summary of 2006 part 1

First of all:
HAPPY BIRTHDAY JAAN!!!!

So as time flows, another year comes to an end. The year of 2006. This year has certainly had its ups and downs. To think that exactly one year ago, a random girl by the name of HelenaRaj added me on hi5. I had no idea who she was. This time last year, i was working at subway asking people what salads they wanted on their six inch. lol. All i did was stay home and play Yahoo pool. I had locked myself into isolation. I was still uncertain about what this year had in store for me. Hell, i didnt even know how i did in my NCEA level 3. I had isolated myself from everything else. My only reason to leave home was to go to work. Man a lot has changed in the past 365 days.

This year saw the passing of a world icon. The tragic death of Steve Irwin shocked us all..... even people who didnt know of him that well were affected in some small way by his death and people did everything in their own way of mourn his passing......

This year also wasnt such a good year for Richard Hammond from Top Gear either. while doing some filming for top gear, he managed to have a high speed crash at nearly 450KM/H. This saw Top Gear on the brink of extinction and Richard Hammond in the ICU on the verge of death itself. The fate of top gear still rests unknown and Richard has known to be doing just fine except for an unusual addiction to celery!!!!

But hey the world still goes around and with the passing of this year, it makes all of us realise that time truly waits for no one. As far as my life goes, well lets just say that its been filled with its moment. its had its ups and its DEFINATELY had its downs. ill admit, it aint exactly been the best of years for me, but whether i like it or not, it has happened and there is no changing it.

This year has seen a lot of people drift apart from my life..... partly due to my laziness of communication and partly coz of other reasons..... and i know that there is no justifying this.... its just happened.... but just like people have left my life, there have been many new faces as well....

Personal reflections:
Well, as far as my inner self goes, to be perfectly honest, i havent exactly been truly happy with myself.... and i have been doing other thing to put that out of my mind thinking that if i just avoid it long enough, it will go away.... but i realised that it wont.... and now i an paying the consequences for it. To tell you the truth, i am a bit pissed off at myself.... partly due to the fact that i just couldnt be bothered to do more to prevent it when i had the chance and partly because i wasnt that worried about it when i should have been..... There have been some things that i have been doubtful about throughout the year and as the year ends, i am even more unsure about it then ever... there is also something else thats been bugging me since last night.... and thats the big reason why i am up at 6:30 in the morning writing this.... coz usually, my day doesnt start till after 11:59AM. As far as my highlight of the year, it goes to that one and only person who i love so much.... even when she gives me hell..... lol.

Things to look forward to:
well, the 2011 Rugby world cup is almost here. but as far as looking forward to thing in the more recent future, well, there is always another year of unknown mysteries to look forward to. and also coming up in part 2 of this summary, which will be written earlier next year, RI XMAS PARTY: hype or an aweesone party??

Dont forget:
Well i am sure as the new year dawns upon us, it would be a good time for all of us to take a look within ourselves this year and see how well we did...... yes, i am talking about NEW YEAR'S RESOLUTIONS!!! here is something for you folks to do by yourself. look within yourself and see how many of your new year's resolutions from 2006 you managed to keep... also while you are at it, 2007 is approaching fast and is just around the corner..... so make sure you give yourself enough time to write up a new list of resolutions for next year.... and use that time to ACTUALLY write the resolutions and dont just bum around..... lol..

Well, that brings us to an end for the year......
Just before i go, i would just like to say that whatever has happened has happened, there is no going back now.... all we do have is our present and the uncertainty of our future..... make the most of it now while you still can... because you never know... Kal ho na ho (there might be no 2moro).

also just before i go, jaan, if you are reading this, just remember, i love you......


adios people
see you on the other side
on behalf of me, a merry 2006 christmas and a happy new year

Sankalp Dave

adrenaline junkie

you ever have one of those days when you find out that you actually like something that you thought you hated?? i have. i had an impossible day today.... you know one of those when you have such a massive job to do in such a short time that it would be lucky of you if you actually made it. my job: two thermodynamics lab reports . the time i have: 10 am to 4:30 pm. yea.... 7 hours 30 mins. these are things that i was given 2 weeks to complete. but in true engineering fashion, i did it all at the last minute. for that time, i drove myself miserable just to make sure that i complete it and while i do it, i hate myself for leaving it so late. but secretly i enjoy it. i focused all my emotions on it... sadness, anger... it was all directed at that keyboard. linear expansion coeffecient and specific heat capacity. never have i zoned out of everything else just to concentrate on just that one task. its scary. coz in the past, i have been known to muck around at the last minute. thats what i have always been like. that too... on the last friday.... the last day before mid-semester break. when everybody is at vesbar getting drunk, i was in that computer lab on WS level 3 writing how the verneir calliper's uncertainty contributed the greatest amount to the linear expansion coefficient's overall uncertainty. 2.5%. and then as the dead line drew nearer, the pressure increased. but i still stuck to it. gave it my all.... and when i handed it in. i thanked god that roy nates still hadnt emptied his box. but after that..... it just felt hollow... i was still pumped up.... still in the "under stress, i need to work faster" mode. and driving home after that is not a good idea.... i was so tempted to just slam my foot on the accelarator and just blast all them cars out the way.... but i couldnt.... i had to resist..... this aint no video games.... the G forces are real. the accelaration is real. those are real people in those cars. and they still got people who love them. just coz i might have lost the love of my life does not mean that i have any right to takes theirs away as well.... but the way i am going right now, it seems like i have a death wish. ill jump off a cliff to my death right now if i have to. i am all charged up. i have too much inside of me to take out.... but i got nothing to take it out on but myself. oh well.... i guess it will pass....

time management 101 and the consequences of not managing time

Ok, now this all started two weeks into this semester. i was telling a mate of mine about how i had done motor control involving servos and stepper motors back in 7th and 6th form using microcontrollers. thats when this whole episode started. he asked me if i was willing to help him out with robodemo. my first reaction was HELL YEA!!! why wouldnt i?? i had always wanted to do this.... so i said yea sure... i would love to.... and then just out of interest, i asked him, when is the comp?? he said 2 weeks....... 2 WEEKS!!! to build a robot and win a compitition. thats impossible..... so since then, i have tried my best to get it to work.... but in the end, we just didnt have enough time, our robot was too heavy, the base was too flimsy and the wheels were too small.... so when we put the 2.5 KG lead acid batterry on the base, it just went concave on us and since the wheels werent big enough and neither did they have enough grip, all we got was constant wheels spin. now when you have such major problems 15 mins before compitition, you have no choice but to pull out. but hey, thats life.... you cant do anything about it at that point of time but pull out.... so thats what we did.... we knew about an hour before comp that we cant make it.... but we still tried.... tried till almost the last minute.... they say never give up even when all hope seems lost. but sometimes, its stupid to continue knowing full well you cant make it..... you cant do anything about it.... so you have to give up.... so we still went to the comp... to see what the other teams came up with.... and yea.... i learned a few lessons.... speed and weaponry is not all that is needed to win.... all you need to win is speed control and nose design.... so with valuable lessons learned, we start preparing for next year's competition and hopefully, we do better next time around.

it all goes horribly wrong

all of us have had days when we have a thing or two go wrong that ruins the day for us. but i guess i got the motherload of it in the last 24 hours. everything that can go wrong has gone wrong. why does fate hate me so much. it all started last night. i had a terrible arguement with my parents (nothing new there). i came online after that hoping that once i talk to my girl, all of the problems will just vanish away like they always do. so i went online.... and well.... that didnt happen.... in a nutshell, she told me to bugger off and leave her alone. so i went to sleep feeling really crappy. had a terrible night. i just couldnt sleep all night.... just kept on tossing and turning. even my dreams did not side with me. from what i do remember, i must have gone through atleast a million different ways to fall to your death. finally morning arrived and i woke up with a hope that a new day will wash my rotten luck away. but that hope faded soon. woke up late.... did my stuff.... and a couple of hours after that, the water cut out all of a sudden. i got a couple of messages from Vodafone that i have a couple of missed calls. which is strange.... coz i have had my phone with me the whole time and it DID NOT ring. so i thought that a call to 777 should fix it. they told me ot do a couple of things and see if that made things better.... nada. so it was another call, this time to the nokia call centre. it took me to some call centre in china (i am guessing) where the guy told me to reset my phone. but it still didnt work. so he said that i have to take it to their "authorised repair centre". he gave me the number over the phone. but no address.... so i called the people up and guess what?? they were closed coz its the weekend. BLOODY HELL!!!! so now i gotta wait till monday to take the phone to the people. it got worse. by the end of the day, the phone even stopped recieveing txt messages. so i am now back to the 3310. which, miraculiuosly, after all these years still works. see, that what the problem is these days with technology. we live in a disposable era. everything is always breaking down. cars, computers, MOBILE PHONES!!!! grrrr.... when will they invent something decent that has the feature and DOES NOT break down in 6 months??
but then again, why would they bother to. people like me who actually stick to the stuff that they have are a minority. in a world where style prevails over functionality, a phone that last kinda becomes pointless when the owner is gonna get a new one in a couple of months anyways. its annoying. i was talking ot a girl at AUT the other day and the talk of the differences between girls and guys came up. and i made a note that girls can be a bit stupid at times. coz all they ever care about is how cool something looks rather than how good its functions are. she imidiately replied "hey thats a very sexist remark". so i asked her. if you had a choice between a phone that looks really cool and didnt offer much in the functions and a phone that was big and chunky and was filled to the brim with the latest technology and gismos, which would you choose.... she admitted that she would prefer the one that looks good. maybe this is a guy thing. coz according to me, any person in their right mind would take the one with the functions. what has this world come to??

the analysis of the weird wake up dream

ok... after days of figureing out what the hell that scary dream was all about, i have finally come to possible explanation of such an occourance. i guess i have been playing too many computer games... coz i blame the concept of it on my most reason purchase need for speed most wanted. the round watch that shows me the map is the exact same one from the map shown on the bottom left hand corner of the screen. i also happen to wear my watch on the left hand. the helicopters resemble the same one found in the game when you get a level 4 heat on your ride... as for the runnig and hiding from them, well, i think it was a mixed scenario of what a game could be like if you were to mix my two favorite games... GTA3 and need for speed most wanted. that guy that got killed by the chopper, he, in NFS most wanted, would have been a civillain car that would have been accidentally taken out while the cops are trying to get to me... all in all... my weird, scary, adreneline filled dream was all a concept idea for a game... go figure...

weird wake up dream

i had to wake up early today for some reason. had to get myself out of bed at about 6am in the morning. this was something special since i dont usually wake up till after midday. anyways, to make sure i would wake up, i set two alarms, one on my mobile.... as usual and i also programmed my stereo to wake me up at that time. so 6am rolled around and i was woken up, but just before i woke up, i seemed to remember a dream that i was having. now this is really strange coz i have never had one this weird before and i am still trying to make sense of it... it was night, it was really dark all around. i was near buildings that kinda reminded me of mount roskill grammer. but it was different from inside. it was all dusty and it had really old dusty windows. the place looked abandoned. from what i remember, i had my back pressed against a wall on the outside of one of these buildings. and for good reason, coz passing from right infront of me and missing me by mere inches was a flash light. the source of which was somewhere in the sky. i could also hear rotors. this means only one thing. helicopters. i look upwards and find that its a black helicopter. but it gets worse, theres not one but there are two of these and for some reason, i cannot get spotted coz otherwise something terrible will happen. dunno what it is but i do know it will be bad. i look at my watch on my wrist and guess what?? it is not a watch, it is a GPS map of where i am and it also shows where the helicopters are and whats their spotting range. now that is weird. but it gets worse. the lights pass by and i decide to take a shot and run to the next building. so i take off... my heart is really racing at this point. thats when one oh the choppers seem to spot me and follow me with the flash lights. but i still keep running regardless.... the ground behind me is exploding due to some weird red lights that are coming from the helicopters. i duck into the next building and do not exit out the other end. i stop inside to catch my breath. strangely, lights are on inside this building. and there are a few people walking about as if its normal and everything is alright. my heart is racing at this moment. i see the first corridor to my left and turn in there and hide just around the corner. a group of three girls and a guy walks by. they go and stand at the corner facing the entrance that i just ran through.... in such a way that i can see them, but i cannot see the entrance. anyways, i hear the rotors getting louder and louder.... it suddenly gets windy and i see the spot light from that chopper shine on the floor near me... they are coming thorugh the windows next to the entrance. and it shines right on the group of people standing there. then the guy steps towards the entrance and disappears from my line of sight. all i see next is a bright light and hear the screams of the girls. the lights fade away, but the choppers are still out there somewhere. i deicde to take a look to see what that bright light was all about only to find that the guy was now a little pile of ashes and the girls were around it with shocked expressions on their faces. i decide its not safe there anymore and i decide to take a different exit. this one is in an L shaped form and is surrounded by flax bushes around the exit. so i wait near them waiting for my opportunity to get away from this building. the next thing i know, i hear this sound of concrete breaking and i turn around ot find that the exit that i had just stepped out of was about a meter higher than it was before and rising quickly. the entire building was being lifted. and as qiuckly as it started, it was gone. disappeared. all of a sudden a light shines on me and i turn around in surprise to find that it is from another helicopter. that just freaked me out so much that i woke up with my heart racing and me sweating all over and Crazy by Gnarls Barkley playing on the radio. oh, and i had a thumping headache and all of a sudden, i was really tired. now that was a really shitty way to wake up. all day i have been trying to figure out what the hell that damm dream was all about and whether it had any meaning to it or not. well... ill let you guys know when i come up with something. in the meanwhile, i would really appreciate any ideas you guys out there might have as to what it means. i am open to anything at the moment.

Computer one day, internet the next

yea. thats right. first it was my computer who decided to be a bitch with me, the next day it was the entire internet that was down since about 6ish when i got home and was out until about 1:30 in the morning. thats more than 6 hours that the internet was down. i finally figured out what it was that was going wrong with my PC. i think it had something to do with the digital audio cable being connected the wrong way around or something. but anyways, thats all fixed now. But honestly, something is seriously wrong here. it is Computer one day, and when i finally fix it and look forward to finally getting everything up and running, the internet crashes out. BLODDY GREAT!!! when will everything sort itself out and stop going wrong?? see thats the problem in this world today. when humans started off, it was called the stone age. then there was the iron age and so on and so forth. well, i reckon today's age should be called the disposable age. everything is always breaking down. everything is always changing at such a rapid speed that what you do have at the moment will become obsolete is a few years. if you were to go out and buy a very expensive piece of equipment, a few years down the line, that same piece of equipment will be the middle of the range stuff.... everything is always depreciating. what has happened to this world of ours??

Computer Problems

today was a great day for me. i went out with my mates and played Counter Strike for about 3 hours straight without even realising it. Man that game is addictive. anyways, i had a lot of fun toDAY as my girl also came back to auckland. however since i got home, everything has been going horribly wrong for me. i thought it would be peaceful and i can finally relax. But no. no rest for me... NEVER!! i got home and it was straight to helping out with the chores. didnt even have time to take my shoes off. finally, relaxed a bit and made a mistake of wanting to do some more work on my computer. BAD IDEA!!! i wanted to attach a Slave drive to my PC and get 2 CD drives working. i had to fix a cable for that. ok, so i turned my computer off and made the necessary attachements after hours of fiddling with the CD drive IDE cable. turn the switch on GUESS WHAT??? the darn thing decides to play up. nothing works. the monitor wouldnt come on. the drive wouldnt boot and it kept beeping. oh great. i stuffed this up. and all this was happening while i was talking to my girl on the phone. she has also come down with the flu. i think i might have caught it from her the last time i saw her. Dont ask how. anyways, she was really sick and was hardly in the mood to talk and my computer not working wasnt exactly helping. so after about an hour of trying to multitask, i gave up on my PC and properly started to talk to her. but i think the combination of her beeing peeved at me and being sick meant that it didnt last as long as i had hoped she would. she hung up after another hour or so leaving me holding the phone hoping she would say what it was that i wanted to hear. but that didnt happen. so, i tried to sleep after that. but i was so angry at my pc. coz it was all the stupid PCs fault, if it had worked when i commanded it to work, me and her would still have been talking. so i got out of my bed in a bit of anger and took it out on my PC. disconnected EVERYTHING inside and outside and started freash. i even unscrewed the motherboard and pulled it out. i didnt go as far as removing the processor though. i was very tempted to do that but i had to keep some control. so i started to put the whole thing back together piece by piece and testing it after each new piece was added. right now i got only 1 hard drive and 1 CDRW working along with the floppy drive. good thing is i got holidays at the moment. not the best time for my PC to mess around with me. coz i got all the time in the world to show it whos the boss around here. Moral of the story: if something gets so complicated that nothing seems to work or make sense. stop, pull every little piece of it apart and start again from scratch. i meanwhile have gotta now think up of how i am gonna make it up to my gal. adios. till next time.

End of the free txting weekend era

It seems like free txting weekends from Vodafone has always been there. Back when it started in june of 2005 in a little country of ours called new zealand, it was great. i remember waking up on the first saturday of it thinking wow, this is so great. i can txt all i want to my mates for FREE!!!! i took a look at my phone, (this is back when i used to have my old nokia 3310) and what do i see?? my inbox is full.... it was a message that said forward this to 50 people and recieve $10. i thought wow.... 10 bucks.... cool. so i forwarded it much to my stupidity and found that i didnt get 10 bucks... lol. that was such a pain in the ass spam that it even made it onto the 6pm news. lol. over time, free txting has been a major part of any vodafone customer's life. it was that extra reason you could look forward to the weekend. when it started, everyone was suddenly busy with their mobiles all weekend. it was just too popular. so rather than the scheduled finish of it at the end of 2005, they extended it until june this year. but like all good things, free txting weekend must also come to an end. this is the last day of free txt weekend. its less than 1 hour left and counting down. its a bit of a sad day for me today. firstly, my girl has gone away for 3 days. somewhere where there is no internet and cellphone reception. 3 DAYS!!! i have talked to her everyday since we met. secondly, a good friend of mine left for US today. she is gonna be gone for 3 weeks. shes gonna come back when uni starts. over and on top of that, i have been stuck indoors all weekend. i caught the flu. i missed auto salon thanks to the stupid flu. that pic below best describes how i felt over the weekend.

Semester Break

FINALLY!!!!! its about time. I have been waiting for this for about 6 months now and its finally here. The semester break has finally started. I had my last exam yesterday. Computer programming. It didnt go as good as i hoped that it would. Damm Slava changed the layout of the first part. Now when it came to studies for the exam, like any other normal person the only place i looked to see what the exam was gonna be like was the previous years' papers. And what does Slava go do?? He changes the layout of the first part. Oh well.... sh*t happens. Nothing i can do about it. But now that exams have finished, i do not want to think about them at all. So whats the first thing i go do when i finish my exam? I go meet my girl for a couple of hours and then when she left, it was back to vesbar and have a few drinks. good thing was, before i left, i told my mate dion (who was also gonna be at vesbar) to buy me one of those drink cards. there was a special on yesterday, 5 drinks for $10. So anyways, i come back and he gives me the card. its been bloody freezing in Auckland lately and last night was no exception. So anyways, i had a few Bourbon and Colas. I learned an important lesson last night. I do not have any sort of a strong alcohol tolerence. i could not have the five that i had paid for. i had 3 and by that time, it was time for me to go home. But mind you, 3 ina matter of about 1 hour 30 mins was a bit too much for me. my head was swimming and yea.... i still managed to get home in one piece and still convince my parents that i was not drunk. but now i am really starting to feel the effects of it. i have a feeling that i am gonna come down with a cold by the end of today. Got heaps of plans for the holidays. firstly there is the Auto Salon. its happening this weekend at Auckland Showgrounds in greenlane. I really wanna go and i even asked my mates to come along. but mysteriously, they forgot and conviniently planned a soccer game on that day. Oh well, thats their problem. but i am definately gonna see to it that i go to Auto Salon. On another note, Russell Peters is coming to New Zealand. his one show only at auckland town hall has already sold out. i got my ticket so i am DEFINATELY going to that. for those of you who dont know who russell peters is, he is a brilliant comedian. check out his website: www.russellpeters.com you will find more information about him there.

Friends

Friends. We all have them. They are always with us. They are someone we can always count on to be there when we need them. We often socialize with them. Share secrets with them and in general, have a great time with them. Over the years, you tend to make a lot of Friends. The longer you stay in a place, the more people you get to know, the more friends you have. Then when you change to a new place, you start all over again. You find a new group of people and make a new set of friends.

When I was in 7th form at high school, I had a lot of people that I socialized with. I did go to the same high school for 5 years after all. So I knew a lot of people. Quite a lot of them, I considered as my friends. I would socialize with them all the time. Then school ended. Everybody separated and went their own ways. Just before going, there was this atmosphere at school. Everyone signing everyone else's school shirt and the yearbook. Some of the stuff written in it were things like gonna miss you heaps and keep in touch. Suddenly, a lot of people became your best mates.

But once uni started, its all over. No one knows anyone else anymore. Everyone is busy with their own thing to even bother to talk to you. You take a couple of mates with you. Still bother to keep in touch with these "chosen few". But the rest fade out real quick. Even if you run into them in the street, you have a quick look followed by the raise the eyebrows thing. You acknowledge that they are there and move on and they vanish. Vanish to be seen again another day..... or not.

The more I think about it, the more it seems worthless. But then again, I guess high school is like that. You take about 2500 teenagers and stick them together for a long time in a confined space, you have no choice but to be friendly with them. Its because everybody is always around everybody else. Personal space is out the window. But once you are freed from that space, these formalities or illusions of friendship is no longer necessary. Thats why people tend to fade away real quick. Its because there is no point maintaining an illusion for longer than the necessary period of time. you move on to uni and make a whole new bunch of friends. And the cycle starts all over again.

The Bugatti Veyron

Every once in a while, when i am sitting in my room all alone with my computer on infront of me at night and the the stereo pumping out the beats while listening to The Edge, i am sitting there wondering, what is my dream car?? what car would i buy if i woke up 2moro with a billlion gazillion dollars?? so i decided to ask people what their favorite car was..... the two that stood out were the Ferrari Enzo by the hard out sports car enthusists and Nissan Skyline GTR R-32. so i decided to investigate further into this matter to see what is the greatest car that i can find. i started by looking up the vehicle statistics for the R-32. the nissan has a 2.6 litre straight six with twin intercooled turbo engine. this gives you a max output of 280 horsepower at 6800 RPM. thats a lot of horses from a road narmal street car. i next looked up the stats for the Enzo. the italian warhorse which is supposed to be the best car ever produced by ferrari has a heart of a 6 litre V-12 giving an output of about 660 Horsepower at 7800 RPM. this really is a million dollar car. with an apporximate cost of 1 million dollars for the base model. then i stumbled onto something even greater. a car so monumental that its in a league of its own. i came across this car out of sheer coincidence. i was watching top gear (my favorite TV show) when they did 3/4 of an episode on this car. Jeremy Clarkson, who car demolish a car's reputation in a matter of a couple of words called this one "Utterly, stunningly, jaw droppingly brilliant" (link to that article: http://driving.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,12529-1890873,00.html)

So i had to see for myself what is it about this car that makes it so great to deserve such praises from Clarkson himself. what i found was quite surprising. Firstly the car has a 16.4 litre engine in a W format.... that two V8s that are joined together!!!!! next they added 4 TURBOCHARGERS!!!! 4!!! this gives an output of 1001 horsepower at 6000 RPM. to keep this kind on power onto the ground, the Bugatti has a permenant all wheel drive. this car tons of accelaration. it goes from 0 to 100 Km/h in about 3 seconds and reaching a top speed of 406 Km/h. costing about 1.7 million dollars, this is not just any other car. this is THE CAR!!!! this is the concord among cars. this is what I WOULD BUY IF I HAD A BILLION GAZILLION DOLLARS.

My first blog

So. this is my first blog. FOr those of you that dont know me, My name is Sankalp Dave. Up until now, my blogging was always on MSN space. but people somehow found their way to it. so i am starting my new blogging here..... as a way to filter the people who actually see it. Usually, my blogging is all about whats happening in my life. but occasionally, i would post up lyrics of a song that i really like or just something that catches my attention. My blog is a sort of a window into my life. SO anyways, feel free to post any comments that you would want to... any question regarding my entries are welcome and all in all, welcome to this place......

Hope you love reading the stuff i post here in the future..... feel free to pop back soon... ill be posting my first entry here soon...

Sankalp