Perhaps the drawback of not being in either of the two scariest classes I could’ve taken this semester is that I have a lot of free time which I’m cheerfully wasting. But I am wasting it by having a lot of fun reading Tamil blogs, which are frankly hilarious. A good thing to come out of that is that I’m motivated to try to write here again.
So my break in short consisted of:
1. My usual insane family. My brother is awesome and I need him to start re-teaching me programming. We walked around the streets of Perth making weird noises and composing acapella pieces by blowing raspberries. Good times. My mum and I had the single most excruciating conversation about my future (hopefully so far into the future that is non-viable) marriage: “I won’t find you someone useless like your dad. No, you’re so quiet, I’ll find you a samathhu talkative boy, that’s what I’ll do.” Really, mum, there’s no need, I swear. And my dad is best represented in this little write up by this picture:
I haven’t seen my dad laugh this much (after I showed him the photo) since my brother and I were little and did stupid things. Many many more pictures are on Facebook. At last count, there were about 600.
2. So, Perth! The coolest things we did, in random order:
a) Fed Kangaroos
b) Petted Koala bears (the reason they sleep so much is because they only get 2% protein in their diet. FYI)
c) Went down a mine shaft in the Fremantle Prison and then kayaked a mile through the tunnel system there.
d) Saw DOLPHINS. Briefly.
e) Went jetskiing at 73 mph. (I’m hydrophobic)
d) Went kayaking for two hours on the open ocean – with brother, without sunscreen. (See above)
I also managed to read five out of the six books I borrowed. My break was so strangely short this time it only took one trip to the library, armed with all my family members’ cards as I was. I must highly recommend R. K. Narayan’s short story “Lawley Road”. He’s like the Tamil version of P. G. Wodehouse.
When the plane touched down at Austin I stumbled wearily towards the shuttle booth and thought “Why the hell am I back, again?”
Three more semesters! = 2 more than the average self-respecting college student is willing to endure. What the hell, I won’t have to work for a while.
Incidentally, college is looking quite decent (from this side of the semester, anyhow).
1. Discrete math. Professor called Sato, which is an inside joke between me and my best friend A, but he looks like a mad evil scientist anyway.
[pause: I just heard one of the most spectacular Tamil lyrics of all time: “My soul, which was like a music CD/you made to fly like an UFO.” God, I love this industry.]
2. Rhetoric class. Awesome, because everyone else is as pissed off about it’s vs its as I am. Also I have a sneaking suspicion that I have now been labeled “the self-professed grammar Nazi.” Well, why lie?
3. Theatre class. Full of theatre kids who have purple hair, cool clothes, and a complete apathy towards transistors and/or Java, unless the latter refers to coffee.
4. Senior design. I don’t know how we’re going to make an mp3 player that selects songs automatically according to how fast you’re running… but it’ll happen. Also, one of the funniest moments in class – “What invention’s 50th anniversary are we celebrating today?” “LIGHTBULB!”
5. Microcontrollers class (killer) VLSI design class (semi-killer) Distributed and concurrent systems (unknown quantity) = what happens when you get dropped from a waitlist like a cartoon character recalling the notion of gravity.
Interesting times.
At Least In Theory 