Friday, May 28, 2010

Couldn't have been creepier than this

"Hey Sreedhar, what's up man?" asked me my racquetball mate on last Monday. My reply was "not much man". "So how was your weekend" was the next question. Even though I wanted to give some elaborate answer, I ended up giving casual reply "it's ok". While playing my match I thought to myself "wow, actually, I went to see a movie at the weekend". I started smiling thinking what his expression would be in case I told him where I saw the movie. I know you must be thinking that I must have seen this movie in some great theater or on some cool HDTV. Nope, your guess is quite wrong.

Give a second guess. Believe me, there is no way that you are going to guess it right. The answer is cemetery. Yep you read that right. It sounds creepy, right? Yep first time when my friend told me about it, I felt same way. Even though it sounded crazy I was very excited to go there after seeing how excited my friend was talking about it.

In fact, first time when I went there I was very surprised by seeing the number of people came to watch the movie. I guess the number was some where around 2000. Ok, let me get back to what I wanted to say before I veer off. The name of cemetery is Hollywood Forever Cemetery. According to my friend, this cemetery is for Hollywood personalities like actors, technicians, etc. It is weird to say something like this but after entering this cemetery I told my self that it was once classy cemetery. I guess it has that special Hollywood look.

Anyway, the screening takes place on the back wall of one medium height building. Oho, I'm sorry I forgot to say where this cemetery is. Of course, it is retarded of me to say it now after writing the name of the cemetery. I'm sure you know that Hollywood is in Los Angeles. Even though LA has nice weather through out the year unlike east coast, it gets cold to some times very cold during nights. Which means they screen the movies only during the summers. During my first time weather was extremely good. I had an amazing experience of watching the classic "Singin' in the rain". If you haven't seen this movie before, then I say you do a favor for yourself by getting this DVD tonight. Believe me you would love it.

It is amazing to see everyone enjoying themselves sitting there on the lawn. Everyone is in their own world clapping and whistling at every great scene. The best part is you could bring food and drinks along with some blankets and small chairs. It's like a picnic party. In simple words it was awesome.

First time when I was there it brought my childhood memories back. As I'm from a small village in India, now and then people used to play the movies on big screen in an open area. It was almost 25 years back. I think my fascination for movies started then in those tents. Screening used to take place on a white cloth.

For the second time, last week I went to this cemetery along with Kishan to watch a horror sci-fi movie "The Thing" starring Kurt Russel. It was second screening for this season and it was cold out there. In fact, it was damn cold. Even though I expected the movie to be typical horror movie, it was better than that as it was sci-fi too.

After this movie, I decided to come well prepared next time when we go there. Next time I'll go with some food and drinks, blankets and pillows. Would be nice to have our Indian items like bajji, etc :).

After watching the movie, I took some photos with Kishan's past life girlfriend's skeleton head. Funny thing is they came out very creepy. Kishan loves her so much he ended up making her bald by playing with her hair too much. You can see that it has only very few hairs left on her bald head. I'm adding those pics here. Let me know what you think of them.

Anyway, I hope we go there well prepared next time. The one thing I want to do there some time in the future is doing weed. I've always wanted to do it just to feel the so called high. One day I guess :)

Ok time to take leave. Tonight it's going to be my last day at YMCA. I want to get out of there on high note by playing the racquetball well. One last dig at my friend. Want to make him run like mad dog all over the court :)

Oho by the way I forgot to add this. I'm sure you agree with me that watching movie in a cemetery among those buried dead people is definitely creepy.

 Before and after the movie. I guess the last photo was very fitting end to my experience at that night. I think she was so angry with me that she just blasted my head off into vapors...
Pics: Courtesy of Kishan.

cheers
Sreedhar.

Thursday, May 27, 2010

Friendships over the years ...

This is my second post in this month. First time when I started this blog, almost two years back, I wanted to write at least once every week. Never happened though. After long time and for the first time I'm writing second time with in two weeks gap. The reason for this is boredom caused by sitting at home all the day.

Just today I noticed that one of my best friends wrote a comment on my two previous blogs. For long time I wanted to write something about my friends. For some reason I always hesitated to do that. I guess there is no need to look for reasons.

I've always believed that I've a pleasant disposition to make friends with anyone easily. At the same time I've always been hesitant to move from a stage of knowing one some one to a stage of being best friends with the same person. I'm sure everyone has the some sort of theory like this. For me, all my life the only thing that made me feel uncomfortable with anyone was some one's financial status, not in a negative way though. I mean if some one was filthy rich or even richer, then I definitely hesitated to talk to them or felt very uncomfortable being around them. It doesn't mean that I hate rich people. I think it has to do more with my inferiority complexion. In my family it self, unfortunately, we were not treated that well because of our financial situation for longest time. All that changed when I did well in school over the years. Lot of reasons made me stay away from rich people thinking that either they would be arrogant or I wouldn't be knowing the right customs to be friends with them. It is very normal for lot of people who come from middle class background, that too if they are from village it's even worse. In the end what I'm trying to say it it all depends up on upbringing and lot more factors like where you come from.

Anyway, going back to what I wanted to say, in my life until now I can confidently say that I made some very good friends. Until 5th grade I was never in the same school for more than one year. Because of this I never made any close friends. After 5th grade I went to a boarding school and it became home for the next 5 years. In all those five years I was there in that school away from my family for 9 months in every year. It might sound simple for you unless you were in that situation when were kid. I still remember lot of my friends were very scared to be away from their families. First time when parents came to school to leave them there, most of the students were crying like anything. I was ok though. When you stay at some place for 5 continuous years, that too at very young age, you definitely tend to make very good friends with some kids. Yes, I had made an excellent friendship with a guy name E.Kiran. He is a very close friend. He was there for me when ever I needed him. I always consider him as my family member. In fact his family always treated me like their another son. I've had some wonderful moments with him to cherish for ever. Once I came out of that school, I lost contact with most of the students. We both went to different engineering colleges. Still we never lost touch with each other. It's just amazing how the bonding happens with different people in our lives. He is the one friend with whom I can share anything and everything. Sounds simple. Right? Believe me, even though you are very good friends with some one, it doesn't mean that you can talk everything with him. It depends on lot of things.

In the same school, I made another good friend named U.Praveen. It's crazy to think that I had big fight with this guy when I was in 8th grade. After that we didn't talk to each other for almost a year. I know it sounds ridiculous. But it always happens with kids at that age. May be puberty has to do with that, I mean with hot temper. I'll write about that incident in my next blog. Once we started talking to each other, I always felt like he was an amazing guy to be with. Like I wrote above, I was very shy and had an inferiority complex when it came to certain simple yet complex things in life. He was always there with me in encouraging to do things. When ever I had doubts and pushed my self back, he was there to pull me forward. In one simple line, he always had very positive effect on me in every way. He always made me feel confident and proud of my self. The other best thing I liked in him is he never felt threatened or peer pressure by being next to me. In stead, he was always proud to say good things about me, which is a rare quality I guess. What do you say? I'm very happy that I'm still very close to both of these guys even after 20 years since I met them for first time.

Just like you imagined, the next step in making strong and everlasting friendships happened in my engineering years. Students come to engineering at an age of around 18 years. I think this is very important age in every way whether it comes to having a blast in a life or making a life for one self or to go completely astray. I personally feel at this age it takes long time to make good friends, but once you make it lasts for ever. Same thing happened in my life too. I met some of the best guys here. Just like it happened in my life before engineering, I had to stay in hostel in my engineering life too. In a way it was wonderful as it helped me in meeting my current best friends.

If I'm frank to my self and my friends, when I first time entered my allotted room in the hostel, I was skeptical about my roommates. I mean to be specific I thought of them to be not my type. That was the first time I met people from different parts of my state with different slangs. In that room I met one of my close and best friends. For long time, for some reason, we were never close. I guess it was like that until the end of the first year. I'm not sure though. Looking back it feels like I've always known him being close to me. I don't remember the exact reasons though. I think I was too much into cricket to not to recognize people around me. Because of strange reasons, at one point, I even thought my roommates were rude. I'm sure there were reasons for that. May be one of them being me going to the room in the middle of the nights spoiling everyone's sleep or talking too much. May be my roommates thought I was annoying type. I don't know what it is, but now I feel strange to look back and think that I wasn't that close to him. Oho, by the way his name is Kranthi Kumar. I think it happened in certain period where we got a chance to talk about lot of things.

By the time I realized I was very close to Kranthi. Most of the time I used to walk to our most loved place "KPHB Colony". In a way I just can't express everything about him. I can say that he is very genuine in every way, very calm, very matured and has this pleasant and peaceful demeanor. Some times we feel either intimidated or irritated to be around some people. Right? It might be wrong to think like this even before we get to know about some one. I agree. But if you meet him, you immediately feel that he is the nicest guy. In simple words, if I have to I put it this way. He is the soft spoken and nice guy with sympathetic heart for everyone. I guess he can never do bad to not only people but also to any life on this earth. Surprisingly, even his habits are also like make you feel he is a soft hearted guy. I'm very lucky to have a friend like him. I'm hundred percent sure I'll be in touch with him until I die.

The next best friend I made in my engineering time is Kishan. The moment I wrote his name, smile came on to my face. Hey, don't think that he is a funny guy. What I'm trying to say by writing like this is he is a very nice guy just like Kranthi with great wits. I'm not sure when I felt he was a good friend. At least with Kranthi I remember some thing, but not with Kishan. By the time I finished my engineering I definitely knew him very well, if not I was best friend of him. If I remember right, I always thought, in fact Kranthi too, Kishan and his friends were all the way in different league. Even though Kishan and his friends are from middle class families, it's just that for what ever reasons Kranthi and I felt that we couldn't connect to them in certain things. No matter what it was, at one point of time we used to spend lots of time together in the hostel, be it in going to colony or preparing for exams. The other thing that brought us close was that we were all in the mechanical major.

After engineering, we all had to go in different ways in search of good life. Don't know whether it is true though. I guess just like anyone else we also went for what everyone goes for. As simple as that. I went to Sweden for my masters, Kishan came to US and Kranthi stayed back in India. Over the next few years the only contact we had was either through emails or phones. All these years friendship with Kishan grew stronger and stronger. The best part with Kishan was he always respected my views and listened to what I felt. More over he was there for me in every possible way. After coming to US, financially, God only knows how many times, he helped me like anything. In one word he is always there for me. The best part with Kishan is he doesn't try to be preacher. In a way I feel Kranthi, Kishan and I have the same kind of mentality in most of the things. What ever it is, if we get together, we could definitely talk for hours with out feeling that the other person is dominating or trying to put his thoughts on each other. In a way I feel all of us know our boundaries and intelligent enough to understand each other's limitations and feelings.

There have been few more friends whom I consider very good friends (Ramesh, Vijay, Anil, Dadi, Vijay Bhaskar and many more). Now I feel I can never make these kind of friends again in my life. Once we get into married life, I think it is impossible to make any close friends. In simple words if your wife becomes more than your best friends, then you are lucky. Otherwise consider spending time on watching lots of TV.

Anyway, I just felt like writing something about my friends. What ever I wrote here was not coherent at all. I guess it doesn't matter. Even though I wanted put my random thoughts and feelings into an ordered manner, it was just too much going on in my mind to put it that way.

It's been long time since I met Kranthi, Kiran and Praveen. I'm kind of lucky to live close to Kishan here in LA. I meet him very often. I don't know how it would have been if he were not here. I'm eagerly waiting to meet Kranthi, Kiran and Praveen in the future. Hopefully it should come soon. It would be really great to meet Kranthi along with Kishan. Same is the case with Kiran and Praveen. In putting American words I just want to spend some quality time with all my friends. I'm sure there is hell lot of things to catch on. Let's see how these things will roll. Only time will tell!

cheers
Sreedhar.

Tuesday, May 18, 2010

For now, confusion prevails over aspirations ...

It's been a while since I wrote on this blog. Since my last blog, even though lot of things happened in my life, it feels like nothing is happening and it's moving at a snails pace. I guess the reason is simple, I don't have job.

For most of the people, life is composed of simple things like going to school for almost 15 to 20 years and then finding a good job, then getting married and have children and then facing mid-life crisis, etc. For me first part continued more than 20 years, unfortunately. I'm not sure whether it was unfortunate though. May be it was fortunate too if I start looking at it from different angle. Anyway, going back to the job issue, I haven't completed my degree yet and still I got out of university in search of job. It's been almost a year since I came to Los Angeles in search of job and nothing happened. In a way it makes you dull and it's hard to come out of this shell. Some times I feel everything gets dragged like anything. Then I tell my self this is part of life just to feel better. Sucks, right? I know it does.

With my friend Kishan's help, last October I attended a supercomputing conference in Portland, OR in search of job and hoping that meeting people would help me out in this regard. In a way I did meet lot of people in this area. Some one from a university promised me that he would help me out. In fact he kept his promise and sent me an email with job postings in his university. Since these jobs are in the university it's taking long time. Now I'm patiently waiting on this opportunity. In a way it's good for me too since it's going to take at least another two months for me to get my employment authorization.

Overall this is the reason I don't know what to do right now. Everyday I go to mail box with lots of hope :). Sounds funny. Right? I go to mail box hoping that I'd have some good news. Most of the time it'd be empty. Even though I get disappointed for a while, I feel great again with in no time. The reason is there is always tomorrow.

Finally, I took a great decision not to play the league this summer. I still remember that when I was in 12th grade, I used to watch a movie pretty much everyday. I lived in hostels right from my childhood. Until 10th grade always there were teachers supervising us in the hostels. It was kind of jail even though it helped me a lot in every way. Freedom wise I always wanted to get out of that school. Right after 10th grade I got that opportunity to get out. I went to the next big city to my village and joined a college for my higher studies. Since I was living on my own and had no supervision, I went wild in every way I guess. I used to go to movies pretty much everyday. You might feel I'm crazy if I told you this. I used to watch same movies repeatedly for weeks before I thought it was time for some other movie. I was always fascinated with movies. More over this freedom issue was there. Overall everything made me go crazy in a way.

Still I did very well in the school. Being a school hater, most of the time I was absent in the school. Good thing for me was even though I hated school, I always loved to know things from books which made me study all my courses. More over it did good to my knowledge since studying on one's own helps immensely well. More over I always had this competitiveness. I always think of my self as exceptional when it comes to anything and everything. It might sound I'm boasting or overconfident. Definitely not. I just don't give up on anything until I get it and this kind of attitude helped me like anything in my life until now. It's the same attitude when it comes to doing well in the school by getting good grades. Some times I feel as long as I have knowledge in it it's fine.

So all the time I ended up studying on my own and I used to study just before exams all the night. I used to do night outs and go to the exam with out breakfast and no sleep at all. If you eat before going to exam, that's it you are done. I mean you'd feel damn sleepy and you can't do well in the exam for sure. It was my theory and it worked for me all the time. Even though it worked for exams, it didn't work that well when it came to engineering entrance. I never cared about it when I took it first time while I was in college. As usual, I didn't get that good grade since I was busy all the time in playing cricket. Even though I knew I'd get bad rank I got very disappointed when I saw my rank. I immediately promised my self not to play cricket and watch movies until I finish my next engineering entrance. In fact I kept my promise to my self in not watching movies. I feel proud of my self when ever it comes to my mind that I didn't watch movies for whole one year considering my love for movies. But I failed miserably in keeping my other promise which hurt my goal really bad. I couldn't stop playing cricket and in fact I started playing more and more. In the end I didn't get exceptional rank but just good rank.

Then I joined engineering college and in those four years time I understood one thing for sure. Even though I always knew that getting good rank is not an indication of how good and talented you are, some where it made me feel different. But during those four years of engineering, I understood for sure some of the students who got exceptionally good ranks are not that great. In fact most of them are just bookish. In a way it has to do with our educational system.

I still remember some of my friends thought I was not that good compared to them until something proved to them opposite. At the end I got very good respect from everyone, even the ones who always thought they were too good for everyone. The funny thing is these students always had a way to look down on other students in something. I guess they never were exposed to out side world. Or may be too spoilt.

Anyway, going back to what I wanted to say, I'm hoping my decision to not to play cricket would bring some luck :) this time too. I know it's kind of stupidity to believe in something like this. It's just a belief even though I know for sure that only working hard would bring us luck and there by results.

By the way, I wanted to write something else too. Lot of guys who thought they were too good for everyone ended up doing those same jobs everyone does. I don't know whether they feel it now. May be not. Everyone has to feel special with themselves. That's the nature of life I guess. But if everyone is true to themselves, most of use are same when it comes to these things. Very few people make them special in other's eyes too by choosing to do something special in their lives.

What makes those very few people special. If I'm not wrong, the guts to do something different from most of us do. For example everyone of us wants to go for jobs and there by having security in leading life. But very few people deviate from it and take risk in doing something else. I mean in achieving some thing great. It doesn't have to be like getting known through out world. It's just enough if you are known for your talent at least in your community. How many of us chase our dreams of becoming something we have always wanted to be. Very few I guess. Right? The reason is fear in our minds. We fear to take risks.

Most of us have dreams. But before we try it out, we starting thing what would happen if it failed. The funny thing is you'd know the result only when you try. Still no one tries out of fear. It's just we want to go in very ordinary and safe route that has been already followed my millions of people.

This is where I guess mid-life crisis comes into picture. Since by that time we know that we can't realize our goal of becoming someone in life, life becomes boring and frustrating. During this time only people start doing so called bad or weird things in life.

My friend and I talk about it very often and we want to do something. I'm still not sure how we are going to do it. I don't know about Kishan. He has his own dreams. When it comes to me, I feel I'm a very confused guy right now. Some where I feel I'll do something for sure out of frustration, definitely good though. If I look back in my life until now, I have always got what I wanted. I have enough guts to follow my dreams and if needed I can go to any extent.

It's hard to imagine next five years of life. I still imagine my self doing something better than what I consider ordinary. Right now my mind is filled with lot of ideas. But the problem is nothing is clear and like I said before I'm very confused about everything. Good thing is even though nothing is going well or nothing great happened for long time, I still feel great in every way and I think this mind set would be good enough to take risks to realize goals, even though nothing is clear right now.

Anyway, for now it feels better to put these confused mindset here. Let's see how things are going to be by the next time I write.

cheers
Sreedhar.

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About Me

LA, CA, United States
Here I write about the battles that have been going on in my mind. It's pretty much a scribble.

Sreedhar Manchu

Sreedhar Manchu
Higher Education: Not a simple life anymore