End sem woes

" I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by."
                                                                         - Douglas Adams
   Planned studying. Always believe(d) in it. If you know me well enough, you would know I keep a diary for planning out studying ops and "motivational quotes"(Yeah, that's me, all the peripheral, unnecessary BS and not the actual studying). The quote above should also tell you that this special planning book has got "Don't Panic" in large friendly letters and I named it The Hitchhiker's Guide to Planning. Cool, huh?  Three end sem exams have whooshed by. Three exams whose studying deadlines were not met. Three more to go, Dayyym...
   The 'cool' (?) colleges are known for their very relaxed norms regarding general students' day and night lives. Dad always used to brag about how he used to go college in shorts. In that way, BITS is the coolest college around. I dare you to find another college which has an exclusive All Night Canteen for students to blow cash over(It's open till 3:30 AM). But there is a general feeling that the rules have been tightened up a notch. Only Jeans and full pants are allowed in the Lecture complex and the IPC these days(Totally justifiable, there is a censored reason behind that!). I myself, while walking from one class to another, was just whistling "Little bird". Just whistling. In the corridors. A haggard old man, complete with moustache(Why does the text editor report a spelling mistake?) and an all knowing smile(He could have tattooed "Bah, college students..." on his forehead) says, "Caaleje hai bhai, Caaleje... "
And your point is?
    Another completely random stream of thoughts. Obama killed Osama -> Global markets rose in unison -> Gold prices also rose -> An incident which comes to my mind.
   I was ten or twelve then. We had gone to Tanishq 'cos mom's jewelry fixation center in her brain had suddenly gotten activated. I, still in the inquisitive stage, asked the guy why Platinum was costlier than Gold. While returning back, my dad explained, "He said  Platinum is rarer than Gold, that's why. Though Platinum is 20 times rarer than Gold, yet it is only around 1.2 times costlier. So the only way Platinum prices(and therefore it's value) can go are - up. It's a stupid argument. But unfortunately, I've fallen for it."          
Aww...

Patriotic standees

    After the reader has been apparently bored to death with The Definition of Desultory files Part 1 and 2, all the writer can warn them is of more drivel to follow. However, this post has been peppered with an interesting incident...

    Have you noticed that movies with a cult following, especially among college youth(Hell, I'm actually talking about movies now) always tend to have a male narrator in the background? A narrator whose voice sounds indifferent, bordering on sarcasm? Whether it's Ed Norton's rant about his inability to believe what was happening around him in Fight Club(It's a great movie yeah, but...) or Morgan Freeman's deep, emo drawl in The Shawshank Redemption,  the junta digs narrators, can relate to them, can think of them as people standing on the same side of the silver screen as they are... Why all this crap? I just saw RocknRolla... Hell yeah!
    Was walking down Gandhi Marg, wanting to withdraw some money from the ATM, and I saw two guys, about my height facing each other and, and... wait for it... and standing still. Now that's saying something, for no trivial reason is Gandhi Marg called the milky way. To stand there for more than a micro second translates to hell for your hair, mind. The pestilence stricken multitudes of crows and pigeons who will kill to take a shot at you with their A-holes are not to be ignored at any cost. Coming back to these courageous men, they stood still as stone... had not moved a bit. At a distance I could see a third friend of their's running away at a distance...
   These two freshers had my attention as I walked on, twenty yards away... What were they standing there for? Is this some mundane ragging thing? To stay and get shit on? Can't be.. It would be too obvious for a prof who was passing by.. The third friend was now calling out to both of them, almost swearing at them for missing the start..
The start of what?
   The two seemingly idiotic, almost gay guys held their ground as people passed on, looking incredulous.
The start of what, again?
   I suddenly remembered something. The Cricket World Cup final.
Hmm... Connect the dots...
   And lo! From yonder(Krishna Bhawan Common Room) drifted the melodious tune of the... Indian National Anthem.
Shit
   I froze. Out of shame and respect.
Jaya Jaya Jaya He...
   

The DoD files II

   Should have been more careful... Remember that mom had sent me this book on Kushwant Singh. So this man is fascinating, to say the least (both good and bad). So with all enthu, I borrowed some "Why I supported the emergency" (See, he is fascinating...), written by him and ahem, it never caught my attention for a few days until I decided to light an incense stick  to ward off some highly strong (and exotic) "washed clothes" vapors which were drifting around... I place it on top of a piece of paper for heat insulation and the book below the whole arrangement. Little did I know that the tip reaches about 800 degrees C and the damn thing would burn through the paper and through Rajiv Gandhi's head, the cover of the book...

    And recently, I was struck blind by a screen shot of a  facebook user's profile on whose wall was made some very interesting observations. The wannabe Buddha started off with stating that he had known the "Why did the chicken cross the road? To get to the other side" joke for the past 15 years and that he had never thought about it in a different way.
Death.
Any of you ever thought about it that way? The other side? Of life?
Death?
Huh? Gotcha...

The DoD files I

   People like to think and feel that things are getting worse for other people. SuperFreakonomics  talks of "Unbelievable Stories of Apathy and Altruism" but I think fatalism constitutes the core of a human being. Remove the many different layers and emotions and you would find that the Second law of Entropy forms the basis of one's psyche. The jar of milk will fall and smash to pieces. The eggs, no, the crate of eggs will break and splatter. 200 people will die of dengue. That little nuclear coolant problem in Jap land will result in Apocalypse. I have got no less than fifteen odd text forwards describing the radiation threat as an EOW symptom. Stop wallowing in self pity, imagining the last few calls you make to parents and other loved ones... Boring... 

   Whoa! That was some heavy stuff. Thought the reader would brood and look deep and forget about why I haven't written in a long while. An explanation is deserved and an explanation will be given. I was writing an article for Cactus Flower, the annual magazine of BITS, Pilani. Hopeless excuse, isn't it? Not if you consider the number of tests and quizzes and the Raag practice which has been going in the past few weeks. Sangamam'11 was presented successfully on the 6th of March and since then I have been diverting evenings to ahem, studies...

   Two important discoveries in the recent past. One, the library. Hitherto used only for nerding away in peace, away from the confines of my room and the distractions offered by my bed, I also discovered that it has things known as 'books'. Not just the "The Physics of Particles and Waves" and "Soil Mechanics" type but also the Rowling, Ludlum and  the Asimov types. The little snag in the above statement is that whenever I manage to locate a book using the lib's computerized system(A veritable treasure hunt), the book is usually in such a dilapidated condition that it kills the joy of reading. ..

   The second is the fact there is a profound mindset change among freshers as they enter their second semester in campus. They know the ways and means of the world and most importantly can use institutions like The All Night Canteen(ANC) without any fear of being trounced upon by seniors. I also started ANCing. My senior has a nice way of putting it. I could've been eating for free. The mess bill involved was an impersonal equation my father had with the insti and my wallet was not involved. And Et voila!  My ANC bill was a bloated 1200 bucks before I knew it. And the worst part was I couldn't stop myself... Egg rice and Cheese Burger... Holy Shit!

   And guys, the situation genuinely seems to be getting worse... Pray for Japan...

Ivy League LSD

   A lot of people, mostly freshers run their case by knowing or pretending to know all about PG degrees in the US of A. Highly amusing are the encounters with guys who cannot complete a sentence without garnishing it with "Harvard" and "Princeton" or "UIUC" in a normal conversation about say, heavy metal. How they crept up is an entirely different question. Do they think it makes them cool by talking about it? No idea. This can be explained as a runoff from those JEE coaching days when a person, who cannot get above 60 percentile in the All India Test Series harps about how his dad or mom or uncle or Grandfather's brother's son's wife's half brother's son was an IITian ot BITSian and how much pressure he is under (the writer can also relate to that, very well, in fact... However, he did nothing to concentrate more on his studies...).

   Anyway, the above para was completely random, aimed at nobody. The chemistry lecture went quite decently.  "It doesn't matter how you pronounce it, "Jetcheff" or "Jetcheff". The Germans and Russians can handle it", rang the voice of the lecturer as students sat in rapt attention and my eyes drooped worse than a koala bear. For those who are not chemistry geeks, there is a Russian bloke called Saytzeff who was beautifully mispronounced as "Zaitsev" by the Germans. My professor being an Indian, pronounced both the same way. He is a brilliant prof though, nice teacher...

   You know you are in the second sem of the academic year when suddenly people start talking a lot about acads and projects. Friend Judee(Remember the guy with the Android phone?) is living proof. He is an Msc. Chemistry student and wants to major in an engineering degree too. So when asked (by mistake) what his interests were, he ranted almost immediately, "Semiconductors, Automobile Engineering, Nanotech, Robotics, a bit of Computer science too..." Hmm... he is still confused about what he is going to take and so am I. I don't know anything about any engineering discipline and was planning to choose what he was taking, damn...

   The Founder's day celebration was a grand success as everyone cheered(?) us on as we danced(?). We were appreciated, more for the fact that we had the guts to not only stand but dance before a gafffe hungry crowd, jeering and laughing all the way through. The IC dinner was excellent as usual and the post dance euphoria added to the taste..

    Math test just got over now. Did decently... Will watch the movie "A Beautiful Mind" (again), a story about a man who goes to Princeton... Uh oh, did I just give myself away?

Welcoming the summer(?)

Yesterday's list:
          1. Plan proposal to a girl I like in Chennai on Valentine's. (Am a despo. Period.)
          2. Plan the studying part for upcoming tests. (Aiming for 8+ CGPA)
          3. Organize books and model exam papers and do chem assignment.
          4. Wake up at 6:30 AM everyday the next week.
          5. Wash undies.

Today's List:
          1. Plan the studying part for upcoming tests. (Aiming for 9+ CGPA)
          2. Organize books and model exam papers and do chem assignment
          3. Wake up at 7:30 AM everyday next week.
          4. Plan proposal for BITSian sister. (Am still a despo. Period.)

(Hmm, the proposal for Chennai girl was half-hearted anyway, and was quashed by my best friend Ashwin. The undies were washed.)

   This weekend went quite well. Well is relative, as usual. Nothing wrong happened. I managed to set my room right and that's saying something with all the cobwebs and dust and books lying around. Raag sessions are also going decently, though I cannot say the same for Founder's day... (Read Previous post.)
   The weather is getting more and more pleasant by the day. I apologize. I don't know if it's the BITSian in me which keeps wanting to harp about the weather at the drop of pigeon shit or the south Indian which frankly, hasn't seen life below 25 and above 40 degrees. The seniors say that it is the calm before the storm, the deep breath before the plunge into scorching heat. Yuck. Freezing cold can be handled. I hate summers.          
   The hostel has turned into a CounterStrike 1.6 gaming den 'cos the freshers got laptops (No, I got a Netbook). So it's not a big surprise to hear "Abey Saale, get to their base armed with sniper as soon as "freeze time" runs out and don't forget to turn off Friendly Fire" or just "Nooooooooo...". Sad. There was this article I read the other day about the incresing number of suicides in IITK; Around 8 in the past five years... It accounted students holing up in their dens and facebooking and LAN games and general solitary confinement as a major factor. My dad told me that in his days, even if students drank or smoked (up?), they did so together and it was always fun with people around...
   Hey, the answer key to my chem test came out. I would like to focus on two emotions here. The first one is happiness; When you have done a test well; When you don't have any classes left for the day; When nothing can go wrong; When you just want to snuggle into your bed without going on a guilt trip like your school days, when a moment not spent on mugging formulae is a moment wasted; When you're in love with life;
  That's how I felt immediately after the test got over...
  The second is the sense of crushing defeat, of impending doom, of dreaded fear, when everything can go wrong at the very start, where I might be forced to take the Chemical Dual(No offense meant for chemicalites... Do remember that I wanted chemical) and will live to regret not working hard enough...
  Well, you know when I felt that way now...(Let's wait and hope I've done well...)
   And  like every Seven  Habits has an Eighth Habit, I would like to tell you about another awesome feeling. My mom sent me two HUGE parcels. One had two great books in it and the other had savories and snacks which might just help me last through this sem without any qualms about the pathetic food here. Yay! Thanks mom! Mental note to send a greeting card for everyone's birthday made...
   The management fest "Interface'11" is happening right now. Everyone's excited, as the culinary delights(?) of Domino's Pizzas(Oh no, not again!) and Momos have set up stalls. It's just another excuse for tasting a bit of civilization before we become our usual cynical, class bunking selves again. My friend Nadeem texted me the other day:
    Nadeem: Ssup?
            Me: Nothing much here man, just tests here.. you temme..
    Nadeem: What else?
            Me: Had my chem test the other day. Went ok, I guess. Otherwise, life is fine...
    Nadeem: Hmm... Ssup?

        Me: Dude, I'm in a bloody village in the middle of nowhere where post offices and banks close at 2 PM itself and civilization is 200 kms away. What do you expect?

    Nadeem: Kk, Am so sorry, man.. Will talk later?
           
                

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…