Mind my drawing...

One of my drawings in a notebook. It's really old but still a favorite.

Drawing gives my mind a sense of freedom that it craves - a stress relief of sorts; a journey into a place I am often scared to explore but when I do, even I am surprised. I find abstract images floating around, trying to find a matching piece - a puzzle I tell you. 

After all...

“Nothing is confused except the mind.” – Rene Magritte

It's Over!

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I know. I know. Exams aren't really over until you get your marks but the feeling of coming out of that exam room when you write your last paper sure feels great! (No matter how bad that paper kicked your ass). 

Now that exams are over, I get to sleep more, read more (stuff that I actually like) and blog more! Yay, for happy days :)

Argh...

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Someday, I would like to have a lazy Sunday afternoon.... Someday.

Exam Study Kit

The must haves this exam season:

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1. Preferably kept within an arm's reach.

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2. Stacks of post its. (Make sure you have a few spare for exam doodles). 

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3. Highlighters - Every book deserves a rainbow.

4. The more, the merrier. Late nights. Early morning. Every 10 minutes.
Give them names. You will be using them a lot.

And finally....

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5. Save. Print. Paste. Use only in extreme circumstances.

The Life and Times of Exams.

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Being that time of the year again when the pimples have a festival on my face, my eyes have sunk into their sockets while bags (not the shopping kind) make their appearance under them, my alarm goes off at odd hours and every break I have results in a trip to the fridge or sweet cupboard... Exam studying sure is a memorable period in ones' life yet that isn't even the half of it.

Stress is the very least of my issues; food shuts it up temporarily. My attempts at keeping my eyes open while staring at a book with a million words crammed into a page (I am a great exaggerator) makes me want to tear my hair out (God, save the little that's left)...Exam time, I tell you.

The first paper is always the one you see people walk into with a smile and out with a shake of their head. All I hear is them scurrying to find their buddies. "How was the exam?", "What was your answer for question 2.3.4.3.2.4?", "Ah damn, I should have put that."...Exam fever sure brings out the inner nervous wreck.

Night and day, day and night, I sit pondering about what needs to be learnt. Facebook. Twitter. Email. I check constantly - anything to keep my distance from that thing we call a book.

And then finally the last paper arrives... in with a nervous frown, out with a smile!

'Til then though, the books shall be my closest companion...

Keep moving. Keep trying. Keep growing.

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April has been nothing short of exhilarating for me. 

No. I haven't gone sky-diving, sat in a roller-coaster or fell madly in love. I only wish I actually had the time to sail the seven seas, scale the highest mountain and scream out to the world that I am alive rather April has been one of my most "work-filled" months for me.

Design projects, tests, assignments, advertising for GirlEng Information Session, organizing a venue, catering for scholars, brainstorming ideas on how to promote the "exciting and fun" world of engineering to female scholars while drowning in more tests and more design projects. How late mornings and early nights quickly turned into early mornings and late nights and eventually into not knowing whether it is morning or night, has made me into one strong Aditi. 

With having tons of work to go through this month, I feel like I have grown stronger and tougher than I ever thought possible. Getting through what you once thought was impossible is certainly a very sweet feeling. Have you ever experienced an adrenaline rush when trying to meet a deadline at work? How did it feel? I sure did have one too many this month. Handing in projects literally a minute before the deadline sure had my mind swirling. 

One thing I unfortunately didn't make it through is the A-Z Blogging Challenge. I have given it a good thought - I could either hide behind a paperback book and never blog again because the embarrassment of not succeeding might swallow me whole or I could simply just smile, type and try again...

Something that experience has thought me is that it is not whether you succeed the first time that is important rather it is the fact that you tried. Keep moving, keep trying and eventually you will get there. I look forward to the A-Z Challenge 2013. This year may not have been my year to see the challenge through but I am sure that there will always be another chance. To all those who have made it through, I applaud you for your willpower to sticking through till the end. 

At this moment in time, as I sit here thinking of how much more I still have to do in order to go where I want to in life,  I find it only appropriate to stretch my hand out, act like I am holding a delicate, crystal champagne glass and say cheers to life! Thanks for being such an adventure...

F is for... Fancy Dress Party.

In Attendence: Katy Perry, Posh Spice & Lady Gaga (that's me!)

One of the most nerve-wrecking feelings one can have is on the way to a fancy dress party, wondering if it is actually a fancy dress event!

E is for...Exercising isn't pretty.

Unless you are one of those models in health magazines, people in exercise videos or someone who leaves the gym looking the same as when you arrived, you pretty much know that the act of exercising isn't very pretty.

Being of average height (okay, maybe the lower bound of average) and naturally having a figure that tends to show everything I have swallowed, I recently started making an effort to exercise. It was at the end of November last year when I cracked. I was not obese or heavily overweight but it was the fact that I was reduced to fitting into only 3 pairs of stretch jeans and wearing jackets in Spring because my t-shirts showed my budding muffin top that made me finally decide to do something.

I started buying health magazines, a beginner's yoga dvd and pulled off all the clothes and handbags that were hanging on the stationary bike that my dad had bought 20 years ago. The first few days felt like someone had strapped me into a straight jacket but I was determined. The well composed, sweat-free lady in the yoga dvd had told me, "Enjoy the feeling. It is your body telling you that it's working."

In the first few days, I sure did want to smash her face every time she said that while I did another squat or lunge but I tried, at the very least, to accept the "pain" every time I bent to touch my toes, hoping that one day it would be my friend. At the end of the 20 minute yoga session (first few weeks, I had only made it through the first 10), I was left huffing as if I was in search of my last breath, drenched in sweat and believed my bones had temporarily lost its rigidity.

Now, 4 months later, I still act and look as if I was put through a gauntlet every time I get off the exercise bike but the best part of it is that the range of "wearable" clothing in my wardrobe has now increased considerably!  I haven't dropped 10 dress sizes or anywhere near ready to write a book but the fact that I am back at a weight that makes me not feel conscious of the angle in which I need to sit to hide the roll that decided to make an appearance every time I sat, leaves me feeling much happier!

Lessons learnt:

• The act of exercising to lose weight is definitely not very pretty (for both, the participant and their audience) but the results are worthwhile! 

• Main ingredients required:

1. Wanting to lose the weight because YOU want to.
2. Willpower to get off the couch and onto the bike.
3. Willingness to not see it as weight loss, rather as "energy gain".

D is for..... all those who dream big!

Captured at the GirlEng Weekend Camp 2011.

Everyday I hear people complaining about how sad their life is, how they wish they could achieve more, "if only they had the chance before" or most commonly, the "I'm just not lucky enough" line. Try then explaining to them what the reason could possibly be for this misery of theirs, and the first reply you'll get: "You think I don't know that?"

Yes, we all know the story that in order "to get it, you got to dream it" but dreaming isn't enough. It is just the first step. Believing in that dream and seeing it through to reality is where all the work lies and quite frankly, in this day and age there aren't many that actually make it to this stage. People know about dreaming but knowing doesn't necessarily mean understanding. 

Having recently read a blog post by Melissa McCreery entitled "Are You Dreaming Big Enough?", I thought it was only right to share it. Here's a snippet of what she had to say:

Here’s what I know: 

1. The bigger we allow ourselves to dream, the more we accomplish and the more we start to see what is possible. 

2. We don’t have to be any more amazing than we already are to do amazing things. 

3. We don’t have to know exactly how we are going to make our dream come true in order to start pursuing it. But we do need to HAVE the dream. We do need to have a clear intention that we’re going to do whatever-it-is and we do have to create space in our life for our dreams to emerge.

4. Big dreams usually don’t require immediate big steps. Small, steady, consistent steps tend to create the most solid and enduring results.

Go ahead, Dream Big! but don't forget to start taking those small steps right after.

To read more on Melissa McCreey's blog post, click here

C is for...Chaos

Recently I have been feeling rather lost; lost in a world where I see deadlines looming around me like  stars circling around one's head, scary faces creeping up closer and closer, undone work standing behind time saying "complete me",daily additions of new tasks stacked up on the pile of "to do" and somewhere in between my mother whispering in my ear "You should take a break". Total chaos! Who do I listen to? There seems to be no start nor end. Where is the order I crave?

Yes. That is how a day in the life of my mind goes.

One thing that I have started to understand though, is that we often think that chaos leads us nowhere but if we look deeper we are sure to find that piece of rope that is able to untangle the clump of wool. Having the opportunity to do a module in classic civilization this semester, I came across this abstract:

Before anything else existed, there was just something that had no particular shape and could not be described as it was empty; this was called Chaos. Then the mother-goddess Earth, whom the Greeks called Ge or Gaia, arose from Chaos and gave birth to Uranus, who became the sky-god and her husband. His rain fertilized the Earth and made things grow; therefore the world came into existence. Since the world was an orderly place compared with the primordial Chaos, the Greeks referred to it as kosmos, which means "order", "world", and "universe".

The moral of this myth is that order comes from chaos. What seems like a space of randomness is actually just an area that is waiting for someone to start picking out things and make sense of it. Chaos isn't necessarily a bad thing, after all...

I do prefer the beauty of chaos over ugly perfection.