Heman's world

2006-07-25T14:19:00.000-07:00

1. Iio – Rapture
2. Sting- Desert Rose (remix)
3. Motorcycle – As the Rush Comes
4. Hisham Abbas- Nareen Nareen
5. Murder – Kaho Na Kaho
6. Murder- Bheegey Honth Tere
7. Arash- Bure Bure/ Boro Boro
8. Miss Jane – Fine Day
9. Tyrese – Sweet Lady
10. Himesh Reshamiya- Aashiq Banaya Aapne (Remix)

2006-07-18T14:08:00.000-07:00

I have always loved to drive. I can remember the first time I got behind a car, I was so scared but at the same time so excited. Now driving just seems natural. When I am tense, and I want to relax, I go for a drive. There is nothing like speeding down the highway with the windows down and the speakers blazing techno. Actually, trance. Vocal trance. There is just something about the way that the beat and the vocals go together, that is like nothing else out there, perfect for any mood, whether you’re pissed off or not.
Maybe the reason that I love to drive is that I drive so much. I have to drive 30 minutes to school everyday (but I can usually do it in 20), and I dated a girl for two years that lived in Dayton, Ohio. That was a 4 hour-long drive. I did it about every couple weeks for almost 2 years. So I got used to the driving. Besides, it was relaxing being alone by yourself, listening to music, and nobody to deal with besides I-75. Sipping coffee trying to keep yourself awake, and chugging Monster and Red Bull (even though I always hated them). The best way to stay awake when you’re driving is to get coffee, let it get cold, and then sip on that. It tastes so nasty that it just jolts you wide awake. I also drove to Chicago with Nithin to visit some of his friends, that was a really good time.
I would have to say Nithin and Arun are my two best friends. The three of us are a trio. We have remained very close through college, something that I pride myself on, especially since none of us went to the same college. I go to Wayne State University in Detroit, Arun goes to University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, and Nithin goes to Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago. I actually hated both of them when I first met them. I thought Arun was just a goody-goody kid, teacher’s pet, straight A’s, etc. He was the kid that you wanted to punch in the nose for sucking up to the teacher and thinking that they were better than everyone else. Nithin was a punk, I couldn’t stand that. He listened to rock music, and he dressed like he was in a punk band. He was anything but “Indian”. Besides, he had the biggest crush on my cousin, so naturally, I wanted to kick his ass.
I went to high school with Arun. I met Nithin through Arun, they were family friends. In high school I was always a nerd, all of us were. I played sports, and I was good at them (captain of soccer and wrestling), but I still always considered myself a nerd. My coach used to make fun of us, he would make fun of all the other guys talking about how they went around with girls or whatever, and then he would make fun of me and my math book. I was a science geek. I loved chemistry, as bizarre as that sounds. It isn’t something that you hear often. Mostly people hate chemistry, or anything to deal with science. But science and mathematics were my two strongest subjects in high school, and the two subjects that I enjoyed the most. I also played soccer and wrestled in high school. I went back to coach the wrestling team, which was a lot of fun, I miss it. Every once in a while I get together with my friends and we play soccer, that’s always a good time.
Every time I get together with my friends, I always drive. No matter where we are going. It is because I absolutely love to drive. The best time to drive is late at night, when it’s dark. Preferably with the smallest number of street lights as possible. With the windows rolled down, and the vocal trance blastin’. . . When I drove with Nithin to Chicago that is what we did. Only it wasn’t dark out. We rolled down all the windows, put the music as loud as we could, and we drove and soaked in the music for hours. That was one of the best car rides that I have had. . . Although my ears rang for about half an hour after we turned the music off.
When I’m driving I hate traffic and construction. It slows everything down. The roads get packed with people, and you can’t drive fast, I like to drive fast. When I can’t drive fast or at least a somewhat reasonable speed, I get irritated.

2006-07-11T12:11:00.000-07:00

Music is a form of art. Art should not have copyright restrictions. This hinders the flow of artistic expression by limiting what an artist can or cannot use. It is hindering to many artists when they are not able to use another artist’s work in their own, especially in the music industry. Using another musician’s work should be like citing a paper. When you use a quote from an author in a paper, you don’t need their permission in order to use it. You just have to make sure that you properly document that their work was used. That is how music should be. It should be O.K. for a music artist to use another artist’s work, as long as they properly document that their work was used. If an artist makes and album, they should make a works cited page that they put into their CD covers or on the CD case itself. That way they are not taking credit for work that is not their own, but they are properly giving credit to other artists where it is due.
One may argue that when you write a paper, you don’t make profit off of it, but when you make a remix of a song, you do. However, that is not true. Take for instance, a researcher. They write grants and papers. In their papers they use other scientific research, which may or may not have been theirs. Now, this does lead to a profit for them, because depending on how good their papers are, they may receive funding due to their publications. So then, why do scientists not have to pay royalties for using other people’s research in their papers? It does not make sense.

2006-07-11T11:51:00.000-07:00

Saturday I drove to Chicago with my friend Nithin. He goes to school at IIT (Illinois Institute of Technology) which is near south side Chicago. One of his friends from school was throwing a party. The drive was long. I 94 had too much construction. I tried to drive above 80 the whole way, but then we would just get slowed down by all the construction. There were two major spots that had a lot of construction ( I don’t remember exactly where). At each of those places we got stuck for an hour. The total drive time came to over 6 hours for Chicago. I was not happy.
But when we were in Chicago we had fun. Nithin’s friend, Gautam, works for Jim Bean, doing some sort of paperwork for them. So, since he works for Jim Bean he got a lot of alcohol for free, a lot meaning not one or two fifths, but 15. Yes, 15. Also, to top that off, he had a keg. Yes, that was one crazy night.
I got to meet a lot of his friends, which was cool, because he is always talking about them, and I never used to know who he was talking about. But now I know.
My other friend, Arun, his ex-girlfriend lives in Chicago. So me and Nithin called her up and she came to the party. She brought her friend Ryanne, pronounced Ryan. She gets called Ry-anne a lot. But yea, it was a good weekend.

2006-07-07T10:37:00.000-07:00

I never understood how people get so attached to their dogs. My cousin had a dog, and he used to bring her over every time he came over. If he didn’t bring her with him, he would sometimes leave my house early because he had to go take care of his dog, or he didn’t want her to be alone for such a long period of time. I never understood this . . . until I got a dog myself.
My sister and I always begged my father for a dog, but he hated them. He said that he didn’t know how people could live with an animal, and how they could be so close to it because they smell, but finally my sister and I conned my parents into getting one. We went up and asked my dad if we could get one, and he said “yes”, not thinking we were actually going to get one. So the next day we went with my mother and brought home dog. The look on my father’s face was priceless. He couldn’t say anything because he told us that we could get one, and we couldn’t take the dog back. Our plan worked.
Over time the whole family became attached to the dog. She was a Labrador mix that we adopted named Chelsea. My father hated her at first, but then slowly he became attached as well. It was interesting to see how much he changed while living with our dog. At first he wouldn’t pet her, now he refers to her as “Chelsea Baby”.
It’s easy to understand now why people get so attached. It’s because dogs become part of your life. Chelsea is almost like a little sister. I have to take care of her, watch her, feed her, and take her for a walk. After doing so many things for your pets, they become a big part of your life.

2006-06-27T13:52:00.000-07:00

Anecdote
I was in Florida at a water park, and then my shorts fell off. I will never forget it.

Career

Chemistry- I am a chemistry major.
Lab technician- I work in the Karmanos building. I hate my job. It’s boring.
Doctor- Look me up in 20 years, I’ll do your hip replacement for you.

Entertainment

Movies- I like anything, it’s a good way to pass time.
Comedy- I like things that are funny, anything else usually depresses me.
Computer- I spend too much time in front of my PC.
AIM- Not even going to say how much time I waste on this.
Facebook- I’m addicted, that’s all there is to it.
Pool- Not the swimming kind, the kind that u hit balls with sticks.
Poker- Another addiction. It’s causing me to go broke.
Music- Trance, take a look at my playlist.

Community

Indian- I was born in the motherland.
Wayne State- Represent Detroit.
Student- I hate to study.
Brown- Color of my skin.

2006-06-20T17:29:00.000-07:00

Tarnation was overall a film. It was a little messed up, and confusing, but it was good. It was entertaining, which is what a film is supposed to be. I didn’t understand the purpose of the film. Why would he want to show all that about his life? Was his purpose to make the audience depressed? I think that it was that he wanted to present his life. Also, I’m sure that part of it was that he had all those clips and pictures from when he was younger and thought that it would be interesting to make a “collage” of sorts about his life.

At first the film was shocking. It was creepy, eerie and had a dark feel to it. There were clips of John cutting himself and bleeding, and what looked like he was shooting heroine into himself. The first half an hour of the film was disturbing, it was hard to watch. But after that, I don’t know if it was that the movie stopped being so disturbing, or that you just got used to it, it didn’t seem that bad. You became accustomed to the darkness of the movie (I don’t know if that’s a good thing). One movie that I saw, which was absolutely disturbing was 8MM with Nicolas Cage. I don’t think I slept the night that I watched it. This movie sort of reminded me of that, in how disturbing it was (only I think I will be able to sleep tonight).

Seeing how some people’s lives are puts perspective on your own. It was hard to relate to his life because mine is so good (even though at times it may not seem like that). I grew up in the suburbs with a mother, father, and sister. And while every family has their share of problems, I must say that ours were relatively few. All of us were in good health (mental and physical), which I think is a very important issue. Also, most of my friends had perfect lives too. We all grew up in the suburbs; got good grades, and came from decent families, which is another reason why it was difficult to relate to John’s story, because I don’t know anyone who has had a similar childhood. But seeing his story puts things into perspective, where you know that there are people who come from such families.

The movie begins with John getting news that his mother (Renee) has had a lithium overdose, which can possibly lead to death. Then the movie shows John’s and his mother’s past.
Both of them had troubled childhoods. Renee was subjected to extensive shock treatment when she was a child, and then spent a lot of her time in mental institutions. John was abused as a child, taken away from his mother, and put into various foster homes. Also, he did not know his father until he was 30 years old. A child being taken away from his mother at such a young age is enough to cause psychological damage to a child, but all of those combined led him to have a very difficult childhood.

John would make movies when he was around eleven years old, which is normal. All of us have played around with our parent’s camcorder, but he would make movies in the dark as he was dressed up in drag and pretend to be some girl that was raped and abused. Having such thoughts as a child is proof of his disturbed childhood. He would go to a gay club, when he was 13 years old. When I was 13, I didn’t even know what being gay meant (call me sheltered if you wish). The club was 18 and over and he would get in because he would disguise himself as a petite woman. A 13 year old child has no purpose being in such surroundings (nothing against gay clubs), a child of that age should be out in the yard playing with his friends. It seems that his childhood caused him to mature quickly.

The movie goes on and shows how messed up John’s childhood and family was. He was adopted by his grandparents. When his mother was not in mental institutions she lived in a nearby apartment. When he was in his early teens, he tried marijuana which was laced with PCP and dipped in formaldehyde, from that point on he felt like he was dreaming his life, and felt detached from it.

John grows up and matures, and as he does so his life isn’t as messed up anymore . . . at least not until he moves out of his house in Huston, Texas where he was living with his grandparents. He goes to New York and finds work as an actor. He also meets David, who ends up being his partner and they stay together for some time. The movie ends with Renee moving in with John, and John talking into the camera saying that he doesn’t want to end up like his mother. However, I think that John’s family was driving him insane. If he lives with his mother, it will drive him crazy, as it showed towards the end. It shows him crying and he has this disturbed look on his face, the look was not there when he wasn’t living with his mom.

2006-06-20T14:18:00.000-07:00

I did'nt know what to write about, so I wrote about online dating...

You know, I never understood internet dating. I don’t get how you can do it. You look at a person’s profile, and if you have some things in common, you agree to meet at some place? Doesn’t that make things awkward? And how do you approach somebody to date them online? Do you send them a message and say “Hey! I saw that we both like the same types of movies, want to go see one sometime?”. That sounds creepy.
I thought about trying it. But where do I get started? Do I go to match.com and then put in my profile, and wait for a computer to tell me who I get along with? I don’t care how sophisticated a computer is, I don’t think that it could tell me who or who I am not compatible with. I think that is the sort of thing that you need to try by yourself and see where things go.
My cousin met his wife online. They talked for sometime before they actually met, and they seem happy now. I always tease him about how he met her online, and how creepy it was. When their kids ask them how they met, he’s going to have to be like “I met your mother online”. What will his kids think?
What if you meet somebody creepy online, like a serial killer. How do you know that when you go to meet them their not going to chop you up into little cubes and keep you in their freezer to feed to their pet monkey? That kind of stuff just scares me. I would rather meet somebody the old fashioned way instead of online. It just seems so much more safe and convenient.

2006-06-13T14:32:00.000-07:00

Every time after you do something repeatedly for a long time, it becomes a tradition. Regardless if it is putting your left shoe on before a game, or bow to your mom before you enter her bedroom.
When I used to wrestle in high school, I did the same exact warm-up for four years. First I would run, then I would stretch, then I would run again or jump rope, and then one or two minutes before my match I would practice some moves or push to get an adrenaline rush. And then after every match I had the same cool-down. I would always run and then stretch. I would always stretch the same way too, I would first to my left side, and then my right. I don’t know why, I think it was another “tradition” that was started during middle school gym class.
Ana Castillo’s son bowed every time before he went into his mother’s room. I don’t even think that they were Japanese (Castillo does not strike me as Japanese surname). However, he did it so often, that it became a tradition, just like my stretching. At first it was probably just a little joke, or he did not pay attention to it, but then he started to do it so often, that he got used to it. Just like my warm-ups or my stretching my left side first. Because then if you don’t do it, it feels wrong. Tradition is what you are used to and expect, it becomes a part of you.

2006-06-06T17:14:00.000-07:00

Communities provide us with a sense of stability. Stability gives us a sense of security, in which we feel comfortable. Most people are afraid of the unknown, which is why people prefer things to be secure, and stable. If we did not sense stability within a community, why else would we join it? The sense of stability makes us feel comfortable. If we did not feel comfortable in a community, then why would we stay there or join it voluntarily?
We can also choose to join a community because it will accept us for who we are, even when the rest of society does not approve of our habits. For example, “Alcoholics Anonymous”, is a community which you can join voluntarily, or sometimes even forcibly. It is a community of alcoholics, people who are generally disregarded in low esteem by the rest of society. They come to a place where they feel comfortable with people like themselves, also providing them with a sense of stability.
People join online communities, such as MySpace or Friendster because they feel comfortable there. You can connect with your old friends, current friends, or make new ones. You can connect with people who share the same interests as you, or have the same problems. Udovitch writes about the online communities of girls with eating disorders. The girls that have joined that online community are looking for people whom they can connect with; other girls who are in the same situation that they are in. The communities that they join are made up of people just like them, other girls that will accept them for who they are. These girls feel comfortable in their communities, which is why they choose to be in them. The girls that join these communities feel shunned from the rest of society, and seek a place for them to be comfortable, where they have a stable social interaction with people who are more or less in the same situation that they are in.
Maya Angelou talks about how she is proud of the fact that more African Americans are starting to move back to the south, where originally they fled the south to get away from racial persecution. The reason that I believe that more and more black people are moving to the south is because most of them are from the south, or have strong family roots in the south. They are moving back to the communities from which they originally fled. The reason I believe they are returning back to these communities is they feel as if those places are their home. Angelou states that people generally feel more relaxed as they get closer to home. The sense of relaxation which Angelou speaks of as people get closer to “home” goes back to a sense of stability, which I believe that these places provide. African Americans are moving back to the south because these areas provide a sense of stability which they were not getting in the north.
In conclusion, communities provide a sense of stability for the people who belong to them. Communities also accept people for who they are, which gives them an added sense of security. If it were not for these things, most people would not join or be in the communities they are in now.

2006-06-06T13:57:00.000-07:00

Maya Angelou states “wherever home is, the closer one gets to it, the more one relaxes”. I could not agree with her more. I have noticed that after a long road trip, coming up I-75, the closer you get to your house, the closer you get to your exit, you become more and more anxious to get there. Not even because of the long drive, there is just a relaxing feeling about coming home. The first time you open up your door, and you see your house, there is a different sense than when you were there before. And there is nothing more comfortable than sleeping in your own bed.

I was reading Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and Douglas Adams writes about how whenever one gets farther away from their birthplace, they become more restless. I can completely understand this. I was born in India. I have been living here ever since I was four years old. But for some reason, whenever I go back to visit, it is always a different feeling. It is a sense of coming home, like this is the place where I belong. It does not seem like a foreign land, it feels comfortable and I am able to adapt easily. I know that whenever any one of my friends or relatives (which were born in the USA) goes back, they always have a hard time adjusting. It’s not as if I spent most of my life there, so I have an easier time adjusting, because I have been in the United States for more than 4/5 of my life. I think that it may be just as Douglas Adams says; that there is a comfortable feeling about being in the same place you were born.

2006-05-30T12:26:00.000-07:00

I don’t understand why the Amish would want to keep all of society out. I would not be able to live in such a conservative community. I would want more interaction with people, and not just the Amish. And I would want to be able to do what I want, and not follow such a rigid set of rules.

I wonder how the younger people feel. When they come in contact with tourists, aren’t they curious as to what goes on outside? Don’t they wonder how the cities are, how life is with electricity, or what it’s like to drive a car? For me the rules of that society would be too strict. I would be surprised if much of the younger generation went along with all those rules. There is no room for freedom of expression. Everyone is the same. That would be waaaay too boring. There needs to be some variety in life.

The Amish also seem to have a very harsh punishment system, to shun a person away from society. If a person breaks the rules, they are turned into an outcast. They are not allowed to come in contact with anybody, or participate in any of the community events. Going as far as not even sitting at the dinner table with them seems too extreme. While it seems harsh, it is an effective way to keep control of society. It’s a good way to scare people into acting how you want them to. Because if they thing that they will not be part of the only community that they know, it becomes somewhat like blackmail.

2006-05-23T17:27:00.000-07:00

Nietzsche in his quote says that “ever since there have been human beings there have been human herds”, this implies that humans have a tendency, or naturally want to be in groups. This implies that part of the human identity is what group or groups you belong in. We as a race identify ourselves by which group of people we belong to. Whether it be by our last names (our family), or by our occupation (professional groups), humans have always wanted to be part of something. If a person is not part of a group, they are likely to change something about their identity in order to fit in or get along with that group.

This relates to Emily White in her article High School’s Secret Life. Emily talks about how everyone wanted to be like the popular kids. Just because the majority thought that a certain clothing brand was popular, other people would start to believe that also. She talked about how the kids in her high school would want to wear those clothing brands just because the “popular” or “cool” kids wore the same brands. The kids that wore those same brands as the “popular” kids probably thought that wearing those same brands would make them popular as well. This shows how people try to change their identity to something else by relating themselves to some sort of elite group.

Firoozeh Dumas talks about how she changed her identity so she could fit in with the children she grew up around when she was younger. As she was growing up nobody could pronounce her name correctly and she was constantly being picked on because of her name. In order to stop that she changed her name to Julie, a more American sounding name. She changed her identity, and went along with the majority (of having an American name) so that she could be part of the crowd. However, she also states that she changed her name back to Firoozeh because she felt that she had lost some of her identity by changing her name to Julie.

In our digital age, it is hard to tell who is a follower and who is a leader. This is so because identity is so easily concealed or changed over the internet. On Myspace I could be a 40 year old man with 3 children and a wife. On AIM I could be an 8th grader, and there is no way to possibly know if I am telling the truth or not. Due to the fact that identity is so easily skewed over the internet, it is hard to see who is a leader and who is a follower.

2006-05-23T13:16:00.000-07:00

It’s not easy going through grade school with a “non-American” name. I can completely relate with Firoozeh Dumas. Kids seem to be insensitive and make fun of you all the time. They will tease you about your name and come up with crazy derivatives of it. Hemanckur somehow easily became hamocker knocker socker. I know that it’s not an easy name to pronounce, but most of them wouldn’t even take the time to learn how to say it properly.

You even notice it in adults, where my father changed his name from Upinder to his first and middle initial U.K. so that it would be easier to do business. I never understood that when I was younger but it became more apparent as I become older. When I met new people, I had to repeat my name two or three times for it to be understood. Even then, most people would ask me to repeat my name later.

I work at the mall, in a clothing store. I hate to tell people my name, because they always ask me to repeat it, at least twice. Even then, when I do repeat it, I can tell that they don’t really comprehend how to say my name, they just don’t want to hear me repeat myself again and again.

I thought about changing my name or coming up with an “American” version of it. Say for instance, Harry. But I thought that in doing so, I would be throwing away my Indian heritage, and living my life as a fake.

2006-05-16T17:21:00.000-07:00

wattup doh

2006-05-16T14:11:00.000-07:00

Teenage social life is tribal in the sense that teens tend to act together as a group. They have no individual identity, but belong to the identity of the group. Nerds, jocks, skaters, drama geeks, band kids, and let’s not forget the “popular kids” who everyone wants to be like. For the most part in high school, you do what your friends do. There is not much of a chance to be an individual. You take the same classes they take, you play the same sports they play, and you join the same clubs that they join. Think about when you were in high school, how many classes you took because your friend was in them, probably a lot. I can say this because I just came out of high school not too long ago; it has only been a year from when I graduated. After reading this article, I thought back to my high school experience. I always thought of myself as a “nerd”. Sure I played some sports (and I did decently well), but I always labeled myself as a nerd, and I thought that was how everyone else saw me. This brings another aspect to the high school tribe, that people see you as you perceive yourself. What tribe you act like you belong in, people will think you are in that tribe.

2006-05-09T17:00:00.000-07:00