Phheeeewwww!! These last 3 days were interesting AND one of the most hectic days of my life so far! I was mainly focused on making this movie for school, which was supposed to be shown at my school's founder's day celebration today, but couldn't be because there were some last minute arrangement difficulties which will be discussed in more detail later in the blog.

Yesterday as usual it was a normal school day, until 11 AM when we had to go to the girls' branch to rehearse for today's party, we all went in a coaster. However after the rehearsal ended I had to stay back for the movie thing. You see I had to make a movie based on 14 years of headstart, putting all the pictures from '91 to '05 and using windows moviemaker to make the whole thing. Since I only started using digital camera in 2001 I did not have enough material from 1990's (I came to Headstart in 96), I had to depend on my principal to give Sir Aamir Malik (an ex-coach and a computer administrator in my school who's helping me with the project) all the pictures. He would have to scan them and e-mail/give a burnt CD of them to me so that I'd start working on the whole thing. The principal was supposed to give the CD on Friday, but instead gave it on Tuesday so I was VERY short of time. Anyway back to the rehearsal, I had to stay back on sir Aamir's request, and we found out the CD was at boys' branch, so we drove there and unfortunately as the PC's there were very slow, we had to copy all the pictures into the network administrator computer, and then burn it from there..

Apparently I had to miss my business studies class because of this and I had to stay back even later than this, and finally sir Aamir let me go, only I had to come back to collect the CD. Next thing I know, was seeing about 3,419 pictures. Oh God, it was a nightmare. I had to guess which pictures belonged to which year, save them on my PC and THEN start on the project.. Man the whole thing took me 5 hours.. My head still aches from looking at those blurry, badly scanned pictures too much. But hey, the bright side of it was that I got to recall all the old days in school which kept me going.

Today was the deadline at 12 PM. I was given permission to miss all the classes and to be at the girls branch to make the movie. I was told the arrangements have been made for a windows XP computer, because thats the only PC where windows moviemaker's available. It was there, only it was very less advanced and none of my CD's which were working perfectly well) worked or played at all! Soooo.. Guess what.. I had to get my OWN PC!! That was all put there and about 80 percent of the movie was completed. Then something happened. It was a rainy weather outside and since the school could not afford to cancel the event they had to book a new venue; NIC building. And because of that and because sir Aamir was in such a rush, I was told the movie would not be shown. Wow.. I was really let down, and as you can read in my previous blog, I was also scheduled to perform. Two major things of mine got cancelled. However something amazing that night happened which made me forget everything and which made me smile, even now.

Even though I was already told a week in advance I'll be getting a prize, getting up on the stage, being cheered by about EVERYONE in the auditorium, was just overwhelming. I had not been onstage and that too, with the principal, for 9 years, and just seeing all my old teachers' happy faces brought the good old days back to me. Even some old classfellows and family friends were there. Although, something extremely embarrassing happened just before I came onstage. After 9th graders and O levellers were given prizes, all the A levellers were asked to go near the stage, I was confused as I was getting the dedication prize, but I followed anyway. All my classfellows were getting onstage and I was getting soo confused, I asked Adnan (computer administrator for girls' branch) when is my name coming up, I took him outside the auditorium to talk about it, and just as I was outside my name was announced. Eeek! The moment I went in, a lot of sirs were standing at the doors pushing me onstage whispering 'jao jao tumhain bularahe hain', and the minute I stepped onstage, being handshaken by the principal and being handed the certificate, the cheers, the clapping and smiling faces overwhelmed me. From this event what I learnt was, even though your efforts are not shown or are not good, it is the hard work that matters and which counts most importantly. Now I can't wait to go to school tomorrow and show the certificate off :-D

P.S Why did my face come out so BLACK?! Because the lighting was low!