sábado, marzo 29, 2003:
song of the day:
mary j. blige feat. ja rule - rainy dayz
it's just those rainy days,
spend a lifetime tryin' to wash away,
until the sun comes out and shines again,
smile for me, smile for me. . .
- to be honest, i don't like mary j. blige OR ja rule, but for some reason this song just appealed to me. and it kinda fits my mood right now. . .
state science olympiad!! w00t.
- undoubtedly, that was my entire saturday - got up at 6:00, and ate and showered before running over to meet up with the rest of the team at 6:30. and kim and dahlia were there!!! =) actually, that was a really good thing, because aditya found a hole in the bottle rocket, so kim flew him over to albertson's so they could get another bottle and rebuild ASAP. meanwhile, the rest of us started loading up the vans to zoom off to cal state long beach. which, actually, was harder than we figured. leslie's instrument (which she MADE herself) was this set of "chimes," i guess you could call it - only it was a two row deep, 10 chimes per row, masterpiece that she played with these metal bars - and sounded TERRIFIC! jenny's instrument was just as large, only it was more a harpish-type thing (and that was incredibly well-tuned too). . .
- but, by far, the craziest thing we had was michael's mission possible (which he worked on with rui and steve). encased in copper tubing, it was basically this two-level machine of madness - for those of you don't know, it's a type of rube-goldberg machine; so, like, a domino rally: one action causes another and sets off an insane chain reaction. more on that later. =P once we got there, we set up camp and started to prepare for our events. . .
- my first event was at 9 - fossils with rui, and we realized EXTREMELY fast that we didn't know ANY of the fossils. luckily, our materials were really good and afterwards we felt like we did a pretty good job with identifying most of the fossils. i didn't have too much time to brood on it, cuz i had designer genes at 10 with si hyun. it was WAAAY different from regionals, though, because instead of a multiple choice test we had a four question packet. . .one was on regular punnett square stuff, one was on hardy-weinberg equilibrium, one was on family genetics, and one was on a recombinant plasmid. the sad part was that we finished the FIRST two in ten minutes, and didn't finish the last two until the LAST ten minutes. yikes. we felt pretty confident with our results, though, so that was nice.
- i had a one-hour break, then, and i met kali's mother - who was nice enough to stay at our area and watch our stuff!! at 12, i had my next event - disease detectives with julia, WHO CAME LATE because she thought the event was in a different building!! luckily, she was only a few minutes tardy, and i was super happy to have her with me. the event seemed a bit random at times, but at the end, when they gave us the "answer," we found out we were right and left the room in quite a happy mood. and that was it for me!!! i only had three events this time around, which was nice and low-stress. after my last event, i mostly watched other people's events. . .
someone's bottle rocket flew away!!! xP
- hilarious story. basically, at the middle school level, the bottle rockets can have parachutes as a recovery system - only THIS bottle rocket, after deploying its parachute, caught about FIVE updrafts and just kept RISING and going farther and farther away. after about ten minutes, the judges pretended "they couldn't see it" - but everyone could clearly see the bottle rocket like a MILE away, and it just kept disappearing into the distance. =P the coolest part for the middle schoolers, tho, is that bottle rocket is a measure of how long your rocket stays up (in other words, AUTOMATIC WIN!!). then again, they did lose their rocket. =.= i also got to see our mission possible afterwards, and although some of the things didn't work as planned, the energy transfers were still pretty nuts - like, they had liquid circling through these tubes that extinguished a fire, which broke an IR sensor beam, that led to some other unbelievably complicated stuff. overall, it was a dazzling show.
- the stupid thing was that everything was over by 2, but the awards ceremony wasn't until 5:30. our team mostly wasted time, especially with this nerf ball we found that was pretty tattered - luckily, pat and i got smart, and just ripped off the tail and fins to make it a sort of football. =P we played three flies up for a while, and for some wacked out reason i won like three times (and each time it was torture for the others, because i can't throw for squat, so someone would win after like SIX of my throws T_T). anyways, the awards ceremony was a bit anticlimactic, and a bit disappointed for me too. . .
- by far, the best performer was leslie, who got awards for all three of her events. she and julia got a THIRD in feathered frenzy, and kali and christine got the same in polymer detective!! (sadly, tho, they were the only people on our team to get medals) leslie and jenn got a 6th in sounds of music, leslie and si hyun got a 6th in cell bio, si hyun and i got a 5th in designer genes, brian and kali got a 4th in dynamic planet, and brian and rui got a 6th in physics lab. our overall was really impressive, actually, because we placed 6th as a school, one up from seventh place last year. but. . .
i made a huge butt of myself. again.
- so basically, they had already announced 2nd-6th place on disease detectives, and since troy was 2nd (remember, troy is the high school that wins EVERY year, and they cleaned house again this year too) it was pretty clear that a surprise school was going to win. i was being stupid, though, and the second they said the word "university" for 1st place i flew out of my seat (i was SO sure we'd done a great job on that event) and ran down rather overecstatically with julia. . .only, it was "university CITY" (this school in san diego) that got 1st place, not us. rather embarrassing. . .and depressing, too. oh well. anyways, despite the several individual successes, and the improvement from last year, we were mostly quiet after the awards ceremony. part of it was because the stupid olympiad organizers SCREWED UP the awards and had to redo the awards on several events (in other words, people who mistakenly got awards had to return them =/ ). . .
- on the way home, we mostly discussed ways to improve for next year, and ways to emulate troy, who ended up winning by EIGHTY EIGHT points over the second-place team, mount carmel high. i got home at 8, after not feeling in the mood to go out to dinner, and just fell asleep at 10, after a long, exhausting, and just disappointing day. just paying the price for keeping my hopes up too high. . .
oh, by the way, i got into northwestern. yay.
Neil Biswas dreams on at
8:51 p. m. //
reveal yourself
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viernes, marzo 28, 2003:
song of the day:
fabolous feat. lil mo - let you go
i really wanna be with you,
but i gotta be real with you,
i can't leave you alone. . .
- and yet another hit rap song that has to do with cheating. lovely. just like "dilemma," this song sounds romantic-ish until you pay a little attention to the lyrics and then realize it's completely the opposite of "romantic". . .
happy birthday kaidi! =)
- man, this morning was a ton of fun. priya, anya, emy, diana, sayeh, porter, and i all hid in ferazzi and threw her a surprise mini-birthday-party, complete with balloons and even brownies. kaidi seemed terribly embarrassed, but i think she was really happy too - which makes it all worth it. i think everyone deserves to be treated to a *wonderful* birthday, and kaidi was a pretty funny sight with her balloons flying about in the rampant wind today. xP
- just to give you an idea of HOW my morning went, i actually got up at 3:30 because i'd procrastinated so much last night and not done ANY homework. i polished off econ hw and stats summary (which took FOREVER) before rushing and barely finishing spanish and english before flying out the door to pick up anya and go get balloons for kaidi. english was ho-hum, we got back a few assignments, on all of which i didn't do as well as i would have liked. . .econ was less interesting, and i really didn't pay that much attention (studied physics instead =D). . .
- in spanish, i actually NAILED the readinq quiz for once (goooooooooooooooooooool!!!), and after that calkins called me to read off my summary (which, since i spent TIME on it, actually turned out well too). mwahahahaha. so yeah, spanish was an ego boost - unlike stats, which once again failed to prove interesting, except for the fact that want let us out ten minutes early - actually, i think she just got confused with the bell system. . .pep assembly was kewl, altho i totally lost my voice (AND ceci didn't wear her swim shirt, which made her stand out embarrassingly on the varsity swim team =P). . .all that in time for physics, where i utterly FAILED my physics test. well, at least i think i did - maybe i did so badly. . .i actually did well.
shiyue gave me meteora!!!!
- actually, he gave it to me yesterday, but i didn't have time to listen to it until after lunch today - he's so nice!!! lunch itself was mostly trying to get kaidi to open up her birthday present, and then spending way too much time around underclassmen. ..but yeah, the meteora DVD is awesome. thanks shiyue. =)
p.s. my mom called me late last night and told me i made the penn state 6 year medical program i'd been hoping to get into. yay!! =D
Neil Biswas dreams on at
2:47 p. m. //
reveal yourself
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jueves, marzo 27, 2003:
song of the day:
evanescence feat. paul mccoy - bring me to life
how can you see into my eyes like open doors?
leading you down into my core,
where i've become so numb. . .
- this song is soo cool - it has this surreal aura around it, and the lyrics are invigorating. (whoa - i have no idea where i pulled that word from) enough blabber, then. . .
- okay, so i got up at 6:30 even though it was a sleep-in day. . .because i hadn't studied AT ALL for my econ test!!! *crap* so i crammed for a good two hours, and then found myself nearly late to econ - but i think i did REALLY well on the test!!! *prays for a 100* that would be awesome, considering this test counts for double (i missed the last test, and seager told me to not make it up). eep.
craig, shahtaj, AND emily all visited!
- office hours, therefore, was a total blast. actually, i initially didn't find any of them - instead, i ran into ceci, with whom i wandered around randomly for a while (and called her a *urinating dog* for tilting her head =.=), before i finally split off and found craig in ferazzi. =) it was so nice seeing him again, and he's amiable as always and so easygoing. after that, i sneaked next door and rather rudely interrupted a convo between emmo and mr. knight - but i just think the latter is SO COOL for caring so much about his former students. i have the utmost respect for mr. knight. =D
- back to the un-fun world of school, where mrs. want and stats greeted me with another test. this one also went pretty well tho, and i think i'll hand the credit to emmo, who slipped in at the start of class and gave me a wink for luck. xP (watch this, i'll get a C) after stats, i couldn't quite leave campus because i had to talk to a few underclassmen (embarrassing T_T) to complete the plot i've been compiling for a week now. i even got ceci and some freshies on it, so it could be a rather LARGE party (nyeh heh heh - i'll reveal the details tomorrow). . .
- after that, i headed home to work on science olympiad for a while and get some nice rest before picking up aditya and jenny from school and going to christine's house for science olympiad practice. WHEEEE!!! sooo much fun. actually, half the time i was helping julia with feathered frenzy (this annoying event with tons of birds that you have to know about - but i did it last year, so i remember a lot of stuff), but at the same time i was fooling around way too much with jelly bellies and chocolate covered raisins. mmm. . .after i managed to calm down aditya following the kentucky victory, we set about trying to get christine's printer to print out this one page, and i was promptly owned by aditya - i tried to get revenge by trying to open the door when we were leaving (no you DON'T understand, this door is literally impossible to open), and once again:
aditya OWNS me. =.=
- embarrassing. again. anyways, the prize he won was a ride to school (least i could do =P), so i did that before heading home - whereupon i found out that kim needed a physics book to study for her test (she'd left hers at school =P). so, yeah, i kinda screwed MYSELF over for the test, but i studied yesterday (or so i think), so i figured i'd be okay. speaking of prizes, btw, leslie and julia get to make rui and i do ANYTHING they want us to do if they win a medal for the feathered frenzy thing. i better not regret that. . .anyways, i've got a ton of hw to do, and a pair of tests to boot. better go =.=
good day overall - filled with people i like to be with. =)
p.s. one last good piece of news - i got a regents scholarship to berkeley!!!! YAY!!!! =) i am one VERY happy bengali.
Neil Biswas dreams on at
7:14 a. m. //
reveal yourself
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miércoles, marzo 26, 2003:
song of the day:
third eye blind - blinded
time is passing when it tells us what were left with,
we become the things we do,
i'm a fool - yes i am blinded,
hey you got me - but i never gave up on you. . .
- new song!! thanks to emmo for the song rec - the lyrics are really poetic too. i was actually productive today, although i couldn't help inject it with a dose of fun *cough cough*. . .
- got up this morning and EMMO was online. *shudder* actually, she had a dental appointment so i suppose she was slightly justified. . .in waking up three hours beforehand. anyhow, english was slightly more lively today, and we discussed some random things, like this weird black and white shape that was supposed to relate to sound and fury - but didn't quite get there. office hours i basically spent in ferazzi terrorizing jackson (!) and trying to figure out WHAT the spanish reading was all about (see what happens when you don't do any work on a given day??? =.=). . .
- spanish itself wasn't that bad, actually, altho i think sr. calkins reprimanded me at least three times for talking (i swear he victimized ME every time, but still - i felt stupid), but the end of class was awesome, because we got to see this part of stand and deliver where the teacher decides to randomly bang on the table and dance around.
sr. calkins, why don't you dance around like a monkey?
- well hey, it'd definitely make SPANISH more interesting. lunch was a csf meeting, and physics was MORE lecturing from malin and MORE mechanical universe video. . .thank god for jeri, who woke me up because i was actually falling asleep during the video. oi. after school, i was rather bored (scared fidelia, which was an accomplishment), until ceci randomly called me and i realized she was on her way to dominating yet another swim meet. =.= she's a human dolphin. anyways, i went to tiff's house at 4, where she, dahlia, and i "studied" for physics - NOT. after about an hour and a half, tiff and her brother ended up starting a word association game which we played shamelessly for an hour before i realized i HAD to go home if i didn't want to fail my econ and stats tests. . .
five tests in the next two days. god help me.
help. . .
Neil Biswas dreams on at
7:51 p. m. //
reveal yourself
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martes, marzo 25, 2003:
song of the day:
michael jackson - billie jean
people always told me be careful of what you do,
and don't go around breaking young girls' hearts,
and mother always told me be careful of who you love,
and be careful of what you do 'cause the lie becomes the truth. . .
- hehe - sotd's a bit of a flashback to the 80's, but it's still a great song. =P anyways, not a bad day at all, although i got NOTHING accomplished, which means tomorrow is going to be a major bust. ugh.
- english was ho-hum, more discussion of sound and fury. econ, on the other hand, was rather entertaining as mrs. skulsky filled in as a sub and proceeded to name off the numbers of people taking each ap test. . .only FOUR people taking physics c. urrrrg. spanish was more of the same as always, el coronel discussion, while stats was just a bunch of notes (as always) and physics was yet ANOTHER boring mechanical universe video. blah blah blah.
AIME time!!
- sad, but this was way more interesting that anything i did all day at school. the test itself was insanely hard, but somehow i managed to get seven right (i actually answered nine, but naturally two STUPID mistakes screwed me over on those). afterwards, i felt slightly bad for jackson and olga (who BOTH walk home. . .but it was 5:30!!), so i dropped them off at home. JUST as i got home, tho, varun imed me and asked me to go play bball with him, so he swung over and picked me up to play some bball at uci. i actually played pretty well, considering i was playing against mostly uci students, and i felt pretty satisfied when i got home - until i realized i'd forgotten my sweatshirt, and so i ran back to the courts with my dad and stopped by albertsons for some food on the way back. mmm. . .food.
- by the time i FINALLY got home, i still hadn't done any homework, and i kinda sorta spent the rest of the night talking to ppl before finally collapsing at around 12:30 (actually, i stopped chatting around 11:30 so i could do SOME spanish homework). last bit of good news tho:
i made ARML (math team)!!! yeaaaah.
Neil Biswas dreams on at
11:45 p. m. //
reveal yourself
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lunes, marzo 24, 2003:
song of the day:
amerie - why don't we fall in love?
it takes such a load off to let you know
that you're the only one - i never want to go,
things i never did now i want to do,
a love i never felt, now i feel with you. . .
- first day of uci spring break. . .and even tho i still have normal classes, i can't begin to tell you how good it feels to have the extra time. =D so anyways, woke up at 6ish this morning, slightly startled because my dad wasn't home - but then i realized he had told me he wasn't going to come home last night and was coming home this morning. out of ridiculous boredom, i typed out my physics homework for today. . .again. i need better things to do. onto english, then, where we took an ap practice multiple choice test - and for the first time all year, i managed my time WELL and managed to finish the whole thing early. not that i turned it in early, cuz i wanted to feel what it was like to double-check english. rofl.
- econ got HEATED, interestingly enough, when ms. seager and neil rock got into a discussion about iraq - seager kept on maintaining that the war was about oil, while neil kept saying that saddam was a security threat. most of the class sided with seager for a while, when suddenly something bit me and i blurted out:
oh, so iraqi-funded terrorists can come into OUR country and blow up the twin towers, and we shouldn't go into iraq and punish them??
- i don't even know if that's really what i believe, but for some reason - that's what i said at the time. . .and the whole class grew silent. ms. seager looked at me slightly incredulously, and i wanted to hide for a second; but then i realized that it did make some sense, and that the u.s. really does have the right to root out the terrorist groups that inflicted such terrible mental and physical damage and eradicate them for good. whatever tho, the rest of the class was pretty lighthearted, thank god. spanish was rather embarrassing for me, because i basically broadcasted to the entire class that i missed two questions on the quiz (because sr. calkins chose ME to answer them out loud afterwards =.=). the end of class was quite fun, tho, because the first sentence of tonight's spanish reading is translated into something like:
through the window penetrated the moans of the castrated animals. . .
- don't you love spanish? stats was routine, except for a rather disturbing moment when jessica, libby, and debbie all burst out in horrific guffaws, which absolutely scared me to death. X_x even scarier was ceci, who politely informed me that mr. alms had decreed me a nameless, lost senior. T_T;; physics was ridiculously boring, but luckily jeri spiced it up with news of a CHEATER. god i hate cheaters - especially senior ones, who are too lazy to do any real work that they resort to cheating to try to convince colleges that they're still good students. that's crap. anyways, jeri and i pretty much agreed that cheaters end up paying for their attitudes in college - we'll see soon enough. as i left physics, i ran into. . .
- emily!!! before we went out to lunch tho, we met up with anya, rui, kaidi, and priya, and proceeded to have a rather interesting six-person chat. after introductions and whatnot, i dropped off anya (still sick =/) before going to asia noodle cafe with emily (pad thai!!! YEAH!!). . .and we had a rather informative and enlightening chat. i was trying to point out to her how college can really change people, but in the long run she ended up showing me that things don't change because of college, per se, but rather because of the neglect that people show when they go off to college. anyways, it was just great being able to spend time with her, and i dropped her off before finally getting back home around 4. . .with NOTHING TO DO!! tonight should be relaxing. =) oh, and virtual insanity has passed 500 hits!!
w00t.
Neil Biswas dreams on at
6:11 p. m. //
reveal yourself
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domingo, marzo 23, 2003:
song of the day:
tyrese - how you gonna act like that
and you’ll be the one who can’t forget,
you’ll be the one that’s innocent,
you’ll be the one i can’t hide,
you’ll be the one that makes me cry. . .
- a rather eventful day, although in retrospect i didn't actually go anywhere or get really busy. i woke up pretty early, around 7, to finish up spanish homework, and then i chatted the rest of the morning away before going to rui's house for science olympiad practice at 12:30. for the next few hours, i worked on various things (although in large part i was mocking kali and jenny, while trying not to laugh at aditya's red-stained body from holi [that's an indian festival]), and for the most part i got some work done, especially on fossils. i'm not quite sure how the engineering events are coming along, but the mission possible seems almost done, and the bottle rocket is well underway. jenny has her instrument finished too, although leslie's doesn't seem to work quite as well. in reality, tho, the boomilever, robot ramble, and plane aren't done yet and still all need to be finished. . .eeep. i really hope we finish those all this time.
basketball time!!!
- that's basically how spontaneous our decision to play basketball was, after most everyone had left. rui, si hyun, aditya, leslie, kali and i went to the rancho courts and just played around. . .kali and leslie aren't half bad at all, actually. =) but undoubtedly, the real all-star was si hyun, who during the last game decided he was some sort of korean basketball star and started beating rui and aditya left and right. quite embarrassing, if you ask me. . .(sadly enough, it was aditya and rui who won that last game because aditya decided to start playing kentucky-style and making all sorts of nonsense xP)
- so afterwards, i dropped off the aditya man - the least i could do after mocking him all afternoon. hehehe. actually, i fail to point out how nice aditya really is - he's incredibly smart (especially at astronomy), but he's also really personable and good-natured. someone not so good-natured would be my dad, who was in apple valley and kept calling me, trying to figure out why i wasn't home. . .lovely. when i did get home, though, i dawdled for a while and just read some random profiles and blogs, when i realized, out of the blue, that i hadn't been paying attention to someone in the longest time. . .jeNn.
not the best way to start being a better friend.
- to be honest, i felt so terrible that i couldn't even talk to her, so i wrote her an e-mail instead. . .luckily, i got to talk to her later in the night and i apologized and promised myself i wouldn't just ignore someone so close to me like that. in the middle of that, tho, emmo called and said she might come to school tomorrow, so monday's starting to brighten up already - hee hee. =) for the rest of the night, i just talked to jeNn, catching up on a lot of stuff, and exchanging a few laughs, which reminded me of last year (actually, two years ago, which was even better). . .i crashed out pretty early, around 12:30, but before that i made sure to check up on anya, who's feeling a tad sick. hope i don't catch the bug.
Neil Biswas dreams on at
11:07 p. m. //
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