Last Term

Happy Christmas folks.

My last term has begun, and the courses I have signed up for are the lightest I could find. International Business Ethics & Leadership and Team Building. The capital letters are not of my doing. All of last term, I cribbed about the compulsory Ethics course. Now I will crib about this one. I could have takencourses on Neural Networks or Insurance but nooooooooooooooooooo.... I took Ethics and Leadership. Hopefully a peaceful and workless time. But look forward to lots of bitching and cribbing. I wonder how International Ethics is different from regualr old Ethics? Maybe they'll kill us with more pseudo psychology and -isms because this is an elective... Hip Hip Hurray!! (Which is apparently an old Hebrew war cry of sorts).

I saw a movie called The Ninth Gate. Johnny Depp. It was very predictable and lackluster. No fun at all. I also saw Hanuman. It was very cute. And Pandavas. Very not cute. And Platoon. I didn't see the whole thing. Got bored partway and got a craving for Hot Shots! I loved both part 1 and 2 of Hot Shots.

I have Lord of War and King Kong. I don't think I'll see either.

Cheerios folks. Be good, have fun, make lots of resolutions this New Year. We'll compare.

BTW, I'm going to Chennai for Pongal. More Yay!

clandestine service careers

This month's Economist has an ad from the CIA, in their Executive Focus.
"Possibly the most challenging job in the world".

All candidates blah blah blah several personal interviews, medical and
psychological exams, aptitude testing, a polygraph interview, and an
extensive background investigation.

.. fast paced, high impact challenges in worldwide intelligence
collectiobn efforts on issues of US foreign policy interest and national
security concern.

For more info blah blah visit: www.cia.gov

I wonder if Ethan Hunt, Jason Bourne, George Smiley and James Bond
answered similar ads...

People have said weird things in classes, during lectures, presentations and the like. Some 'Oh My God' moments, some 'Don't say things like that when I'm drinking' stuff, some 'I can't believe he just said that' and a few 'Did he just say what I think he said?'. Unfortunately, I haven't kept a record of all these spew-worthy sayings. I did write down a few.

- strong purchase intention to buy

- ... mainly it was predominantly dominated by ...

- cost of the price

- flexibility is not as rigid

- people should not buy what they don't want to buy

I can't remember the other things that induced stomach ache causing laughter spells. Sadly.

I had a class just now. Planning IT Enabled Organisations, fondly called PITEO. I don't know why "Planning". We don't learn much about planning, but we do get a lot of IT and Enabling. Today's classes were full of documentation. I got such a headache from just knowing the types of documents that exist, I don't know what I'll do if I have to actually deal with them.

I am so not ready for real life.

What a tangled web we weave...

Not getting short listed for interviews ranks in the Top 5 Yucky Things To Happen To Me list. Add a surprise end term exam, rumours of corruption of those in power, my clothes not drying and 2 grasshoppers in the toilet and my day is officially ruined.

I had bad, bland noodles a while ago and it is making my stomache cry out in pain and agony.

I want a vacation.

I need a break.

I get more work.

The Times of India had this article about how humans share 98% dna with chimps and 60% with chickens and fruit flies. It was nice to know that I was more chimp than chicken. I had always wondered...

The Games have Begun!

I had a very painless interview today. My first ever job interview!!!! I feel so grown up! Damn. In less than 6 months, I am going to be WORKING? Paying taxes? having deadlines? Oh my god. Shit. Deep breaths.

Today is a big day for me. And so, I am going to celebrate my coming of age with a huge bar of Dairy Milk Roasted Almonds and Lepon Doyen "100% Veg Healthy Always" Cookies.

Speaking of Dairy Milk - they have a Tiramisu bar. New, I think. I saw it for the first time last week. Or maybe, new to bhubaneswar. Anyway, it was yummy. Not like any tramisu I have ever had, but yummy still.

Damn. I still can't get over this. I am 22 years old. I have to grow up some time.

Irrespective of whether or not I get the job I was interviewed for, today was weird. In a good way.

Bye folks.

Movie Spoilers Ahead

Maybe it was the bad sound and bad camera print and lack of coke and popcorn, but the movie version of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire was terrible. Not bad, not ok, terrible. It was as bad as The Prisoner of Azkaban.

There were many things bad about the movie.

The way it started, for one thing. They completely cut out the World cup! Maybe the bootleg version didn't have it but still... And I didn't see Winky at all. Not once. No Ludo Bagman either. WTF?

The dragons were good. The underwater rescue was ok. The maze was totally fucked up. No sphinx, no Boggart, no dementor, nothing. I am going to see it when I go to Chennai again. Get a good print. I am hoping all of this got cut out from the version I saw. Hoping it will make the DVD version.

Voldie looked ok. A little too grey. Cho does not look like that. No freakin' way. The Weasleys need to get hair cuts. Cedric looked good. All handsome and Hufflepuffy. Ron's dress robes were hilarious. The Dark Mark was awful. Itwasn't even green! Voldemort's speech after his resuscitation is one of the best things about the book and it was barely there! They showed only Lucius Malfoy. No Dolohov, Nott, Crabbe, Doyle, et al. I have read the books way too many times.

It was as if they took all the good parts of the books, which actually gave it substance and deliberately cut it out. I am very upset.

My version of the movie is a lot better. When I read the book, I visualised the whole thing. This movie does not live up to that.

Neville is way taller than Harry, even taller than Ron. It's weird. he's not even plump anymore. Draco Malfoy is his platinum self. The Amazing Bouncing Ferret scene atleast made the cut.

The weird dance thingy that the Beauxbaxtons do, and the staff stomping thing that the Durmstrangs do... where did that come from? And since when was the french school all female and the bulgarian school all male?? The guy has taken way too much creative license. I don't mind if they take a book, change everything and make a good movie. It's only when they change a good book into a bad movie that I have a problem.

I also saw Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Thats an example of a good book made into an entertaining movie. Dumb yes, but it atleast helped pass time. Maybe the good print and sound helped.

The omlet I had during breakfast was uncomfortably crunchy. It felt like I was chewing on cement...

p.s. I have given up on titles for posts.

I have had too many Consumer Behavior classes this week. My brain is going numb. The man says the same thing over and over again, and he seems to think we are all to dumb to understand. Not that we are all very intelligent, but what he has to say dosen't require even a 2 digit IQ. A frog or a stone could understand him.

I saw the first 20 mins of Saw. It took gross to new levels. I can't believe people saw Saw and then saw Saw 2 too. (Wasn't that a nice sentence!)

My grossness-tolerance seems to be very low these days.

I saw bits and pieces of a Russel Peters show. For those of you who don't know, he is a Indian-Canadian (or is it Canadian-Indian?) comedien. He's not very funny after the first 15 mins. He makes the same sexist, racist jokes all the time. They are funny, but not for 50 mins at a stretch.

What motivates you to study? Fear? The utter joy of gaining knowledge? Competition? The threat of Pain if you don't? Lack of better things to do?

My throat feels like somebody is rubbing it non-stop with sand paper and then pouring alcohol on the scratched area. It hurts when I swallow, when I breathe, when I speak and even if I don't do any of the above.

My nose was hurting yesterday. The bridge of my nose. I didn't know it could hurt there. When I told someone, he told me it was probably solidified snot. Ugh. I didn't need to hear that when I was having dinner (Which was otherwise very good, both food-wise, company-wise and conversation-wise).

Tada.

134

This is post #134 in case you were wondering.

Have you ever wondered about music genres? I would have sworn Avril Lavigne (sp?) was Pop but according to Yahoo Messenger;s LaunchCast, she and Michelle Branch are Adult Alternative. Why Adult? and Alternative to what? Before those two, they played Coldplay. I can't believe they'd put these three in the same category. I don't generally give a shit about categories but when I am bored with the songs on my comp (all 6gb of them) and turn to launchcast, I don't want to listen to Michelle Branch.

That Vonage ad is also very irritating.

Gorillaz is apparently Rock. I give up. I like their videos, I can't just listen to them. And who's 311?

I read somewhere that they are making a movie of 50 cent's life. Should be interesting. Will it be like a 2hour version of THS: 50 Cent? Or like 8 mile, with that green tint and all?

Ah finally! System of a Down.

Coffee Day was packed today. Nobody in this town/city has anything to do. It was a good 1 hour there. 3 coffees, one sandwich and Here Comes The Sun by Tom Holt later, I came back to my room to find that somebody else is doing the case analysis and I have nothing to do. Again. I think I'll go read those old editions of Economist and Time Magazine a second time.

I like Green Day. They have a very irreverent attitude.

My fever just spiked and my hands are feeling very cold. I have to go and dig my quilt out. Farewell folks. This cold and fever could be the end of me. If I don;t make it, think of me when you drink filter coffee and eat chocolate. Sayanora.

grasshoppers

I just got out of a bloody cold shower. Cold showers are not my favorite form of shower. They are actually my 2nd least favorite form of shower, narrowly beaten by having no shower at all, due to a lack of water, time or inclintion. But this post is not about the horrors of a cold shower. Not at all. It is about having a cold shower, when there are TWO BLOODY GRASSHOPPERS in the bathroom! No, there was no actual blood involved. But it was close. So close.

I was having a nice shower, with hot water and all, when I felt something on my leg. I thought it was soap?, or maybe shampoo foam(?). But no, when I kicked my leg out (and hit the damn wall in front of me), something landed with a faint noise on my left. Foam and bubbles don't make noise. And they definitely don't follow up the landing noise with more jumping around noises. After the soap was successfully washed off my face and braving the shampoo trickling down my head, I peeked. And there it was. A 4 inch long green grasshopper. I hate these things. I didn't know that grasshoppers could fly, until I got here. They are called grassHOPPERS not flyers; why do they have to fly?? Somebody please make them stop. They are so annoying. Anyway, this one landed near the drain and seemed to be playing this game of hop a little, fly a little, hop some more... Ugh. Then it was joined by another green monster. And they proceeded to fight. They were hopping, jumping, flying all over the tiny bathroom while I WAS TRYING TO BATHE! Damn nuisances. By then, in my trying to swat them, avoid them, kill them, all the hot water had run out and I was stuck with a cold shower.

Maybe it wasn't a fight. Maybe it was the green green grasshopper mating dance of tag or whatever. I don't care. Not when I'm bathing. They settled down somewhere near the ceiling. I am too vision impaired to see that far so I just proceeded to get out of there before I was bombarded by more grasshopper missiles.

Damn cold showers.

Double damn grasshoppers.

P.s. I don't think grasshoppers have blood in the normal RED sense of the word. I have seen squashed grasshoppers here and they are all surrounded by something colourless and liquid. Maybe they have colourless blood. And they go crunch when somebody steps on them.

dinner

We were waiting for our dinner when the following conversation happened.

Me: *something gross*
S (24 yr old female): Ugh! Your statements should come with a PG warning!
V (22 yr old male): Huh? S, you are old enough to be a P yourself. (He then paused when he realised how gross that sounded and then continued) You are old enough to give some G yourself! ... and the conversation went on...

This reminded me of a similar setting a while ago when some of us were debating something of absolutely no importance when this "P" issue came up. At this juncture, somebody piped up with "The English pee or the Tamil pee?". And all burst out laughing. The letter P is so versatile. That is why I hate it when somebody calls me M.P. or Meera P. They always follow it up with a snigger. Dolts. My parents actually signed me up in school as Meera P. So basically, every roll call was a torture. I made things a lot better when I signed up for the 10th board exams with the full name. Even then, people with limited intelligence and a 6yr old sense of humour really piss me off with this Meera P. nonsense.

Maybe this bothers me a little too much. After all, what's in a name? Right? Yeah right. A rose is a rose is a rose but only somebody with a bad name knows the pain. I love my name; it's the P after it that stinks.

?

I have an assignment that has been postponed so often that nobody knows when it has to be submitted. Other than that, I have one more project to be done tomorrow. And then, pretty much nothing else for a while. The midterm schedule came out a while ago and I found out that none of my courses have midterms. Yay! So basically, when some people are slogging their asses off, I'm free! This is so much better than being free when everybody else is also free. Now, i get to be free and gloat about it to the other idiots who aren't! Ideal situation.

Nothing much other than that. Went out for dinner. Had biriyani and dal and raitha and soup. I have a splitting headache adnd I feel like I'm dying. It feels like their are these tiny people behind my eyes and they are simultaneously trying to poke my eyes with red hot rods and hit my skull with hammers. It hurts. Really hurts.

Now I have to go and figure out what to do for this other submission.

Happy Diwali

There is a very muted rumbling of crackers all around. A lot less noise than I am used to during Diwali.

I haven't burst crackers since 10th std. There was this major anti-child labour movement in Tamil Nadu at that time and the pictures in the papers really grossed me out. Since then, we haven't had crackers at home. A couple of weeks ago, in one of my classes, we were discussing child labour and how according to Indian law, children under 14 can't be employed. The prof was pro-child labour and said stuff about how it was a lot worse for the children without the work. I don't know how I feel about it. On one hand, I know that conditions are awful, that children should go to school and have a childhood and everything, but on the other, I can't help feeling that if they were not working in factories and farms and as domestic help, they would definitely not be in school and unless somebody can find a way to get them to school, I don't think the whole 'child labour is bad' issue will ever get resolved. Every Diwali I think about this and the rest of the time, I'm too caught up in my little life to really care.

I had 3 classes today! 3! I only attended one but still... What were they thinking! Keeping classes on Diwali?! There was the usual mumbling about how they'll never have classes on Christmas but they don't mind bugging us during Diwali. I don't know how true that is but I definitely wouldn't have minded having the day off. Not because of Diwali; any undeserved break is a good thing.

I have had the music playing till now with the speakers turned off. I wondered what the problem was - checked the port, checked the settings but didn't check the speaker itself. These things happen far too often with me. This morning, on my way to breakfast, I realised that I had on chappals of two different pairs! I am so happy I realised it before anybody saw me. Imagine the embarrasment!

Happy Diwali folks! Think of me when you have sweets. I will probably go out for dinner. I am not subjecting myself to the horrors of the "Special Diwali Dinner" at the mess tonight. My poor stomach commit suicide. Would that be like Harakiri? Are Harakiri and Seppuku the same thing?

p.s. Chad Kroeger of Nickelback has the nicest voice I have heard in a long time.

hospitals

Why do they always show people sleeping on their backs in hospital scenes? I never sleep on my back and I'm willing to bet that most people either sleep on their sides or on their stomachs.

work

No classes today, and that's a bad thing because nothing ever gets done when I don't have classes. I have no motivation to get up from bed.

But there was a project to finish. Or rather, start. We went to the local ISP for a PITEO project. PITEO being "Planning IT Enabled Organisations" and if you don't know what an ISP is, shame on you! The prof is a cool guy. Comes once a month and takes 10 classes in 2 days. Not very nice but when did they ever give a shit about our mental well-being?! Anyway, the project was about their hardware systems and networks and who their customers are and what kind of services they have and stuff like that. It was a good 15 mins visit. I just stood there and listened in to the conversation a guy from my group and the manager were having. It was interesting, but I couldn't come up with anything intelligent to ask him. After that, we went to have coffee.

2 cups of coffee later, I'm back in my room, trying to figure out what to do next. I have one more assignment to complete in the same subject and a couple of cases in Supply Chain Management. The cases are very interesting and I have to do Linear and Goal Programming. I don't remember either. We were supposed to submit this a week ago but we got an extension of the deadline; so, we haven't started yet. Story of my life.

Our internet has been pretty shitty the past couple of day and only now, seems normal. I'm tempeted to go to yahoo games and play texttwist or something. But I'll resist. I think I'll finish work first. I think. I'm turning over a new leaf!

Tata.

I'm screwed.

We had a talk by Mani Shankar Aiyar this morning. It was actually interesting. I don't remember what he said, just that it was all very entertaining without being completely pointless. He seemed to have a bone to pick against biz school grads, tho.

We had a meeting sorta thingy with the placement committee tonight where they gave us the list of companies coming for campus recruitment in January. I have this feeling of impending doom. A cranky evil laughing at me. I have no idea what I want to do, where I want to work or what kind of work I want to do. Two years here was supposed to give me an idea of what I was going to do next. Now, I am more confused and everything seems irrelevant, pointless, vague, scary. I have taken mostly marketing papers. My experiment with finance was a disaster. So what am I going to do? Marketing? Then, what kind of marketing? Do I really want to sell biscuits or software? I am so fucking lost. Everybody seems very sure. They all have dream companies, dream jobs. All I have are nightmares. What the hell am I going to do?

At the same time, I have this weird reassuring feeling that it can't be so bad; that everything will be alright; that I'll figure it all out; that it'll all come to me at the right time. But what if I fuck it up in the last minute? What if I screw up the interviews? What if I am too dumb, too smart, too annoying, too predictable, too weird, too ugh, for anybody? What if I don't want the jobs that are offered? What if I am doomed to a life as a desk jockey? A paper pusher? Yet another Pointy Haired Manager? Am I obsessing over this too soon? Or is it too late?

Sometimes I just hate being me.

today

A prof said, "A homogeneous group of different types of people". And the nobody reacted!

damn!

blogger is so fucked up!

*throws hands up in the air and storms out of the room*

won!

I came 2nd in a quiz we just had. Team of 5. I feel all warm and glowy. It was 2 hours long and great fun. Does it say something about me, the fact that I enjoy quizzes so much? Anyway, we won a "Second place" shield and some toffees. There was no audience coz nobody had turned up. It was the most fun I have had in a classroom in a long time.

This just came in the mail. It's hilarious! Check it out. It's the "Bushwhacked" game. Drop a brain in Bush's head.

I had 4 classes today, of which I attended 2. I bunked both my neuro marketing classes. The guy keeps repeating himself and there is only so long that I can keep myself entertained by looking at his mustache. He han't said anything new since the first class.

I have been watching assorted episodes of That 70's Show. There are very random episodes available here, so it was sorta weird. I saw the first episode of the first season where they just sorta introduce everybody and then I saw something from the 6th season where Kelso is having a baby with some random woman, and then some episode where Fez "Does it" for the first time then another episode in which he's married to Laurie and she's on their honeymoon with another guy and then the one where Eric ditches Donna on their day before the wedding and then the one in which they find Hyde's dad and lots more.

Basically lots of That 70's Show and now I'm very confused. I have seen only the first 3 or 4 seasons on TV and now I saw bits and pieces of the 6th and 7th seasons. There are huge gaps in my knowledge that need to be rectified.

Not much else. There are a bunch of The Wonder Years episodes also lying around with someone. But for some reason, I find Kevin Arnold and his friends very annoying. Maybe I have had too much of them when I was in school.

I make it seem like I have no work here. It's not like that. I really do have a lot of work to do. But since all my work has to be done in groups and all my deadlines are not anytime soon, I don't have work to do now. If I do have work to do, somebody from my group will tell me what to do and by when and I'll do it then. It's a brilliant system. In a few subjects, I even do some of the pushing to get the work done on time.

Anyway, cheerios. Will go see either Apocalypse Now or more of Eric Foreman's basement.

Adios amigos.

And then...

.. nothing. I really have better things to do. I should be doing, uh, other things. You know, stuff that I came here to do. Like... stuff.

Anyway, since I am so busy and all that, I have a question for you.

There is this guy... who sometimes sits in my vicinity. He is a very nice guy and all that, but he smells like a homeless person. Or what I think a homeless person who hasn't bathed for a very long time and is outdoor all the time smells. The weird thing is, he is not the kind of guy who has, um, bad personal hygiene or anything. There is this other guy who claims to bathe like once a week or something, and he dosen't stink. But this guy does.

The question is, how do I get away with not ever being near him? He is a nice guy and all but... I can't hold my breath for long.

Anyway, that's that.

Maybe I should rename this post Assault of The Olfactory Sort.

I saw this really really really awful movie called Dog Soldiers. Really really awful.
Werewolves, special forces, Scottish forests, deserted houses and stuff. Hilarious. They use about a gazillion rounds of ammunition and blow up two trucks, one barn and the house they were in. Only one guy survives. Duh. Big guy. Blond. Now I know where the inspiration for the werewolf in Prisoner of Azkaban came from. Yuck.

I had this really boring class today. I was mesmerised. I could not take my eyes away from the prof (except when I was reading Churchill's biography or Outlook). His upper lip was completely hidden by a thick curtain of hair. His face is really small and he has a balding head. His most prominent feature on his face is his moustache. And it is really funny. Imagine a thick blanket of hair curving over a guy's upper lip till it almost reaches his lower lip. Weird. He looks a little like Thompson and Thomson. It's been a while since I read Tintin. I "louved" Captain Haddock's curses.

Have to get back to work. Yeah. WORK.

no classes yet

I came here on monday thinking I'll have a presentation to attend on Monday and 2 classes on Tuesday. It's past Wednesday and I HAVE NOT HAD ANY CLASSES SO FAR!! It makes me so mad. I have had absolutely nothing to do. I could have stayed at home. They 'rescheduled' the classes at the last minute. That is probably admin speak for "the profs overslept and couldn't be bothered to come to class". At 2pm. Gah!

Gah! seems like a very European thing to say. I don't know why I think that. Maybe because Poirot was the person I heard/read saying it. And nobody is more European than Poirot. Maybe Rupert Everett but he is more Ernest than anything else. (If you didn't get that, go read Oscar Wilde). If you write an entire sentence within brackets, does the period come within the closing bracket or outside it? Was the previous sentence right or should it have been ".. or without?" ?

These past 3 days have been very fulfilling in a very "I'm so jobless" kinda way. I have slept an average of 10 hours a day and have seen 2 movies a day. On Monday I saw The Family Guy and Boondock Saints (both 4 on a scale of 0(ugh) to 5(brilliant)); on Tuesday, I saw Dog soldiers (0) and 25 Hours (3.75) and on wednesday, The Breakfast Club (2.9) and A Clockwork Orange (sometimes -100 and sometimes 3) and I have just one thing to say - Stanley Kubrik is one twisted, creepy and maybe brilliant SOB. I also read some 4 magazines, 2 comics, 1 novel and 1 biography. All in all, a good time was had. Like a mini holiday after a long vacation. Not that I had a very long vacation, but still... Even then, it makes my blood boil to think that I could have had 3 more days at home if they had told us earlier that they were going to reschedule. Damn admin jerks!

Anyway, I have 2 submissions coming up in the next two days, so maybe now I'll go and do something productive. Maybe.

back

That was one looong trip, but this time I had the side upper berth; definitely better than the 3rd tier. There was a lot of food. I had not brought any, too lazy to carry stuff and it turned out that it was a good thing that I didn't. Ecerybody else had brought food - there was puliyodarai, lime rice, curd rice, rotis, aloo, some kinda beans, chips, paratas and lots of other stuff that I don't remember. Everybody ate well. Some stuff had gone bad by dinner, and went out of the window. We ended up playing cards for a really long time. It was great fun.

Anyway, back in Bhub. It was really hot when I get here in the morning, almost 3 hours late. Damn Eastern Railways. This marks the end of good coffee for me for a long time. Good cheap coffee in any case. There is always Cafe COffee Day right out side, where I can get good cappuchino for Rs.20 plus VAT. Which I did, this afternoon. The bespectacled waiter guy greeted me like an old friend. Perhaps their profit margins had been squeezed beacuse of my week long absence. They are selling Tantra type T shirts there.

I saw Family Guy today, post lunch. Hilarious stuff. And after my Coffee Day trip, I saw Boondock Saints. I liked it. Sorta like The Four Just Men, only more blood. Edgar Wallace made all the righteous killing sound very clean and bloodless. This seemed more real. Anyway, decent movie. I didn't like the reunion with the father part, but whatever. Willem Dafoe is brilliant.

Nothing else; two classes tomorrow and back to the grind soon. I have midterms just after Diwali. Sadistic admin jerks.

I really really miss being back home. What I do like here is that i can talk in tamil and very few people understand. It's a great way to make fun of people in public without them catching on. They'll know you are making fun of them but what you say sounds like double dutch to them.

Tada.

back soon

It's over too soon. Going back to Bhubaneshwar tomorrow. 20 hours in 2nd class sleeper. 3 tier. Some more staring at the roof of the train. Or is it ceiling?

Anyway, the purpose of this post is not to whine about the impending trip back: you'll get that after the trip; it's not about my time here: you already know most of it; it's not about my very cute nieces; it's about the latest Backstreet Boys video.

They have hit rock bottom and started digging. It is pain, torture and ugh of unparalleled proportions.

The sister and I were watching VH1 this morning when I was having my breakfast. There was Jessica Simpson killing yet another classic: this time, the song was These Boots Are Made FOr Walking, formerly by Nancy Sinatra. They actually had the audacity to use this song in the soundtrack of The Dukes of Hazzard. As if the movie wasn't bad enough.

Then I left to bathe when I heard the sister call me. SHe pointed to the TV and said, "Have you seen this?". I thought that it was yet another rock band making fun of boybands. This is getting a little old. But it wasn't. It was the Backstreet Boys. All of them. Hanging out of a convertible. Looking decades older than they biologically could. Looking like shit. With long hair, all of them and grungy clothes. They were doing a parody of rock videos - complete with the guitar breaking, the blonde groupies, jumping around like morons, and all that. If their earlier songs and videos were car wrecks, this one was a nuclear accident. The kind that brings about total annihilation of life on earth. The stuff that killed dinosaurs. That bad.

We watched with morbid facination; like when there is an accident on the highway and you cannot help but look at all the blood and glass and mangled steel even though you know if you doo see it you will want to puke or pass out.

Will see you all the day after tomorrow from Bhubaneshwar. G'nite.

almost over

The vacation is almost done. Now I don't want to go back.

While at the doctor's waiting room for 2 hours, I read The Plot Against America by Phillip Roth. It was an amazing, but disturbing book, along the lines of To Kill a Mocking Bird. All the more disturbing because it is mostly true, almost completely historical. Some scary stuff.

It was about persecution of the Jews in America during the Second World War. Most books talk about Jews in Europe and persecution by the Nazis, whenever the 2ndWW is mentioned. This book was about anti-semetism in the US of A during the same time concentration camps were being set up in East Europe. Not anti semetism of the same type; but painful to those subject to it never the less.

And now, BBC Hardtalk has the author of The Colour Purple talking about how blacks still have it really bad in the USA and about poverty of both blacks and white there.

It is weird that both happened on the same day. I have grown up very protected and free. The only discrimination I have faced is because I am a girl and I have not faced much of that. I just don't like being lumped in one category and expected to act in a particular way just because of my uh.. anatomy. ANyway, I have never had much trouble because of that. I have had a very easy life. Sorta boring, true; but keep in mind the ancient chinese proverb, (All old proverbs that are a little twisted and seem badly translated end up being Ancient Cninese!), "May you live in interesting times!".

Thought it was worth a mention.

dune

Who has read the Litany Against Fear?

I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.

Bene Gesserit Litany Against Fear - From Frank Herbert's Dune Series

I was thinking about Dune and I remembered this. Good stuff, Dune.

the 'rents

The parents did a sorta interview now. With me. They are apparently worried that I'll fuck up my interviews with my bad attitude, terrible posture and expressionless face.

ugh.

Going to sleep. Have a general check up tomorrow. Just what I want to do. Spend the penultimate day of my last vacation in a stinky hospital full of pointy things and evil sadistic white coats. *run screaming*

G'nite.

la la la...

I couldn't think of a topic. obviously.

I don't have anything to say. I saw Rush Hour 2 last night. Hilarious junk. My mother walked off after the first 5 minutes. She just couldn't take it.

I told my 10 yr old cousin that I would use junk instead of shit. I think junk is really cute. When it's coming from a 10 yr old. From me, I don't really know.

Imagine saying, "What junk!" or a "Load of junk" or just "JUnk!" Weird.

It rained all of yesterday. It was awful outside. Chennai was not built to withstand water. WIth a little more than 5 hours of rain, there was 2 feet of water on the roads and autos and premier padminis and ne118s had stopped on the road.

Since I don't seem to be in a writing mood, I'm going to post a mail I had written on this topic on Nov 1, 2002 to my family e-group.

yesterday was an interesting day.

last exam got over. went to a friend's house with another friend. saw parts of fantasia, argued on the merits and demerits of seinfeld, frasier and other earth-shattering stuff. then it started raining. and it rained and then kept raining. we kinda decided to stay the night there, then my friend remembered that she was wearing her contact lenses and couldn't sleep with them on.(why not? i have, and suffered thereafter) so she pursuaded(?) me, that for the sake of her eyes (and for world peace) we'd trudge back home. and that we did.

picture this. dirty madras. dirty madras after almost 4 hours of nonstop rain- madras under a couple of feet of water. up to my thighs in some places. we saw some kids having a lot of fun in the water and figured it couldn't be all that bad. until somebody mentioned ditches, open manholes and the general state of roads in madras. so we set out on our journey back home. the first hundred yards or so was wet wet wet. up to our knees wet. then we got to the main road and it was total chaos. the road was packed. auto rickshaws, cars , buses, bikes and a lorry that just had to go the other way. i will never understand people. throw in a few cars which had
stalled, were deserted and some wet morose cows and every thumb on the horn and you will understand what it was.

the 2 of us decided that instead of holding up traffic we'd take an auto and we chanced upon an empty one, with a very garrulant driver. according to him, only 1 in a million auto guys were honest and we had chanced upon the only one in town. we were also entertained to stories about his two daughters, 3 sons, several grandchildren,fuel prices and tamilnadu politics in general. we humoured him with "ok" and "uhuhh" periodically but i dont think it would have made a difference if we hadn't been there either. anyway half way through, the auto stopped too, we helped push it to a corner of the road and waded our way back.

wet, cold and dirty, home never seemed more inviting.and it was only the first day of vacation.

by the way, we got a yummy dinner at my friend's house, so 'twasnt all bad.

going to ranipet tomorrow. will keep you posted.
bye
meera

what do you think?

honeymoon over.

I wrote this long thing and decided not to post it. Basically I'm already bored of chennai. I kinda like being away from family and not many of my friends are here any more. I have visited only one since I came here. Had fun with her but I want to go back; not because I like bhubaneshwar; it's just very stressful here. I am having better food and meeting all my cousins and everything but I have absolutely no private space here and I need my few hours of alone time everyday if I am spend the rest of the day with people - even if it is with people I like.

Feeling sorta down. Have you ever wondered if you are clinically depressed? I'm in a sorta yoyo mood - up one minute, down another. I hate being me at times like this.

another day, no sleep yet

Ala - no idea what I meant by that. Oops.

I hate it when people delete comments. Leaves me very curious to know what was so bad/unkind/unparliamentary/too nice/praise-ish that I/we couldn't read it.

Yesterday was fun too. In a way.

I got all cleaned up, in a manner of speaking. Unless you are a girl, you have no idea what I'm talking about. Or maybe a "metrosexual". I think men who volunteer to get their chest/back/whatevers waxed are masochistic bastards who deserve anything they get. I mean, they actually go through that horrrifying pain even though they are not socially expected to do it. I sometimes wish I was born in the Neandrathal age or as a Chimpanzee and hair on the female of the species was not considered a sign of the major UGH.

My face, if left to its own devices, would have more hair than most adult men. After tweezing, threading and waxing, it looks all shiny and hairless. And only I know the pain, the PAIN I go through to look socially acceptable.

After the movie Cast Away was released, while people were debating many aspects of that movie, I was wondering how I would look if went 7 years without my tweezer, wax strips and parlour. THAT is how much I am affected by the unnatural acts forced on me by society!

After reading what I have written above, I have come to the conclusion that I have no shame. Yippee.. One less thing to be worried about.

Anyway, after the parlour, I went out for dinner with 2 aunts, 2 uncles, the parental units, the sister and grand mother and great aunt. It was good fun. And great food. ANd weird/interesting conversations. Every time my father started a controversial topic (which was every time he opened his mouth to speak), my grandmother would shut him and say the tamil equivalent off "Not here, people will hear, wait till we go home, have you no brains?". It was hilarious. ANd everything he said about govt. policy, politics, religion got the same reaction. But once the food came, we sorta concentrated on it and spoke only between mouthfuls. Damn good food. If you are in Chennai, check out Casablanca @ TTK Road.

After that, I went to my grandmother's place, where I, my sister, 2 cousins, aunt and dog saw all three Lord of the Rings continuously. Awesome stuff. My 10 yr old cousin and I were speaking the dialogues. It was so much fun.

ANyway, I haven't slept at all, and I'm going shopping with my mother in a while. I will probably feel the pain of lack of sleep in the afternoon. Yeehaw! But it's not as if I have plans, so I guess I could sleep in later.

ANd later today, I have to subject myself to torture of unparalleled proportions. Of deforesting my arms. I bet you did not want to or need to know that. FUN. DO not cross me tonight. I am not responsible for whatever I throw at you for annoying me.

Has anybody seen Maine Gandhi Ko Nahin Mara? My grandmother wants to go. Will I sleep, die of pain, suffer the mercies of bad acting, bad dialogues or will I enjoy a historical piece?

after 1 day..

I am so tired. I feel like my brain is being squeezed out of my tear ducts. Not nice.

Metlin - Hahahahahahahaha. CHant that nonsense? Right. "babality animality brutality fatality " wha..?

Ala - Soon.

Yesterday was fun. I had had 3 coffees by 7 Am and I was crawling on the ceiling. I woke Tara up and she freaked! She was so annoyed, and I just couldn't stop talking. SHe said, several times, "shut up!" and "who are you and what have you done to my sister?". WHatever. I visited one cousin, spent time with my "cho cute" niece, helped her make a mess of the house and then visited my grandmother and cousins and aunt a short distance away. I bugged my lil cousin off the computer with "I come here after 4 months and you would rather spend time with your stupid games than with me!!". He looked horrified and then came down with me. I really didn't think it would be that simple. Then we had lunch and saw Xmen. Tara slept, and got up only to drool whenever Wolverine is on sreen. That girl is desperate, I swear.

We then went to a recently married cousin's home and met her sister- and parents-in-law. What fun. We had a loud arguement with her motherin law about the new rules in anna university about dress codes, cell phones and other shit like that and I think she was a little disgusted by our too liberal views on male-female relationships, clothes and the like. Her daughter teaches at a certain college that I went to; I didn't know that and proceeded to trash that college and it's teaching staff. Open mouth, enter foot. Exit Meera.

The cousins went up and chatted a little - we should do that mor eoften. I didn't spend enough time with them. Then I went to another aunt's place for Golu and then out to dinner at the Great Kabab Factory. I have many insights from that episode.

1. Don't take 3 yr old kids out for dinner to an expensive place when they anve a) not slept enough; b) not eaten before that; c) both. What fun. Uttara kept screaming her head off for ktti chappathi and refused o eat anything they brought her. She finally had one small roti and dal. She is really a damn cute kid.
2. Vegetarian kababs are sorta weird. Not that I have ever had the other kind but they all sorta tasted the same, either panneer-y or aloo-y;but the buttermilk was yummy.

more later. I'm going out for dinner now.

home.

Even vending machine coffee tastes better in Chennai. Seriously.

The first thing I did when I got off the train was to buy coffee. It is thicher, has less water and even smells like coffee. If you have not had watery, sewage-like Nescafe or Lipton coffee, then you will have no idea what I am taking about. The great thing about Coffee Day vending machines is that you can control the amount of sugar that goes into your coffee. Why haven't Nescafe and HLL not figured out yet that not everybody likes their coffee with as much sugar as a boiled confectionary? Anyway, as I was thinking all this and loving my nice strong coffee, I forgot to watch where I was stepping and stepped into one of those large spaces that are so randomly strewn in Central, just before the Chennai Central Welcoming You board. By space, I mean empty, where there should have been concrete. Anyway, I twisted my ankle/foot and almost fell. It was one of those funny moves that people make when they know that they are going to fall unless they do something drastic - my something drastic was a little shake, stumble, bend forward and jerk and put my other foot down as hard as I could. It worked! I didn't even spill all my coffee. Yep. That went through my head as I limped to the car behind the oblivious driver. I still had most of the coffee left, and I could always lick the rest of it off my hand if I got desperate. Got into the car and left for home. On the way out of there, I noticed the CHennai General GOvernament Hospital. It is huge and looks spit shining new. It was good to know that there was a place that I could have gone nearby if I had broken my foot.

GOt back without much further ado, and my great-aunt woke up to let me in; said hi to her and my grandmother, let them go back to sleep and went to raid the kitchen. Didn't really feel like eating so made myself more coffee. Unfortunately, there was only enough coffee for one cup so you'll have to wait. Yummy. Filter Coffee rocks.

The train journey was a study of the train ceiling. The dirty, ugly, too close to my face ceiling. I wanted to sleep when we had gotten on (7.30 ish), so I got in to the top (3rd!!) bunk and slept. I got up at 10 and they refused to let me down, claiming no space. So I got my mp3 player out and listened to music and zoned out again. GOt up again at 12 and they still refused to let me down. I slept again, read a little, listened to more music. I'm glad I came prepared. I listened to all 178 tracks in the 20 hour trip. Yay me. ANyway, I finally got down at around 10 pm. I spent more time horizontal than otherwise this trip. It was awful. My back ached and I felt really weird - zombie like. Had 2 spoons or rather fingerfulls of "Veg Pulav Rs.20" and almost died. It had gone bad. SO had half a packet of Parle G Tiger biscuits and listened in to other people's conversations. Mostly people making fun of each other. One of the other girls (3 in total) who had come asked me what song I was listening to and I sorta sang out "My friend's got a girlfriend and I hate that bitch"; she looked horrified. I asked her why and she said that until this train trip, she had never heard people swear so openly before. Poor thing. I felt bad for her. I just grinned and shut up. See, I know when not to shoot my mouth off.

Anyway, nothing much happened. I was looking out through the window at the stars. I recognised Orion. That is the only constellation I can recognise. I used to be able to recognise the big and little dippers but I don't remember what they look like. There was this set of 5 stars that looked like a ladle and this other set of 6 that looked like a 6 pointed star. I though that was really cute. Nobody else did.

How do you tell someone that they have terrible B.O.? I tried to stick my head out throught the bars of the window, but my head was a trifle too big for that, not figuratively speaking. I am a very well grounded person. Do not laugh.

It is taking me a while to get used to this keyboard. I keep hitting capslock.

Nothing else to say.

We met the darjeeling band (Grunjee Morfins) at the station yesterday morning. They looked diappointingly normal.

The Indian Ocean concert was good. After the first 3 songs, everything else sounded the same to me. They sounded very good, just repetitive. Except for Kandisa and Bandein, I didn't recognise anything. They played the latter twice. The crowd went mad. Good stuff.

What do I do now? I think I'll go watch TV till my aunt and uncle come back from their walk. TV!! Haven't watched TV in months. I'll probably end up watching BBC, NDTV, Discovery or NGC. Wait, they might have History. Ok I'm going now. I love my History.

Tada folks. More things as they happen.

lately..

.. I have been very busy. Too busy for you.

Metlin.. You need help. Mortal Kombat was BAD. Yes, capital letters. Though the fight sequences were good.

We have been having our "Fest" - In common parlance, it's a "B-School Fest"; I personally feel that it sounds very dumb. It should ideally be called "We will do anything for some very expensive publicity" or "A whole buch of unrelated and semi-related activities followed by a lot of beer" or "I am sick of classes; let's spend an insanely large amount of money and have some fun and a lot of headache". I guess they thought these were too long and went with "Xpressions 2005".

My college has this really bad habit of having an X in everything. Xpressions, IlluminatiX, maXim, Xfin and blah blah blah. It's annoying. It's one of those things that go to annoying without ever being cute. I think it is because I feel that misspelling things on purpose is a crime - I just hate hate hate it when people write rulez, rox, and crap like that and now I am surrounded by such nonsense.

Maybe this is bothering me just a wee bit too much.

What is the right usage for "Mayhap"?

Last night was great. There was a rock competition. Not the sort that people throw rocks at each other - they are called Parliament sessions.

Generally rock competitions that I have been to are awful - they are filled with lead singers with fake accents, drummists who think drum rolls are "kewl", long haired, bare chested, guitarists who can play only Hotel California and Nothing Else Matters.

This time was mercifully different. The first band played a pretty decent "Whereever I May Roam"; though their lead singer did not sound like hetfield at all, they still sounded damn good. The second band was as bad as all the others were cumulatively good. BAD BAD BAD. Their "Original Comp" Dhokha was bad, but it was still better than their rape of Hotel California. They all came to stage wearing identical white banians and blue jeans. UGH. And so it started.

The third band was AWESOME. They were called Bodhi Tree, from XLRI and they played Joe Satriani's Summer Song, Cranberries's Animal Instinct and Pearl Jam's Black. It all almost sounded identical to the original. BEE-OO-TI-FUL. Vaishu, your friend Shambhavi was the lead singer and she got best vocalist. Their other singer, Narayan was also awesome. AND they made the guitars speak. I'm running out of adjectives. They did Joe Sat. Recognizable Joe Sat. Need I say more? They had a female drummer. The testoterone affected in the audience was yelling "we love your drummer" at the end of their sound check and after their first piece they were yelling "we love you all". It was very corny but it got the message across. Their original comp was about how their mess always served potatoes. Hilarious. stuff. We could all relate. they got best original comp for "having fun on stage and writing about stuff that happen to them". They played "XL ki kudiyan" at the end, asked for by popular request.

The fourth band was also great. They were a bunch of recently graduated school kids from Darjeeling and played the best damn crash metal I have ever heard. Their lead singer went from MHz to Hz within the space of one word! Not that we ever understood what he said. The band was great. Their original composition was called "Dark-cula" - about Dracula. duh.

The next band seemed semi professional. They were from Calcutta and their original composition was called "Kurukshetra". It started with "Yada yada ya dharmasya.." was was heavy rock, full of angst and pain and fights and stuff. Too much. But they were also good. They got second best original composition.

The judges were one guy from Silk Route and part of Indian Ocean. Indian Ocean are playing tonight. They are supposed to be good. Let's see how good. They jammed after the competition and played old Silk Route songs. Didn't like any. There were some people in the crowd who were having fun. Some you win, some you lose.

Later that night, Narayan, Jishnu and Bharat (XLRI band) played and sang for us while they were waiting for 4.30am. It was fun. Good, fun people.

My yahoo messenger has two new people on it. It's good to meet new people; even if one of them is a friend of a friend whom you have already met before.

A lot of people said a lot of nice things about this campus. I didn't think it was a big deal. I guess familiarity does breed comtempt. But was hilarious when the guys from FMS complimented our mess food. Delhi University can't be that sad!

This post has been mostly about the rock competition, but lots of other things also happened. A hilarious video was shot. Somebody teach me how to upload videos and you can see it for yourselves.

I crave comments. Help me.

rain

I hate rain. Everything is wet, soggy and unpleasant. Now, on top of that, we are having a cyclone. Yippee.... 150 km/hr. The clothes I washed last week still havent dried and now are probably lying on the lawn somewhere. ugh.

You can probably tell that I'm in a pissy mood. Not everything is bad.

The new term has started. I have 5 visiting profs this time. So most of my week is free and my weekends are all booked. It's weird. I had 1 class on friday, 3 on saturday, 2 on sunday, and none today. Cool.

The wind is howling outside, my curtains are pretty much all the time on the same plane as the fan and there is suddenly a lot of sand in my room. I saw a few good men last night. Jack Nicholsen has all the good lines in the movie.

I have 2 more projects from last term to finish. One will get over today, dunno when we have to finish the other.

I bitched about my project management midterm here once. Last week, I wrote the endterm exam. The paper was for 2 hours. As usual I was done in about an hour and fifteen and when I was leaving the prof stopped me and said that he "Enjoyed reading my midterm paper very much, it was very well written". UH? Cool. I thought I had done terribly. Sometiimes, it's nice when you are proved wrong. Sometimes.

I haven't written a lot this week because there have been a lot of power cuts here AND I have been sleeping all the time. Actually, the only time I don't sleep if I'm in my room is if there is a power cut.

I saw bits of Mortal Kombat before going to sleep last night. I had forgotten what an absolutely awful movie it is.

I read Tom Clancy's Executive Orders and Rainbow Six last week. They seem very hollywood friendly. Maybe Clancy wanted all his books to be made into movies. But after Patriot Games and Clear and Present Danger, he should have learnt that they only take decent books and make them into terrible movies. I wonder if the Jack Reacher books will ever see Tinsletown? Who can play Jack Reacher? He has to be, according to the books, 6 ft 4 inches tall, broad as a barn door, fists like hammers, hair like sand, super smart, all knowing and with a tortured family history. What was Lee Child thinking?! They make amusing books though.

I have to get back to work. And I have to clean my room. It looks like the cyclone was in here too. Keep in touch.

Exams

I feel so bored during exams.

Today, I had 2. The first was ok. Lots of sums, not much time spent thinking. Just wrote. I didn't have a calculator and ended doing arithmetic in the margins. First time since school. No wait. I did it for CAT and all that crap. I still remember my tables. And I finished almost an hour ahead of time.

The second was a pain. I got bored midway and consequently made a lot of silly mistakes. I drew a instead of b and figured it out only as I was going to give the paper in; then I had to draw b and got totally confused. I still finished 45 minutes ahead of time.

Why to people write so much and for so long? I can't sit for longer than an hour and a half for an exam. I either know the answers or I don't. If I do, I write fast and if I don't, I write some (ir)relevant bullshit and leave. Why sit around and torture yourself?

2 more exams tomorrow. I don't have to study for one and I don't know what to study for the other. All in all, no studying. Yippee! I wonder what movie I can watch today. I saw a bit of Wedding Crashers last week and got very bored. How are Must Love Dogs and Sky High? Never heard of them, but copied them from someone on the lan. Hope the print is good.

wonder..

Have you ever wondered if perhaps God is a mad scientist and life, the universe and everything as we know it is an experiment gone terribly wrong and the reason why He can't make it right is because He is in a padded cell in a straightjacket...

The real question is - Who put him there?

PS. oops straitjacket. thnx shri.

phood

The Sister sent me a large parcel. I got it yesterday. It was wet, so I sorta freaked and ran with it to my room and opened it. Phew. It was wet only on the outside. I had 3 minutes to get to class.

Anyway, after the classes were over and done with (2 presentations! One in a sari!! To be honest, I didn't make any of the presentations; I was just sitting, and one of my group made the prez, but I was wearing a sari, whose blouse I almost forgot to iron and I answered questions after the presentations), I went back to my room and checked out the box. It was all add-water-and-boil Pasta and bread sticks and stuff. With great trepidation, I tried out the pasta. The instructions said, boil in water for 10 mins and then let it stay for 5 mins. Boil in water?? All I have is a 500ml kettle. So I boiled the water, put the pasta and the boiling water in a bowl and covered it. 5 minutes later, it was ready. It was a little rubbery, and I had put too much water and I should have added the masala thingy after draining the water, but whatever. It was good.

All the other packets need milk added to it... Wonder how that's going to turn out? How much of a mess am I going to make?

Stick around. One of these days, I'll feel hungry at night and I'll do it, and I'll let you know.

More coming up in The Adventures of Meera And Her Kettle.

Now I will go bathe and then have lunch. Cya later.

PS. Thnx Tar. The LOTR will follow shortly. I swear.

so...

have 1 mid term tomorrow and many many end terms next week. i think i have already said that.

I saw bits of usual suspects today.

I have nothing to say.

Really.

This rarely happens.

I have to study.

I have mouth ulcers. Zytee tastes awful. When I told my friend that, she said that I wasnt supposed to eat it. Big help!

Vish, I had fried rice too. Only, it was ugh.

Bye now, Have to study.

Will I or won't I?

SPAM!

aaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhh spam.

if this continues... i don't know what i'll do. I could disable comments, but I love comments. I hate spam. I haven't checked in here in a couple of days and just now, I saw 16 comments on one post and I felt soooo happy. Most of it was spam. Damn it. WHat do I do? Help!


and so i changed the "comments" settings to "add word verification"

plz don't be mad. hope this kills the spam.

sound of music

I saw sound of music again. Loved it. A friend came in during the puppet song and I made her watchthe song... she was very amused.. I can't imagine why people would go through childhood without watching this movie!? I finished it and then saw all the songs again.

I am on the lookout for My Fair Lady, Chitty CHitty Bang Bang and Bed Knobs and Broomsticks.

This term is coming to an end and a very hectic end it is too. I have 9 papers in 5 days; my exams are starting on the 8th, I haven't finished most of my assigments, I still have 3 presentations to finish before the exams and I AM GOING NUTS.

ANd I'm watching movies. I need to get my priorities straight.

Italian Job tonight. Damn my priorities.

on good and bad plays

I love The Comedy of Errors. I read it a week ago. Macbeth rocks too. I found the Tempest very annoying. But not The Twelfth Night. And I like Oscar Wilde's plays; all of them.

Anyway, this is not about plays specifically. It's about one. And this is a sad story.

I got roped into doing a bit part in a play the dramatics club is doing. My part is not the problem. This play is doomed from the start. For one thing, we are doing "The Ghosts of Marvin Grange"; basically a bunch of people talking about a haunted place and a few fake ghosts thrown in. There are some flaws inherent to the play - the ghosts are actually people in disguise (the play is set in 1907, that itself is questionable. How do you fool people up close?? They actually say "She was attacked by strange and mysterious apparitions"! But the play is not the problem either.

The collective enthusiasm of the "actors" is negative. Except for one guy, the others would be quite happy to be rid of the who thing. The fact that the end term exams are creeping up on us does not help either. The last rehearsal saw a record low of three people turn up!!

Not that any of can actually act... but it is fun to pretend for a while. It would be "funner" if we weren't up to our necks in presentations and projects. And if we could find time besides midnight to rehearse. Anyway, I don't think this performance is going to see the light of day. Let's see.

Break a leg.

took an axe to my head...

...and axe oil burns. A friend told me of a time when she got axe oil in her eye by mistake!! I can't imagine the pain. It's almost 5pm and the weather is great, all of a sudden. The sun is completely covered by grey clouds and the wind's awesome.

There has been a spate of power cuts recently. Upto 4 or 5 times a day, but not more than 5 to 10 mins at a time. It's not so bad, except for the high pitched shrieks of the UPS.

Today, in Advertising Management class, the prof asked us which company was the leader in India for Industrial Advertising. It turned out to be the one my grandfather had started.. Imagine my embarrassment when the others figured out that R.K.Swamy was my grandfather! The kindly old prof asked me if he was my real grandfather; no, I just borrowed him when the others weren't available. I didn't say that; I nodded and said "my mother's father" to which he said "Nana?"; I guess. Thankfully, he stopped there.

I got a letter from amma today... a real letter, I thought. Snail mail!!! My father sent me one on Lufthansa stationary last year. Anyway, it wasn't a letter, it was a photocopy of an article in the paper about her. She looks too young to be 50.

According to Tom Clancy, the chinese Politburo is a bunch of randy, stupid old men, who can't see beyond their own ego and order executions, wars and nuclear ballistic missile launches at a whim. And America is all knowing, Russia is a cuddly bear, and they both drink lots of vodka together. It was an entertaining book, never the less.

big head

Isn't it funny how everything that happens around me boils down to me. Actually not funny at all.

And in other news, there is a mosquito that has been sitting on my computer screen for the past 10 mins. It dosen't move much, except to flutter its wings to show me that it's still alive. I wonder what it's thinking, or do mosquitoes not think?

The Bear and the Dragon is not all that bad, atleast the first 80 pages. Are there any Enid Blytons on the net?

phd

So my mom finished her Ph.D. Go Amma! I'm very proud of her, both for being Dr.B.P and for not quitting though she whined a lot about it. I always knew she'd do it. I feel like a big project of mine just got over, even though all I did was a bit of editing, and tell her best of luck every time she called. I do know a lot about Women's Self Help Groups and the like now. But I did 2 years ago too...

But lets get to the real problem here - MY MOM'S A DOC! No pressure at all.

now I lay me down to sleep..

I have to finish The Firm and then I'm going to start on The Bear and the dragon. I saw a guy reading Of Human Bondage in class today. I read a long time ago but I don't remember anything. sob sob. I couldn't show off my superior knowledge to him beyond 'hey, great book, give it to me after you are done with it'. Or something.

I had puliyodarai today, rice from the mess and pulikachal mix out of a plastic bottle somebody had brought from chennai, along with uncle chips, aloo and Omfed Plain Dahi. Yummy. They were also making jalebi tonight, but it was too hot and too sweet so I retreated after a bite, though it was quite good.

Bed calls. I have class at 2 pm tomorrow but I'l probably bunk that and read for a test that I have in the class after that. I should probably study now or in the morning but I don't think I'll get up before 11 and I have to read 4 chapters. Why am I trying to justify bunking? I don't have to give you excuses.

I got the least mark in a part of a project report in my class and my group had spent the most time on it. Life sucks. Moral of the story: hard work doesn't pay, smart work pays. So I'll have to figure out how to do better in the next submission. I am so sick of projects and submissions and presentations. Sometimes I feel like I'm only biding my time before the next prof gives me a load of work to do. Why do they all wait till the end of the term?! Why can't I start work early? Why do I whine so much? Anybody who gives me an interesting or amusing or innovative or all of the above answer to those three questions will get a coffee bite the next time I meet them. Or you can go and buy a coffee bite for yourself from me. Don't under estimate the power of a coffee bite. It not really coffee and it dosen't really bite but it's yummy and that's all that counts and I need to go sleep now.

Sleepy. Gnite.

books

I'm reading The Firm again... I am surprised at how much I am enjoying it. I thought I had grown out of Grisham; apparently not. I have just grown out of bad Grisham novels like The Brethren and others of that ilk.

I met a guy today, for whom we are doing a demand estimation (for his hotel, not for him). He was the most wooden faced guy I have ever had the displeasure of meeting. He didn't smile, frown, nothing. He didn't even crack a smile after we left (I did look back). Weird. When someone had told me earlier that "We can't ever tell what he's thinking.", I thought he was one of those guys who smile even when they are angry. But no; this is anyday more annoying.

I have a meeting in a few minutes and then somebody's birthday is going to be "celebrated" - cakes, kicks and general humiliation. Good fun to be had for all. And then another meeting. Yippee. Then I can sleep till 2 pm tomorrow.

Bye bye.

HP 6

I re-read The Half Blood Prince 2 days ago and something struck me as a little weird - Dumbledore shows Harry a memory in which Merope, Morfin and Marvolo speak to each other in parseltongue (does Merope speak P'tongue? I don't remember); what I don't get is, how does D'dore understand them?? There are only 3 ways he could have understood them : 1) He asks Voldemort what they were saying, 2) He has a parseltongue-english dictionary, and 3) He used a Babel Fish. All three options are very unlikely... so how does he do it? JKR, Please respond.

I liked the book 2nd time around too... it has passed the test of time.

I had 6 classes today - that is 6 * 1.5 = 9 hours of class; and another 9 hours tomorrow and 7.5 the next.... not even the Independence day free!! Sacrilege!

No news... just classes and more classes. Save me!

Apparently, a local hotel is having a South Indian Food Festival.. dare I risk it? How will my weak stomach react??

what's new? I'm ill again.

I'm bored. So bored that I read Pigs Have Wings twice in one day, in two consecutive classes yesterday.

I'm ill again - fever and sore throat. I'm feeling so bad for myself. I want hot mushroom soup with lots of pepper and toast with honey, but instead I had soggy cornflakes for breakfast and roti and some random paneer subzi for lunch.

I met one of my profs today for a project discussion along with my group and he said that I participate a lot in class. (This is one of the statements that require a smiley after it, but I'll resist.) I'm so cool - I can make sleeping in class look interactive; Needless to say, the others in my group looked weirdly at me after we left his room.

Nothing else seems to be happening to me. Lots of people are falling ill. It seems very unfair because the weather is awesome most of the time and instead of revelling in the cool breeze and enjoying the light drizzle, I feel cold and uncomfortable and I want to sleep all the time and my whole body hurts.

I complain too much.
The dean attended one of our classes (we had complained about the prof) and after the class he said that we needed more collar mikes! We weren't complaining about audibility, it was his entire teaching method we had an issue with! ugh... More to bitch about.

One more class to go for. (or is it go to?) Bye. Be nice and write to me.

1000!!

I hit 1000 visits. Yay.

American History X and a Vegetarian Dilemma

I'm watching that tonight. I've watched about half of it and the weird thing is, I keep getting mixed up with this movie and Bang! Bang! You're Dead. It must be because they both deal with teen angst, identity crisis and "issues". Though the issues themselves are very different. More on that after I finish the movie.

Dinner was weird. It all started innocently enough. Alka called up and asked if I was coming to a nearby chinese restaurant for dinner. I said ok. And so we set out, Alka, Anbu, Kobi and I. We reached the place all in one piece and it said "ONLY FISH". Now this, I didn't know. I wasn't too bothered; I could always have the chinese restaurant staple - noodles, and so, on we went.

We entered the dim-lit, restaurant and then it hit me. The smell of fish. There were two bowls of fish and crab, cut up and very delectably arranged on the table next to the entrance. UGH. I knew fish stank, but god, ugh! Anbu, predictably, pulled me close the chopped fish and there was a smaller fish inside the bigger fish's mouth!! It looked like it had been killed in the process of puking!

We sat down and they ordered soups, fish, prawn and crab, while I ordered soup, noodles.

The soups came and were predictably bad. I had two sips of mine and sent it back. It looked like sewage and tasted pretty bad too. And then the food came. It was a massacre of unparalleled proportions. Atleast it seemed like one to my unfamiliarized eyes. And ears. The smoked hilsa came in pretty, pink, filleted strips, with a lot of vegetables on the side and didn't look all that violent. But the prawn! and the crab!! 'twas all red and when I asked why everything was so red, Alka, with a straight face, said that it was because the base was blood. She's damn good, but I'm used to her by now... They ate, or rather tore their way through the food. The exoskeleton took some manipulation; and by that I mean, they first bit it (it broke with a resounding CRACK) and then tried to scoop out the stuff inside with a fork, then with a spoon, then with a knife and a fork and finally gave up all the silverware and went at it, teeth and nails. It was a very educative experience. I gave up trying to eat and just watched them. This took a while. Toward the end of the meal Alka turned to me and said "This is going to be blogged, isn't it". Heh heh. Yep. Then we had dessert and made our way back.

The moral of the story - when going out to dinner, make sure there's atleast one other person whose dietary needs match yours.

Fish stinks. How much ever a delicacy it is, it stinks.

Now I have to go wash my clothes. Good bye. Do you have any interesting food escapades?

nothing much

I'm bored. I have nothing to do. My mid terms are over and I feel very lethargic. I have been sleeping a lot. My exams were boring, for lack of a better word. The first one was ethics. ugh. I'm not going to rant about that subject again, don't worry. The paper was theory, as expected. Like, "What is the purpose of learning the thoeries of ethics for a business manager?". I wanted to write "The only reason I'm sitting for this particular paper with such a useless prof is because it is a required course", but instead I wrote some "acceptable" and hopefully grade-fetching crap. Ironic, that an ethics paper drives me to, uh, prevaricate. Anyway, thesaurus.com has 93 entries for "lie".

Moving away from ethics, my next paper was Project Management. More gas. He asked 2 questions about some cases we had done in class which were pretty straightforward but the other 3 questions were ugh! How would you answer "what are the roles and responsibilities of a project manager?" ? How would the answer be anything but hyperbole! Anyway, the midterm was followed by a "true or false" paper. And he gave us half an hour for that!! Impossible, that man is! But he's kinda nice too. In a very grandfatherly manner. One of the few non-stuck up, seemingly intelligent, soft spoken type. His classes are very sleep inducing but that's ok. Atleast he dosen't have his head stuck up his ass. More on that, some other time.

I have 6 classes and one test this weekend. I'm not too bothered about that. There are people who have 11 classes!!! My solution to feeling bad about a situation: find somebody who's in a worse situation and feel good about not being that person. Works all the time for me.

Nothing else. Had a bad sandwich and good coffee at Coffee Day. Have no classes tomorrow. It rained here today, though apparently not as much as it did in Mumbai. Send some rain south, Aslan!

I have downloaded The Magician's Nephew and The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe! Tomorrow is going to be Narnia day! Go out and spread the word - Aslan and The High Kings and Queens from over the Sea will save the day. I liked the Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy stories better than the Eustace and the other girl stories. Back to the books. Bye.

Hungry

I'm ravenous; but I'm too lazy to go and get someting to eat. I have nothing in my room and I have to walk all of 5 minutes to get food but I'm really not in the mood to go.

I forgot to have lunch (yeah, forgot), had tea and maggi at 6 and again forgot to have dinner! Forgot because I have to finish a advertising project. Which is still nowhere near completion. I am not getting any data. I feel like bawling. M called me for dinner at 9.40 but I figured I'll finish this stuff and then go. But I still haven't finished and it's almost tomorrow.

I also have midterms starting on monday; thankfully only 2 subjects. I have no idea what to study or from where. I hate exams.

I'm hungry. And pissed off. Not a good combination. I am going to repair atleast one of those.

It has been a while.

It feels like it has been a really long time since I visited here. In all the 2 days since I last came here, I have had exactly one test and some 3 classes. We had a HUGE argument with the Service Marketing prof. Basically, we told him his teaching sucked, we don't get shit out of his case discussions, and we don't see the point in coming and sitting for one and a half hours just to listen to him spew stuff he barely understands at us. And he did not take it very well. This 5 foot nothing, smarmy loon started yelling back at us about how we put no effort to analyse anything before class and how he will not lead case discussions because that will hamper our application. Or something like that. How do people come up with crap like that with a straight face?? If he won't teach, what the fuck is he here for? But we have to go and sit in his class and pretend to be engrossed in this millions of slides on gaps. He has taken 6 classes and has still covered only around 4 topics. Asshole.

But something good happened too, in the past 2 days. There was this another prof. He was a complete nutcase. He would go on and on about transparency and availability of knowledge and abuse of power in Productions and Operations management class. Well, he quit. Good riddance. He was annoying, stuck up, rude and worst of all, had no sense of humour. His first class started out with, "Who has seen Dead Poets' Society?". Ugh. That was the beginning of a really bad term. He gave me terrible grades too. But that's not why I'm glad he's gone. I delirious with joy because I will not be subjected to his ridiculous posts on the notice board about distorted information, keeping Vocal people Voiceless (huh?), turf wars between departments (where? how?) and all the things that apparently only he had a clue about. Even though we all live here. Annoying little git.

Off to bed. Gnite. Be Good. Comment.

The Trials of Meera

I sat in Coffee Day today for an hour. The couch was free, so I sat inside and not outside as I generally do. They had done something to the place, it wasn't as teeming with flies as it was the last time I went there. So I had a great sofa, a sort of clean place, nobody I knew and a good book. Then they played Aqua's Barbie Girl. Why is it that everytime everything seems great, something always crops up to spoil it all?? How can you read about Poirot's perfectly curled moustache when this thing is shrieking about picking her up and undressing her everywhere!!If it is not Aqua, it is remixed Spice Girls. Remixed! I have no words. No words at all.

I got over it. I ordered a coffee and started reading. 50 pages into the book and two coffees later, two guys came and sat down. I did not understand a word they said, but the sight that assaulted my eyes! Let's call them A and B.

A sat directly opposite me and was like a very brown version of Fido Dido but without the charm or "cute"ness. He was wearing those specially faded, gray jeans. They were faded in thick horizontal, stripes across his thighs, starting immediately under his you-know-where. So basically, he had one patch of dark gray, a long patch of dark gray-light gray stripes and another long stretch of dark gray, strategically torn at both his knees and cut off just above his shoes. And tight. To complete the sartorial mess, he topped it off with a mustard coloured, full-sleeved shirt, about 3 sizes too big for him. And bottomed it off with white sneakers. Bright white.

B was of a totally different category. While A obviously thought he was "cool", B thought he had "style". Another eyesore. White, shiny shirt with three quarter sleeves!! I have never seen a guy wear three quarter sleeves before. Wow. I don't ever want to see that again. And brown trousers. Again the shiney sort. Greasy hair, with about three fourth of it falling over his forehead. What a sight! This one wore polished, black shoes. With green socks. What a beauty. I love it when things like this happen to me out of the blue. Totally makes my day.

By the way, A had striped his hair too. Blonde. And nobody was there to share it with me.

Harry Potter and The Half Blood Prince

And I finished it. 827 pages in 4 and a half hours. Pleasantly surprised, I was. After the Order of the Phoenix, I didn't have very great expectations. A moron here told me something that happens in the book towards the end. I was so annoyed, I have been cursing him all day. Considering that he is almost a decade older than me, that's not very nice. His fault.

It was good. Not as good as Prisoner of Azkaban, but definitely worth a read. I'll read it again tomorrow, just in case I missed something the first time.

My eyes hurt. I have a class in 5 and a half hours.

Goodnight. Read the book.

Today, in my life.

Bad stomach and bad classes are all that I seem to write about. But that is all that happens in my life, if I'm lucky. Today was one of the 'badder' days. I had to sit through two and a half hours of 5 old men gassing about their respective companies when they were supposed to talk about Indian manufacturing.

The first guy began his 'speech' with this beauty: "I am glad that you put your focus on this topic which needs a lot more focus to be put on it." That was the only good thing about the whole "discussion". And it went on and on and on.

And I have a 7 am class tomorrow. On a Sunday.

Tell Slartibartfast I want a different earth. One without Evil Sunday Morning Classes.

G'nite.

Not for the squeamish

Have you ever run to the toilet in the middle of the night, undoing your pants on the way, praying that you get there on time?

I did that several times last night. And this morning. After a breakfast of tea and air, I had Andial, in vain hope that it would stop. I got back to my room and collapsed on my bed, knowing that god was punishing me for calling my profs names behind their backs, for bunking classes and being generally EVIL. And I took it without complaint. I went back to sleep.

A few hours later, I woke up. At first, I thought that I was in the sets of Jurassic Park and that there were speakers broadcasting the mother T-Rex's cries to her hurt baby. But no, that was just my stomach. And the roars were moving south, and fast. So I ran, tripping over books, chairs and clothes in my mad rush to the porcelain god, cursing Andial as I ran. I banged the door shut, and....

... it was just a fart.

God bless you, Andial

big, white teeth... mostly white..

I'm smiling. Big smile. Staring at the screen and smiling.

I just saw Ocean's Twelve. But that is not the reason I'm smiling, though the movie was funny. Unintentionally so. Brad Pitt dosen't eat as much in this movie as he does in Eleven. That was my net takeaway from the movie. Definitely not entertainment. Not my kind anyway.

Do you want to know why I'm smiling? Because Sheetal left a comment in an earlier post; I followed it back to her blog and what do I see???

p.s to consumerdemon - can't believe you're actually reading my blog!
because your blog was one of the first that got me interested in blogging! THANK
YOU!!!

Wow! Somebody I don't know said that! I think I am going to smile for a lot while longer. (And yes, Sheetal, Guarini looks really weird; like his pet rats ran out of food and nibbled at his whiskers!)

Take that Alka! I am going to shrug off all the people here (all 1 of them) who make fun of how much time I am spending on my blog!

Going away now. Still grinning. I haven't figured out how to change the alignment in this thing. But who cares.

strategy, beer and stuff

I had 2 very bad classes. In the first one, we were discussing a beer-naming strategy case and the Prof. picked on a guy who dosen't drink and told him shit like "If you are not drunk, you are not a man"! I hate it when people glorify this shit. It's ok to poison yourself, but do you have to try to make a guy who had made a consious decision not to drink feel dumb in front of the whole fucking class? Who all laughed at all the right places. Bloody suck ups, the whole lot of them. This man is so full of himself, 'i am so fucking cool' all the time! ugh. Nauseating Moron.

In the next class, we were entertained by another buffoon. This man has a nasal voice and claps, grins and laughs at everything. You give him you opinion, laugh. You tell him you want to leave the class, grin. You answer his question, clap. It is so annoying. And the worst thing about him is his tests. They make no sense at all: they are either memory tests or match the following jargons with a set of other jargon, all of which sound the same. I got 7 on 20,i think, in the first one; I'll probably flunk the next one.

3 hours of pain. And it is raining now. I want food. And coffee. And sleep.

Bye.

On Poetry

I have always thought of people who write poetry as NOT HUMAN. I'm not talking of those far-away beings like Tennyson who wrote the first poem that I 'recited' to an audience - The Beggar Maid and other works of art like The Charge of the Light Brigade and The Lady of Shalott; I am talking of people I know, who are otherwise normal, who can make phrases rhyme, who can piece together an ABABA style or even a 'modern' poem that dosen't rhyme, but sounds so damn good!

Take T for example; She is brilliant. Her poems are almost always sad, angry or upset. But they are beautifully so. And R, he is an effing genius when it comes to describing emotions with metaphors or K, who I was knew for 5 years before I knew that she wrote poetry.

Pigs. I love poetry. Not to the extent that I can quote Keats at the drop of a hat (though I do know "I stood tip-toe upon a little hill, The air was cooling, and so very still") but I like to read them. But can I write poems? Hell No. I have tried. And what a miserable product that was! Embarassing, it was.

This is a testament of my jealousy.

86!

This is my 86th post. I feel all warm and glow-y. I can't believe I have actually continued this. I thought this would just be a summer fling. Apparently not. This is a new one for me. I generally tend to not like the same sort of thing for a long time - all categories: food, movies, places, people, everything. Books are the only things to escape this weirdness of mine. I still like the same books I liked when I was 6, 10, 14, 18, 21. It has been a natural progression from Noddy to Faraway Tree & Amar Chitra Katha to Narnia & Malory Towers to The Golden Gate to The Grand Sophy & Jeeves to The Future of Freedom & Papillion. I would re-read any of these books given a choice - even Noddy.

Maybe the blog would fit into that category. It's too early to tell. But I can hope.

my way or the highway

Limp Bizkit is good for many moods. Pissed off, angry, upset, sleepy, happy, bored, constipated... all of it.

Somebody just asked for Marylin Manson's songs on the lan messenger. I have never heard any of his stuff. How bad can they be?

I had three classes today. I slept through the alarm and missed the 9 O' clock class. I went for the 2 O' clock class but got bored and bunked the 3.45 class. And missed a surprise quiz. I can see my grades nose dive. The good news is that the people who took the test said that they'd probably get zero or less, so I guess I didn't miss much. Time will tell.

tuff

Not very happy now.

Listening to Megadeath's Insomnia. It sounds angry and anti-people. Just like I am feeling now.

It was a guy's birthday "celebrations" today - which basically means that he got the shit kicked out of him, got smeared with stuff and got a lot of hugs. He was a popular guy and there had been a lot of "campaigning" before his birthday. Lots of people turned up. It was funny in parts, but mostly dumb. Everybody laughed a lot in all the appropriate places. Me too.

It's weird how generally smart, quiet, subdued people turn into loud-mouthed, annoying dip-shits when faced with an equally loud, obnoxious crowd.

I'm feeling very unaccomodating of people now.

I talk too much when I am around a lot of people. Or I don't talk at all. It's obsessive compulsive, with a twist. I hate it when it happens. I am unintentionally idiotic, and I want to kick myself when that happens. I never think of what I am going to say and end up very verbose. I don't seem to know how to form sentences. Like PP said, I am the worst sort of verbose. I make fun of people like me. And it's not as if people give a shit about what I say. I keep telling myself, "Shut up, Shut up Meera" but I don't. Ever.

Fuck it. I'm going to sleep.

something stupid

Have you ever wanted to talk very badly but had nothing to say?

case

Why is every prof so obsessed with case studies? Why does nobody teach?/ Why do they want me to do so much work in preparation for a class? Why do I have so many things to write out these days? - pen and paper writing seems so difficult these days! Why do profs not trust printed submissions anymore!? Why do I have to go to class now? Oh Shit, Class.

Bye.

Weird But Wonderful!

That is how i want somebody to describe the book that I am going to write. Someday.

I have written lots of stories in my head, but when I put them down on paper or MSWord they just don't work the way they were supposed to. Pity, because they were great stories. Brilliant plots, amazing characterization and great locations. And they never really got out of my head. Imagine the headlines when I finally write my bestseller - STORIES HELD HOSTAGE BY HOSTILE MIND FINALLY RELEASED!!! RUSH TO YOUR LOCAL BOOKSTORES NOW!!

Wait and watch.

I have never.

... seen a Scorpions video.
... been to a good concert.
... met anybody with "Movie Star" good looks.
... been first in any subject, school, college or now.
... liked being asked something in class by a teacher, even if I knew the answer.
... had a real hobby.
... been hang gliding, bungee jumping, free falling, para gliding, or anything that sounds cool.
... learnt to ride a motor cycle.
... learnt to play a musical instrument.
... sung in public.
... sung in the bathroom.
... not slept during a long drive.
... had airplane food that I liked.
... had Brinjal/Aubergines/Kathrikka; atleast not that I can remember.
... liked any wedding.
... liked any formal occasion that involved lots of stranges, big smiles and dressing up.
... been to a disco.

There are lots more. But I am goinng to sleep. Good night.

...

i couldn't think of a title and hence the ellipses.

i have class tomorrow at 9 am. which is not a very nice thing to have, generally. not as bad as having a lobotomy or a session with the shrink at 9 and definitely not as bad as having a class at 7, which some people do. hehe. i feel better already. instead of saying "i have class at 9", i can say "i don't have class at 7". but there are some people who have class only at 11. that's just mean. and wasteful. early to rise and all that.

i have nothing to write about. i could write about my mosquito bites, but i have already done that; or about how i was wearing a torn salwar today without knowing about it till half the day was over, but that's nothing new in my world; or about how i had an identical, but untorn salwar that i changed into, that i did not know about, but who cares; or about how i did not understand anything the product management prof said in the last 15 minutes of the class, coz i was not really listening, but that's not breaking news material either; i could write about all the replies i did not get to my 3 mails to a group, but i have really stopped caring; nothing to write about.

for someone who had nothing to write about, i seem to have written a lot.

i am becoming more antisocial than usual. there is social, there is normal, there is anti-social and then there is me. i think i am going to create a new category under my present category and occupy that slot. i can think of nothing better to do with my spare time than read "Anne of Avonlea". it begins quite nicely. but i haven't gone past the first 10 pages. i got distracted and started reading "20,000 Leagues Under The Sea". the professor character is lot like the professor in Arthur Conan Doyle's "The Lost World". which was an awesome book. Micheal Chrichton is a miserable loser and copycat. jules verne, arthur conan doyle and issac asimov are my next list of authors to re-read.

i went to coffee day today. at 6pm. it was awful. it was as if two battling factions of flies had had a final showdown there. remember the end of the battle/war scene in those epic movies? where there are dead bodies all over and not a living soul to be seen? it was like that, but with flies. ugh.
i'm not going back there until i can get that image out of my mind.

i cleaned my room today. by cleaned, i mean put my books away, put most of my clothes away and swept 10 days worth of dust and other assorted stuff out of my room. i also sort of cleaned over and around my computer. man, what a mess. i shook my keyboard and stuff fell out of it in buckets. i'll save you a description of what constituted "stuff" for a day when i am feeling particularly mean.

i want to start using capitals when i post. i am satisfied with all other aspects of grammar, vocabulary, punctuation and lack of "cute" and "popular" abbreviations but i still have to master the art of using capitals when i type.

soon, i promise.

whatelse? i don't want to stop writing. it feels nice to write. type. whatever. reminds me of something vish said. about how it feels very unromantic to say typed. very true. feels bland. colourless and bleaghhh.

have you heard bon jovi's "thank you for loving me"? it is the worst love song ever. almost as bad as the stalker anthem, "i'll be right there waiting for you" or jessica simpson's version of "take my breath away". i am listening to it right now. it is playing on Launchcast's Adult Alternative channel. they seriously need to re-classify that song.

ok, nirvana's lithium now. what a weird song. I’m so happy ’cause today/I’ve found my friends ...They’re in my head,I’m so ugly/ but that’s okay, ’cause so are you ...We’ve broken our mirrors..........blah blah........I like it - I’m not gonna crack/I miss you - I’m not gonna crack/I love you - I’m not gonna crack/I killed you - I’m not gonna crack....

what was he thinking?

i have heard of people having imaginary friends. how does that work? i have never had an imaginary friend. i have imagined myself in worlds that don't exist out of books when i was 13 or 14, but that was beacuse i was bored and could not sleep and thought of how it would be if i was a horse wrangler in rohan and there was a passage from middle earth to narnia and i went to narnia on my favorite horse and met edmund and peter and susan and lucy and susan didn't like me initially because i called her a wuss. and things like that. aslan said i could come back to narnia whenever i wanted, until i grew up. i wish.

add c.s.lewis to my to re-read list. eoin colfer has come out with a couple of non-artemis fowl books. i want to read those too. my list is ever-growing. the wish is there but where from do i get these books?

867 words. 869.

do you..

i sent this as a mail to some of my family today........................................

do you get upset when somebody has an opinion that differs radically from you? do you feel frustrated and angry? for example, if your friend calls Oasis " Coldplay wannabes"! or somebody says 'ugh' just after you finished recounting how much you liked a movie, or calls your favorite book, person, place, music or idea, "a piece of crap". do you get all self-righteous and holier-than-thou, even if it makes you very irritated when other people get that way? do want to throw a tantrum, kick, scream and cry, if the rest of the world dosen't agree with you? do you storm out of the room, red at the ears, if your opinion gets beaten down by cold logic, accompanied by sneer or a smirk?

i want to stick my tongue out. and sometimes, i do.

please comment.

trauma

for the first time in 5 years, i sat in the first row in class today. not out of choice, though.

it was traumatic, right under those beetle eyes and too thick moustache of the prof. he could see everything, from the doodles on top of the page to the loud, checkered pyjamas that i chose to wear to class today. it was pure pain. especially when i wanted to join the dots on the mosquito bites on the back of my palm and had to desist, coz i was right under his beady, black eyes!

and in other news,

what is black and white, looks very cuddly, is fat around the middle and walks very funnily??

if your first thought was of a penguin, you lost! i was referring to me. or rather, me in a "suit". not that i have ever worn one, but i saw a bunch of girls in them today and had this mental picture of me in one.

dream

i slept from 6.30 pm to 8pm today. why? coz i could. and now, i'm not able to sleep. i'll probably go to the mess and get the latest gossip.

i had a dream during my one and a half hour nap. it was weird. i dreamt that i was in the middle of a very crowded shopping mall. and then in a blink of an eye, the entire place was deserted. empty. not one person. a la vanilla sky when he comes out onto the road and there's nobody, but without all the sex and naked tom cruise. then two people in yellow jumpsuits came at me from nowhere with long, thin swords. not rapiers, proper swords, but thin. i froze, but just as they swung at me, i ran and i slipped. and they killed each other. it was awful.

if i hadn't slipped, and they had killed me in my dream, would i have died in real life too?? i have never read of anybody dreaming that they actually died. but now, i want to know.

i woke up and went to a class that made me wish i hadn't slipped.

one more reason to hate kill bill.

annoying

in b2b marketing class today i was very annoyed.

nobody near me was paying attention. not that there was anything of monumental importance going on, but it is very annoying when everybody is DOING SOMETHING. the guy sitting next to me KEPT FIDGETING. he kept picking up my pen, playing with it, picked up the notebook of the girl sitting on my other side, picked up my phone, talked, nudged, basically bugged the hell out of me! the girl on my other side was talking to the girl behind me who kept pulling my hair; the girl in front of me was playing a game on someone's cell phone and THE DAMN THING KEPT BEEPING. the guy next to her kept looking back and talking to to the guy next to me and I WAS GOING OUT OF MY MIND. i was surrounded by bloody imbeciles. i was mentally screaming.

i had a mental picture of me running, screaming out of the class. at one point, i almost did it. and the weird thing is that i have, in the past, actively participated in these annoyances, with much glee. why was i so bugged?

maybe i'm just growing irritable in my old age. 22 going on 70.

ethics

i have an ethics quiz tomorrow. i wonder how they can justify quizzing us on jargon in a subject like ethics. does it matter if i know what meta-ethical thinking is? even if i know what is ethical and what is not, does that automatically mean that i am going to do the ethically right thing? how can a person be graded on ethics? we had a "discussion" on morality in biz ethics class last week; i found it pointless. there was the usual 'moral relativity' discussion- about how somethings are viewed as moral in some societies and immoral in others. and how legal does not automatically mean moral. i got the feeling that the the class was just giving lip-service to the issue.

apparently Ethical subjectivism is the idea that moral opinions are based on our feelings and nothing more. On this view, there is no such thing as “objective” right and wrong. i knew that when i was in 6th std. i just didn't know that it had a name. i don't completely agree with it. but nobody cares about that. they just want me to know what "ethical subjectivism is". what is the point?

i hate listening to people prosing on about morality. i just hate it.

i still have to study. bloody grades. the topics for the quiz are Ethics and economics; What is ethics? Distinction between Descriptive, normative and meta-ethical thinking; The distinction between law and ethics; Ethical subjectivism and ethical relativism. who cares? i'm already feeling sleepy and it's only midnight.

wouldn't it be ironic if somebody cheats in the quiz?!