November 29th

Yesterday evening I left home for my friend's house. I was there till 12:20 am! We wanted to study but hardly did. We spoke on many things ... many many actually. During that time my cousin visited my house and all I could do was talk to her on phone. She is leaving for Gulbarga tomorrow.

Today, after, fajar, I woke up very late. I had my breakfast when the time was for lunch. I didn't do much after that except for reading a cousin's blog. Then a friend called and said that he would be coming to my house to have some combined studies. I hope I do it this time. I should be here in another 30 minutes.

I have my last theory external on Friday. It's about Managerial Economics and Accountancy. I like the subject and I like reading all that the subject has to offer. Learning it to write exams is something that makes me go lazy! I need to manage somehow and get decent marks just to keep up my aggregate around average. The previous exams were not satisfying except one or two.

I do not know if I will be updating the blog today evening or even tomorrow. I will try to.

November 26th

Sunday morning I finally woke up at quarter-to-10. I had to wash my clothes and I loaded them into the machine and forgot! My friend came to pick me up at 12:15 pm and we were at Ohri's at 12:35. I had a wonderful time there. I was there to celebrate my birthday with my friends.

Till the time we all assembled it was already 2:30. One of my friend had another party to attend so joined us a little late. There was a cake brought there by my friends, a part of which was 'decorated' on my face! I was given some gifts and the best of those was a nice watch. I got lots of chocolates and Encarta 2006 too. My hearty thanks to everybody. They all made my day. I am going to cherish every single memory of my time at Ohri's on November 26th, 2006.

That was not the end. There were 15 of us at the party and after that, we 7 people went to Necklace road. From there we took a boat to the Buddha statue. We spent some time there and took a boat back. I have been seeing Buddha for past 20 years but this is for the first time I got so close to it. It was amazing standing there surrounded by water on all sides and having my best friends with me. It was a good experience in the boat. On the return ride, I sat in the front part that was jetting into the air above water. It was amazing.

It was the best birthday I celebrated till now. The last time I celebrated was when I turned 10. It was a party at home with all my relatives invited. After that there were times when my father had taken out to some restaurant for dinner. But that had only 4 of us. Many times it so happened that my tests were going on and there was no chance of doing anything. Twice I remember, we had to attend some function somewhere else.

Even on 26th it was a bit similar. The day had a perfect ending. We had a function to attend at my aunt's house in the evening. My cousin sister from Gulbarga had come. Just before leaving from there, I went inside to meet everybody and it was only she and another aunt who wished me. Others followed. Not that I wanted anybody to wish, but she being there was something I had wanted. Long back she had already told me that she will be here on 26th and she was.

I reached home at 11 pm. I didn't feel like writing anything for my blog. I spent a lot of time with the computer chatting and listening to music but wrote nothing. Yesterday too I didn't write anything for this blog. I wrote one for Flowing Emotions. I completed the post I had posted by title 'A Guy Like Me'. I continued from where I had stopped on the blog. Yesterday night I wrote almost 5000 words at a stretch. But I couldn't give much importance to the words and the language I was using. I wrote what came on mind mind and all that I tried to think about. I wish I had given a little thought to the way I was forming sentences. But that could have taken a lot of time. And yes, I am sure, I wrote a few things openly ... something that I had never thought of writing. There are many more though. I think I have improved on my typing speed.

I thank all my friends for being with me on Sunday and making me feel important. Happiness is obtained in these kind of occasions and is cherished for long. It will make me happy every time I think about it. I am glad to have such nice people around me. I thank Allah for everything.

November 25th

Just a few minutes back (it's 11:13 pm now) I had my dinner. I had been to watch the movie Dhoom - 2 in the evening with 4 of my friends. One of them called me in the afternoon and asked if I would come with him. I was leaving for my aunt's house but still I decided to go with him. He picked me up from my aunt's house at 5:30 pm. e bought tickets in black. The movie was good. I don't like Rithik Roshan though.

Yesterday I finally had my computer fixed. Along with 2 of my friends, I planned what all we had to do. While deciding all that I looked to me that we won't be able to do it successfully. We did it.

I wasn't able to boot windows. It was saying that some .dll file was missing. We opened the cabinet and attached another hard-drive belonging to my friend. We had his drive as master and mine as slave. It didn't work. We were not able to access any of the disks. We tried to change some setting with those jumpers and also from BIOS. Still nothing happened. We were prepared for this.

We took a bootable CD of pirated WinXP and installed it on my system. We didn't format the main partition but deleted the HP recovery partition. It took some 25 minutes. Then we reattached my friend's hard-drive as slave and transferred all my data into it. This took 1 hour. Then I took my HP recovery disks and ran them. This time I chose the option that formats the hard-drive completely and reinstalls the operating system, drivers and all the softwares that HP ships along with its computers. I was afraid that it would show me the result it has shown a few days back - a few days back I went for partial recovery and that didn't allow me access the operating system. But this time, as it was full recovery, things worked. My computer was made into what it was when I purchased it on September 14th, 2004! I am now working on a computer with is as good as new.

Then I had to configure it to connect it to internet. I had already taken a printout of what all I would be needing. Then we installed the Sify broadband client and successfully connected to internet. I had to download Yahoo messenger. Then I installed Windows SP 2 from its original CD which I had ordered online more than a year back. Then I installed IE 7 and few other things. I still have to remove some useless softwares which HP had shipped and install few more including the drivers from my printer.

By doing all this I removed the worm that had been troubling me. It was slowing down my computer using 100% of CPU utilization and also restarting my computer by itself. Even the shortcuts on my wireless keyboard are working perfectly. Things like ping, msconfig and msinfo are working fine too.

It works

Along with 2 of my friends, I fixed my computer. On Wednesday, when I tried to run HP system recovery with partial recovery, it messed with my windows OS. I tried it twice and it didn't work. Today we took more than 4 hours and set everything right. Presently I am working on a computer which is as good as new! I will write more tomorrow.

First problems with my computer in 2 years

It was 7:50 am today when my brother complained of some indigestion problem. My father had already left for his work and mother, of course, is not home. I was already worried for my exam when my brother said this. I was confused for some time because I thought it would not be proper to ask him to leave for his college anyway and if I ask him to stay back at home, I can't leave him alone. So, I called my aunt and told her that I would be sending my brother to her house and requested her to take care of him. She was fine.

I told my brother at least 4 times that he shold call me the moment he reaches there. He said he will. I also repeatedly told him that that in no way should mother come to know that he is not well. If she does she would be worried and that would be bad. I said the same to my aunt and also my grandparents. My brother left home at 8:09 am sharp. I remember looking at the wall clock that time. I told him again to call me the moment he reaches there.

I was busy with my studies and also looking at the work being done by the servant maid. The time was 8:50 am then. I got tensed even more because he didn't call me up to inform meabout his safe arrival there. I spent a few very tensed before calling up my aunt. I was told that hehad reached there sometime back already. I spoke to him and scolded him. I had to; it was not my nager but my worry ... worry of 2 things to be precise - exam and also his not calling me up. He is fine now.

The exam didn't go well. I just pray to Allah that I am not humiliated in front of myself. I reached home aroun 1:55 pm with few of my friends. We got CDs from outside and watched 2 movies - Pink Panther and some other one whose name I don't remember. Both of them enlish - of course.

After my friends left, I sat down to see if I could do something to the virus (worm) that has effected my computer. My computer has slowed down and even restarts by itself at times. I thought of several things but first, I installed partition magic and recovered the Linux ext3 partition and converted it into FAT32 and saved some files on that. I tried to do some resizing to the existing primary partition but it didn't happen. All I could do was to secure some of my data which is primarily some (more than 3 GB) of music video files and audio files.

Tomorrow I will try few more things. I will uninstall Norton AV, install McAfee, get its updates (download them even before removing NAV because my internet connection doesn't work with any pirated software), install all the latest virus definition for McAfee and scan my system. As far as I think, things should be solved. If I don;t get the right definitions, then I will be calling for some technical support from HP people. I hope they help me. If that doesn't work, then the last resort would be to reinstall Windows which will most probably result in the removal of the original licenced copy of the operating system. I don;t want to have any pirated operating systems on my computer. It's not that I hate thins particular, but just because I like to flaunt my orginal software!!!

If McAfee works, then I will have a successful scan and remove McAfee and reinstall NAV. My updates for NAV has expired long back so I can't use it to better my computer. The name of the virus is something like bron.tok... It is doing a lot of damage to my computer eve when it's alert according to several websites is 'low' and 'medium'. I just hope that I continue with my original XP and don't loose any date.

Microprocessor Systems and Interfacing

Yesterday though I used the computer twice, I had to leave it abruptly without writing anything. I wokpe up late and was busy all time. In the afternoon I went to a friend's house to take some papers and in the ivening it was some shopping wiht my father. At 11 pm my friends came to my house to study and we were together till 3 am. We hardly studied.

I had to wake up early in the morning. My father and brother left home at 7:40 am. Then the servant maid came and I had to keep an eye on her. I slept after she left. I was a disturbed sleep and I finally woke up at 12:30 pm. IN a short while I will take a bath, have my food, go for prayers and finally start with my studies!

I do not know how long will it take for me to finish the syllabus. For the last exam I had to study till 3 am and wake up again at 5:30 am. Even that wasn't enough. I hope this time things go fine. All I need is marks. It all depends on what Allah wills.

Today is the third day after my mother left. 3 more days to go before she arrives. I am a kind of missing her too. We have already spoken on phone several times since she left. It will be the worst for me when I won't find her home in the evening today as I am used to see her daily coming from her office around 7:30 pm. I will be seeing 3 of such evening without her.

Networking

I took along with my father to the Nampally railway station to see my mother off to Kochi. I didn't know how I was supposed to feel when mother was leaving, but it was something different. I miss her now. When there were just 7 minutes for the train to leave she called my father saying that she could see us from inside the boogie. My father and I were standing just outside the boogie when she was inside looking at us through the window. The window was one-way see-through. Only she could see us and we couldn't. She didn't know about that and she called sitting from inside. Within few minutes the big box started moving and for a few second I couldn't believe that it was moving. It was moving away from me making no noise and making the small distance between my mother and me larger every second until I had to turn away and leave.

I had a look at the railway station after a almost 3 years. The last time was when I had been to Warangal to meet my mother's uncle there. Trains have always interested me. The machinery used, the boogies and especially the engine. I have always wondered about the power and wight of the engine that pulls the complete length of the train at such great speeds. Definitely locomotives have been one of the greatest inventions of the 19th century. The whole working of the railways too is amazing and wonderful - it is such a big network with so many people working for it.

After that I reached my grandparents' house and spent the rest of the day there. I had planned to spend some time with my friends and study but that couldn't happen. I didn't make it happen actually; I wasn't serious enough. Later in the evening I attended a reception function and had a heavy meal full of chicken, fish and sweet-meals.

I drove to the function hall which is at a distance of around 3 kilometers from my house. For the first time I had an experience called 'sudden brake'. The car in front stopped suddenly so even I had to stop. I was successful! I had some practice of driving with slow moving traffic and I did it well to my satisfaction. Only while crossing the ring road I was a bit reckless and my father was there to correct me.

Today is the first of the 5 nights I have to spend without my mother. I will feel the difference only tomorrow when I would not have had seen her all day. Just a few minutes I started a post for Flowing Emotions. I stopped without even finishing it because I do not know what all I have to right. To be precise, I have planned a few things but presently I am too lazy to put into words. I have already published whatever I have completed. Rest will come soon. InshAllah. Definitely!

I still wonder what made me say 'there is no such thing as ... that exists' ::: Objection Overruled

Even until yesterday morning I didn't know that my mother had to leave on Saturday for Kochi. She has her program there starting on 20th. She has to attend a 2 day seminar on Organic Agriculture. It deals with the business and financial aspects dealing with organic agriculture. She will be back on Thursday.

My exam today was fine. Just fine. Yesterday night studied till 3 am and slept at 3:30 am to wake up at 5:30 am. So, definitely I have to write the exam well. It could have been better though. There is always room for development!

I came home at 1:40 pm today with my friends. We were together till almost 5 pm. I slept after that. I had to. I couldn't handle more heaviness in my head. I didn't yawn, just felt tired. Sometimes, the left part on the rear side of my head aches when I don't sleep for long. I have been trying to live with that pain. I still believe that I can do more if I can beat sleep. I am more productive during nights and this is the time I usually sleep.

Today we had a marriage function to attend. My father forgot. He was supposed to get the invitation card which is still at his cousin's house. We have the reception function to attend tomorrow. So, the first night without my mother will start this way ... we won't have to do anything for dinner!

The last thing my mother had been to some training program was 3 years back. She went to Lukhnow. That was for more than a week and she had some of her colleagues with her. This time she is alone. 3 years back when she was back to Hyderabad, she got the bad news that she had been transferred to Snagareddy as the Duputy General Manager of District Co-Operative Central Bank. In a few weeks she became the General Manager of that bank. She enjoyed many things like a car for herself, even some security guard for few days, and many more things. But she had to handle 2 unions present in that back. There were more than 1000 people working under her and she had to make up and down trips to Sangareddy daily. That was the worst part.

Somehow she managed to convince the Managing Director of the head office here and got herself transferred back to Hyderabad. It took more than a year. Now she is working as the Assistant general Manager in the long term loans section. The deputy general manager under whom she was working has now retired from his job so my mother is taking care of two posts. Under all this she is always stressed, frustrated and angry. Those who face are my brother and me!!! (I have written all tis just to write the previous line. In spite of all this my mother has done everything other mothers do for their children. I have no complains whatsoever. She couldn't have been better.)

A few days I had written a post with a title I don't want to mention here. I wasn't doing fine that day ... wasn't feeling fine actually. In the last sentence of that post itself I mentioned something about 'mood swing'. Later I realized that the title was too embarrassing. I don't give such descriptions to anybody, I respect ... it was something else that made me do that and I am still trying to find out what it was. Hehehe... I know I sound more illogical now. It is nice to be illogical and derive some logic out of it. This is how new ideas and 'feelings' can be created - out of nothing!

My computer has become slow again. I am sure it is because of some virus or trojan than came into my computer through a USB device I got from a friend. The antivirus program I have is very old to detect it.

One year of blogging!

Till yesterday afternoon there was some problem with my internet connection here. It was supposed to get renewed by itself 3 days back itself but I don't know why they made me call and ask for it. I thought of updating the blog then itself but didn't feel like writing.

On 20th my mother is leaving for Cochin for some official work. It will take her 5 days before she is back. It will be a tough time for me with even my exams going on. Her presence is like a moral support to me always. My father and I will have to manage the cooking a and several other things.

My exam on Tuesday was fine. I had prepared for almost all the questions that appeared in the question paper. My writing didn't go well. So, it all depends on the examiner. The day before the exam I was with 2 of my friends and we studied together. There was a lot of talking too and it went on up till 1 am. Even yesterday I had my friends with me. 5 of them. We even went out and got grilled chicken for ourselves to eat. We were together till 2 am. We did study but there was more of other things.

Today, I still have to start my preparations. From the 5 units I have already been through 2 of them. I have to give some final readings. The other 3 are staring at me. I will do everything, inshAllah.

Molded in silver, decorated with gold, and given life

I studied for quite some time today. But it was just a reading kind of thing I gave to some chapters (units). I still have a long way to go. The first of the exams starts at 10 am on Tuesday.

It was a quiet day today. I didn't talk much to anybody. Everybody was calm and silent as well. It was only my brother who went out to play and was jumping everywhere. I felt alone for all the time. It was as if there was nothing to do even though I had so much to study. Somehow, I am fine enough to write an update for today.

Today was (is) one of my very good friend's birthday. We couldn't celebrate it today but we hope to have something later. InshAllah. All I could do was call him and wish him.

I have always believed that everything - being happy, being sad, everything - was dependent on me. Today I understood that it takes more than me. I won't be writing much on this today but all I can say is that I learnt something I wish I never had come to know about.

My mood is on a swing actually.

Of Hijab, Burqa and Scarf

My father woke me up at 11:15 am and asked me to clean the car. I just gave a small dusting and he left. He had to get a routine servicing done to the vehicle. At the authorized service center there were too many cars so he just got some new engine oil filled and changed one of the old headlamps at a local garage.

We had to attend a marriage function in the evening. It was the marriage of a distant relative's daughter. The bride's father also happens to be a good friend of my father and also my uncle. There I got to meet my cousins and we spoke about how we are going to enjoy our cousin sister's wedding in December.

After my father left, I slept for some more time. But before that I switched on my computer, spent some time there and slept. The night before, I had a very disturbed sleep. I had to somehow make myself fresh. I find sleep as the biggest problem. My mind works the best in the nights. There are several things that could be done only during the day time - things like meeting people and going out. But sleep comes in between all this. I find no time but still I have to sacrifice other things. Today I wanted to reach my grandmother's house early and study for sometime. I could reach only at 3:30 pm. Already my aunt and cousin sister had arrived and I couldn't study. There was a lot of disturbance. I was angry with myself ... my sleep actually.

I have been taking coffee daily. This is even effecting my weight. Coffee reduces appetite. But I take it because I like it and to beat sleep. The second reason is the chief reason. And even the coming winter is a threat to me - it makes me sleep more. I don't feel like getting out of the blanket!

My cousin sister is in engineering 1st year at Shaadan College, Khairtabad. She was telling me about her college and the things she has been studying, liking and not liking! I told her the things I have seen or felt throughout my time in engineering. She said she is studying daily after coming home. I found it the best thing she is doing. The timings of her college are unusual - 7:30 am to 1:30 pm. She likes them. Then just before leaving I had a debate kind of thing with my 2 aunts and mother. The topic was 'girls wearing scarfs and burqa'. I was 'for'. Though they were not against it but there was something they were not liking and were not ready to accept it. I can say I won but it is my religion that won. I had the rules by my side.

The debate started when when my aunt told me about a 2nd cousin of mine who was asked to were a 'burqa' by her neighbor. She had replied 'I wear clothes that cover my body completely so why should I wear it?' She is from my college studying in 1st year. Even my sister doesn't wear a scarf so indirectly I wanted to tell her that she has to wear it. I am sure she got my point.

They all still seem to have a doubt with what 'hijaab' means. To be frank even I don't know the exact meaning but very soon I will find it out and let them know. And I will also let them know about the punishments they may face if they avoid it and also the ones they will see if they deny the truth. I will keep everything as polite as possible but I will get to them my word. My sister has got the best of education and I am sure she will understand the things and take my words and my intention positively. What I am trying to do is for her good. I don't care what other girls (strangers to me) do. She is my sister and she needs to do the things right.

My youngest aunt (my mother's youngest sister) was telling me about an incident where my uncle was standing somewhere with his friend when some girl in a 'burqa' and scarf winked her eye at my uncle's friend. My immediate response was 'why were they looking at the girl?' My mother prompted 'boys are like this!' I continued 'and that's the reason it is necessary that girls wear scarf and 'burqa'.

Sometime later my mother said that I have grown up now. I was expecting something like this especially after that night when I spoke to both my parents about me and told them several things - of course about me.