today's agenda: wake up, brush teeth, eat, go to work, fly a plane...?

Life has kept me busy. I seem to always be engaged in doing a handful of different things, which is good because I have no room to be bored. Can't say I'm entirely satisfied with the way things are right now though. Sometimes, circumstances entirely beyond my control tend to offset my usual way of handling myself and things in my life, which is frustrating beyond what I can explain, but sometimes there is nothing else to do but to suck it up and deal with it.

Anyway, how many of you can say you have flown a plane? Up until last Thursday, I definitely couldn't have. And when I woke up Thursday morning, I didn't wake up thinking, "hm, what should I do today? I think I'll go maneuver a plane in the air." Nope, definitely wasn't thinking that. I woke up thinking I was going to a flight show hosted by the RPI flight club or something along those lines. I walk in however, and discover a flight instructor waiting to teach me how to fly a plane. Now let me ask, how many of you can say you have gotten a surprise birthday gift as incredible as that? I'd be willing to bet, not many. It was absolutely incredible - I learned to check the plane before taking off, I learned to maneuver the plane on the ground, I learned to take off by myself, I learned to handle the plane in the air by myself, and I learned to land, though with a bit of help from my instructor so it would be as smooth as possible. However, I would say about 95% of the time, I was in control of the plane. Now, the next time I step onto an airplane to travel somewhere, I know exactly what is going on up front. I was speechless, the experience was one I can't even begin to describe, and overall, it was just stunningly awesome. That was one hell of a surprise birthday gift.........

Aside from the fact that I still cannot get over the fact that I had the chance to fly a plane, no other big news. I'm just still high from flying that thing. Friggin awesome. No words to describe it. Just plain awesomeness.

Dengue fever outbreak in India

It has come to my attention that an outbreak of dengue fever in India has killed 42 more people and infected another 1,000 in JUST the past four days. It seems that most of the outbreaks are in the New Delhi area. This is extremely disconcerting since I have family members and friends in that area.

A total of 94 people have died since late August, and nearly 5000 dengue fever cases have been reported. Here is the Reuters article on the matter.

About 306 of these cases have been reported in Tamil Nadu, which is even more disconcerting because it is my homestate in India and I have even more family and friends from there.

Though it seems that dengue fever is caused by any Aedes aegypti mosquito bite, the outbreaks in India are apparently caused only by the female bite. Click here to learn more about dengue fever in general, and click here to understand more about the specific outbreak right now in India.

Bush...enough said

I was, just as I do any other day, casually browsing the Internet... and look at the article that pops up: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061014/ap_on_go_pr_wh/bush_iraq

The title: Bush keeps revising war justification

Surprised? Me? Not at all.

It's not enough already for him that his ratings are the lowest in the history of American presidents. As the article states, his initial reason for the war on Iraq was specific - to prevent Saddam Hussain from using WMD or from selling them to al-Qaida and other terrorist groups.

3.5 years later? No WMD or end to the war.

So then, Bush decides to claim the war is to prevent Iraq from falling into the power of another brutal ruler. Oh, how altruistic.

Then after that, the purpose of staying in Iraq was to fight terrorism, but not on home soil. America should be kept safe. Oh joy.

Now guess what it is? A struggle between good and evil. No comment.

All-in-all, I think I have a huge problem with why we went into Iraq in the first place. However, now that we're in, we have to come out successfully. Eh...don't get me started on Bush. I'll never stop.

Immaturity to the MAX

It's amazing how age sometimes has absolutely nothing to do with maturity. Most recently, I'm watching a couple of people I know and who used to be very close to me, let their entire "worlds" fall apart simply because one thing has gone wrong in their life. Funny thing is, these people are considerably older than I am (24 to 27 years old), and don't act a BIT like they should be. At least, they don't act even close to what I think mature adults their age should act like. All right, so even if I give them the benefit of the doubt that the one thing that went wrong was such a huge part of their lives, isn't it somewhat ridiculous to allow your whole life to fall apart because of it? When I ask these people about it, they respond with “that WAS my life. I let everything I am and everything I do revolve around that. If I don’t have that anymore, my life is not worth living.” Come on, seriously, let alone “immaturity to the max.” Shall we say, drama to the max?

All right so I know I sound incredibly cynical and harsh right now, but for crying out loud, give me a break. If you cannot be independent emotionally, then you have a huge problem. Financial independence is something that will come with time. Not everyone is financially independent at the same time, and many of us are still in school or still receiving help from parents because we don’t have big jobs yet that allow us to be entirely independent. But being financially independent right now is not what I mean by maturity. That is something that we can all be, whether or not we are emotionally and mentally mature, when the time comes. To be emotionally independent is to have a mind of your own, to be able to pick up broken pieces and continue right where you left off and move on without letting something affect you drastically, and to be able to think for yourself without letting your opinions and your thoughts be influenced by someone or something else or entirely formed by someone or something else. Now THAT is what I want to see in people. That is what I think is worthy of respect. Even if I was the one “thing” a person let his/her life revolve around, I’d frankly find that disgusting. I’d feel somewhat choked as though I have no room to breathe [ok so that’s my bit of drama, but it’s hard not to get that way sometimes when dealing with people like this].

I think it’s time for these people to understand that their lives have to be lived for themselves and nobody else. If you choose to do something, do it for yourself. Do it because you have a clear reason in your mind for doing it, and what anybody else thinks or says has no influence over your thoughts and actions. When you have clear ideas in your mind, clear goals, and a set of values that you will not change for anyone aside from yourself, that will automatically win the respect of people around you even if their ideas, goals and values are drastically different from theirs. No two people are going to be identical in every single imaginable way. The world would be far too boring if everyone thought the same way and did the same things. So please learn to live for yourself. Otherwise, don’t expect to get very far in life.

That’s my bit of venting for the day =) Ciao!

I love SPB!!

So this Sunday, October 8, was the much awaited SP Balasubramaniam concert. It was absolutely amazing. Apparently, SPB was extremely sick. He had performed in New Brunswick, NJ that Friday, and was hoping to cancel this particular show in CT because he was that sick. However, the officers of the CT Tamil Sangam who were sponsoring his concert begged him not to cancel because of the number of tickets that were sold and the number of people who were expected to attend the concert.

He finally agreed and he made it to the concert. His singing was flawless. I was thoroughly impressed. Most of the songs were among my favourites too, which made it that much better. Of course, the concert left me wanting more, and of course, there were songs I wanted to hear and didn't get to because there was no time, but like my friends were saying, no matter which songs he had sung and how long the concert was, there would have been a slight bit of dissatisfaction regardless because there would have still been songs that were not sung and I wanted to hear, etc.

Then we had dinner in the same hall as him and got our pictures taken. It was apparent he was very sick since his face was emotionless and it was very obvious he wanted nothing more than to go home and sleep.

Whatever it is, I'm just really happy [all right, for very selfish reasons], that he made it, sang for us, and that too, completely flawlessly, and I had the chance to hear him live!

SPB is amazing =)

my usual "one month later" update..

I've gotten into this ridiculous habit of updating this once a month...I should probably try and snap out of that habit. I know, I know, I say that each time and I never do it. I'm sure if my mother read this statement, she'd make a comment about how I carry that quality in me (to say things repeatedly and not do them) all the time. I'd beg to differ, but hey, that's just me.

As usual, I've been busy with work, class, and the many other things I like to engage in. I'm excited about this weekend - SP Balasubramaniam concert in Newington, CT. If anyone wants to attend, please do! It will definitely be well worth it. It's SPB - how can it not?

There are so many things I wanted to blog about over the past month but just never had time to sit down and do it. 9-11, the whole E-coli/spinach breakout, etc. Oh well. There are always other things to blog about.

Right now, I have so much work to finish up before my busy weekend, so I will come back to this again in the near future...and by near future, I can't promise that it won't be next month. But you'll hear from me again for sure. That, I can guarantee.