The Shitty one

 To be the mud, the bog, the mire,
 To soak the bones in February-
 Eons from the autumn shower-
 Even from a summer berry!
                                           - February Rain, 72.21.81.63


     Oh, what is it? I can hear it. The steady clatter which makes one believe that the Tzar's horse carriage itself is arriving. Its in the air, I can smell it! Its on the ground. I can see it. Its on my head too. Well, what is it? Its PIGEON SHIT! 
    Life in Pilani can be a bitch sometimes... Like, that blue moon dhobi and that little curfew for girls. Well, right in front of my hostel is a patch of white road known as the Milky Way. This dilapidated, seldom walked upon if not ran across and completely yuck stretch has got its infamous nickname because, believe me, Pigeons from all across the campus sit on a tree in the sidewalk and choose to let loose. Its true, they ALL chose to suffer from explosive diarrhea at the milky way! It rains shit!
    Well, pot jamming or ghatam practice is on full swing, accosted by some "founder's day" celebration dance and learning a bit of photography training. I also managed to nerd a bit in the library today and therefore granted myself a guilt free pass to blog away. I also borrowed "Macroeconomics deMystified" from the lib... Kinda figured that engineering may not be so interesting after all so why not major properly in economics? It is a good field..
   My friend Hariharasudhan(smartly shortened to Judee, there's a history behind that) has got this kickass android xperia phone, and it is well...........................................kickass! Its got everything, man. The apps are nice, if not squeaky clean like apple, if you know what I mean. It can read docs and spreadsheets and apps like the Bar code reader and Talking Tom are amazing. A nice app is the urban dictionary...  
   You may already know this, but for the old chops, here goes... The word 'shit' is a very versatile term. So Wrong context and/or emphasis on specific words may give the sentence a whole new meaning. Adding a "the" before 'shit' and stressing on it actually means the shit is cool. Removing the "the" completely messes it up. So, please do me a favor and say Li'l Wayne and t-Pain are shit, not the... 
       My room is a mess, I got a lot of laundry to wash, there's a lot of ghatam practice and I need to pickup my grades! Ugh, I need to get my act together, pull my pants up, literally and figuratively too(Friends will get it. Go Low Waist!). I made this small timetable, describing short term plans(which include studying hard for the t1 and waking up by 7) and long term plans(writing a book and washing my clothes). I like writing stuff. 
   Yawn, time's almost one. I am all out of stray thoughts... G'nite then...

7 Ganton Maaf

    Am blogging, completely spent of all energy to do anything else, of the will to do anything to do with acads and of the compulsion to go to anc to munch something. Two important developments... One, I attended all SEVEN hours of class, including every foul lecture and draconian tut. That's saying something, 'cos I never had a 7 hour day in my previous sem and even then, I had not attended all classes of any day. Who ever said the path to renaissance, order and decorum from chaos and laziness starts with baby steps? I would like to see the reader attend a seven hour day...
   Maybe I went overboard with my use of (googled) words. Well, the second piece of trivia about yours truly is that I am going to be dancing for the Pilani Tamil Mandram to a peppy number on The Founder's Day celebrations in the auditorium in front of all the students. Holy crap, that's embarrassment! I hark back to the days of old when I came up with amazing excuses to skip the kiddish Sports Day dance at school. Revenge, huh?
   Meanwhile, the institute, in keeping with its ambitions and dreams of Vision 2020, is finally thinking ahead and has installed these small, cute(?) and irritating speed breakers at every turn of the campus. Well, I guess students in super bikes by 2020 wouldn't be so off the mark, would you say? On a serious note, I seriously appreciate the insti's effort. They could try and increase the number of dustbins too... I love my college, man. I want it to give some serious competition to the IITs...
   My mom can sleep peacefully at home knowing that I simply cannot game on my netbook. Why? I tried to install Counter strike 1.6 on my comp and et voila! It was slower than my '98 comp when I tried to play Liberty City on it... Poor devil, It put up such a brave fight! Anyway, I didn't want to see it suffer anymore and uninstalled it... I'm using it for lec slides and blogging only now...
   I'm putting the cycle(Baby, I call it) to full and awesome use these days. I am so happy. It eliminates all these lousy 'transition' time intervals which were such a big waste... Give you an example... If the time is 11:00 AM and I got a class at 12 and I had to buy stuff at C'not, without a cycle I won't go 'cos the job might take me more than an hour. Well, with a cycle, thinking about travel time intervals is simplified and can be neglected, if you get what I mean...
   Meanwhile, our bhawan also acquired the much coveted "Visited by the Chief Warden" status symbol. No idea what we did, though. We did have a few birthday 'celebrations' in the first few days. Guess they were loud enough.
   On the subject of metal, I think only folk metal is worth listening to these days. They are mostly clean, they quench that li'l classical thirst inside me and most importantly, the music is damn good. Special reference to Inis Mona by Eluveitie and Windrider by Ensiferum.

   Stop pulling at your hair, my blog ain't that bad...
PS:  Did I tell you that the trailer of 7 Khoon Maaf looks kickass? Looks like Priyanka Chopra and Vishal Bharadwaj are cooking up a real kicker this time. Wishing Akshay kumar more luck this year...
    

Musings

Here I am, blogging my brains out...
    I am not gonna be sleeping today. No one has been handed a laptop, net connection and DC++ on the same day. Its too much power. I want to spend myself this weekend so that I can concentrate on studies the rest of the sem. And the file which had the honor of being the first to be downloaded was 'Sheila ki Jawani'... Haha..
     I am also slightly happier than usual, today because of a totally dumbass reason. The girl I liked in 11th and 12th grade had her 18th birthday today and she is in Chennai and she replied back to my 'Happy B'day' message! I mean, she usually does reply and conversations are quite formal and friendly. But us despos celebrate at the drop of a hat and I had everyone guessing what I was so cheery about. I should try convincing pappuji to change one of his shakes' names to ''The Kesh Shake"... Pretty cool, huh?
    Anyway, I haven't taken a bath for the past five days. Uh, the horror! I used to be a daily bather when the weather was ok. All I can console myself with is that the temperature has been touching 1-2 degrees every bloody night since new year and the sun peeps out of the clouds once a day. All birthday celebrations are rescheduled to 10:00 pm the previous day as its simply too cold at twelve. I guess every BITSian cries at least 5 times a day why GD Birla, god bless him, had to be born here. I mean, come on, this village has its advantages, but still I would put the high incidences of smoking and drinking among students here to the extreme climate and the lack of well, anything outside campus.
   The coriander and onion pastes which mom got me to mix with rice and eat are working out quite well, thank you mom. These and the absence of an ID card have ensured a near zero anc bill till now. I did promise myself(maybe in vain, as seniors tell me) that I would be damn stingy this sem 'cos the mess extras in the previous one simply went through the roof.
   I have just downloaded the entire collection of lecture slides of all the courses, prepared by all the profs for the entire second sem.This lovable wonder, this incredible software, this god given blessing called DC++ also turns out to be a veritable monstrosity. I also have downloaded a few discographies and movies. Till now, the 'distractions' have been  kept at bay...

Back in Pilani

      Yep, I am blogging from my dear college again, but this time from my own net book with frosted, multicolored and numb fingers; the temperature must have hit 4 degrees out there. The whole campus is empty except for a few early birds like me and friends, and it looks BEAUTIFUL… Will probably hate myself for saying so later as registration and time table making will begin day after tomorrow. Meanwhile, I got more pressing things at hand which will help me weather the weather extremum. Having been told enough by Preethi (Raagan) to get a quilt and to quit being this lazy, tomorrow is the day for buying that and other essential commodities like soap, shaving blades and cream and a LAN cord. Now, let me bother the kind reader about my new lappy.

     It’s a HP mini whatever model with an atom processor. It looks great, is compact and can be carried around in a ‘sleeve’ and is very portable. It’s a net book and supposedly can’t play games. Not that I’m gonna try and install any. Mom and dad have placed so much trust on me even though I had screwed up my first semester big time and I will use it only for lecture slides and other stuff.  Of course, blogging isn’t a big distraction! It’s only for biggies like Sidin Vadukut who make it, well, big in the blogosphere and have a reputation to keep up. I am also excited ‘cos it looks kinda like the one Zuckerberg uses while inventing FaceSmash in The Social Network. Yep, I almost feel a billion dollars coming my way, thank you…

    I enjoyed the train journey from Chennai to Delhi by the recently introduced Duronto trains. The discomfort due to the disgusting CD flush system notwithstanding, it’s very encouraging to see the Indian Railways take some good steps to reduce the load on the world’s largest toilet. For those who didn’t understand, the new drains in some of these new trains do not lead to the tracks… Collects the shit instead. The food served was pathetic as usual, with the guy having the balls to collect tips. There was a water shortage problem too, going down into the complaint register from a very irritable (and slightly smelly) lady. Well, I beat the crowd before the panic rush started.  The air conditioning kept us well insulated from the freezing cold but the intense fog prevented the poor driver from arriving on time by more than five hours… Sad.

     The Chennai Thyagaraja Aradhna Programme conducted by students of BITS-Pilani turned out well, with a small help from my enthusiastic parents’. There was an explosion of talent as classes right from 1988(like the guy who started it) to 2010(like me) participated… I played the ghatam, which also was a HUGE learning experience for me… Remember the super perspective vortex which Beeblebrox was put through? There was this 1992 pass-out who played the mridangam. Holy crap, he was an expert and I didn’t know shit! I could have tried dancing instead…

PS: I also found my cycle back! It was in the abandoned cycles dump near the insti… Could be a sign of good things to come, very soon…