10 Steps Ahead With a Broken Leg

Surat Sikh Conference 2009

2009-01-27T22:02:00.000-08:00

Surat Sikh Conference is a conference held in New York every year where Sikhs between the age of 18 to 35 get together to discuss current Sikh issues. This years theme was about the problem faced by Sikh farmers in Punjab. Formerly the most prosperous state in India, modern day Punjab desperately struggles with grave economic and environmental problem. From 1997 to 2001, the Indian Government reduced distribution by the Public Distribution System (PDS) by 20%. In 2001 there was a food surplus of 38 million tons while there were 320 million malnourished or hungy Indians in the same year. This clearly shows how the decision of PDS to reduce the distribution has a drastic effect on the farmers and the villagers. There have been shocking statistics on reports of Punjabi farmers committing suicide where 1 Punjabi farmer commits suicide in 3 days mostly because they re in debt. The conference discussed about this issue. We even spoke about the tragic 1984 attack on Sikhs. 2 speakers who lived through those attacks described the whole thing. I am personally shocked that we have not got any of our rights served and not many people around the world know about what happened.

Other than the discussions, we had a bhangra night where the famous Bhikram Singh performed. We went ice skating at central park, imagine skating outdoor in the middle of new york with buildings all around, and sikhs all over. It was so much fun. The whole conference was awesome, met so many new people mostly doctors and dentist. I personally hope we have a conference like this back in Malaysia. All we have are camps but not these kinds of conferences. Fellowship Camp may be the closest to this but we need our Sikh youths to be more informative about current issues faced by Sikhs around the worls.

Penn State 2009 Season

2009-01-06T01:55:00.000-08:00

2008 has past. Penn State will remain Penn State. without looking back, 2009 is gona be our season!! Hands down ours. All comes down to inches and seconds, and we re gona fight for that inch and seconds. Cause we know when we add up all those inches, thats gona make the difference between winnning and loosing, between living and dying. We are gona have the penn state nation wiling to take that extra inch toghether to the national championship in the 2009 season cause WE ARE PENN STATE.

College Football- Road to Big Ten Championship

2008-10-26T15:05:00.001-07:00

So basically American football is a new passion i ve possessed, one big reason is because Penn State has a great Football program and they have the best fans in college football. I ve learn to love this team and have started missing EPL games for these College Football games. Penn State is in the Big Ten conference where they play their college football games against other big ten teams. and they will rank us with all the other teams in other conferences. Right now with 3 games left, we are ranked 1st in Big Ten and 3rd in the country behind Alabama University and University of Texas Austin. We played our biggest game of the season last night against Ohio State where people said that if we beat Ohio state we will definitely be considered for the NCAA championship game to determine the best college football team in the nation. The game last night was a very defensive display with very little yards by both teams but a mistake by Pryor, the Quarterback of Ohio State when he lost the ball and gave us an interception where we scored a touchdown to win the game 13-6. We played at Ohio State and we have never won a game there since we entered the Big Ten conference back in 1993. The win last night was a memorable win with our biggest win of the season. Students here celebrated with a big time riot downtown State College. We have a creative and hardcore offensive line lead by Quarterback Dryll Clark and wide receivers like D Will and Norwood. Earlier in the Season we beat Michigan after loosing to them 9 times in a row. This I would say is our biggest chance to get into the NCAA championship and be the best College Football Team in the country.

Here is a link for those who wana know more about College Football and rankings.

http://sports.espn.go.com/ncf/index

summer break - Malaysia

2008-08-30T01:13:00.000-07:00

summer break Malaysia

- langkawi

- genting

- jamming

- performances

- gurudwara

- parties

- weddings

- shopping

- college ball

- prep for migration

Mid west games 2008

2008-08-30T00:33:00.000-07:00

Mid West Games is this event where al malaysian students studying in the States come together representing their university in games. This year it was held in university of southern illinois which is about 14 hour drive from PEnn State. The penn State contigent took a bus there a day before the games. It was pretty much like the olympics with events like swimming, athelethics, soccer, bowling, congkak, volleyball, tennis, basketball, ping pong, and alot more..We had a big contigent so we took part in almost every event. I was the soccer captain and played volleyball for penn state. We manage to get a silver medal in mens soccer, bronze medal in volleyball and a whole lot of medals in other events. We manage to win the overall championship and it was all worth it.

Catching up

2008-05-03T22:49:00.000-07:00

Well, its been a long time since i wrote on my own BLOG. I finally realise im not a Blogger..but what i can do is write maybe 2 sentences and throw in a bunch of pictures..hahaha. so since spring break, i have just been cathcin up on assignments and finals. Vasakhi, International Soccer Tournament(ISC), Maryland Field Trip with my Geoscience class, and Semi Formal were the few things I did while cathcing up on assignments. The Sikh student association booked a small hall and a family brought SRI GURU GRANTH SAHIB JI. So all Sikhs around the area (students and families) got together and had a celebration with kirtan and langar. I represented the Malaysian team for the ISC soccer tournament and we lost our group stage last match against BRAZIL. so that wasnt too bad. The Maryland Geology Field Trip was a day trip. We hiked and walked by the great falls and explored facinating geological features. It rained badly and non of us were up for it. So the trip back (4 hours) was not at all comfortable (all soaked and wet).

Spring Break

2008-03-26T20:31:00.000-07:00

With limited finances and the ever awaited midwest games during the summer, I had to spend spring break bumming around watching movies and playing soccer in the university itself. Went to pittsburgh (3hours away)for a day and loved it. Pittsburgh is an old but beautiful and amazing city filled with steel bridges and old structures. University of Pittsburgh (1787) is one of the oldest university in US. Their buildings and the interior looks alot like those buildings in 'Harry Potter'. The Steelers/Panthers stadium is another must see site in Pittsburgh. Got myself a drumstick from Hard Rock Cafe Pittsburgh. I drove back the whole way making it the first time driving long distance in the States. It wasnt as bad as I thought it would have been, but the fog troughout Altoona made it a lil harder. Besides travelling to Pittsburgh, we played alot of poker and I guess im an addict now. Some of my friends from University of Tulsa visited us here and those were the best 2 days of spring break.

THON 08

2008-03-03T10:31:00.000-08:00

12500 children are diagnosed with cancer in the US every year
more children die each year of cancer than any other disease.
more than 1 in 4 children diagnosed with cancer will not survive.
treatments for many children with cancer last between 3 to 4 years and can cost up to $25000 month.
Doctors speculate that they will find cures within our lifetime only if the needed funding for pediatric cancer research can be secured.

In 1972, Charles Miller founded the Four Diamonds Fund after the motivation of his sons death. According to him, he had to take his son 5 hours north to Boston to get proper cheap treatment. when his son, Cris passed away, he decided to do something for the families here in Pennsylvania and not drive 450 miles up to Boston to get cancer treatment. He got a doctor from Boston and started the cancer treatment in a hospital in Hershey. So he decided to start a fund that will basically help families financially with the treatment. The four diamond fund is supported by THON where students of Penn State go out and get as much sponsors as they can for a weekend dance marathon. You might be wondering how much money would a weekend dance marathon able to make to support the kids. I myself dance trough the weekend wondering how much can we actually help. Besides having the kids dance with us, and over 10000 penn state students dance non stop for 48 hours, THON 08 made $6,615,318. 6 million dollars for the kids!!! unbelievable!! now THON and the four diamond fund supports up to 2000 families with full medical treatment.
Lets make cancer history.

On a Valentines Day

2008-02-11T20:51:00.000-08:00

My insides all turn to ash, so slow,
And blew away as I collapse, so cold,
A black wind took them away, from sight,
And held the darkness over day, that night

And the clouds above move closer,
looking so dissatisfied,
but the heartless wind kept blowing, blowing

I used to be my own protection, but not now,
Cause my path has lost direction, somehow,
A black wind took you away, from sight,
And held the darkness over day, that night

So now you're gone,
And I was wrong,
I never knew what it was like,
To be alone... On a Valentines Day !

-Valentines Day, Linkin Park-

Valentines day just like every other celebration has its history behind it. It all started by a priest named Valentine who lived during the 3rd century Rome. When Emperor Claudius II decided that single man made better soldiers than man with families, he outlawed his soldiers from falling in love and getting married. Valentine realising the injustice of the law, defied Claudius and continued to perform marriages for young lovers in secret. When Claudius discovered Valentines actions, he was ordered to be put to death. During his time in jail, all the young lovers that got married gave him roses and notes. He also fell in love with the jailers daughter during his time in the jail. Valentine was hung on the 14th of february after writing a note to the jailers daughter that ended with .. Sincerely, Your Valentine.

What are rocks?

2008-02-08T23:07:00.000-08:00

Rocks are assemblence of one or more minerals. Therefore every Geologist must have learnt the compositions and identifications of minerals to be able to study rocks. The study of minerals is called mineralogy. There are approximately 4000 unique minerals(200 common minerals) that make up the 3 major kinds of rocks; sedimentary rocks, methamorphic rocks, and the igneous rocks.

Learning to identify minerals in class was a huge problem for me as I used to memorise the characteristics of certain minerals to identify them until i was thought to look at it in a broader manner, by categorizing those minerals into larger groups.

Minerals from Igneous Rocks make up almost 75% of the minerals in the Earth. There are only 7 groups of minerals under Igneous Rocks; Olivine, Quartz, Pyroxene, Plagioclase, Orthoclase, Biotite, and Amphibole. So if you pick up a rock and some one asks you to identify the minerals in it, most of the time if you guess one of these 7 groups of minerals, you will be right. So for all of you who read this, try memorising the names of these few minerals and you can then sound like a geologist.

The white mineral in the picture is known as Quartz which is mainly made up of only silicon and oxygen under certain amount of temperature and pressure. The green mineral in the picture is called Olivine (Fosterite in particular) which is made up of Magnesium, Silicon, and Oxygen.

Georgius Agricola (1580) is known as the 'Father of Mineralogy'. His books were used by many European mining companies to increase the efficiency of their outputs.

Team Building Camp at Shaver's Creek

2008-02-01T23:09:00.000-08:00

I am enrolled in this class called Diolog on Races where we just sit in a circle every mondays and wednesdays and talk about race related issues for 2 hours. There are 7 students in the class including me and this is by far the best most educational experience i have ever gone trough. I have learnt so much about myself and how, why people from different backgrounds think differently. Last sunday we took a van ride to shaver's creek for a Team building camp that lasted the whole day. Shaver's Creek (land own by penn state university) is situated in the mountains about half an hour from my university. We basically played some team building games and we had to analyse the idea behind every game. That was fun but very common. We had fecilitators who actually tore us down and kept asking us very personal stuff so that we be open to the rest in the group. We were asked critical issues and we had to give opinions about it and have a proper reason for our opinion. At first it was very unconfortable to speak our mminds out but towards the end of the day, we were so open to each other. I learnt so much about myself and this camp helped me alot in breaking my walls while understanding stuff outside my box. The group i went with is more like my family now here in Penn State. I wished education institutes in Malaysia come up with these kind of programs to increase integration among race as well as understanding other peoples point of view.

Winter Break - MALAYSIA !!!

2008-01-19T00:31:00.000-08:00

Trust me, Malaysia is the best country to live in. I only realised this when I got back for the winter break. The one thing that I never got in the US was the Malaysian food and my mom understood me so well that she took me to a 'kedai mamak' the moment I landed. Roti canai garing, nasi lemak vegetarian, and teh tarik was the order of the day and OH MY.... it tasted like the best food on Earth. Life was so relaxing back there without any cold to worry about. but honestly I had a hard time sleeping the first few nights..it was boiling hot for me. Jamming, Futsal, Couter Strike, PJ gurudwara, 'CHAA' at 'LINE CLEAR' were my daily routine. New Years day was awesome, got to meet friends and family...tell them truely how much I missed them. Obviously I never left midvalley, sunway pyramid, times square, and KLCC out of the list of places that i had to check out. Spending time with my family ( my parents and my brothers ) were honestly the best few moments of tthe holiday. Would be looking forward in seeing all of them again in June.

New York City

2007-12-08T01:06:00.000-08:00

Thanks giving break finally began. All penn state students left the campus to meet up with their families. We on the other hand took this week advantage for a lifetime experience at New York City. Our trip involved museums, statues, sky scrapers, subways, NYPD, shopping, china town, little Italy, Times Square, and Harlem. Basically we had fun and our experience can never be described. I spend 700USD but would never regret it.

my favourite sport

2007-11-13T17:49:00.000-08:00

Fav team - Manchester united, Portugal

5 fav players - C.Ronaldo, Deco, Messi, Kaka, Romario

predictions for this season - primear league champs (Man U)

- Champions League Final (Barselona vs Milan)

- Primear League surprise (Man City)

- Champions League surprise (Fenerbahce)

- Primear league players to watch (Tevez, Benjani, Petrov)

- Champions league players to watch (Z.Ibrahimovic, Pirlo, Kaka)

Greatest moment - Man U treble

Worse moment - Brazil vs france 3-1 (1998 fifa world cup finals)

Life During Fall

2007-11-06T21:57:00.000-08:00

life has been the same the past month, the time ticks and we carry out our daily orientated jobs picked and chose by our fate. My daily routine starts with classes, work, homework, and ends with the thought of being back in Malaysia. I did break trough this routine, watched a movie in the local cinema, took pics of beautiful sites, and played a friendsly soccer game on sunday afternoon. It has started getting dark very early so there is this thing called Day Light Saving where we are all suppose to minus an hour on our clocks till next year during spring. Haloween was fun but I din't get a costume to wear. it was weird to see everyone in costumes even for class. My only mistake was forgetting to take my camera that morning.

Akon & Rihanna Concert at PennState

2007-10-18T22:17:00.000-07:00

My god i just got back from the concert and still have the bass drum beating trough my head. Rihanna had the start and she really got the crowd going. unfaithful, umberella and shut up and drive were her famous songs the pennstate students screemed over. Akon came up on stage and the crowd just couldnt stop screeming. The best part was that he wore a PennState t-shirt. I never stopped jumping trough the whole concert. akon took off his t-shirt and jumped into the crowd while singing. it was massively crazy jumping around and screeming. I still cant get over the fact that I ve seen Rihanna and Akon live in concert. Man, im lucky!!!

Home Coming Parade and Raya Celebration

2007-10-18T21:39:00.000-07:00

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I represented the malaysian students in the parade under the international students contigent. It is said to be one of the most anticipated activity every year. Students and children gatthered along the parade path which was from east campus all the way trough downtown and ends at the west part of campus. It was truely a great experience walking with reps from countries like mexico, japan, ausralia, UK, italy, greece, and indonesia. As we gave out candies and carried our national flag high, the students cheered and screemed all the way till the end. Right after that we celebrated raya eve in a seniors house and had good malaysian style nasi goreng.

Field Trip

2007-10-09T16:27:00.000-07:00

This was my 3rd field trip and it was about 10 miles away from campus. It started raining badly just as we got on the bus and it stoped when we reached the area. So the site was all wet and we had a though time reaching up at the rocks we had to analyze. This week we were suppose to make a detail strategraphic column of a portion of sedimentary rocks. We were suppose to analyze beds of rocks and include information about the bed thickness, bedding plane contacts, sedimentary stuctures, fragments of fossils, color, and approximate particle size. With those information, we will be able to find out the history behind that place and what kind of environment was it under. We concluded that those rocks showed marine environment characteristics showing that thatt part of pennsylvania few million yrs ago was covered under water, either under a river or an ocean. We manage to find mud cracks and fossils embeded in the rocks. Believe it or not, we actually managed to look at some fossils of extinct marine animals. We basically had so much fun rolling around the rocks and mud.

Bhangra Night 2007 Penn State

2007-09-29T22:58:00.000-07:00

This was the second time Penn State was having a Bhangra night and it was called Bhangra Ressurection, The Second Coming. The party basically started at 10.30pm in the student hall big enough to fit around 400 people and the floor was full. So i would say around 3 to 4 hundred people turned up from all around pennsylvania. There were more white people then indians that came. It was basically just music and dancing like what they have in wedding dinners. The dhol players made it even more lively and I tell u, white dudes dance like crazy. Here no one is shy and stuff, they jus dance and ge crazy. The party ended at around 2am with the crowd forcing the DJ to keep playin music all night. I thought some white people how to dance bhangra and managed to get some numbers ; ) unfortunately most of em were guys. Some white guys even wore kurta and girls wore punjabi suits. There was a dholi tha reminded me of Ajeet and another guy reminded me of Sathi. Man i miss u guys!!

soccer and lab

2007-09-27T22:00:00.000-07:00

Top pics : my geoscience lab partner..man we had so much fun doing our lab together

: the building is called the old main, Penn State's most important building
: Standing in front of the geoscience building.

Bottom pics : soccer turf feild..honestly its smooth..trust me!

: guy in red is my very good friend, Mario (plays very good soccer)
: the chinese guy is from malaysia (Jin), plays soccer well too.

My First Penn State Football Game

2007-09-15T13:23:00.000-07:00

I manage to get a ticket for the PEnn state vs Buffalo game a few hours before the kickoff from a friend who didn't wana go so i excitedly took the 50 dollar ticket. game started at around 12 afternoon but it was windy and cold. the first quarter was kinda boring but it ended up pretty well.. we beat buffalo with a big margin 45 - 24. I had a great time watching the bands perform and the cheerleaders entertained the crowd well. The fans are crazy and the atmosphere was electrifying. I had a great time.

2007-09-06T17:56:00.001-07:00

football eve The people here are mad when it comes to college football ( american football ). Penn state is one of the best whn it comes to football and we have the biggest football stadium among all colleges in the US. The season just started and we won the first game 59 - 0 and it was one of our biggest win in history. The game tickets here are rediculously expensive and comes up to 200 dollars for a game. Season tickets were sold early june and it got sold out in 59 mins. ( fasters ever tickets sold in college football history).The day before the game kicked off, we had an event in the stadium called football eve. The football coach of Penn state ( Jo Peterno) age 70 over gave a very motivational speech and introduced the new football team this season and we are expecting to be top 3 in the BIG TEN League this season. It was a very spirited event with fireworks at the end and the chearleaders making the occasion even more attractive. They gave away free white PENN STATE t shirts to be worn for the following game. Our biggest rivals are Michigan, Ohio State, Wisconsin and Notre Damn. Next week Penn state will be playing Notre Damn and they have formally asked everyone to wear white ( even non students have to wear white ). We were ranked the best fans last few seasons and will be looking to keep that reputation this season as well. I watched the first game on Tv and learned the game well. To be honest, if you know the game, it is pretty interesting. Soccer is still the worlds best game!!!

Farewell Party

2007-09-04T19:56:00.000-07:00

A week before I left, my family organised a farewell party for me and it was a great success. Thank you to everyone who attended and made it a fun night. Basically we had food ( pizza ) and drinks with some outstanding performances by Param and Naranjan. We had very emotional speeches from my uncles, aunties, cousins and best of friends. The part I liked most was when I received a huge card with everyones signature and short msges. Thank you all so much for that special night.

A class day at Penn State

2007-09-03T22:50:00.000-07:00

my roomate - JOE

my cupboard and bed

the Geoscience buiding

my friend from Kenya and my ESL teacher from Vietnam.

9.00 - class begins
11.00 - break, lunch, quick nap
2.00 - class resume
3.30 - class ends, ride back up all the way back to east halls ( my room ) , study, go online
5.30 - ride to the turf, play soccer till it gets dark around 8.00
8.30 - get ready f
7.30 - get up get ready
or dinner, ride to downtown ( 5 mins ride downhill ) suffer riding back up.
10.00 - assignments, online, sleep.... thats if there are no parties which rarely happens.hahaha

Saturday Night Late Night Penn State

2007-08-29T21:30:00.000-07:00

This is basically a special event the university conducts to get students involved on saturday nights to prevent them from going to bars and stuff. Last saturday was my first time and I guess that was the best night so far here. The event starts at 9 pm and ends at 2 am. There were stand up comedians, megicians, people who do circus tricks, karaoke and they make a video of u singing for free, Bum and face sketching, photo sessions where they put the picture on a megazine cover and make us look like celebrity, black and white photo sessions where we are required to wear aincient clothes, photo taken and sticked on a key chain, and its all for free. It was like a big festival and all of us got a free t shirt as well. There was rock climbing, aerobics, basketball 3 on 3 tournament (winner stays and anyone can join) in the next building. The place was packed the whole night. The only reason till now I regret is because I did not take my camera along. This weekend they will be having a big football match and the place will be too packed so they are not conducting the late night Penn State this weekend.

washington DC

2007-08-25T23:44:00.000-07:00

It was a 5 hour drive from Penn state to washington DC. 5 busses filled with international students took part in that trip. We checked out the white house, the capital, and all the important monuments. It was worth the time. Our petronas advisor from Washington picked us up and took us for malaysian lunch at his place. Man it was the best food ever, malaysian style. We took a drive to a factory outlet in Virginia. It was huge with all the best brands you can ever dream of. Nike, Adidas, Tommy, Levis, Bum.... and the list goes on. The stuff there was pretty reasoanable and got an original Levis jeans for 30 dollars. By the time we got back to Penn State, it was past mid night.

2007-08-24T20:28:00.000-07:00

These are the people who matters most.Thank you so much for making this life of mine so special. Thanks for getting up at 5 in the morning, took an hour drive all the way up to the airport jus to send me off. I know I cried like a baby before leaving but thats only cause Im so happy that my life is so meaningful to you all. Thank u so much. Just hope time does not change anything. Hope after 4 yrs u all treat me like the same now. To mom and dad, thanks for fighting this battle with me and giving me this once in a life time opportunity. Would never have been able to do it on my own. To Gurpreet and Harmit, just hope will be able to come back and play strip football together again. Miss all the fights with Harmit and all the gossips about girls with Gurpreet. To veereen, thanks for making me the person I am today. Just hope will be able to go shopping with u like we always use to. And to the rest that matters, u know deep down who u are, I just wana take this opportunity to say i love u all !

2007-08-24T20:01:00.000-07:00

Penn State University

2007-08-24T12:01:00.000-07:00

Arrived here about 2 weeks back and I guess I ve had enough experience to understand the american culture here and share it with u guys. Penn State University is one hell of a huge campus. For the Malaysians I would say its almost twice the size of UM or maybe bigger.

The people here are crazy about american football so they built a stadium with the capacity of 110 thousand people.That would be bigger than shah alam stadium. It seems when they have a big game the population in the university campus becomes as big as the population of the biggest city in Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. Penn State is included in the BIG 10 which means they are top 10 best in US. They even have an indoor stadium used for basketball, ice hockey and other events. There are many open aired fields and they keep the turf better than in Bukit Jalil.

People here are super nice and friendly. They ll go out of their way to help me out. the girls here are Hot nothing like Malaysian girls ;) my university has around 50000 undergraduate students. Imagine adding that with the graduate students and the workers and lecturers here. Penn State has the biggest Alumni in US. 1 out of every 50 Americans is a Penn State graduate.

The place is super clean. Hostels here are like hotels in Malaysia. There is a microwave and a fridge in my room. internet and phone connection is also free in the rooms. The surprising thing is that there are so many indians and chinese here.

The food is delicious but expensive. vegetarian is not a problem here cause there are many vegetarians here in the states. the meal lan is awesome, we ve got like a certain number of points and everytime we go into a dining hall they deduct 3 points but I get to have anythin there and as much as i want. Imagine eating cookies, cakes, cereal, pasta, pizza, ice cream, doughnuts everyday. The variety of drinks also damn cool. capacino, pepsi, lemonade, all kinds of jus. Basically Im havin a great time and will share more when I start classes.