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YEAR 2007!!
The year I turned 20!! At least I was a teen for half-the-year. So you'll allow me this kiddish pleasure of ramblin about how this year turned out to be for me...
Mast Moviez
1) Mozhi
2) Freedom Writers
3) Tare Zameen Par
Smashin' Songs
1) Jab Se Tere Naina (Saawariya)
2) Aazha Kannal (Mozhi)
3) In Dino (Life in a Metro)
Fantastic Fiction
1) Splendor of Silence (Indu Sunderesan)
2) Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (J.K.Rowling)
3) Nervous Conditions (Tsitsi Dangarembga)
Mmmm Magazines
1) National Geographic (March '07) - The bit on Elephants
2) National Geographic (Nov '07) - The Memory Article
3Jean-Paul Sartre's Introduction to Frantz Eanon's Les damnes de la terre - The Wretched of the Earth - (1961)
Memorable Moments
1) My mom came on TV (Podhigai+Sun), radio(AIR) and published a book (a small supplementary in Aval Vikatan)!!!
2) My sister got into college this year - SSN!! :-D
3) This year was the first time in NUS, that a lecturer caught and told me off for cutting lectures!!
Craziest things I did this year
1) I did an intern!!!
2) I went night-cyclin' for an entire night - in heavy rain!!
3) I came back home for a weekend!! Right after Diwali too!!
Resolutions for 2007 - Reality Check
1) Academic Goal 1 - Get 5.0 in one subject at least- Satisfied
2) Academic Goal 2 - Obtain SAP of 4.50 atleast - Nearly Satisfied
3) Personal Goal 1 - Do 3 really good things that you've never done before -No. But I did make a start this year. 1/3.
People I'll remember
· It’s wonderfully light!! It is the perfect travel mate. I mean...I know laptops are meant for taking around – but this beats ‘em all!
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· There’s this beautiful – what I like to call Empower Acer – toolbar which gives you a running status on the battery time left, the system uptime, the resolution and a shortcut to recovery management.
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Yeah! Therez fingerprint launch!! :D And the lovely part is that it works wonderfully well! You know, when I first thought of getting my own computer I always thought it’d be cool in ways that it’d scan my retina and say ‘Access Granted’ ...kinda romantic I know, but well the fingerprint access is definitely better than typing in a password!! And the best thing is - it says “Access Granted”!! Three-Fourths dream come true!!:D :D :D
And Oh yeah!! You can launch several other stuff using your 10 fingers!! Itz the perfect gadget to show off you know – over a chat with some friends, you ask – would you like to listen to this latest song from Saawariya (which is jab se tere naina by the way – it totally rocks!! If you aren’t yet crazy about it, well you know where to find your show-off friend!! ) – and just sweep across your index finger – and lo it plays!! Hehehe...
· You know how its really troublesome when you type out technical reports – you’re always left looking for ‘Infinity’ and ‘Sigma’ and it gets so irritating that you’d rather write it out by hand – well this is a kinda mid-way solution and it ain’t too bad for Archun!! :D Its called the character map and you just hafta select the symbols (which by the way I realized includes some signs that look extremely familiar to Kannada ‘Pa’...hehe) and copy ‘em!
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· Still guessing what my point is? Itz a really really beautiful screen display. I mean..yeah..I know Acer reflects – TP is anytime better that way – but its kinda stylish you know..?? Windows Vista by the way works awesomely well (I luv the graphics involved in the option that says switch between windows...sighhhhhh)! I kinda like the windows sidebar as well! And yeah, it’s got a 160GB hard disk!! I mean thatz like 4 times my last disk storage space!! The 2GB RAM though is absolutely necessary (I upgraded from 1GB) The duo core combined with the large RAM give me an ultimate performance!! Itz reeely reaaly fast!!
· Yeah!! Thatz a pic from my luvely in-built web-cam!! I mean itz sooo convenient! No wires and hassles – just one click away from conversing!! I luv that!!
· It supposedly has speech recognition! I mean..I was so excited about this initially – I really thought I could dictate stuff instead of typing and that’d be really so awesome..hmm...I’m not quite sure – cause I ‘m one of those weirdoes who likes typing...neyways, hehe...it’d definitely be cool right? But it recognizes what it terms ‘British English’ alone – so yeah..I’ve gotta train it to learn my accent and voice!! I can now direct it to open programs/firefox – but yeah..thatz pretty much what it does!!! I’m not gonna let go though..keep tryin n one day itz bound to understand me!!!
· Yeah!! Sticky notes..hehe..n it has the usual windows journal and calculator and magnifier and the like!! But did you notice how I managed to get luvely shots of all the sutff I wanted to show ya?? Itz awesome eh?? Its dis reely cute tool called ‘Snipping Tool’ that allows you to take screenshots of whatever u like!! Kinda cool rite? And especially useful for those graphs you’d like to place on your report!!
I really haven’t had a chance to check out the DVD R/W yet. Will do so sometime soon I guess....cause yeah...160GB isn’t ∞ rite?? I can’t keep storing all my songs n videos in here forever...hmm...hehe.
Overall a lovely laptop!! If you’re the kinds that hasn’t tried an acer ever, well this is the one to try!! Itz quite cheap too! I got it for SGD1700. By the way, I haven’t named him yet...any suggestions?? ☺
Dearest Amu,
Thatz for you!! You're the bestest ever and I'm sooooooooo proud of you!! CONGRATS!!
Love
Archun
(My mom's had a rocking month!! She been on Podhigai for the past 3 weeks performing in a live cookery show (n will be coming again this Friday) - Her tiny book (on 30 different podis) got published in Aval Vikatan - AND her second consecutive AIR(All-India Radio) show was aired every Saturday for the past 6 weeks!!)
Vegetarianism and World Hunger
Raising animals for food is an extremely inefficient way to feed a growing human population. The U.S. livestock population consumes enough grain and soybeans to feed more than five times the entire U.S. population! One acre of pasture produces an average of 165 pounds of beef; the same acre can produce 20,000 pounds of potatoes. If Americans reduced their meat consumption by only 10 percent, it would free 12 million tons of grain annually for human consumption. That alone would be enough to adequately feed each of the 60 million people who starve to death each year.
I love the forests. Can I save them by being vegetarian?
Certainly! Did you know that throughout the world, forests are being destroyed to support the meat-eating habits of the "developed" nations? Between 1960 and 1985 alone, nearly 40 percent of all Central American rain forests were destroyed to create pasture for beef cattle. More than four million acres of cropland are lost to erosion in the United States every year. Of this staggering topsoil loss, 85 percent is directly associated with livestock raising i.e. over-grazing!
Vegan Leather!
Some vegetarians choose not to wear leather. So what can replace leather footwear and other accessories are expected in some workplaces? There are many specialist suppliers that sell belts, shoes, safety boots, jackets and briefcases that share the appearance of leather but are in fact made of synthetic materials generically known as Vegan leather. High-end fashion designer Stella McCartney is famed for her refusal to use leather, fur or other animal products in her range of clothes and accessories and is thus popular with wealthier vegetarians.
Famous Vegetarians
Leonardo Da Vinci, Charles Darwin, Socrates, Plato, Sir Isaac Newton, Thomas Edison, Drew Barrymore, Paul McCartney, Chelsea Clinton, Lisa Simpson, Hank Aaron, Bryan Adams, Alicia Silverstone, Mark Twain, Leo Tolstoy, George Bernard Shaw, Mahatma Gandhi, Albert Einstein.
