whistler’s blog

This concept has been told and retold before, but I didnt get a chance to blog about it. Most of the year at AUS, it is unbearably hot outside, each time you enter a building you thank God for creating AC. Its usually quite cold inside buildings.

During a typical day a typical student has to go through several typical “sun crossings”. You get out of a building and walk in the burning sun to get to your next class. While in the sun your head expands, as your brain expands you feel smarter for a while (when not in a class). But within a couple of minutes you are in AC again and your head shrinks and by this time you are sitting in a class. Because of the contraction of your brain you feel really dumb.

As this cycle continues throughout the semester, numerous expansions and contractions of brain result in the weathering of the brain similar to what happens to rocks in the desert. During the day heat expands the rock, at night the cold contracts the rock, this creates stress in a very thin outer layer of the rock which then peels off. Overtime rocks just become sand. But the brain weathering I am talk about is much faster than the so called “onion skin weathering” because expansions and contractions happen to our brains multiple times a day instead of once as in the case of rocks.

So by the end of a semester it is perfectly normal to feel much more dumb than you were at the start of the semester.

I haven’t blogged in months, I felt like paying more attention to more useful things. I have been working on a car for the FSAE competition. Now I am programming the ground station for an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle. After a lot of confusion of where I’m heading, I have no regrets that I decided to do mechanical engineering. And looking back at it, it has been a fun year at AUS, regardless of my constant complaints about how hot it is in Sharjah and how hard it is to get a driving license over here. Maybe I’ll blog a little bit more often, or maybe I wont.

Today was my last IB exam, and finally after months of hardship, its over. I must say although IB may have given me a little different experience, I am an A Level kind of person. My grades have been very low, reason for getting rejected at universities where I would really like going to. I am pretty sure my grades would have been superb if I were doing A Levels.

Well, I should also blame TIS for the bad grades and frustration. At my new school, EIS, it was fun and exciting, while very tough at the same time. I would really miss this place.

I have never waited for any other day as I have waited for today. I had put a counter on iGoogle and google desktop(when I used it) for this day. Finally it counts 0 days.

159 days till i get out of the cage of IB, i.e. my last IB exam. I am already beginning to plan what I want to do. Firstly I want to go trekking, there are so many wonderful places out there like Nanga Parbat, Deosai, Rakaposhi and Siri paye. Trekking previous June was one of the best experiences of my life. This time I also want to do something more thrilling as well like rock climbing, repelling or rafting.

Then I am thinking of doing an internship somewhere as I have never had any sort of real work experience. I might take up some open source coding project, some entrepreneurial idea or both. And of course I want to meet everyone I know in Pakistan before I go on to university.

No post for a long time, I have been quite busy and am trying to reduce the amount of time I waste using my computer, i.e. being carried away browsing sites which are irrevelevant to any of my IB assignments.

A little update on my life, I have started taking guitar lessons, and have to buy a guitar, just that I cant find any time to go to some place to shop for it. Finally my extended essay is beginning to take some shape but still far from complete, instead of doing lab experiments I want to create a computer simulation for the essay. I am making some progress catching up with the french class, but really need to work on my vocabulary.

Over the course of Ramadan I have mastered the art of sleeping in the bus, now I am aware of several postures that are suitable for sleeping. I had got a backache from the way I used to sleep before. One Thursday my phone and watch slipped out of my pocket while sleeping and I had to wait till Sunday to get them back.

Some interesting things from class. Economics period. We are missing a teacher, so there is a substitute but he stays outside the class and we are engaged in various activities. Suddenly he comes in and asks why are some of us listening to music. Somebody says: “Im not listening to music, im learning spanish!” *pause* “Como se llama, bonita, mi casa, su casa “. Really good excuse!

After spending a few days working in an accellerated pace including sometimes keeping awake overnight, I am now in a somewhat better situation. I have finally finalized my extended essay idea and am going to start working on the experimental part of it during breaks. I need to get in to some sort of activity, probably music classes to cover some CAS hours. I have to do my world lit essay before the end of ramadan, so i can prepare for my english oral presentation and TOK presentation in the eid holidays and also complete a math coursework. I badly need extra french tuition, I seem to know nothing compared to others in the ab initio class.

Regular visitors would notice this blog gone back to a previous date. Well the server got hacked and I had no recent backup. I had just done a lot of updating recently because I know I will not find much time for this in my final year of IB diploma.

Life is tough, have to wake up early in the morning for school, school is a long distance away and traffic in Dubai is a big headache, There are all kinds of deadlines to be met for IB. At TIS we wasted a lot of our time, over here at EIS it is acadamically tougher but people, both teachers and students have been very friendly and helpful so far. Have to catch up on all the work and get where the rest of the students are.

My interest in photography is nothing new, but my gallery at flickr is! I wanted to put a gallery on this site but was facing problems with drupal. So i decided to use flickr to host my photos instead, which is much better than running your own script to manage photo’s.

I’ve put many old and new snaps that I have taken, even got some positive response, I never checked before that someone had commented on my snaps. I’m even thinking of upgrading my flickr account but its useless until I get a better internet connection and better photography skills.

Few days back I went to trip to northern areas with school through Adventure Foundation Pakistan. It was fun and a really nice experience, specially the first three trekking days were really cool. We trekked from Thandiani to Biran Gali on day one, from there to Dagri on day two, next day we trekked to Natia Gali via Miran Jani.

We then had to part with the very nice new friends we had made over the three days. We then camped at Ayubia and rested there most of the time. There we had 16 annoying sixth-graders camping with us. On the second day at Ayubia we went for a trek to Shekapura, if I got the name correctly.