• Grew out of my straightened hair. That was cool. Got a super chic haircut that turned heads upon getting curly hair. :)
• Started eating beef again? I'm anemic and I have to start eating red meat in order to get more iron because my ferrous sulfate tablets threaten to make me hurl and I think pork is too chewy.
• Ate at Five Guys with a homeless guy who tried to give us a necklace in turn for a burger and then Jason felt bad for him and said he'd give him some fries to which he responded "Please, I've had so many fries!"
• Gone on a camping trip with my friends complete with swimming in a lake, not showering, kissing boys, making breakfast in the morning and singing in the car both ways.
• Visited Washington DC with my best friend and stayed at my fabulous teacher's house. Rode the subway every day and lived the good life for about a week.
• Had a summer of dreams: working at a great internship, hanging out with friends every day, watching television and actually getting life things accomplished (as well as the aforementioned two trips)
• Got a 5 on my Calc AP test and passed the UW Calc 221 placement test-- I'm not so great at tests, who would've thought?
• Survived my stupid dance class, getting into college and also the whole forgetting to send in my housing deposit thing.
• Opened up a checking account and credit card with a bank as an 18-year-old.
• Got good grades at college because of what I actually knew and learned and tried to do and not because I crammed for my finals or because I did lots of extra credit, but because I tried my best and wanted to learn what I was learning.
• Made (some) new friends. Kept the old! :) Built lasting friendships through experiences and had some of the best times of my life!
• Organized all this stuff only to have it fall apart again, of course.
• Realized that I might just really want to be fluent in French.
• Allowed myself to fall back in love with music and get really excited about it.
• Oh yeah, did I mention that I'm in a band full of sweet ass musicians? We are not named yet.
• Got a faux-new years kiss the hour before the new year from a very delicious hunk of man.
• Rang in the new year before everyone else while doing college applications in India
• Actually succeeded in making some great gifts for people and some awesome mix CDs too.
• Got an ass like Bascom. Well, kind of.
• Was industrious, was not shy and schmoozed up people.
• Was not afraid to ask for help, to speak my mind, and to flaunt my talent and was frequently rewarded for it.
• Received one of the "best" scores on a midterm and got part of it copied for the class to read.
• Got to do a duet with one of my best friends.
• Sang an arrangement of "Fidelity" in a Benefit Concert for glioblastoma, arranged by Jason Shao.
• Got into a really weird collegiate sleeping pattern, hung out late, party-hopped, and friend-juggled
• Was single for some of the time, but taken the rest of the time. Was single during prom, but still had the most perfect romantic evening.
• Went to state for forensics. Won lots of tournaments. Almost qualified for nationals in oratory.
• Won 2nd place in a sweet poetry contest and received an actual ESSAY that an ACTUAL poet wrote analyzing MY poems. Talk about the most flattering thing ever :)!
• I got my job at the Free Press which taught me a lot about how to write journalistically.
• Realized that only I can fill the hole in my life.
• Made friends with people I thought were too cool to hang out with me.
• Got Respect. I'm not really happy unless I'm gettin' respect. I felt like I showcased the good things about me a lot, and I think that means I've grown a lot as a person.
• Re-read some of the books I loved as a kid.
• Made a total fool of myself, but I think it made me a better person most of the time :)

DISCLAIMER: sorry if this is boring, and sorry if it seems conceited. but really, 2009 was a pretty great year for me in retrospect.

I love my homeland.

As an Indian who is pretty much an American, this means a lot for me to say.

I'm such a little poser, it seems to me, as I think of how little I have made an effort to embrace my culture. I haven't been big on labels or languages or bollywood films... but I just can't get away from my roots.

I just can't help but realize that the ideals that Indians have are close to my own, the concept of lifelong friendship, the concept of not letting a clock run your life, the idea of wearing bright colors and showing your pride, that is very me.

And yes, my whole life I have interpreted this pride as showiness, the lateness as disrespect, the friendship as survival instinct... but when I hear the words, when I meet Indian people and realize their sense of humor, I am elated.

When I go to India and meet people, I am happy that they are happy despite the relative squalor that they see everyday.

Sometimes I feel like I'm missing something, like my life has no point or purpose, and I feel that if I got the chance to go back there, I would be less comfortable, but more free. And I would volunteer again, and my life would mean something, and I would talk to the people and they would talk to me, not because I am pretty or that I dress cute, but because they like what I am doing for them and what I bring to them.

But maybe not. Maybe, I'm just a little fool.

Mom: What's the question that this unit deals with?

Chet: Conservation of Energy.

Aarushi: "Energy is neither created nor destroyed."

Papa: Fat people conserve energy.

Mom: What's a physical change?

Chet: I don't know...

Me: Come on Chet... what happens when ice melts?

Chet: A phys-

Papa: A physical change is when you exercise a lot and lose weight. A chemical change is the love that grows in our hearts over time.

Chet: When weak bonds are formed, it's endothermic?

Aarushi: I just think of it as whether you're putting energy in, or energy is given off.

Papa: When you eat fattening food, you are being endothermic.

if you want, you can check out this link of my article: http://www.madisonmagazine.com/Madison-Magazine/September-2009/Notes-From-Around-the-World/


I am dreading this french presentation. People think that 2 minutes is a short amount of time. Clearly these people have never
been 2 minutes late to class, 2 minutes late in sending their chem homework that ends at midnight, 2 minutes early for their audition in a hard to navigate building, or had to listen to screamo before. And these people most certainly have never taken a french class in which you have to give a 2 minute explanation of a french thing.

And in the mean time, I wishing that someone somewhere is dreaming little dreams of me.

I wrote a song today. And by wrote, I mean I employed this random trick that I sometimes do when I get a random melody in my head. That is, I put on my sound recorder and improvise a whole song because no one is around to make fun of me. It turned out okay, but when I do this, I always get paranoid that I've probably heard the melody some place else and have internalized it.

I still like this library!

because it is historical, and right now I'm listening to Linkin' Park, which is a rare old-timey treat. </shameless procrastination>

songofthejays , it's such a treat to read you.

i suppose i should give the world an update as to my new "college life."
perhaps, more for my own purposes than anyone else's. it's nice to read a diary, internet or otherwise and see yourself in the midst of a flux of dynamic experiences. life is such a strange equilibrium.

i have successfully made some friends i guess; nice people who laugh at my admittedly spur of the moment jokes.

i am slowly discovering myself and it is a nice feeling, though i find that it's very difficult to traverse the highway of hurrying students on my way to the chemistry building, and even more difficult to reason with myself to walk 10 feet to the showers, and awkwardly shut the propped open door that reveals to passersby (1/3 of which are male) that i am in fact coming out of/going into a stall or brushing my teeth with my loud, sputtering sonicare toothbrush.

one thing that is easier than those things is making friends and oh my goodness, getting exercise. i don't think i've walked so much in my life, which is not saying much for me. unfortunately the difference is made by the dorm food and the abundance of free pizza everywhere i go.

being away from home makes me miss my family with such sincerity. i miss them in every step.
when i'm waking up 3 or 7 times in the morning, trying desperately to pull myself from memory foam induced sleep, to when i'm brushing my hair or putting on an underskirt, knowing that my mother would like it that way.

last night when i came home to my dorm, i felt this incredible sense of unwholeness. emily was gone, and no one was there except for me. it was 3 am and i had just taken the 81 back to the union and taken the elevator in lieu of taking the healthier stairs.
my parents had called me five minutes before, which i think is funny. they knew by some parental omniscience that i would be awake.

when my dad picked me up today, he told me not to worry-- he had loaded all the songs from iTunes successfully onto an external hard drive, while calmly warning me to keep track of my things,  "A twenty second investment now will save you hours and hours of aggravation."

coming home today filled me with relief. after watching youtube on my dad's latest obsession--the blueray--of indian music gameshows, SaReGaMaPa and Indian Idol, i know i can go to sleep.

don't get me wrong, college is rather amazing.
i love the freedom i have, to go shopping, to join groups, to make friends, to go out on my own and to not have to ever pay for gas.  that and the subsidized food and movies.
i love the built in movement and music. i like that there are people around who want to make friends, and  to experience life.

i like that our teachers don't baby us and expect us to do things by ourselves, but that help is still there if you ask for it.

and it made me realize how completely strong and brave NASA scientists are.

They don't know whether their work will really benefit anything, but they take the risk anyway. I mean, obviously, they're intelligent and they assess the information that they have in order to determine whether or not a mission is worthwhile. But the fact is that they want to discover and they're willing to bet their reputations and money, while writing proposal after proposal just to get the chance to discover something.
It's intense.

The weirdest thing of all is that it takes so long for any kind of money to get paid for such vast endeavors such as space missions, so much of their careers are spent waiting, lobbying and thinking. The results that they reap, when Europa is explored potentially in 2026, will be rewards to people who are in high school now, working on their careers as astrophysicists or whatever. And the people who have spent their whole lives working for this will be very old or gone.

In writing this article, I got in the state of extreme focus. I just wrote and wrote for 2 or 3 hours, thinking about how absorbed the scientists are in their own work. How can they not have the satisfaction of instant gratification? How can they all work for an end they cannot yet see?
Then I realized that we all work for the unknown future, those of us who actually work.

And I thought, if only I could be that foolishly dedicated. I would be a much better person.

and I don't have the strength to not take it personally.

I really just don't know how to be the bigger person anymore about anything.

I think it's time to set some ground rules.

1. I am going to go swimming every time I can get up early enough to go at 6:15 in the morning, not tonight though because I have not slept yet and it's 2 AM. If swimming is impossible, due to sister-car-related restraints, do treadmill for 1 hour. On 3 days a week, Wii fit should supplement this activity. In college, I will visit the surf and do Roomba classes and swim everyday.

2. I am going to stop eating out for the sake of my wallet, and health. I will assist my parents in shopping trips so that I can 1)learn how to buy cheaper food, 2) learn what foods are available and easy to make, and then prepare foods too, so that I can make use of my Chadbourne kitchen next year.

3. I will, for the love of god, go to sleep, and wake up at a decent hour. For tomorrow, it will be 9, but then we'll try to shock my body into the habit of waking up at 5:30 so I can swim.

4. I will take my medicines!!! Without fail.

5. To keep this stuff organized, I will do a daily checklist in lieu of a diary. Diaries are too structured, but checklists are fun and will make sure that I take my medicines and stuff.

6. I will write things on my calendar and make myself do things that I keep forgetting to do like ahem, Thank you notes?

7. I will try not to get too emotional about going to college. I will also stop freaking out about facts that I cannot control like certain parts of my body being assymettrical or dare I say lopsided. (Maybe there's a kind of sit-up you can do for that?)

8. I will finally dedicate myself to the guitar and practicing voice.

9. I will write a book.

Thanks for listening, friends who don't care!