I am feeling really restless; I want to have a daily schedule

I don't know why, but lately I always want to write something depressing. But somewhere inside my mind I want to get out of this crazy thoughts. I have tried my best to come out of all this frustration and depression for a while. I think now I am feeling much better compared to some time back. Still some times I feel really really restless. Why? I know reasons. But I don't do anything to get out of it. I know the reasons for my restlessness, frustration and depression. Still I don't take any action to come out of this. I guess I just want to live my life waiting on something to happen. Frankly speaking I know for sure that nothing happens if I don't take life into my hands.

All the time I go to the youtube and see some tennis videos of Justine Henin. Always I watch the same video again and again. I have this compulsive disorder. I try to suppress this by doing something else. Some times if something comes to my mind, I can't do anything except keep thinking about the same even though I don't like that. Strange. The more I try to get out of this, the more I am into this problem. More over I am not trying to do something I am supposed to do. I am sure if I keep doing what I am supposed to do, then within no time I can definitely come out of all this. For example I need to work on my new project as a part of my thesis for PhD. But I haven't been working on it for a while. How long can I go like this? It doesn't help either personally or professionally. I need to change this worst habit of living in the past. It is taking me down.

The other thing I notice is I constantly check my gmail and go to the same websites again and again. I guess this is just because I don't know what to do and I don't want to do certain things which are supposed to be done. So I understand one thing. I am always escaping from the real world. I just want to be lazy. To escape from something I am feeding some problems to my mind. I mean my mind it self is creating these self-made problems to escape from the daily work.

I think it never occurred to me that I am trying to think everything in negative way. The other thing I noticed with my personality is I complain a lot even for small problems. I simply get frustrated. Funny thing is I always think that I have lots of patience. Looking at all these things it definitely doesn't look like I have lots of patience. May be I am trying to make other people responsible for my problems. If I start thinking right, then I will definitely understand it well as I always feel it somewhere in side my mind. I guess no one likes to be reason for their own problems. Always people try to blame it on others. I guess I am also no exception to that. But if I am honest to myself, then I know the fact.

I just don't know what I really want in my life. I am just wasting my time not doing anything useful. I always try to give some philosophical thinking to my thoughts to make feel better about what I am doing right now in my life. Finally I feel like going back to my life as a student from 5th grade to 10th grade in Navodaya school. There it was like military. I had to wake up early in the morning and go for exercises. Then I had to be on time for school prayer. Now I am really firm on making good schedule on what to do everyday. If I follow at least half of it, then I will definitely be in the right path. If I want to finish my PhD in another one and half to 2 years, then I need to follow some schedule. I need to work hard.

Yesterday my first paper was accepted for publication in one of the fluid mechanics journals. Right now I am working on very interesting topic called DPD applied to lipid bilayers. I know for sure that if I do good work, I will not have any problems in getting very good publication in top journals as this work was never done before. Still I am not doing anything to finish off the work for which I came here all the way from India. Again it looks really funny to put some printouts of my daily schedule on the wall. I am sure it sounds funny to me and my all friends because we never tried to do this before and may be don't like the idea of trying to be good and perfect student like nerds here. What ever it is, if it puts me in right track, then there is no wrong in doing it. Right?

The other thing is I am getting used to writing a lot on my blog. That too I am using this blog to escape from my real life frustrations. I don't know whether it is good or bad. In a way I spend lot of time writing. But in the end it gives me immense satisfaction. By the time I finish writing I feel really relieved. My mind feels really fresh. If it makes me feel happy, then I guess it is definitely good habit even though it requires lot of time.

Another good thing is today I have fixed my bike and it is working properly now. Some time back I didn't know that I should not use choke for long time when riding the bike. It causes lot of carbon to deposit on spark plugs. So I had to change these spark plugs. I did it with my own hands reading repair manual. Even thought it is simple work, I felt extremely happy and proud when I successfully changed the spark plugs. It was my first mechanical work. Funny thing is I am a mechanical engineer, but I really don't any thing when it comes to either cars or bikes. So in a way this is the first step in learning a lot in repairs. I feel extremely motivated to read lot of books on engines, etc. I feel like laughing as I never cared to read the books carefully enough to understand the concepts. In in engineering I just read them to get good marks. Now I see the importance of all those things. When it comes to personal use, only then people try to learn things. In a way it is definitely good thing in USA as it costs much to fix things manually. That way we learn things as we don't like to spend lots of money on fixing with the help of mechanics. Manual labor is damn expensive here.

Now I am going to have lot of time to go through these bike manuals and read about engines as I am going to put my bike in garage till next summer. All this time I can use properly to understand basic concepts, so that I can use my bike properly when I use it next time and can fix it on my own if something happens with it. I guess it motivates me to do something useful everyday. It tells me to concentrate on my research. You know why I feel like that? If I don't do good research, then I will get fired. If I get fired, then I won't get chance to ride my new bike next summer. That means I am wasting lots of money and effort I put in to this bike. In a way if I respect money and time, then I should do something to keep it that way. That is nothing but doing good work in the university. Let's see whether I keep it or lose it.

Ok. Now time for cooking. After that make one schedule and take printouts to keep them on the wall. First step is waking up early in the tomorrow morning. If I can do that, then its like I have done half of the work. I always wake up something around 11 or 12 in the morning. That means I don't see half of the day. More over here sun goes down by 4pm. So I see most probably just 2 hours of sun everyday. So I feel like I am there just for 2 hours. If this is the case how can I do some work in my everyday life in all this winter. That means if I wake up at 6am, I can see whole day. I am sure definitely it looks like I have lot of time to do something everyday.

Enough of my planning. Hopefully I should follow it. I should be able to follow it, at least half of what I plan if not full. I don't want to ask God to make me follow it. That is simply stupid to ask like that. It is not in his hands, but in my hands to do that. So Sreedhar try to use your time properly to make something out of it. Chalo. Why till tomorrow? Start now it self. Lets cook something so that I don't have to worry for lunch tomorrow. More over its kind of sucks to spend lots of money on food in cafeteria. Lets make a daily plan. Cool. Sounds good. Now go away. This is enough. You have already written damn two pages. Go and do some useful things before you call yourself stupid.

Life doesn't play by rules

This is hundred percent true. Life definitely doesn't play by rules. If I look back at my life I find so many disappointments rather than happy moments. Why? What went wrong? I don't know. I guess this is life. I mean people give so many definitions to life like this saying that life is mixture of happiness and sadness. That's fine with me. I guess always expected life to be run by rules.

For example my philosophy works like this. If I do good, I should get good. But in reality it doesn't work like that. Then people say that it is all our karma. I still always feel something is missing in this logic. In Hindu religion we believe that it is all karma we have to go through because of our last life. That means our future is already decided. There is no way that you can change that. So it really doesn't matter to think that I should get good just because I do good. In a way it makes sense even though I don't like it.

Some times we don't do any mistakes, but ends up getting punished. Let me give one simple example. There have been number of road accidents taking place all over the world everyday. In every accident most of the times two parties are involved. And most of the times only one party does the mistake. That means the other party has been punished even though he hasn't done any mistake. Here you might get doubt why I am using punishment. I mean everyone uses the word punishment as a treatment for bad things. Not really. I mean at one point of time in our life as kids every one of us might have gotten punishment from our teacher for doing silly and stupid things. But here in life I don't know who the teacher is. Some one says, I think most of the people, it is God. But teachers never give us beating if we don't do any bad things. But here in life, if God is the teacher of school called life, God always gives punishment even if we don't do any mistakes. That definitely sucks. I mean its kind of partial. Because we see in our everyday lives lot of bad people having an easy life. But who am I to say that they are bad people? I mean there is no reference to say this is bad and this is good. I guess it all depends on individuals perspective.

Everywhere Society decides rules. If 10 people does some thing and you try to do opposite thing to that, you are bad for them. I guess society works on that rule. For example here in America, you go with 10 different girls at different times. But if you are honest to them every time saying that I don't find our relationship interesting, so I want to be single. Then you go single. After a while you go with some other girl. But that is not a bad thing here, because you are honest every time. But the same thing is bad in India even if you try to be honest. Because in that society what ever it is, it is definitely wrong to go with lot of girls in the first place. So it all depends on society.

Coming back to karma, some time back I wrote, if there is some one called God and he has the right to play our lives, then he is giving us punishment based on our last life, even though you haven't done any mistake in this life. So this logic works as long as you believe in this theory of last life. What if you don't believe. I mean I don't remember my previous life. So why should I get punished in this life? So even if I believe in God, I definitely believe that it is not fair on part of God to give me punishment for my previous life.

Then the ultimate doubt comes to my mind. Is there God? I guess again answer depends on so many things. If we think in pure scientific way the answer is no. If you go by spiritual way, then answer is yes. But in the end again people are ignorant. I mean different people believe in different Gods. But the problem is there can't be different Gods depending on places like America and India. There has to be one. Thats it. But still people start cursing other religions and try to put them down all the time with some disgusting methods. For example Muslims tried to rub their religion on others with force and aggression causing fear in people minds. They are still doing the same things. Christians did the same thing till 1700. Then they changed their methods and started doing the same thing in a cunning way through missionaries.

Why all this bullshit? Did any one see the God? Definitely not? Some people say that they have seen the God in their dreams. Thats all has to do with your thinking and depends on other things you have talked and done before you went to the bed. Its all magic of mind. So no one has seen God. We all have created our own picture of God having damn good qualities that we don't have. At the same time we try to picture evil as ugly as possible and with qualities we don't like to have. That's it. I strongly believe this God is just concept. It's all not more than anything, but just myth.

Any way I guess I totally deviated from the main topic. Some times I really get frustrated to see nothing happening with people who do great hard work. I don't know whether it is really justifiable. Then again people say thats life. I guess if there is God, these people would beat him to death once they are out of their tolerance. But as we know no one does nothing. Lot of people know that they are doing bad things. But they stand in front of God, if there is, and pray to him for a while and request him to forgive him. Thats it then forget about everything. Otherwise I guess no one can live their life. Everyone tries to live their life till their death by forgetting what they have done in their past. Cruel. This world is definitely cruel.

Coming to my life, I guess I had too many disappointments. But when ever I talk to my friends they say that I am doing everything in my life. But am I happy? They don't know that I am not happy. Yes I feel happy when I do something like dancing, skydiving etc. But that stays for very short time. After that again I feel frustrated. I don't feel happy. The main problem is I really don't know what I want. Some times I think that I think too much and live in the past. For example I get angry when I think that life didn't go as I planned. I mean I haven't done that many bad things in my life. But still I always ended up getting severely punished. I don't want to mention too much here, but some people got everything alright even though they are doing so much bad (bad by their standards and so called society standards). So I am losing belief in all this good and bad.

Another funny thing I observed in my life is if I am extremely happy for 5 minutes, then something happens and makes me extremely sad for 5 days. Some times 5 months or 5 years. May be life time. Is it all fixed? I guess so. These days I constantly think that I had enough life. I mean I had some life whether it was bad or good. So what is more there to live for another 30 years. I guess I really don't care if I die right now. It doesn't mean I want to die right now. But at the same there would be no complaints if I die today. The problem is I always feel I am just living my life because I have to. This is not right.

For me right solution for all this is nothing but saying to my self that life doesn't play by rules. Don't care what ever happens to you. Just don't expect to get easy life just because you are righteous and doing good things to others. Just don't expect. That's it. If you don't expect anything, then it really doesn't matter at all. You never become sad even if something bad happens to you because you have never expected anything. Let's see how it works.

Into the wild: I recommend all of you to watch this movie

Two months back I went to watch some movie in Roxy theaters here in Burlington. I watched one trailer which caught my attention like anything. After that I forgot the name of the movie. But somehow as I knew the actors in that movie, I found the name of the movie through IMDB. The name of the movie is Into the Wild.

Most of the time, we get excited seeing trailers and decide to watch those movies. But in the end most of the times we get disappointed with movies. Trailers are always exciting, but it might not be true when it comes to whole movie. When I saw the trailer, it seemed the movie is some kind of adventurous journey of one young guy. I really got tempted to watch it thinking that it is some kind of great adventurous movie. Actually this movie is more than that. You will find it kind of emotional.

The movie starts with an introduction from the sister of main actor of the movie. The main actor of the movie is a very young guy. At the beginning of the movie you get to see him getting bachelors degree. Then he starts on a long dream journey to Alaska. He doesn't even inform his parents. You might wonder what made him to take that step. He finds it too harsh to live in the main land where people show anger against each other even for simple reasons. He is hurt at his parents quarreling all the time. He tells his parents that he is going to be there in the university for few more days before setting off to Alaska. He gives all the money(24,000 dollars) he had in his account to charity before starting his journey.

He starts his journey in his car all the way along south coast of USA. All through his journey he meets different people and find different experiences. Some times he even burns the money he has with him to feel warm early in the mornings. He doesn't believe in money giving happiness. Most of the time he depends on hitchhiking. He walks miles and miles having only one thing on his mind all the time, Alaska. He goes through so many hardships in his journey, you feel really sorry for him, but at the same time we feel great looking at his determination.

Actually movie starts in retrospective fashion. I mean it starts with our actor walking through Alaska. He walks to a place where you don't see any people. He finds some kind of small rundown bus. He lives pretty much in that bus during all his stay in Alaska. From there onwards movie explains how his journey started and went on till he reached Alaska.

One time he gets beaten like anything by a railway guard for traveling on the goods trains. By the way I forgot to mention his age. He is just 23 years old. Finally he meets one old guy who was retired from military and living alone. I found one scene involving this old guy and young guy very interesting. Young guy wants to experience life by not following the other people. Where as old guy is content with living his life in his small place. These two go to some place in the truck. In between they see some naked people partying by the side of road. You observe one thing here. This young guy doesn't even care about those people. All his mind is occupied with only one thing, Alaska. But this old guy, who is counting his final days, looks back at those naked women repeatedly. He wants to have some experiences in his life. But he doesn't want to take any risk. Point is you don't get any where unless you take risk. Any way those two go to some hillside. Then this young guy walks all the way uphill and asks old guy to come to the top of hill. This old guy says that is not his kind of thing. Then young guy says you old man you are just sitting all your life on your butt waiting for something. Old guy takes his comments to the heart and starts walking uphill. Finally he gets to the top and looks around that hill. In a way old guy gets emotional with him during his stay at his place. Finally when he wants to leave the place, old guy wants to adopt him, so that he would have his lineage even if he dies. Young guy politely says that it is not the time to do that and he will do that once he is back from Alaska.

His life is all the way different in Alaska. You don't see people at all. There is no one except him on all that land covered with snow. For a while he totally depends on animals for food. He starts facing big trouble in finding animals during the middle of winter. You can see his frustration being hungry. You see him saying something like "where the fuck are the animals?". He depends on little bit rice to kill his hunger. It is kind of unbelievable the way he lives with that small amount of rice. You see him reaching the danger level of that small rice bag (this level on the bag is marked by some pen). Finally not being able to bare the hunger, he starts eating leaves of some kind of plants by reading the information about them in a book that he has brought with him. After a while you see him writhing in severe pain. Then he understands something wrong happened and finds that he ate some kind of poisonous plant leaves. He comes to know that those leaves could cause slow death by stopping digestion, etc. He starts crying not knowing how to escape from there. Actually he tries to leave the place. For that he has to cross the small river. During the summer he puts big logs over that river to cross it. When he finally wants to leave the place before winter, all these logs are washed away by heavy rains. Then he has no option, but coming back. Finally you see him in a very bad state. He becomes very thin as he has been out of proper food for a while.

He keeps writing all his experiences in his diary all through his journey. In the final scenes you see him writing something like happiness is real only when shared. You feel really sorry for him. He wants to live. But there is no way to escape, there is no one to save him. Finally he dies in that bus.

This movie is made based on a real story of a guy. They made this movie out of his diary and statements from his sister. By the way I forgot to mention about his parents. In search of their son, they find that he is gone to distant land on purpose. They find that he is gone forever. Their search for their son brings them close to each other. Sadness makes them support each other.

Moose hunters found his dead body in summer. They found his diary and some undeveloped negatives. It was his photo sitting in front of his shelter. I still remember I came out of the theater filled with kind of sadness knowing that it was true story of a young guy, who took risk at the cost of his life. In final scene he writes in his diary that he had good life. Yes he had short but memorable life with amazing experiences.

You come out of theater little bit sad. Thats for sure. But I am sure you definitely don't repent for watching. Instead you feel some kind of urgency to do something in your life. You feel like living your life like anything. You try to think how we are wasting our precious time in stupid things. After watching movie I decided not to repent on what ever happened in my life, but try to make the rest of life memorable by taking meaningful risk. Important thing I learned from his life is don't get scared of anything. For example when we are studying we get scared about future thinking that what would happen if we don't get jobs, something like that. If we think practically that is stupid. We are literally following others to live our life. I mean we don't like to take risk thinking that something bad would happen. First of all how do we know we are going to get bad before taking risk it self. Thats why we just follow simply others. I mean we study, then apply for jobs, get married and have kids and finally die. That's it. If you look at people on this planet, most of them do the same thing. Only very few people do it different and live their life completely.

You can ask me one thing. What about you Sreedhar? Yes. Thats right. I am also doing the same thing. But believe me. I am trying to deviate from this following path. I am trying to take risk. I will take risk and try to make my life more meaningful. I am sure there are hundreds of ways to experience life if we are ready to take risk. The only thing we should be feared is losing life, if at all we are afraid of something. But definitely not for losing job, etc. Once we are out of these fears, and know how to live this minute not thinking about another 10 years and not saving money for another generation, we will definitely have a blast in our lives.

For me I always wanted to do certain things in my life. What ever it is I was most of the time scared of outcome of my trials and couldn't do anything. I realized one important thing in my life when I was in Sweden. I realized that money is definitely not the important thing to be happy. If you are desperate for money, you might get it or not get it. In a way I understood that if I am destined to get lot of money, then I will definitely get it some how. For that I don't have to put all my life down. Instead it is better to do things that make us happy and lead happy life. In a way those things might make you rich, who knows. Even if you are not rich, it doesn't matter if you are really happy in your life.

I always wanted to see every place on this earth. Now once I am done with my PhD I will start my journey after a while. I really don't care whether I will have enough money with me. I think if I don't know how to survive with out anything in my pockets, then PhD degree is just meaningless. I guess if I can manage to live ok all through my journey, then I guess its like getting degree which is more valuable compared to PhD. I will definitely not end up in some job sitting in front of computer monitor. I will take risk. Even if I lose my life in taking this risk, that is definitely worth. I used to think that my life was ok till now. But frankly speaking, I don't think my life was something great. I guess I lived like any other ordinary guy. I never took any kind of risk at all.

I will try to make my life worth by taking meaningful risk. I hope I succeed in realizing my dream soon. My advice is go for your dreams not fearing of anything. Take risk to realize your dreams. Don't try to be a one of the sheep just to be recognized as a good guy by very few people on this planet. Good luck.

Andre Agassi and Justine Henin: True superstars in Tennis

If I remember correctly, my first tennis match on TV was French open final 1989 or 1990. It was Agassi playing some other guy. For some strange reason I liked tennis at my first moment it self. More over it was Agassi. Then he had long hair sprawling out behind his head through his cap. He was very young. He looked really careless. I felt that he gave more importance to other things like fashion than Tennis. Still it was interesting thing to watch him playing. Over the years I saw so much change in his game and attitude. Attitude wise I guess he is the real champion in the present tennis world.

Basically Agassi is a baseline player unlike Sampras. Sampras style suits very well to fast courts. Sampras is tall (6.2 feet) and have very good service. He plays serve and volley. It definitely looks very good to watch him serve and volley on green Wimbledon grass courts. Agassi was 5 feet 11 inches tall. His service was not that great like Sampras. So he always preferred to play baseline game. I guess people like both styles. Some times people having very good service win games with just their booming serves. There game doesn't look appealing as people love to see rallies. I guess thats why I loved Agassi. More over people consider him the best returner of serve in this era.

I am not sure whether people know this fact. There have been only 5 people till now in the history of Tennis to win all the four grandslams in their career. Andre Agassi is the 5th person to do so. Amazing. Right? Funny thing is at the beginning of his career he reached French open finals twice. That too in consecutive years. He lost both the times. Still everyone thought that he would win a bunch of French open granslam in his career. No one expected him to win Wimbledon because his style doesn't suit grass courts. Surprisingly he won the first grandslam in England. I mean it was wimbledon. I am sure even Agassi might not have expected that. I guess one time he also said so. Any way after that he kept on trying to win French open. It didn't work for long time. One time he said he was getting desperate to get French open as it was the one eluding lot of people in their career.

In 1995 he openly gave a statement that he would beat Sampras to win the Australian open. He won this beating Sampras. Then he said he would become number one. He did. Then he married beautiful actress Brook Shields. By the end of 1997 he had to take divorce and go through slump in his career. He had to see his sister fighting for her life battling breast cancer. Because of wrist problem, his ranking slid to worst ever 147 in his career. Finally at the end of 1998, when his father was in hospital, he promised his father that he would take tennis very serious. He kept his promise and started playing dictating tennis. Starting with French open in 1999 he reached all four grandslam finals losing just Wimbledon title. First time he won French open. I still remember he had tears in his eyes when he lifted the cup. It was a great finals. It was with Andre Medvedev. Agassi lost first two sets by 6-3, 6-3. Everyone thought that he would lose one more finals. But Agassi knew that it would be his last chance to win the French open. It would be his last chance to redeem him self not only in the French open history but in the history of tennis too. Finally he won the open in 5 sets.

French open requires one to be really strong both mentally and physically. It is famous for its red clay. Some times you see red dust coming off the court. Ball doesn't move that faster compared to hard courts and grass courts. You need patience and good forehand and backhand. You need very good baseline paly. You need to attack the serves like anything. It is grueling tennis compared to other surfaces. It takes all your energy out of you to win the game. Sampras never won the French open. It remained to be a impossible thing to achieve for lot of people. But Agassi proved to be a superstar winning all the 4 grandslams on 4 surfaces. He is definitely true superstar. He was the one who made Tennis a famous sport among people. He was the one who changed the rich people sport to common people sport. That was the charisma of Agassi.

In 1999 he got married to another Tennis superstar Steffi Graph. I felt so happy when I read that news. Its kind of great when two greats get married. Now they are blessed with one boy and one girl. Now Agassi is retired from the game and doing good social service. Once upon a time he was considered brat of tennis. But in the middle of his career he became true ambassador of tennis. His way of showing respect to people by bowing to four sides of stadium became legendary.

In USA everyone has great respect for Agassi. It is not only because of his tennnis, but also because of his social service. He is running free school to homeless children. His school is among the top schools in USA. By the way people call Agassi Vegas kid as he is from Los Vegas.

I always liked Agassi like anything. I used to get really upset when ever he lost important matches. He has been always inspiration to me in my life. I show my respect to Agassi by having one big poster in my apartment. If you visit my place you can see his poster saying Agassi-Legendary. It shows the grandslams he has won and what years he has won them. I think for me Agassi is the true champion in the tennis.

Now I really don't care that much about mens tennis. It has become kind of boring over the years as Federer is dominating the sport like anything. Lately there have been some good players emerging. Especially Djokovic. Last week Nalabandian proved to be a strong nemesis to Federer. He proved to everyone that on his day he would beat anyone whether the other person is number one or two or three. I hope its going to be exciting in the near future. Lets wait and see what happens.

For me womens tennis started attracting like anything. I am sure you have started smiling thinking why I watch women's tennis. You are absolutely wrong about that. Have you ever seen Justine Henin playing? Oh my God I have never seen any one in the history of Tennis like that. You know what? She has every shot in the Tennis. She plays every shot thats there in the books. Especially she has gorgeous one handed backhand. Go to the youtube and try to see Justine Henin matches. Amazing. Considering that she is short and thin compared all other women on the circuit, its definitely great to become number one in the sport. She proved that she deserves number one spot by beating every other player including Williams sisters. Serena Williams always boasts about her self like great player. She uses her power but not finesse. Where as Justine game with sheer talent and finesse.

Recently Justine beat Serena Williams in every quarter finals of grandslams. First she gave some stupid reason saying that she lost the game because she was not completely fit. Second time she said she had some other problem. Third time during the US open she said she would win this. In the end she lost like anything. She proved her self to be a barking dog rather than biting dog.

One great thing about Justine is her ability to be strong mentally. I have never seen her crying on the court after loss. She lost in many finals of grandslams in year 2006. She never cried or yelled at others or showed too much happiness on the court. Maria Sharapova thinks that Justine is the strong women in the women circuit, not physically but mentally. I guess thats what everyone needs to succeed in their lives.

Any way it is pure blessing to watch Justine playing. I hope she keeps winning like this. She lost her last match in the Wimbledon to Marion Barthorli in the Semifinals. It was kind huge upset and shocking. She admitted that Barthorli was better on that day and she was too tired to play her best. She proved it by beating Barthroli by 6-0, 6-0 in the ongoing WTA Sony Ericsson championships. Now she is in another finals in this year. I hope she wins this event this year too. She is going to play against Maria Sharapova who is very dangerous to play with given the day belongs to her.

This year Justine won total of 9 titles including two grandslams French open and US open. He reached semifinals of all the events she played this year. That is the consistency she has shown which is impossible to see in this time. Now she is riding on 24 consecutive match wins. I hope she keeps that by winning against Sharapova tomorrow. The gradslam that is missing in her collection is Wimbledon. I hope she wins it next year. This is the third year she is ending as number one. The point difference between her and second ranked Svethlana is huge. She has won her 4th French open this year. She is the only one to win 3 French opens consecutively in the oepn era after another great player Monica Seles. All these credentials reflect that Justine truly deserves number one ranking.

She missed Australian open this year because of personal crisis in her life. She had to go through divorce. Still she came on top overcoming all problems. If you are looking for inspiration, then I say that she is the one you are looking for. A true inspiration indeed.

Thanks to Orkut I am thinking about reunion for my engg class

My title of this blog sounds strange. Right? I think almost 6 months back one day one of my friend told me that we could meet all of our old friends online through some google application called Orkut. Frankly speaking I didn't pay any attention to that at all. One day I was sitting in my office idle with out knowing what to do. So I thought of giving a look at this Orkut thing. More over it was quite convenient as I didn't have to register separately for this one.

Initially I didn't meet that many friends. Now I have almost 80 friends on my orkut page. Best part is I have met some friends with whom I did schooling from 6th grade to 10th grade. If feels really amazing to talk to childhood friends after such a long time. It's been almost 13 years since I met them last time. Now I scrap them and they do the same in return as though we have been in touch regularly.

Another thing that made me feel really good about this orkut is I am able to talk to girls who were there with me in my classes. I used to feel damn shy to talk to girls. I still remember one thing. When I was in JNTU I used to live in hostel. All my friends are just like me. I mean they were also very shy when it came to girls. When ever we saw girls on the road, instead of saying hi, we used to look for some other route to escape from them as though they were from some other planet. Strange. Right? That was the heights of shyness.

But the funny thing is I always wanted to talk to them and make friendship with them like any other guys. So do my friends. But no one had guts to overcome the shyness. Shyness took the first place all the time. Still we had our own good moments.

In my first year of hostel stay in engineering, seniors used to rag us every night for a while in the beginning. One day one senior came to us and started asking something like name the girl we liked most in the class. Everyone was hesitating to tell the names. I took the initiative and told him I liked Neeharika. In a way I had huge crush on her. Funny thing is half of the hostel had crush on her. All my roommates told the same name. In a way I got pissed off the. After a while we were laughing like anything over that matter.

I have only very few good moments when it comes to girls. I along with my friends Kranthi, Kishan, Vijay Bhaskar, Vijay kumar reddy and Ramesh took the responsibility of arranging the farewell party for my class. After the party we were walking the girls to their hostels. One girl named Sudheera asked me Sreedhar it seems you never study for the exams, always keep playing cricket, but still get good marks, how come?. For a second I felt so happy to hear it from the girl. I gave her some funny answer. I said I get question papers before exams it self. Any way I told her I do night outs before exams. Any way point is I had kind of good reputation like this among girls. Might not be great. For me it was enough to make me very happy. Then I was holding some bouquet in my hand. Neeharika suddenly said Sreedhar you should give this bouquet to a girl and try to impress her. You know what I did, right away I gave to her saying that Neehariks this is for you. I still remember all of them started smiling. During all that half an hour walk, everyone of us trying our best to talk to them. When I look back, it feels really funny. That's it. I think I don't have any other moments with girls in my class.

During my ragging period, I had to shave my mustache off. That was the first time I did so. Then I went home on vacation. When I came back I had full mustache again. The senior who told me to shave my mustache off before vacation didn't recognize me at all and started asking me weird questions as part of ragging. He started behaving at though he never met me before. When I told him that I had met him before, he was shocked and asked me to shave my mustache again immediately. he advised me not to have mustache again in my life. He said it makes me look old. I think that was the last time I had full mustache on my face. Then I completely shaved it off and went to a science fair with other classmates. Then I saw two girls in my class smiling looking at my face. I kind of weirded out thinking that shaving mustache off might not look good. Now everyone says that I look good with out mustache. I guess its all there in getting used to. I mean if some one is used to look at you with mustache, then taking if off looks very weird to them. But after a while it looks normal again.

Any way the point is I first time in my life started scraping to all the girls form my class that were there on orkut. Some of them replied very nicely. Especially Swapna gave very sweet scrap. In a way it feels good to meet people again after long time and to know that they still remember us. I mean at least they recognize us. All the time my fear was what if they say who are you? I am sorry I really don't remember you. You see things like these in our movies. I don't know about actors in movies, but it definitely hurts male ego. I guess it is same with girls too. Some others asked how I am doing etc. But some girls didn't even care to give replies. I guess there was only one. I don't want to name her. I guess she did what she felt. But I still feel it is minimum courtesy to say hi if some one says hi to you. That too if you knew him for four years in your life.

In a way my class was pretty weird. For some reason nothing went well between guys and girls in the class. All other classes except our class (Mechanical) went on industrial tour. I felt so bad when my friend from computer science showed good photos from their tour. Actually industrial tour means it kind of feels it is for mechanical students. But nothing happened with us.

Any way now I am in touch with lot of guys, I mean girls and guys, from my engineering class. Don't think too much. Here touch means scraping now and then. That's it. Having something is better than having nothing. So in a way its good.

I have some plan in arranging some reunion for my class here in USA in coming future. I know that it is very difficult for everyone to make some time from their busy life here in USA. Still I feel it is not impossible. I am waiting for some of other close friends to come here from India. Once they are here I will start working on this. I am sure about this that one day we will have reunion of our class here in USA. I hope it works.

God damn it I made one freaking big story out of my life in the past two months

Prologue:

Funny thing is first I wanted to write few words about certain things. Then I ended up adding chapters writing lot and lot. Finally I added epilogue to it in a novel style. As I added epilogue, I had to add prologue.

It is just what happened in my life in the past two months. I am not sure whether I should say it brief or too much. What ever it is, it is up to readers to say. I guess I wrote what ever I felt because it's my blog. It is up to some one else to read it now. They read it if they find it interesting, otherwise who cares.

Chapter - 1: Skydiving

Name it self sounds adventurous. Thats true. Skydiving is definitely exciting and adventurous. At the same time I am warning you guys, it is damn expensive too. It cost me 300 dollars. But I had video and photos too. I mean I paid 100 extra bucks for video and photos. There is no point if you don't get photos and video of these memorable things. How many times we would do things like this? So I think it was worth.

I went to state Maine for doing this. I drove there with my roommates. It took almost 4 hours to reach that place. Sad thing was I had already missed two times because of damn weather. I got lucky third time. I wore some nice outfit. May be I should say some jacket to protect from strong winds. More over it was really cold in the sky.

First they took us in small plane. It was kind of fascinating to see how small that plane was. It was kind of funny the way we sat in that plane. It was like RTC bus in India. There were two long benches in side the plane. There were total number of 16 people. Thats it. You first sit on the bench. Your instructor (the guy you jump with) sits behind you and ties your body to his body with some belts. When the plane altitude is 10,000 feet, you both jump. Another guy jumps one second ahead of you to take the video and photos of you.

I am sure I was not scared at all. But I was kind of little bit nervous I guess. Funny thing is once I jumped in to the air, it felt awesome. You go down so fast, at one point you think that some thing wrong happened and you are going to hit the ground. Because those two guys talk to each other using some sign language. Of course some screaming too. You hear loud sounds of air thudding you from all the sides. But with in no time you realized that everything is fine. we actually hug the other guy like a frog. I mean our posture looks like frog. After a while when we reached right altitude, they showed some signs to each other and go separately. From there onwards he releases a parachute and you start coming down little bit slowly compared first minute free fall. But believe me that free fall feels amazing. Then the guy with you changes the direction of fall by pulling some cords of parachute. If he doesn't pull anything it just goes down. When he pulls the card on the left hand side it moves to left side. I mean it moves to left hand side in a free fall motion. During that time you feel some kind of weird in your stomach. For example when the plane takes off, we feel the same thing because of pressure difference. It was the same feeling I felt. In another 2 minutes we were almost down. When we go down close to the ground, we realize how fast we are coming down. In the end you just slide down on the ground so that nothing happens to our legs and back.

In a way it was truly amazing experience. My advice to anyone who wants to do this but scared of heights is simple. You are scared of heights when you know what the height is. I mean for example if you are standing on the roof of the building you see the ground from there and get scared because you know how high you are standing. But believe me you don't see anything except beautiful clouds form the plane. I mean you don't see ground at all. So where is the point of getting scared. It's all in our mind. So get over it and try to do it. It will be an amazing experience in your life. I am sure you will say the same thing to me when you do it.

So what's next? I talked to one of my friends yesterday. He lives i Texas. During winter I am planning to go to his place if everything works fine. There I will do this diving one more time with him. I will try to do all the crazy things. I mean what ever they have. I will try everything. There is no point in getting scared. If you get scared you are missing something. Remember this simple fact. If you think like that you will never get scared of anything.

chapter 2: What's happening Sreedhar-No updates on your blog

Look at my title of this part. This is what one of my close friends asked me a while ago. I felt like writing some thing on my blog too many times. But as usual I kept on postponing. Finally here I am. I want to write what happened in my life in the past two months.

In my last blog I wrote that I had got my license. Right? One week after getting my license, I was ready to hit the interstate. I wanted to go at the speeds of 90 mph. Suddenly one day I decided to go to Pittsburgh. One of my close friend's brother is living in that city. He is from the same part of India where I am from. More over he got married just two months before the time I decided to go to his place. I thought that it would be proper to go to his place so that I could meet new couple. I knew his wife too, not in person. I talked to her on the phone few times. Any way I googled the directions and took the printouts.

I wanted to start very early in the morning. But because of what ever reasons, I started something around 9am. First thing I wanted to do was gas filling. So in a way I started my journey. Funny thing is within 2 minutes one lady who was ahead of me hit the bus with his car from behind. Whole traffic stopped for a while and I was feeling kind of uneasy. So again I went back home and had some water and started journey afresh again.

Initially people told me that it was not a good thing to go on such a long journey as it was just one week since I had got my license. But I guess I was extremely confident and motivated. I think all that euphoria is common for anyone. I mean when we learn driving, it feels like driving for ever. I was also no exception to that feeling. At the beginning it self I missed my route. But later it helped me in recognizing the route signs properly. At one place there were multiple lanes on the interstate. I mean you are in between two cars one on left and another on right traveling at the speeds of 70 mph. You feel kind of anxious to move away from the lane. I guess people feel tense to see cars on both sides and try hard to stay in their lanes and do mistakes because of anxiety. Luckily I didn't feel anything like that. Good for me. Another funny thing that happened was I had to go right, but I went left. I looked at the junction. It looked pretty scary. I mean if I go in that direction, I thought that I would definitely end up some where not knowing how to get back to my original route. So I started reversing on that exit. People were looking at me as though I was crazy person. Of course I couldn't expect any better than that. After that my journey was really really smooth. There were two long stretches (one was 330 miles and another was 120 miles). First one was not covered with trees. So I could easily look for cops well ahead of time. I started going at very high speeds like 90mph. The other stretch was covered with huge trees on both side of the road. Cops are kind of sneaky. They stay in those corners where you can't see them in time. So on that road I was going with in speed limit.

Finally I reached my friends place. I didn't have any problem in finding his apartment. Some one opened the doors of that building. My friend was expecting me very late into night. But because of my over speeding, I had reached that place very soon. I kept on calling him as I didn't remember his apartment number in that building. It seems he forgot his cell in his car and was coming down to pick it up. He was kind of shocked to see me there that early.

I spent 3 days with their family. I didn't visit that many places though. I visited famous Sri Venkateswara temple. Most of the time I stayed in side his house. The best thing was I had Indian homemade food. My friend's wife is also form the same district where I am from. She prepared different in those 3 days for my sake. She made all those curries just the way my mother makes. I felt so happy to have good food after long time.

Coming back was kind of easy. I didn't take any break at all. The total journey time was 11 hours. But some how I was not tired at all. But definitely this journey made me feel very good about my self. I guess it made my confidence level shoot up. It made me believe in my self. I was feeling so confident at one point of time I was trying to pass the cars ahead of me on the rural routes too. It is kind of dangerous to do so. But its damn fun. Another thing was it started raining heavily at the end of my journey. I realized how difficult it is to drive in the night when it is raining. We definitely need to maintain more breaking distance between our car and the vehicle ahead of us.

That's it. By the time I reached my place, all the euphoria was gone. Same life, same home and same problems. Oh my God. More over the rain made me feel very depressed. I still remember I came home with the feeling as though I won some kind of war. Once I entered home, there was no one. All the harsh realities showered on my face. I was like 'Shit I need to go to university tomorrow morning. Fuc* this man'.


chapter 3: Great friend & Motorcycle disaster

When I was in India, during my engineering time, like all other young students I always wanted to ride motorcycle. But some how I used to hesitate a lot to ask other people for motorcycle. When ever I talk about motorcycle one thing always comes to my mind. Let me share that with you.

Before I joined engineering school, during my intermediate education (11th and 12th grades) I used to live with 4 more roommates. We all came to that big town from small villages around that town. We had one common friend from that town who had one good motorcycle. I think it was yamaha. All my roommates used to ask him a lot for this motorbike. When ever he gave them bike, they had accidents. Funnily all the time damage was done for the bike. He was such a nice friend, he never asked them to pay for it. In stead he stopped giving bike to them anymore. But I never asked him for bike in those two years time. After two years, one day he came to me and said "Sreedhar let's go I will teach you how to ride bike. You can learn on my bike. I always thought that you would also ask me for bike. But you never did. I was wrong about you and now I want to help you with this". In a way he liked me being never tempted to ask for bike. Any way I had one important engineering entrance exam the next week. So I thanked him and told him that I would jeopardize my future if I had broke something while trying to ride bike.

Strangely I never got opportunity in my life again to ride the bike. I guess we have to lounge forward to catch the opportunity when ever it knocks on our doors. I didn't do that and I could never get it again.

Before I tell more I need to make some thing else clear before you think that what I am going to write here is irrelevant to the story. Some time back I used to have 3 roommates at my place. Now I have 3 roommates. Out of them two were girls and one was guy. One of the girls had some motorbike. This time, I didn't feel shy or hesitate to ask her for bike. She openly told me I could always use her bike as long as I am responsible. I mean if something happens to the bike, then I need to fix it. That was the unspoken agreement. But nonetheless I was extremely careful. I got the hang of shifting the gears within half an hour. Especially starting the bike was pain in the ass. I mean moving the bike in the first gear. All the time we release the clutch suddenly in stead of doing it slowly. Some how I found it simple to do after 5 to 6 tries.

Then happened miracle. You know what? I have great friends. Why am I saying this here all the way suddenly? Read this carefully and properly. You might feel that you don't have that great friends like I have. One of my best friends gave me $2500 just like that to buy the motorbike. I don't mean to say that he is my best friend just because he gave me some money. I am sure if some thing happens to me right now and I need right away kidney transfer from some one, then I can confidently say that there are at least 4 to 5 friends who would that for me. I would also do the same thing for them. That kind of friendship I have with them. But I don't want to take advantage of it either. I will definitely pay back double the amount to my friend when I get job or have a chance to get good amount of money every month. I will never forget it in my life and will pay back double the amount to show my gratitude. My friend name is Kishan. Thanks ra Kishan.

My title says motorcycle disaster. My roommate was so happy to have new toy. He wanted to ride my bike more than I did. So he took my bike even though it was raining and tried to give show off. In the end the result was he dumped my bike within 2 hours of purchase. Thats it. I felt so pissed off and mad at him. Still I kept my cool and asked him to fix it. I have to change whole cowling, gear shifing lever and stickers. By the way I forgot to tell you what bike it is. It is Kawasaki Ninja EX250R. That means 250CC bike. Its definitely nice bike. I am planning to fix it this week. Hopefully everything should be ok with it and it should run smoothly. I know that I can't use it for long time as its freaking cold outside right now here in Vermont. But next summer I am sure its going to be damn fun.

Now my roommate got the new parts. I am taking the bike to dealer tomorrow if time permits. Then I may use it for a while, I mean until it snows here. Then I keep this bike inside my home till next summer. The most exciting part I am going to learn a lot of things about motorcycles. I always love to read manuals, and finding information about engines, etc. So in a way I want to see my self to be able to fix the bike on my own if something happens. More over here in USA manual labor is damn expensive. Being a mechanical engineer, I always feel very bad as I don't know anything about the cars and motorbikes. So in a way first step is knowing about motorcycles. Next step is car.

If everything works out I want to buy a car some time this year. I want to buy some cheap car with manual transmission. I feel there is no fun in driving automatics. I tried the car with manual transmission and found it to be really exciting. Especially shifting gears. Definitely fun. Thats why I want to go for this one. More over automatics are expensive compared to manual ones. The good thing is I got the hang of shifting gears in the first 5 minutes it self. Cool. Right?

Now I have motorcycle learning permit. I can renew it 2 more times. Every time it is valid for 4 months. So in a way I will go for license next year in the summer. Its definitely good to have motorcycle endorsement on drivers license.

I guess I am in the process of realizing one of my dreams. It is all possible just because of my best friend Kishan. Once again thank you Kishan. I will remember it for ever. I will be always obliged to you Kishan. Thanks a lot.


Chapter 4: My Research - life sucks

Funny. I came to USA for PhD, the last thing I ever wanted to do. But destiny had different say. I ended up in PhD. Life is definitely strange. I always hated going to school all my life. I still remember I used to look for ways to escape going to school when I was kid. After that I used to bunk the school when I was in kind of boarding school giving some stupid health reasons. After that I was on my own during intermediate. I never went to school properly during that time. I enjoyed being on my own. I loved the idea of not being told by some one else. Then ultimate period was engineering. Believe me I didn't go to college continuously for almost one and half year. Then I had to go to Sweden for masters. I guess I would have gone for something else if there had been opportunity to go to western countries other than studies. Now I came to USA like any one else. I needed some reason. That was PhD. Funnily I am still in the school. In a way I love the idea that I am still in the school. I do hundreds of things here which my friends can't do as they are working.

I am sure I would have stopped going to school if my family was rich. Even though I never liked going to school, I always knew that the only thing that could bring the living level of my family was studies. The other thing is I always loved learning new things. Especially I loved mathematics and physics like anything. I loved learning those things on my own. I never liked the idea of listening to some one else. It doesn't mean that it is bad to listen to some great teachers. Only thing is I didn't like it. I still remember one thing. I used to read 7th grade mathematics books when I was in 5th grade. That was the my interest in mathematics. Then I was all the way in to Physics when I was in 11th grade. Some of my friends who used to get good points in mathematics got bad marks in Physics. For me it was ok. Then I understood one thing. If some one is good in mathematics, there is no guarantee that he would do good in Physics, but where as opposite is quite true. I mean if you are good in Physics, then you will do very good in Mathematics. Maths is just kind of tool to understand Physics. Physics is the force behind nature. It was amazing the way scientists found all these great things. Worst thing is some times we spend so much time in understanding the things that have been explained very well in the text books. Think about it. That means we are not able to understand the things that have been already in to existence. But when some one found it first time, there was nothing before he started it. There was no one to explain things. Oh my God, I don't know how mind works like that. One has to be damn imaginative and think differently from all others. Especially it is quite difficult to think different from the society you are part of. Most of us are followers of society. We get scared to deviate from the path of the society. Very few people do this and succeed in life and get great name.

Enough rambling. For the past one month, I haven't done that much research. I mean I didn't do that much work as part of my research. More over this semester I am Research Assistant. So I have time more than anyone in my department. Still I ended up wasting my time like anything. Adding to my lack of motivation, my adviser has been busy all the time. Finally I had meeting with him yesterday and got something to work on. My work has been shifted to new to project on Lipid bilayers. It is kind of exciting to use programming for the biological applications. Finally I am motivated to do some good work. Let's see what happens.

Chapter 5: Dance performance for Diwali

One thing I always wanted to do in India was dancing. Dancing in front of lot of people. I could have done this in front of hundreds of students in my engineering college. But I didn't guts to do like that then. Finally last year I realized one harsh truth in my life. one day suddenly I came to my senses to know the fact that if I didn't do anything now then I could never get another chance in my life again. I felt that it was my last chance as a student in the university. That feeling made me feel very happy and very tense at the same time. Happy because I finally realized something. Tense because it won't be easy to do something just because I realized some fact in my head. In a way first time I took the position of GSS Secretary here. I had to speak up in front of Americans. I gave 5 minute speech It was first time in my life to do something in front of people. For the first 10 seconds, I was literally shaking. But after that I was really fluent and felt at ease. It feels really good to look back and to see that I used to speak in English in front of lot of people in different meetings. Because of that position I learned website designing, html programming etc. I guess I totally deviated from dance thing.

Coming back to dancing, last year I gave dance performance with one of my friend for Diwali festival. People loved it. Especially Americans. They said I danced really well. All the time I knew one thing. Even though I am not a great dancer, I could dance really well if some one shows me the steps. I mean I have my moves. Only thing is I need to practice. We practiced well for one Telugu and one Tamil song. We danced for almost 5 minutes on the stage. It was mass dance. All the time there were whistles and claps. It was really cool. I felt so happy to do that, then it self I decided to give dance performance this year too.

This year I gave dance performance. This time I danced alone on the stage. I danced to one Telugu mass song titled Naire Naire from movie Andhrawala. It is a nice and fast paced song. The actor Jr. NTR dances really well in this song. I tried to copy whole song as it is. I could follow almost all steps except one or two. I couldn't practice for too many days. I think I practiced it for just 3 days. Last day I practiced whole day. I got serious muscle cramps 3 hours before the event. I thought that I wouldn't be able to dance on the stage. I was kind of tense. My whole body was literally shaking like anything. I never take painkillers for anything. But I took almost 10 painkillers in two days to get rid of pains so that I could practice. That was my dedication. At one point of time, event coordinator asked me whether I would do the dance. I assured her that I would dance in any case. Because I know for sure that if I don't dance, later I would repent a lot.

On the day of event, I took almost 6 painkillers, 2 energy shots, 2 energy drinks, etc. Then when my muscles started giving me real pain, I stopped practice. I had 2 hours time for the event. Another one and half an hour for my performance. I was kind of tense before going to the stage. Mine was the last performance. All my friends had high hopes on my performance as I was the only guy dancing. All other performances were from girls.

I practiced my dance on a big floor. But the stage in the event was very small. More over there were music instruments all over the place. I was not sure how I would adjust my self to dance on such a small stage. Any how once I took the stage, I got all the energy in the world (may be because I took one energy shot, 2 more painkillers right before I went on to the stage) and started dancing freely. For the first 3 steps I didn't face audience. But I could hear the sound. When I turned towards audience they looked curious to see my dance. I could see that they were paying all of their attention. That's it. I felt energetic like anything. I started dancing really well with right energy putting in to steps. But I lost rhythm some times considering the small stage. And I got tired too soon as I tried to dance too fast. Any way I gave big shock to my friends in the last 30 seconds.

When the song was about to be over in another 30 seconds, I turned other side and wore cooling glasses and turned towards audience. That's it. whole auditorium was in claps and whistles. People had big smiles on their faces. Honestly for me everything was kind of dark for a while. I did one cool Hrithik step with those glasses. It was moving pelvis in 360 degrees keeping one hand pulling the center of jeans above zip, and the other hand in the air showing one finger to the sky. I always loved that step. So did the audience. Everyone liked it. In fact loved it. This time lot of people came to me and praised me like anything. For Americans it was totally strange to move body like that. It felt so good to hear it from lot of girls. Another good thing is one Telugu family came to me and said you made us proud by doing Telugu song. I felt so happy to hear that I made sure that there is some one from Telugu.

Now I am eagerly waiting for photos and video. I will upload them on Orkut once I have them. When I had meeting with my adviser he asked me about it and congratulated me on that performance. He couldn't make it to the function as he has some other commitments. But it seems he heard that I danced well through some other faculty. Some other thing that made me feel extremely happy was one American couple started following my steps and asked me to teach some steps. You should have seen me that day. I was literally in the air all the time. Then they said they are planning to go to India some time this winter. They made that decision after watching our function. Thats definitely good.

Now I am determined to dance next year too. Next year I will dance for at least 3 songs. I make sure that I do one duet with one girl, one class dance and one mass dance. By the way I forgot to tell you one thing. I wore one saffron colored bandanna on my forehead. I did this to have a mass look. Kind of rowdy-ish look. I will practice well ahead of time next year and make it memorable last time in my life. hats off to university life. Finally I am having real student life. Finally I got courage to do things in my life. I mean these are small things. But they give us life long satisfaction. I definitely felt proud of my self on that day. So my advice to you is if you want to do something, then don't hesitate to do it as long as it is good thing to do. Go for it. Give what ever you have to give. The result would be definitely worth. May be more than what you give.


Chapter 6: Thank you Stephanie - I owe you a lot

You might wonder who she is. She is my roommate. She is from Germany. She moved to America after living in Germany for first 16 years of her life. I met her here at my University last year. Now she is my roommate. In a way I am obligated lot of things in my life. I am really thankful to her for everything. I will be always thankful and will remember it forever.

In India I was always ok when it came to written English. But when it came to speaking, I had no clue. I mean I was able to speak. But I used to feel very shy thinking that people would tease me if I made mistakes. But some how I got rid of that feeling when I was in Sweden. I mean I had to speak English all the time for survival. Still it was not enough as I was living with Indians all the time. Then I came to USA for my PhD. Here I met Stephanie and we two became very good friends with in no time. Then we moved to the same apartment. As I started spending more and more time with Stephanie and her American friends and my other American roommates and Stephanie's siblings, the better my English became. Now I speak good English according to them.

When I first met Stephanie's sister, she asked me how long I have been here in USA. When I told her one and half year, she said I speak very good English considering that short time. Now I feel even more confident in speaking. Stephanie always tells me one thing. We never lose accent. The change is rhythm of speaking. I mean some times we put more stress on certain syllables where we shouldn't. This makes whole difference. She told me that the Indian accent is my identity here in USA. She thinks one should never lose their identity. That's true. I guess I changed my rhythm of speaking, but not my accent. I still remember when I gave ride to one new masters student from Bombay, India, he told me later that he had liked my accent very much. I felt really happy to hear that because I still remember how much trouble I had with English when I was kid.

Till 7th grade I did all my schooling i Telugu medium. I could write and spell things in English. That was it. Nothing more than that. I couldn't make any sentences. I didn't know any grammar. I couldn't understand one word in English. That was the case. Then suddenly I had to switch to English medium in eighth grade. Till then I was one of the class toppers. But in eighth grade because I had to write everything in English, I didn't have any clue to do that. First time in my life I got bad marks in 3 subjects (social sciences, science, English). Mathematics didn't make any difference. I mean everything was same if I understood the question which was in English. Still some times I lost marks because I couldn't understand the question properly.

One day I got so scared of my English teacher, I wrote all the answers on small chits and copied everything from it. I felt so bad doing that. I still remember that I promised my self I would never do that again. In fact I never did that again i my life. You might be wondering how I knew the exact questions on the exam to write all the answers down on the chits. Actually because of some family problems, I left to my village for one week. In that one week new teacher joined the school for teaching English. When I came back I missed the first exam English. So I had to take it alone at her home. First she tole me she would give different exam from other students. But suddenly in the afternoon she told me that she would give the same exam she gave it to other students some time back. She asked me to prepare well because I know the questions. But there was only one hour left. Even though I knew the questions I had to remember them by heart as I didn't understand English that well then. Anyway I got good marks in that exam as I copied the solutions. From then onwards I got very bad marks as I never used chits again. First time she praised me like anything. From second time, it was scolding all the time.

Because of what ever reasons, she used to ask me lot of questions in the class. Once class starts I used to be the first student to stand up. Damn I still remember I used to get so tense before English class. More over her rule was everyone had to speak everything in English in her class. For me speaking in Telugu it self in front of all other students was a big thing. Then how could I speak in English? One day she asked me to stand up and asked me answer one question. Frankly I didn't understand anything. I just stood up and kept quite. She asked me to speak something. Still I kept quiet. Then she yelled at me and said she would give me severe punishment if I didn't speak up. Still I didn't speak up. Then she told all other students in the class she wouldn't teach the class unless I spoke something. Then everyone in the class started urging me to speak something. I was determined not to speak up as I was not sure what to speak. I didn't know anything about answer. First of all I didn't understand question. Any way she then said I would have to stand all the year in her class if I didn't speak up. Still I didn't speak up. After that I used to stand up on the bench everyday. It continued like that for almost one week. Then one day finally she came to me and started smiling and said Sreedhar I lost the challenge, I think even God can't win with such a adamant guy like you. So please sit down I will never ask you any more any questions. She even did namaste kind of gesture. All the students in the class started smiling. I felt literally embarrassed . At the same time I felt very happy too. You know why? Because she said she would never ask me questions again. But it was just for one day. She didn't care about that in the next class. The whole thing started from the next class again.

Then we had different teacher in the 9th class. In the eighth class name of teacher was Soujanya. Even though she was very strict, she was very good at teaching. I mean I found that after one more year. When I was in 9th grade, I was working on some English homework. First time I found that we could write part of answer from the question it self. For example if the question is "what is your name?", then we could start or write part of answer from the question it self like "My name is" Sreedhar. Only thing we need to change is from your to my and we need to add name Sreedhar. I felt so happy that day as thought I invented something. From then onwards, I never looked back in my life with English.

We had the same teacher Miss Soujanya in the 10th grade. I got good in English by then. In one of the half year exams, I got the first mark in English. She called me to the front of the class and praised me like anything. Best moment of my life. From there it was always going forward. It was always improvement. Finally now I am able to write and speak English with confidence.

When I first came to states, I used to get nervous to speak to some one in English on the phone. I used to think that people on the other side would have problems in understanding my accent. But after a while I slowly overcame that feeling and now I am able to speak very freely to any one on the other side of the connection. Before the other person on the phone used ask me repeatedly what I spoke like what, pardon something like that. But now I never have any problems like that. It feels really good. My only problem is some times it is really hard to spell my name Sreedhar. Other than that I don't have any problems with my English. Considering my difficulties with English when I was kid, it has been definitely a very long journey.

In a way it was my determination and hard work that helped me to reach this level. Still it would have been impossible if there was no help from Stephanie. I always owe this to Stephanie. Thank you Steph for all your help. I will never forget this in my life. At least to fill my obligation, I will take her to India some time in the future. I always promised her that I would show her India. I mean I promised her I would be with her in visiting different countries.

She was the one who taught me driving car. I learned riding bike because of her. Even though I was interested in adventurous things like skydiving, I was able to do that because of her. She was the one who gave me car to go to Pittsburgh. she was the one who taught me roller blading. I couldn't have done Penguin Plunge with out her. She was the one who encouraged me to learn swimming. She was the one who encouraged me to do dancing for Diwali. Finally I can say that she is the one for all the changes in my life. She made me grow my level of confidence. I owe her millions of things. Thank you Stephanie. Thank you so much. I will never forget your help. I will be always obliged to you.

Epilogue:

Oho my God. I wrote pages and pages I guess. I don't think it is a blog. I definitely need a publisher soon :). Any way it gives me immense satisfaction to write things like this. I missed it for a while. So I made up for that my typing continuously for almost 3 hours. Any way if there is something useful you find in this, then grab it. If you think it is all my crazy stuff, then just don't care about it. But please definitely don't try to judge me. I hate being judged. I guess everyone does.

cheers,
Sreedhar.