circadian rhythms & cultural immersion...

well it's not the usual 2-3am update for the blog, but actually quite the opposite...4pm in the afternoon. i've relocated to the university at the dana building comp lab (which is currently inhabited by 3 other humans) to get some more work done...since i have been unsuccessful at The Tank thus far. guess what? yeah, not so successful here either, but i'll take things one step at a time, at least until the night before my advisor's meeting this friday.

all that being said, i have of course fallen behind with updating the time-wasting monster, so i am taking time out of my normally "busy" schedule do a rare daytime update. on to the bullets, maybe after a few entries i'll actually be caught up:

- first off, congrats to the BioRhythms people (Rashmi, Sonya, Shveta) on what was an amazing performance on sunday! i had never been to one of these shows, but had heard of them before. the relatively large and quite diverse group consisted primarily of medical school students and dental school students performing a variety of pieces, including cabaret, rock, dance, hip-hop, and bollywood. i must say i was very impressed with everything, and will definitely be planning on attending in the future (everyone else was impressed too, and the pendleton room of the union was packed to the point where it was standing-room only for those who showed up late)! favorites were of course the indian dance to the song "Deedar De" from the movie "Dus", the med school rock band performing "No Rain" by Blind Melon & "Last Dance with Mary Jane" by Tom Petty, and the hip-hop numbers. again, well done everyone...i'll be sure to arrange a group to go to the next performance!

- my schedule has been way off as of late, but i think i finally got around to resetting it today (by getting up at an "early" 10:00am. i recently got a new mattress and have found out what it's like to sleep on a normal bed as opposed to what i now call 'the petrified forest' (aka my old mattress which was unearthed around the Cretaceous Period). oh yeah, have fun with that mattress next year sarah, i don't know if a mattress pad will make it bearable...perhaps the box spring alone is more comfortable.
anyway, given the new sleep medium, i've had a much harder time getting out of bed, and since i've averaged a bedtime of between 3-6am over the past several days, i don't mind. so i guess one could write off some of this blog laziness to the fact that i've been sleeping a lot more. oh well, i'm not complaining at all.

julia, me, and parul pretending to be serious at Live

- bollywood. several of you probably have realized by now that i've been renting and watching quite a few hindi movies as of late...it's a trend that started around Christmas break with the initial conversation between rakhi and myself about how Bride & Prejudice is not a 'real' Indian movie. the result? i was lent several popular hindi movies and was instantly hooked (i now own the original three that i saw).
well recently rakhi took me to the indian store (Foods of India, in Ann Arbor, for those of you keeping track) the week she left for nashville. i ended up renting several indian movies; "Dus" which ended up being the main event for our recent hindi movie party (which was a great success and proved to be entertaining for everyone who attended...not to mention raised a lot of questions about indian movie plot complexity, risque dance interludes, and just how many consecutive shots can be fired from a rocket launcher).
i've also become addicted to bollywood music...i was always a soundtrack fiend, but it's even moreso with these movies where the music is actually a huge part of what makes the movie successful or enjoyable. heck, i'm listening to a bollywood mix as i write this. my goal is to SOMEDAY understand what they are saying, since i currently only know a few hindi words and phrases. which leads me to an entirely different line of thought on the same subject...

- me and my sisters are Indian only by the fact that we LOOK indian and eat indian food. this is the conclusion i have reached, and have had somewhat in-depth discussion about it with rachel and sarah recently. here i thought a lot of other indian people who were born in the US were in a similar situation or state of ignorance, but i was wrong. i seriously think my parents had us living in small towns all our lives so we would have no interaction with other indians (this is obviously not really the case, but a humorous coincidence). little did they know sarah and i would end up in the state of michigan, which is of course known for its immense diversity....riiiight.
anyway, even damon figured out that main hoon na means "i'm here now"...which was just a little slower than how long it took me to figure that out (yes we had subtitles, but thats not the point). there are the FOB's (fresh off the boat indians), ABCD's (American-Born Confused Desi's), and i propose some sort of third group for people like me and my sisters...who are even more "confused" than the ABCD's. i'm sure through some brainstorming sessions i'll have a new acronym to report soon.
with all that in mind, i'm hoping that there is still a chance to undo all of this somewhat-blissful yet scary ignorance; i just don't know if i have time to do so amidst feeding all these fishes and doing my research. we'll see.

last 'biofish crew' outing to Casey's before Rakhi had to take off; L-R: Priya, Sherie, Hans, James (pretending to scratch his brain), damon (incapable of acting normal in most pics), me, rakhi, christine, carrie

- oh, and i'll add one more thing before getting off the indian subject, i went to panchero's today (surprise, i know, shutupleavemealone) and another one of the workers asked where i was from. i told him my parents were from india and he smiled in recognition and then said "namaste" in greeting. i found this amusing and yet impressive, especially since he barely spoke any english and had in fact been teaching me some spanish phrases. this was also somewhat scary, because it really meant that he already knew one of the only 5 hindi words that i knew! i have some serious learning to do. maybe i SHOULD go to india this summer as my grandma wants me to...but that's also another story for another time.

james showing how excited he gets while working on the smolt trap on the Muskegon

- go to vinology, try the mojitos...they are very good and very sweet. no, they don't taste like crest :P

- although i had virtually sworn them off about a week ago (that story another time), there is a good chance that by the end of next week i will have a new fish at The Tank. i am very happy about this, my roommates are very happy about this, happiness will have returned to The Tank...ok maybe a bit too melodramatic, but you get the point. there will be some sort of celebration, so stay tuned.

- icelandic snow owls!!!! i had been trying to figure out what the owl was that lloyd christmas killed in the movie dumb & dumber and it just hit me. i'll answer any zoological trivia, bring it on!!!

- anyone up for some Halo 2? my sister lost our copy of Mortal Kombat 4 (that's your summer project sarah) so i'm down to just a couple options. i'm afraid double D will not provide much of a challenge to me...sigh.

ok this has obviously derailed to complete randomness, i need to get some work done or go to dominick's...i don't really care. oh, and come to the fish meeting to hear double D and ricky give talks on primitive fishes...i've prepared some challenging questions for them...because i'm evil. have a good evening <:><

music:

"Salaam Namaste" - Salaam Namaste soundtrack (yes, i have yet another soundtrack to a movie i have not yet seen. it's a sickness).
"The Disney Song" - American Desi soundtrack

pics (from Julia's bday outing this past friday) :

the gang at Improv Inferno on Main Street (definitely an entertaining time) L-R: Carrie, AJ, Hal, Julia, Chris, Me, Ly, Vidya, Damon

change of venue to Vinology, L-R: Julia, Seema, Ly, Vidya, Me, Chris