I tried maintaining a picture journal, like a couple of my friends, but the plan flopped big time. I just didn't have more than 2 pictures to put into it. One was an illustration of the combination of a fish's brain and a robot that was just moving about randomly because the fish was a bit disoriented in its new body. A lot of animal activists revolted against that one, but I think they wouldn't have had so much opposition had it been a dying fish. The other picture was of an old computer that dates back to the 80s; the keyboard had all of its function keys placed on the left and didn't have cursors other than the ones in the numeric keypad. Its a 2^nd generation keyboard because the first generation didn't even have lights for the Num Lock, Scroll Lock and Caps Lock. Maybe they'll consider eliminating the Scroll Lock because it isn't of much use any more. In some laptops, I noticed that they have Scroll Lock, F11 and F12 functions as combinations of keys rather than implementing a single key to conserve space; that, in addition to removing the extra Shift, Ctrl and Alt keys....oh, almost forget - they don't have a numeric keypad either. Then, there are the new Compaq laptops that can be converted to desktops(by unfolding) as they are foldable. Its hard to tell the difference though.

Today during my driving class, some nut who has just inches away in the fast lane turned into my lane and slowed down to overtake a truck in front of him so my instructor and I slammed our brakes(yes, he has a brake too) and we could hear the squealing of rubber. My instructor also pushed my horn so the guy got frightened and slammed his brakes too so I was just hoping my car would stop in time. That wasn't really frightening because I haven't yet been in any major accidents yet. All the ones I see look like the guy behind never used brakes at the time of impact; either that or it was very bad reflexes. I'd suggest everyone get those `L' boards attached to their bumpers to keep the drivers behind alert. My HUGE `L' board mounted on the roof of the car didn't seem to have any effect on that nut whom I almost crashed into today, and its supposed to be my fault because in this country, if you hit a car from behind, its ALWAYS your fault, even if the other car was moving in reverse.

Things are all in the mess these days. I was supposed to have my road assessment on Wednesday, but they postponed it to Sunday. Being the nice guy that I am, I accepted the date for Sunday and that was the end of the peace talks. When I got there on Sunday, I wasn't even listed(see what happens if you don't smoke the peace pipe?). It seems that it has been postponed indefinitely. Somebody, remind me to go and put my foot in the door and get my assessment date; I hope they don't smash my foot in the door.

Remember the movie October Sky in which the guy has a dream of building a rocket and then finally manages to do so? Just day before India's satellite, Insat 3C had been launched by one of the Ariane spacecrafts. It looks just like that final rocket that they show in the movie; I mean the big one after the rocket launched by his dad. Its a cool movie and I'd call it a must-see. Anyway, I was hoping maybe I could find something to work towards. I'm currently mindlessly wandering about looking for something BIG to work towards and to make my ambition. Looks like I was just meant to blend into the crowd instead of stepping out and performing some remarkable feat. I'm on the lookout for something on the electronic frontier so that electronics can be introduced to students at the age of 11 or maybe 14 instead of at the engineering level. Well, at least the basics of it can be taught because its in the teenage years that students have a lot of creativity, which begins to diminish as they move towards their twenties. The educational frontiers aren't all that popular right now, but I think *I*(with italics, bold, underline and everything else for more emphasis) can change that. Just wait and watch....
PS: Don't laugh at me if I become a failure, I'm just having a first go at it. I just may make modifications to the plans if something doesn't turn out right and I have no idea about whatever they teach in the B.Ed., M.Ed., MCT and all that so I'll just have to rely on common sense(which is really rare these days), instincts and a lot of luck.

Hey, I got my assessment date for the road; I'll get the date for the final test then. It usually takes a while o get through the final test. Actually, the assessment test was supposed to be today, but I received a phonecall telling me that its been postponed to Sunday. Its good because I didn't see myself enlisted for today's batch of assessments students and so I would never have even known that I had a test.

BTW, the news is just in that Masarat Daud is quitting from the presidency of the Themes club that she started at the university. I just asked her if she could get me the a note of acceptance for the last thing I was assigned so I could go about it and she tells me not to go too far into making it a hit because we'd be leaving the club anyway to devote more time into study, play and getting some experience to put onto the C.V.

My unc was operated upon yesterday and it took them 7 hours to go over the whole process. I wonder how they manage to get everything done without tape or anything; I mean they seal the blood vessels without heat or tape - they just stitch the vessels and they know, with their eyes closed and their hands tied behind their backs, that the blood isn't going to drip out of it. Its a miracle, actually because I've tried using thread to seal a couple of pipes, but it doesn't work unless the pipe is rigid and blood vessels are too flexible to hold in place. And the blood isn't supposed to clot so rule out the possibility of a clot stopping the flow of blood. Hmmm....this must be another one of those mysterious things about the medical profession. Actually, I wanted to go for medicine, but things didn't really work out right.....I mean the politics and stuff - they started a court case against all the colleges I applied for so I just applied at some other place out of their jurisdiction but they don't have medicine here and that's how I landed in Information Technology.

Its been almost a week since my last update. I had my parking & signal tests on the 16^th and passed both of them. Next comes my road assessment and finally my road test. The road test is tough to get through because even if you drive perfectly, the examiner is supposed to make up some excuse to put a stamp the papers with a failure. Mine's an automatic so hopefully, things should be easier than it is for the folks driving a manual vehicle. Another good thing about driving an automatic vehicle is that I neither have the garage test, nor do I have the hill test. Meanwhile, on the non-driving side of the world, I came across an old Mercedes classic in pristine condition....actually, I came across 4 of them and all of them looked as good as new; I'll bet they got it repainted and spent quite a bit on maintaining it - it should be worth a lot right now. Not much to report except for a LOT of work from my Arabic class. I'm not really into the habit of doing my work regularly, but this Arabic class makes me do it.

Today at the driving institute, there was just 1 student out of 8 who passed his road test(the final test). One of the guys who failed was my classmate at the university and according to him, he failed his test because while parking he accidentally shifted to the 3^rd gear instead of the 1^st from 2^nd and his car was running out of control. Anyway, a long time for me to read the roads - I have yet to receive my dates for parking so I look up the noticeboards everyday; hopefully things will change by then.

I wonder whose bright idea it was to write a book with zillions and zillions of numerical questions on electrical physics; I'd rather spend my weekend with an Archies book. Now that I can't go all the way to the library till Sunday, I just have to look around for something to do because my book turned out to be some nut's physics notebook published on paper.

Whoa! Looks like everyone in class have been hypnotized into answering questions. One of my classmates, Yogesh Ahuja, changed his major from I.T.(Information Technology) to BBA(Bachelor of Business Administration). I wonder what made him do that. He lost only 10 credits inspite of being in his 2^nd year because half the subjects for I.T. belong to BBA! Either way, it isn't much of a loss for him because for BBA he requires only 190 credits while its 210 credits for I.T. .....and in other news, I met several of my former classmates that I never thought I'd ever see again - actually, they spotted me, recognized me and yelled out my name loud enough for the whole university to run over to see what was going on. Anyway, I hope tomorrow is yet again another fine day. No, for those of you who were wondering from the journal entry a couple of days ago, I'm not a nerd; I'm just a part-time geek!

Today, I finally solved the mystery of why so many cars just stop by while I wait by the roadside for my ride to the university. I figured out with my observation that that's a site where the hitch-hikers go hitchhiking and get themselves a lift and pay a nominal fee to the guy driving the car. Maybe they thought I was stranded there after seeing all the stuff(well, mostly books) that I was carrying along. Nice to know that at least someone pays some attention to me (*sniff*)

Its fun to be a nerd! Trust me, its true, being a nerd feels really great. As a nerd, you can comb all sorts of places for information and you just stand out for the rest of the gang. Go, run over to the library and get the weirdest books you can find. Go and get yourself a book on nuclear physics and organic chemistry or something. Maybe even rocket science, after being inspired by the movie October Sky. I watched the movie about a month ago and as far as I remember, there was this guy who wanted to build a rocket but his dad wanted him to become a coal miner so after a couple of arguments and tempers, he gets accused of starting a forest fire with one of his rockets. Then, his dad has an accident so he takes up his dad's place in the mines. Later, he proves his innocence in that forest fire case and gets back on track, working towards the science fair. At the end, he manages to build his dream rocket and then a flashback to what happened to all the characters in real life.

The driving classes this morning went fine. I think I did pretty well on the road, except for a little turn. I'm still not all that great at changing lanes for U-turns and stuff. The last 10 minutes were dedicated to reverse-parallel parking. Its hard to tell how far the car is from the poles so that's the hardest part of it; at times, I see the reflection of the sunlight off the number-plate badge and that's when I can tell that I'm really close but I can't always rely on that because in reality I'll have another car back there and not a pole. Parking in the evening should be easy because you can use your lights to tell how far the poles are. Or even those fancy Mercs that have a distance indicator with some sort of a radar.

Well, as usual, I forgot all about my resolutions AGAIN!!!

After all, resolutions were made to be broken.....and so are rules of the road, according to resolution #1 because I drove ultra-rough & ultra-rash because its hard to see too well with the sunlight shining into my eyes. Resolution #2 is still okay but I haven't started studying for any of the exams yet and I'm already signed up for one of them. If I don't get through this one, I'll almost definitely give up on this resolution too so scratch this one off the list too. Resolution #3 is a bit tough so I never even moved muscle towards fulfilling it and it just got wiped off, right from the planning stage because it wasn't too practical. Resolution #4 is tough if you're the all-knowing guru of all times. Resolution #5 is too vague and I can't think of what made me make it up. Anyway, its fun to make resolutions

Wishing you all a very HAPPY NEW YEAR! Y2K+2
When I skipped my journal entry session for the last two days I was making up my resolutions for the new year. They are:

1. Drive faster, smarter, better - I NEED my license this year
2. Get myself to do all those exams that I've been staying away from
3. Get my little bit of physical exercise
4. Teach myself something worthwhile
5. Get a bit more involved into things going on around me

Today at the driving class, I drove FAST, just like my instructor wants me to, but its crazy! I made 3 mistakes in a single day. First, the car accidentally crossed the line and went into the other lane because I couldnt turn the steering fast enough to keep the car in my lane after a U-turn. Then, the instructor asked me to overtake and I didn't see any vehicles around so I stepped on the accelerator; this van then came from out of nowhere at a really high speed and so I tried slamming the accelerator, which proved unlucky for my because the accelerator slipped and the car started slowing down again. Going on to mistake #3, well it wasn't really my fault, but the signal turned red and I HAD to stop so I used the brakes and stopped exactly on the line - what's wrong with that, you ask? My instructor said that I hit the brakes too hard. Sheesh!

Now you know where all those rash drivers come from - the driving school! I was driving perfectly well on my own and in the classes they tell you to drive FASTER. I drive either at or slightly below the speed limit, but that's just normal and the way it was meant to be. Its also more eco-friendly because it consumes less petrol and stuff......and at the end of the day all the rash drivers get their licenses and the poor guys like me end up taking zillions of classes at the institute and get stuck there for the rest of our lives.

I've been eating out for over 4 weeks now 'cos my mom is with my sis and my sis is on vacation so while she gets to eat all the nice stuff that my mom cooks in the kitchen, I'm forced to eat stuff that someone whipped up according to someone else's tastes and the stuff is either too spicy or too tasteless or just plain icky. The best place I've been to so far is some Lebanese restaurant at the local shopping mall(Bur Juman) and the food there is just great though I wouldnt want to go there for each and every single day of my life. Puh-leeze, don't even think of suggesting that I cook up something of my own. I'd rather just escape the torture by running away from myself if I could. The last dude who got to be my guinea pig for the day never came back and is still in a state of shock from the experience; I just hope the poor guy doesnt sue me or anything 'cos situations can get pretty unpleasant when it gets to that stage.

Hello again, people. I've made up my mind to dedicate some time from every single day to write up a journal entry. Its for me to get a sense of discipline into myself because I just don't have the will power to stick to my books and avoid all the music and jazz when its time to do some serious studying. I think it should be a good start because I actually love writing and its best to start things off with things that you love.

I am actually beginning to get better at driving now that I've finished 7 days of training. I still need to pick up on speed but the accelerator just slips away from my foot and slamming it down doesn't do any good except for roaring a bit because its a Nissan Sunny with maybe a 1.6 litre engine and I have a feeling it just doesnt have enough power to propel my trash into the garbage dump. I wonder why the instructor doesnt say anything more than a few irritated words whenever I make a mistake; maybe because he pledged to put an end to the generation X but is unable to do so because of the local laws and is saving it for some other time? Or maybe he's just trying to keep my attention on the road, which is very hard to do when you've got the hang of driving and are just trying to get it over with so you can get your license.

Did I mention that I met one of my classmates yesterday on my way out to lunch? No, it wasn't the legendary Nazia Hassan. I forgot her last name, but she shares the same first name. One thing that makes her look like a.....like a......errrr.....now, what's that word...oh yeah, a fashion freak is her braces. I may actually give in to the advice people have been giving me for installing braces onto my teeth. The only braces I've ever got installed were on my wrist and in my computer but none on my teeth. Besides, I'd rather lose my teeth in an accident than 'bracefully' let the braces make a mess out of them.

YaHoo! My grades are in and I got an "A" for both my courses. Sounds like I hear someone asking for a party(a party? What's that?). Getting through that class was like holding my breath while I turn blue 'cos I didn't buy the textbooks. I did the assignments and got through the exams *without* the textbooks! God forbid anyone decide to do that unless they've got the nerves of steel to survive through class without turning pale when the instructor goes about asking questions.

I'm beginning to wonder if going to the local Driving School is the most practical way of getting a license. I mean, they have formal rules that aren't really necessary for a normal everyday driver driving through the streets on a normal Sunday afternoon. Pick any random driver on any random road and randomly enquire - its all a formality; no one ever bothers with the parking brake at the signals, especially with those big cruise ships that have the parking brake located on the floor. Besides, has anyone watched "The Fast and The Furious"? I'll bet they dont bother themselves with the hand brakes and shifting to neutral at the signals.