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.