they keep doing some activity or the other. To describe a typical day, I'll tell you what I did today. In the morning, we had lectures from the "Archer center for leadership training" and we did a lot of group activities. After the lunch, we had a lecture from Prof in the psychology about how to deal with depression and suicidal tendancies of Undergraduate students whom we teach. After that we were shown small videos on problems that most undergrads face and asked as of how we would react to it... Let me tell you, it was horrible. I would never want to solve such problems for them. Its all too personal. One of the situation was like this. "A girl comes to you and complains that the her labmate is hitting on her. Now, how'll you deal with this problem?" I mean, WHAT THE HELL??!? This is way beyond my responsibilities... OMG! I would never want to resolve such issues for others. But I guess I have to :(

Another trippy thing happened two days ago. We were going through this SPEAK test rules and stuff like that. The "Master TAs" as they are called are supposed to help us out by giving us some practice question. There was one story about a guy sitting in a park bench which had a wet paint. So, a korean guy was asked to tell the story. He started the story and went on slowly... and then he said " The man yelled "Oh my god! I sat and wet my pants!" ". I was lmfao =)). The Master TA was not laughing though. She went on to explain the guy what it really meant " You know when you say " I wet my pants" it could also mean that you actually peed in your pants". I couldnt stop laughing. I just turned my face so that it doesnt look awkward. But it was so funny :)) She was patiently explaining it to him some three times until he understood :D Poor female. Its funny when you think of yourself in such a situation. I would have surely laughed at him even if I were that Master TA :P


And yeah, I started bigiling here also ...... Lets hope I continue blogging :)

Heil Fuehrer!

I saw one of the best World War II movies today - "Der untergang" or "The downfall". Excellent movie I should say; conveyed what it wanted to say clearly. It was not about the war exactly. It was more about what was happening personally around hitler during his last few weeks. The time when Berlin was going down. It shows how people treated the "Fuehrer". He was like a god for most of them. I always liked Hitler for his character. The most ideal military man I have ever heard of; stood by his principles till the end. It really touches your heart when Hitler feels betrayed by his own generals. When he realizes that his orders were no longer getting executed completely, he loses faith :'(. Its not about the war, its all about hitler and thats why I liked this movie a lot more than other general WWII movies and sentiments with people getting killed. I would have probably liked if germans had won the world war II. Dont ask me what the world would have been like if that did happen :-/ That'll probably be another blog :)