I'm leaving in about an hour and I probably won't be online again for another week or so. This is less because of internet availability and more because the damn power cord needs a converter and I'm too cheap to buy a British one. In the interest of laziness, Im gonna say don't expect any posts, at least till August.

Malls are so damn pro

Yesterday night we watched mall cop. I'm really bad at doing movie reviews, so I won't attempt one. Nonetheless, after playing CTF at Tysons, this movie just seemed so epic. That probably conveys nothing, but I'd recommend you watch the movie.

Grad + ANGP

I'll actually describe these sometime in the coming week. For now, though, a quote from Lily's car just as I was getting dropped off this morning.

Lily's dad has dropped off Ellen and takes a left turn, whereas my house is off to the right ish.

Lily: Dad, Arvind's here.

Lily's dad takes an alternate route.

Lily's Dad: Arvind is so big, Lily. How could I forget him?

Two hours ago, I was frantically filling out forms online, writing essays and panicking because I had to turn in all this stuff for college housing and advising by 5. I finished, and, after saving several confirmation pages, I went to eat an incredibly late lunch. I came back upstairs and noticed all these saved pages cluttering up my desktop and I decided to move them. I opened up my school folder and realized something: I should probably stop storing these files under Colleges in my Senior Year folder. I quietly went up a directory and moved my frosh, soph, jnr, and snr year folders into a new TJHSST folder before making a new College folder. I won't lie: it hurts.

Capture the Flag - So Legit

Take note, the title of this post is not sarcastic. Lily briefly described this, but I had a lot of fun with it, so I wanted to be more complete.

First a bit of history. Whether or not he admits it, this amazing idea was borne of Ved Basu. If asked, he will claim that he was joking, but this is a farce. We were trying to figure out how to spend the evening after the last day of school (suck it, juniors =P) on Wednesday. The initial suggestion was laser tag, which is undeniably fun. However, Ved said there was a lot more to do at Tysons Corner. He started throwing out suggestions, and we ended up talking about capture the flag - not outside, but inside the mall itself. It's kinda funny, but before we started playing this, everyone in our group was like, fail, this will not work, while everyone else whom I told this idea to was like, THATS SO PRO. Anyway, no one responded to the email thread about Wednesday evening, so on Tuesday night, we opened a group chat with me, Tim, and Ved to discuss what we were doing, eventually expanding to Eric and Dwang as well. The conversation was not incredibly on topic, though I dont think the participants would be very happy with me if I revealed the chat's contents =P. In any case, we finally worked out more or less all the details except for one: what would the flag be. Tim suggested rocks (no), I suggested flags. No one liked either of the suggestions, but we promised to bring in two flags and several rocks the next day.

Thus, after school had ended on Wednesday, we piled into several cars and drove to Tysons. Tim went to pick up Alice from Oakton and meet us at the mall. Eventually, we all arrived and began to argue about how to make the game work, while me, Ved, and Renjie at least were having really dumb "who can go the farthest in three steps" competitions. Eventually we decided on the rules of the game and set out for our bases. I stopped off at Nordstrom with Chris to give his mom his backpack, which took quite a while because we're both introverts who dont like to ask questions to employees >_>.

The rules of the game:

Tysons corner is shaped like an L. We situated the two bases at opposite ends of one branch of the L (note: this does not imply that the other branch can't be used for the game). We were allowed to use both floors of the mall. The teams were:

Team Tall (or not short):

Renjie You, Jack Wang, David Kim, Chris Olund, Eric Bomgardner, Arvind Thiagarajan

Team Short + Kee Young:

Tim Hu, Alice Yeh, Ved Basu, Lily Hsiang, David Wang, Luke Cheng, Kee Young Lee

Tall had their base outside of Bloomingdale's, while Short had their base outside of Macy's. Because we didnt want to get caught and thrown out by mall security immediately, we instituted the no-running (more correctly translated as no-getting-caught) rule. No man's land was this little strip between the two bases where escalators went up and down. Flags were located on the the upper floor, jails on the bottom floor. The game begins.

Let me describe a little bit of the strategy here. There are three ways to attack Tall Base:

1. Straight on, a direct line from the Short Base. This is likely to get you killed, but is also the easiest way to the flag if you can make it.

2. Descend to the lower floor, enter Bloomingdale's bottom floor by somehow tricking the jail guards of Tall, and go up the escalator there, then try to take the flag from behind. This usually works alright as long as you play the priorities of the jail guard against him. If he's trying to catch you, try to free teammates in jail (both you and they then get a free walk back to home base). If he's trying to guard the jail, then get into the store and head on up to the flag. Of course, everyone's got cellphones, so you have to get to the flag before the people below call the people above.

3. From the outside. There are actually two ways to do this: one entrance comes in from the side hallway outside of Bloomingdale's, and if planned properly allows for easy access from behind to either the flag or the jail. This is by far the best entrance. The other entrance is at the back of Bloomingdale's, but while it allowed for easy access to the jail, its access to the flag was heavily guarded.

There are also three ways to attack Short Base:

1. Straight on. Same deal as with Tall.

2. From below, this time through Macy's. Same deal as with Tall.

3. From the outside, there's again an entrance into Macy's directly, but this has the same flaw as for Tall Base, except now the flag is guarded much more securely. However, there are now two other entrances from the outside. One of them is too far up the hallway, so it really is the same as 1, but it provides for a nice escape route. The second one is all the way up the unused branch of the L. Nobody expected it to be used, and I dont think it was, but in future games, it's likely to be pretty epic.

I'm not gonna go through each game detail by detail, because that actually would get boring. First game I was on defense, our team as a whole played a mostly defensive game, putting half their team in jail. Ved was going to free them via attack route 2, and I noticed but, being an idiot, I waved to him for the lulz, so I was no able to catch him as he ran away through escape route 3 (back of shop).

Meanwhile, dkim waited until most of their team was trying to salvage their position, and then snuck across quickly, took the flag, ducked into a tea shop, drank some tea samples, and then walked leisurely back.

Second game, we decided to play more offensive a game, but Short was playing good defense, and basically all of us minus dkim and chris were in jail (maybe Eric too, I forget). Kee Young took our flag and they won.

Third game, I decided to take attack route three, via the outside edge of the L. However, as I started running along the path, I noticed Tim and Alice doing the same thing from their side. So I ducked behind a dumpster and waited for them. At one point, I jumped out to tag them and then realized that it was some random black man, who looked at me quizzically. I apologized and went back to hiding. God I must have looked sketchy >_>. In any case, I jailed them both and then stayed at the jail guarding them. Unfortunately, I then fell for the oldest trick ever, when Alice said "Hey Arvind, look over there" and then Kee Young freed them from the other direction. It was ok though, because while they walked back to their base, Eric got their flag and got back to ours. So in short, Team Tall was a winner =P.

Basically, we need to do this a lot more often, and next time with more widely spaced bases and with visible flags instead of putting your hand on your head to indicate possession of the flag. Twas epic.

I apologize in advance for this post. I try to avoid politics on here, somewhat because the politics I follow is politics most people don't care about at all. I've especially tried to avoid this topic, since our dear government does not sympathize, but I feel that I need to put this out there. My view is not an uncommon one, but I do think that in this case, its an unbiased one.

Today a war ended. A bloody civil war that most people did not follow or, frankly, care about. The war was fought in the North East sector of Sri Lanka by the Sri Lankan Government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eeelam (LTTE), also known as the Tamil Tigers. The Tamil Tigers are proscribed as a terrorist group in several countries, including the US. This is not entirely inaccurate, I concede. The Tigers are particularly harsh with their military, though of course, not being a recognized state, their military is treated as a terrorist organization.

Some background is needed to understand why this classification exists. Sri Lanka is home to two distinct populations: Sinhalese Buddhists and Tamilian Hindus. These two populations have little in common with each other, and the Tamilians, though numerous, are a definitive minority. The Sri Lankan Tamils have always been mistreated and persecuted to varying degrees, both by the Sinhalese and by mainland Indians. Hell, even one of India's celebrated epics (Ramayana) demonizes them. So when the British left Sri Lanka to self government, it was no big surprise that there were revolutionary movement fermenting in the Tamilian Northeast. One of these movements caught on and grew into the Tigers as they were recently. The Tigers were enormously successful at gathering support from Tamilians both in Sri Lanka and in India. They established a shadow government to administer proper justice to the Tamilians. The Sri Lankan government, concerned with its loss of power, sent troops into Tamil areas of the island. They were completely surprised when a LTTE military materialized and pushed them back out of Tamil lands. Sri Lanka retaliates by bombing the Tamils, eliciting protests from Indian Tamils. Indian Prime Minister finds his hand forced, and sends a peace keeping force (read: Indian troops) to quell the conflict in Lanka. Unfortunately, the Indian Minister ends up fighting on the losing side, i.e the Lankan government, enraging the Tamil Tigers. The Tigers had their agents in India assassinate the Indian Prime Minister. This resulted in the peace keeping force being withdrawn, the Tamil Tigers being marked terrorists, and an unofficial ceasefire between the two warring parties.

Many Sri Lankan Tamils had fled during this fighting, settling in different places around the world. Every time a number of these Tamils congregated, they set up charities for their fellow Tamils back home. While some of these were simply charities, a number of them contributed money covertly to the Tamil Tigers. With this money, the Tigers were able to maintain their military and develop their own minority state. The Tigers did not press for more land, but instead sought publicity for the cause of an independent nation for the Sri Lankan Tamils. The Sri Lankan government, powerless to wipe them out, sat idly by.

A little bit about what exactly the Tigers did. The Tigers set up an educational system and a justice system for the Tamils under their rule. They did not hold elections, they did not print currency, and they did not use military force to compel obedience from their people. They did not establish formal executive or legislative agencies, preferring instead to simply use local police forces. Nonetheless, despite this seeming crudity, the Sri Lankan Tamils openly preferred this system. The government offered them protection, rights, justice, and education. They might not have agreed with the governments methods of dealing with foreign adversity, but they accepted it. After all, they were an unrecognized people fighting against the world.

Then, in the last two years or so, the nations of the world began to systematically shut down Sri Lankan charities that they found. As the Tigers found their funds drying up, the Sri Lankan Prime Minister began anew the war that had ended so long ago. Without money to support their army, the Tigers began a futile stand against the Sri Lankan army, which was supplied by and modeled on the Chinese military. As the army slowly mowed down the Tigers and took their land, the Tigers continued to retreat. This morning, the leader of the Tigers was found dead after an ambush, and the war was declared over in the Sri Lankan capital. The UN, as it is wont to do, bleated uselessly about human rights and then sat on its ass. As a result of the war, several millions of Tamils have been displaced, either to other, less friendly parts of Sri Lanka, or to the Indian South, where an inept government mills about uselessly trying to provide the Tamils with sustenance.

I want to emphasize something: the Tamil Tigers constituted a dictatorship, and the source of their power, if one had to be chosen, was their military. And yet they were liked by those they ruled over, and they did not use the military to suppress their public's opinion. Do you realize just how rare this phenomenon is. A competent dictatorship that enjoys the unfettered support of its people. This amidst the completely incompetent democracies that riddle Southeast Asia. And yet it is this government that is labeled a terrorist organization, and it is to defeat this organization that so many misled governments in the world work.

The war is over, and within a month all discussion on Tamil rights will have ended. The Indians will make their customary gestures of condolence and then sit back again to enjoy their corruption. The Sri Lankan government will declare celebrations and then go back to its tourism supported economy. No one else really cares. It's just a little sad.

After avoiding this uncomfortable truth for a long time, I've come to a realization:

I have to watch Firefly if I want to understand the xkcds >_>