The Shailesh-tival

Being snowed in for the weekend, I had a lot of downtime. I got down the rabbit-hole of college admissions and decided to look into what applying to college even feels like today. For instance, would I even get admitted to my alma mater (my gut tells me yes, but Illinois’ engineering program has gotten far more competitive in the ~20 years since I graduated). But why just dip your toe in the water when you can dive in headfirst? So here’s my application essay for U of I.

I didn’t quite ‘stick the landing’ on this one. The end of the essay sounds kind of awkward. Still I wish I had the ability to articulate myself as a 12th grader as I do now. I could’ve saved myself hours of editing. Anyways, here it is…

My response:

When you come from a family of engineers, its tough to explain exactly when the engineering bug hit you. But as far as I can tell, it’s always been there.  My first deepdive into the world of electrical engineering happened at the tender age of two years old.  Armed with a battery, my mom’s car keys and unfettered access to an electrical outlet, I learned three important lessons that day: 1) I had not figured out how to charge batteries; 2) the doctors at Washington Adventist Hospital are wonderful people; 3) I needed formal training in the subject. Clearly, I didn’t have a great start, but my desire to tinker and build never left me. When my parents bought our first computer in middle school, I quickly took to learning to program in QuickBASIC.  As one of my prouder achievements, I built a Connect Four game on a snow day at school.  When my sister bought me a musical keychain from her alma mater, it was only a matter of weeks before I disassembled it and connected it to the home stereo, blasting her school’s fight song for most of my neighborhood. When we (and everyone else), first got internet access at home, I taught myself HTML and Javascript, and eventually used those skills to build a one-of-a-kind interactive calendar for my high school’s website. Outside of the fun side of engineering, I’ve shown myself capable in the classroom. I’ve taken every Math, Science and Computer Science course available to me at school, and I’ve excelled in them, earning AP credit in multiple domains. Between my intellectual curiosity and my academic capabilities, electrical engineering has always been a natural fit for me.

So why Illinois? In short, Illinois is the perfect fit for this amazing journey.

The engineering program speaks for itself. But it’s also a place where I can see myself getting “lost” (in a good way of course). I’m looking forward to what I will learn and do academically, but as a sports fan, I’m also looking forward to Saturdays and Memorial Stadium and Big Ten basketball.  As a musician, I’m looking forward to shows at Krannert. And as a keychain afficionado, I probably owe my parents’ neighbors a few bars of, “Illinois Loyalty,” from a rewired musical keychain.

Given the recent resurgence of Illini football, I thought I’d add my math about how the Illini can still make the Rose Bowl. It comes down to this:

1. Illinois wins out against Iowa and Northwestern, finishing at 6-3 in the Big Ten
2. Minnesota loses out against Iowa, Northwestern (stop laughing), and Wisconsin, also finishing 6-3 in the Big Ten
3. Wisconsin goes 2-1, which includes going 1-1 against Nebraska and Purdue, and beating Minnesota (as stated in step (2) ), so they also finish 6-3 in the Big Ten
4. Illinois, Wisconsin and Minnesota end in a 3-way tie for first in the Big Ten West
5. Using the first tiebreaker for a 3-way tie, all three schools went 1-1 against each other, so the second tiebreaker would be used
6. Using the second tiebreaker, Illinois and Wisconsin finished 4-2 against the Big Ten West, whereas Minnesota is 3-3, so Minnesota gets eliminated from contention for the Big Ten Championship game
7. With a 2-team tie, the tiebreaker reverts to the results of the head-to-head match-up between Illinois and Wisconsin; Illinois wins this tiebreaker by virtue of winning that game
8. Illinois goes the B1G Championship game and beats the Big Ten East winner (likely the winner of the Ohio State/Penn State game)
9. ROSE BOWL!

Go Illini!

I’ve been an Illini fan for 9 years. I’ve seen the Illini play at many other stadiums throughout the Big Ten. Strangely my worst experiences as an Illini fan have been at Illini home games. So today, I present you with:

Shailesh’s guide to being an Illini fan

Read the rest of this entry →

Saturday marked the return of college football. Since it was a long weekend, I had the opportunity to witness the Illini take on the Eastern Illinois Panthers.

The Illini looked improved from last season, when they struggled to beat similarly talented teams. The offense put up 42 points, which I pretty much excepted and the Illini running game racked up almost 300 yards. Isiah “Juice” Williams played a few drives and did ok, although he did fumble on one scramble.

The defense still looks suspect. The secondary gave up a number of big plays to Panther wide-outs.

Next week I expect a very tough challenge for the Illini. Yes, we beat Rutgers last year, but they did manage to go to a bowl game and they’ll be at home. I do favor Rutgets to win, but this is definitely a winnable game for the Illini.

And I’m heading back to Champaign in 7 days for corporate recruiting.

I’m hoping to make it back for the Indiana and Ohio games in October too. We’ll see how that works out.

Yesterday I’m flying back to Detroit from Washington DC and I’m sitting in the airport bar at National Airport. The guy next to me is talking to the 2 guys next to him. It turns out the two guys are Michigan State alums, and the guy next to me is an Iowa alumnus, and they’re talking Big Ten smack.

Then they notice my Illinois T-shirt and I jump in on the Big Ten smack too. As it turns out Michigan State fans love Luther Head and Dee Brown (only because he went to High School with Shannon Brown) but they hate Deron Williams and James Augustine. None of this really surprised except the Deron Williams thing. Then again I’m surprised they like Dee so much considering he usually played the game of this life against them.

The other funny thing was that they thought it was so frustrating to play us because we beat them so much. I can clearly remember when Assembley Hall would be going crazy because our up-and-coming Illini were hosting the mighty Spartans who were National Title contenders year in and year out.

Anyways, this is something unique to the Big Ten and possibly the Pac-10. There is a certain level of respect that transcends athletics because every school in the Big Ten also has an incredible Academic reputation — even Ohio State.

Yesterday Trevor and I went to East Lansing to watch the Illinois – MSU basketball game. We got to the arena about half an hour before the game and took our seats.

MSU’s arena is really nice (probably the nicest arena in the Big Ten), but I think their fans have been a little spoiled by the teams recent success. The arena never got particularly loud, except maybe till the 4 minute mark of the 2nd half. Worse yet, whenever the Illini fans in the upper deck started the ILL-INI chant, the MSU fans did nothing to drown us out.

At OSU a couple of weeks ago that was never the case.

I will say, however, that Michigan State fans are the most respectful and knowledgable fans in the Big Ten.

Trevor and I happened to be sitting right next to three other Illini fans, so that just added to the fun.

Anyways, the Illini were trailing by one at halftime, when we got to see the infamous halftime show. Roughly 20 middle aged men with beer guts came out wearing wife beater shirts, small green shorts and holding folding lawn chairs. One other man dressed just the same but wore a hat and yelled out military calls at these 20 men. Together, the men marched single file around the court a few times and did some bizarre motions with their folding chairs, similar to what you’d see a soldier doing with their rifle. This went on for roughly 10-12 minutes and the crowd simply stared at this halftime show in confused amazement. Some comments from the people around us:

• “Someday I’m going to be 70 years old and I’ll be sitting on my couch with my wife and my mind will wander back to this, and all of a sudden it’ll make sense.” – Me
• “I’ve been going to Michigan State basketball games for 50 years and I’ve never seen anything this bizarre.” – MSU fan in front of us
• “They should give the 2 points just for the halftime show.” – Me (Jamar Smith hit a 2-pointer at the end of the first half to give us a 1 point lead. The refs reviewed the play and originally said the basket counted. Later, they decided he didn’t take the shot in time)
• “No one is going to believe this when I tell them about it. I have to take a picture.” – Illini fan sitting next to us

After doing some research, I found this information about the halftime show:

What could be funnier than a group of Dad’s marching down the street with black socks, American flag boxer shorts and white tank tops? How about barking out cadence like: “She don’t know and I don’t care, I’m wearing yesterday’s underwear.” Or “All our wives say we are lazy, our laying around just drives them crazy”. Many people jump out and hand off a cool malt beverage to our group. We perform twice as hard for those people. Why wouldn’t we?

They have a website at http://www.lawnchairdads.com/.

I guess the embarrassing part of the whole situation is that, as it turns out, these guys are from Illinois.

Anyways, Illinois won the basketball game. After the game Trevor and I were driving around the MSU campus and joking about going to the Triangle house.

Right then, we drove right by the Triangle house, so we decided to pay them a visit. We rang the doorbell and one of the brother’s answered the door. It was their spring break, so the house was pretty empty, but the one brother decided to give us a tour of the house. We saw the main living areas, basement, kitchen and got some information on the house. Then, he decided to show us a room, so he opened up one of the doors and the person inside screamed, “Oh God, Nooooooooo!”

There was a confused silence for just a moment, but then the brother giving us the tour inquired, “Are you looking at porn?”

And the other MSU Triangle brother replied, “Yeah … sorry, I thought the door was locked.”

We closed the door and hurried away and continued on the tour. When we got to the next part of the house on the tour, there was an awkward moment of silence before anyone said anything.

Trevor and I went out to grab some food with 2 of the MSU Triangles. Since these brother’s were so nice to show us campus, we decided to buy pitchers at the bar. The waitress came by and I asked if I could buy a pitcher. But apparently this place doesn’t sell pitchers. They do sell ‘buckets’ of beer. Now, most of the time when you think about buying a bucket of beer, you think of an aluminum pail, with lots of ice and 6 12-oz. bottles.

I asked the woman if I could mix beers in the bucket and she gave me a blank stare. She said I could but that would be kind of wierd. At this point I was confused.

“What’s wrong with mixing beers,” I asked.

“Well nothing, I guess. It’s just I’ve never heard of anyone doing anything like that.”

At this point I am really confused so I just decide to stick with one beer, and I order a bucket of Newcastle.

A few minutes later the woman comes out with our bucket. Imagine a bucket you’d use to wash your car. Now imagine filling that bucket with beer straight from under a tap. Yes … the beer was poured directly into the bucket, like mop water.

Then we also got a pitcher that we used to scoop out the beer, a rag to wipe down the pitcher, and some glasses to pour the beer from the pitcher to the glass.

We drank a bucket of beer.

So I discovered Illini Torrent yesterday. Basically it’s a BitTorrent site that lets you exclusively download Illini clips and entire Illini games. Of course this thing became very famous during last year’s dream season in basketball.

So I downloaded some stuff, namely:

• Highlights from the NCAA elite eight Arizona game
• Season highlights
• The Georgetown game

I was at that Georgetown game and as I watched the mpeg of it, I noticed something interesting. With about 13:20 left in the 2nd half, Georgetown was shooting the 2nd of two free throws when the camera zoomed in on some Illini players. Who is in the background? Lo and behold, it’s me!!!
 
(This post used to have a screen-cap of the aforementioned image, but it’s been lost in one of the many times my blog has changed platforms.)

I love the Illini. Seriously. The Illini men’s basketball team played Penn State last night, and I didn’t want to miss the action. I called all of the sports bars near my apartment and couldn’t find a single one playing the game. Finally, I found a BW-3 about 20 minutes away had would be showing the game (which tipped off at 9:00 PM ET). Unfortunately, the Michigan State Spartans were playing at 7, and the Pistons at 8, which meant that if the Spartans game ran late, I was out of luck for Illini tip-off.

Anyways, I left the apartment at 8:10 or so and got to BW-3 at 8:30 or so. The Spartans were ahead of Northwestern comfortably with 8 minutes left to go. The Pistons had 8 minutes left in the 2nd quarter. Anyways, I figured that maybe I’d miss the first 2-3 minutes of the Illini game, but the Northwestern Wildcats started fouling the Spartans with about 7 minutes left. When the Pistons went to halftime at roughly 9:00, the Spartans still had 4 minutes left in the game. Remember, that when I started watching, both teams had roughly 8 minutes on their respective clocks.

Anyways, the Spartans finally finish off the Wildcats at 8:20 and I ask the bar to put on the Illini game. Alas, it has started snowing and their satellite dish isn’t receiving a signal. Unfortunately, I’ve already ordered my dinner. So I down my dinner and head out, hoping to catch the end of the Illini game on the internet back at home.

I walk out of the bar to find that it’s snowed about 5-6 inches in the hour I was in the bar. I slipped and slided my car back to my apartment. I took about 40 minutes, and I was seriously scared of ending up in a ditch on multiple occasions. Anyways, I get home hoping to catch the end of the Illini game and I learn that I missed the end of it.

And how did the game end? The Illini blew a 14 point lead, at home, against the worst team in the Big Ten. They trailed 66-65 with 3 seconds left. They shot a desperation 3 at the buzzer. The shot went in, Orange Krush stormed the court and then the refs reviewed the shot and it turns out the ball was still in the shooter’s hands (the name of the shooter evades me right now) at the buzzer. The shot is called off, and Penn State wins.

This leads me to a few points:

1) Northwestern University — You suck at basketball. Stop delaying the inevitable. Michigan State is way better than you, you’re not going to overcome a 15 point defecit in 7 minutes. Get off the court and let me watch the Illini.

2) DirecTV — You should look into putting heating coils on the back of the satellites, kind of like the defrost on the back window of a car. I know that when I had DirecTV, I once had to clean the accumulated snow off of the dish to get my picture. That BW-3 probably didn’t have a signal well after the storm ended.

3) Orange Krush — You people are idiots. Even if that shot does count, Penn State is not exactly Michigan State or Wisconsin. If you were one of the people who stormed the court last night, you are an embarrasment. I realize some of you had no other option because you didn’t want to get trampled, and I understand, but the rest of you are idiots. And you’ll probably never admit, but deep down, you know who you are …

On Saturday night, the Illini trailed the Arizona Wildcats 75 – 60 with 4:00 remaining in the game. The instanity that ensued will likely have a permanent place on my TiVo and is something I will not soon forget. Read the rest of this entry →

I mentioned Bruce Pearl in my last entry and I thought I’d actually go further in depth on this whole angle of the Illini game on Thursday. In the early 1990’s, the Illini and Iowa both competed to recruit Deon Thomas, who was Illinois’ Mr. Basketball. After Thomas chose Illinois, Iowa assistant coach Bruce Pearl called him to question his decision to attend Illinois. Read the rest of this entry →