But it (sp)Rained !

I had wanted to post something a few days ago, but was thwarted by the stubborn refusal of the bits net to get me signed into blogger.
Im just back from yet another trip to Bangalore, although unlike the others, this one was strictly a chumma trip.
Anyways, today i decided to go play tennis for a change. Back home, i play at least 4-5 hours on weekends. In college, due to the laughable courts combined with my racquet being nicely hoarded back home, my playing frequency is zero. However, today it seemed to be a favorable alternative to being bored to death, and so there i went, off to the newly being (re)built tennis court. Someone had mentioned the courts were blue like in US open, though made of tar. Well, that was enough to spark off my curiosity, and i went-a-searching for a tennis racquet. I found one with a friend, and promptly headed off to the courts.
There i found the nets hanging dead barely a feew inches over the ground, as if some hurricane had come there and demolished everything in its path. The courts, lived up (down) to my expectations of resembling more a road than a tennis court.
Anyways, all the effort gone into gearing up and walking right upto the tennis court was not going to go to waste, oh no. A few juniors playing, i joined them. Ah, long time. New court, new racquet, new opponents, and the ever so fickle wind changing direction every other minute, being sometimes a boon blowing cool sea-breeze into the face and sometimes a curse swinging the ball wildly according to its own whims and fancies. Anyways, it was fun simply because it was something other than staring at a 17 inch screen.
During the last rally, i sprained my leg. Perhaps it was due to the lack of tennis in the past 3 months. It should be just another sprain, i know. But i can't help glorifying it, because its been aeons since i had any physical injury. It feels good to be human sometimes. It might be a minor sprain, and then again, it might not. I can't really remember when i last sprained my ankle, or for that matter any part of the body. Its not that i don't play much. At home, tennis forms my major weekend activity. In college, of course, i take recourse to other activities, most of which involve sitting idiotically in front of the machine which im using to post this right now. Its just that I haven't got hurt much. All around me i see people on plasters and temporary crutches and Volinis. I kinda feel this sprain was long time due.

Obviously, i dint visit the doc or anythin, despite the assurance of some basketball n football players that i might regret it later that night. Lets see, if it swells to conspicuous levels, then i might go tomorow. Till then, i will savor this once in a blue moon occurence. Even if it means a painful night. The only downside is that i might not be able to play for a few days. Ah well, one can't have everything in life now, can they?
I aint no masochist, just another crazy human, with just another crazy post.

Soup

Some mixed feelings here. Spurred by the sudden joblessness that has creeped in lately partly due to the clarity of what im going to do the next two years and my giving up gaming altogether, these thoughts are more prominent now.
Happy i am, for me, and many of my friends, all of whom will start a new journey of their lives.
Sad i am, that i will be leaving this college and all the people i have been associated with in here, in a month, on my own path to wherever.
Hopeful i am, that these friendships will be maintained. That these memories will never be forgotten.

A longer and more detailed post on this will come, when the time is set, for us to set off from here. Till then, i shall relive these memories in the unlimited spare time i seem to be having at the moment.

My latest impractical plan for saving the world

The world is currently a sad place. There is recession looming everywhere, terrorists are havign the time of their lives blowing up people every other day, and roger federer failed to win yet another tournament.

In these times of grave crisis, i come as a messiah of hope. Here goes my plan for eliminating recession and bringing peace to India. Like most ideas, this one isint original, but has  cleverly been tweaked so that any claim on the idea, in case it goes on to win me the nobel peace prize, would be seen as merely yet another zietgiest.

For starters, lets find some country that terrorists ( like al qaeda, US govt, or Investment bankers) would never target. Lets take the swiss, for example. Those neutral bastards found the perfect scam to avoid being attacked by terrorists or dictators. Thats called good defense strategy. 

Obviously, it is impossible for India to stage the neutral scam, although not for lack of trying. Take the case of hospitals. Rarely would one hear of a hospital being blown up ( except in case of 'joker' of the Batman: Dark knight fame). Even terrorists try to avoid that sort of target. My plan is to make India the country to look up to when there is an emergency. With the right foriegn policy, India could become the country to fall back upon. 

The problem is, India is neither a supremely rich country that can afford to aid monetarily, nor is it a superpower so it can support militarily. The one thing that we do have in excess, however,  is population. We could have a national disaster relief consortium, that goes to the various nations and provides the labour to rebuild it. This could be in the form of manual laborers or skilled ones. We could even customize it according to the GDP of the nation concerned and charge for our services. For example, Australia and Canada would be heavily charged, while it would be free for afghanistan. In the times of recession, this could provide the much needed job openings for people, and remove us as the target of radical groups.The lure of foriegn travel is also something that could be used to attract people to the job, not that they need it during these times. 

The great thing is, there is no shortage of disasters in the world. Thus, there would never be any actual joblessness.  The best part is that we could use the same in case we ever get struck by disaster. We would still need a big-ass military, just in case. But it would be efficient if they would be dual trained, for fighting and for disaster recovery. Foriegn policy is completely over rated :|

As most of my ideas are, this is probably unoriginal and completely impractical. I just think its interesting to think why. 

This Cushion

After quite a long time, actually, for the first time this semester really, i had a good two and a half hour long discussion/debate on politics, policies, world happenings, history etc etc.

Only three of us, but its been some time since i'v had a good long debate about these things in college, so,  man, that felt good! Interspersed were facts and quotes that were googled just to make sure none of us was bluffing our way to dominion.

It started with the usual rambling about the job scenario in rDx's room, which, by the way, is way too damn hot , where any air circulation goes to die. The eternal optimist in me still felt that the scenario wasn't as bad as was being portrayed, and that bitsians would still have some advantage, hopefully, to weather the storm, only to be laughed at, and then followed by the regular college,economy, wall street, etc abusing. 

A small innocent comment about the inefficacy of the govt proved to be the tipping point for the discussion, further fueled by the arrival of Samya, the walking-talking-world-war-2 dictionary. From whether or not the NDA would be better than the UPA,  to their past policies, Samya siding with with the latter while rDx with teh former, n yours truly, in the true spirit of a dilly dallier, with both (:P), it then spiralled into the posible solutions for kashmir, then into the balochistan-kashmir comparison, china, russia, europe, world war 2 ( at which point samya almost jumped with delight ), g20, manmohan vs advani, modi, sonia, PoK, tibet, afghanistan, intelligence, osama, WTC, and the like. 

Why im posting this is because it reaffirmed how little we know (or at least i know) about what is happening in the world around us, how we are just another face in the crowd, how there is so much scope for expanding our sphere of information, how my quest for keeping myself abreast of the latest developments has to keep pace with the ever changing world. 

Nothing like a good ol' discussion to remind us that we are truly just an insignificant seed in the forest of knowledge, and only by absorbing all that the environment offers can we rise above the weeds and reach out to the sun. 

If theres one thing iv learnt in the past few months, its that im pathetically ignorant, and its about time i do something about it :|

Edit: Tan ta daaan !!! My new avatar is here 0.0

Intriguing question of the day

I walked into a most wonderful bookstore in Brigade Road, bangalore called Blossoms. They have both new and 2nd hand books, and the most important thing, they have almost any book u would want. Just ask the librarian, and they wil take you to the book you had been searching for eons.

I spent like 2 hours there, just browsing books, and trying to reach a decision on which books to select to fit my then limited budget. Im definitely going back there during my next bangalore trip, this time with a considerably fatter wallet. 

While i was looking thru the books, i came across this interesting book, the name of which i unfortunately don't remember, but whose summary, like of so many others, i read. It posed an interesting question:

What would be the one piece of wisdom/knowledge/contribution you would give to the world, if you knew these were your last few moments on earth ?

Happenings

This is gonna be just about anything that comes to my mind as i type at 4 am.

For starters, something that really set me off thinking, almost making a skeptic out of me regarding the apparent forward thinking mindset that's supposed to be a characteristic of the urban Indian. Im assuming of course, that fellow students of our so called well known institute constitute a fair representation of our urban youth. I was having a discussion with a group of friends who i just happened to cross on my way to the mess for snacks. Who they were, i don't really want to go into that, for reasons that will be fairly obvious in a while. The discussion as usual started off with the usual stuff about the college turning more into a prison sort of place and about the need for a student union that actually has the balls to do something, then launched off tangentially in the direction of jobs and salaries and future and all that stuff that we'v been hearing all too frequently lately. Someone then remarked Mr. X's gf would be earning more than him, and got a mortified reply that that wasn't the case and that he would be the one earning more, pointing out some things like cost to company and the like. What i really noticed was the fervor with which he replied, almost with a sign of triumph or relief, cant say which, that he was with the higher paying job. I casually remarked that i wouldn't really mind at all if it were the opposite in my case, only to get a curious, almost pitiful stare from everyone in the group. They were seeing me as if i had uttered something blasphemous, which is what set me off into a debate with the rest of the 5-odd people, all of whom were appalled by my stance. The debate was inconsequential in the end, each side sticking to their guns, although i was heavily outnumbered. I got the cup of tea which is just one of the extremely few things that i like in the mess just in time, and set off thinking about where was all the forward thinking that is so hyped in the papers? I just met a bunch of well read, young and brilliant students at a premier institute, all with good backgrounds and so called forwards thinking youth of the country appalled by the possibility of their better halves earning more than them. I was almost amused by the pettiness of their stand, then later dissapointed and disheartened that such things really matter to the educated youth. I'd like to think that such a stand is fairly uncommon and i just happened to cross a group of people who all thought this way, and that all the recent hubub about gender equality is not just plain empty talk.

In a more lighter vein, iv been playing more WoW than ever before lately, and the guilt of doing nothing better has been eating me from inside, so i thought i'd better post something here to take my mind off the guilt of having wasted the few hours that im awake, and am likely to waste in the future. Coming to this sem, its been awesomely (or awfully ) light, especially because i havnt taken any project. A little boring, compensated by the occasional thought of this being the last of its kind 'vacation', and the frequent 'house' episodes that i still havnt got remotely tired of. The college is at its notorious worst, reprimanding people in its usual manner for things as trivial as not opening the door when warden comes knocking and ur sleeping, dead tired, or playin loud music that no one in the corridor seems to mind. I'll be visiting Bangalore next week, so i guess that would be a break from the monotony. This post is looking more like a letter than a blog post, so i think i'll stop, and go to sleep, got work to do tomorrow, technically, today, that really can't afford to be procrastinated.
gg

House it possible ?

Time for a post :)

Been watching Gregory House MD, a series about an insanely gifted doctor who wants to be as miserable as life can make him, yet never runs short of a seemingly unending stream of sarcasm bordering on hurling insults at everyone and anyone who gets too close to him, both physically and not (at least till half of the second season, which is where i am right now, after a humungous marathon house-watching session was interrupted rudely by a much needed dose of sleep, followed by a not at all rude session of going and seeing what waves is all about this year, when im not associated with it at all, which makes me miss the running around-tackling unforseen problems which invariably creep up on you from behind whenever ur managing or organising or that sort of thing, while knowing that any screw up would directly affect the event or program or some such thing or person(s) or etc-etc-this-sentence-is-too-long-anyways-n-im-running-short-of-breath-phew! )
Well, the point is, the break from the house marathon got me out of my room, during a time when im not supposed to be in my room because a cultural festival with which i have been directly associated during its formative years is going on in my backyard (so to speak).
Well, i have been thinking for a long time as to what reason i have for completely divorcing my blog for such a long time, that would stand trial in any court (of my mind), and i have arrived at the conclusion after briefly being reminded during the waves-exploring session about the fact that my blog is miserable and lonely and iv got to make it up to her (i like to think its feminine), that i have nothing in my defense that would stand the test of trial, except that the net speed is crappy negated by the incriminating fact that im too damn lazy to go type in my username password in blogspot.com and just type a damn post.
Ok, back to house.
Oh my god its exactly what i needed. It felt like a splash of freshly bred sarcasm. After the months of boring monotonous existence that i lead, in which im including almost all of my bits years, and where i'd almost forgotten to read or write (or type), this was like rediscovering the joy of creative english speaking. The dialogue writers for the series 'house MD' are a bunch of geniuses. I would recommend the series to anyone who is not allergic to anything remotely connected with medicine. Now im transformed into the erupting volcano of sarcasm and anything i touch suddenly sprouts into a sarcasm spitting machine!!!!!!!!!!!!
Ok, im overplaying it, but you get the point. Watch it if its the last thing you do.

Which brings me to the question, do you talk to yourself? Yes, im asking you , the occasional reader of this divorced blog.


Well, i do. A lot. Infact, more often than not, you can find me talking to myself in an animated manner, provided i think ur not looking. It might seem a bit boring, me talking continuously about myself like a self obsessed narcissist, but hey, if i am that, run away, shoo, before i nauseate you to death with my seemingly unending quips about myself, and if i am not that, you know i cant keep up with this myself for long.

More often than not, this self-talking-whenever-i-get-the-opportunity is mistaken for a classic case of a candidacy for a mental institution. Ok, its not the same positive self-talk crap that they try to teach us at the phonetics and english speaking class,
but it helps me pass the time, pretending im someone else having a conversation with an imaginary someone, who replies just as i want him/her to.

When i talk to myslf, most likely im anybody other than an engineer, talking something abstruse to someone who is just as intrigued in my imaginary ability to vomit out sentences that would make little sense were it made to a real person, as i am in my imaginary friend's reply.

Dont fret, im not schizopreniac or anythin, and i wont eat you. Its just sad that there's nothing half as interesting going on in my life as i would like it to be, and pretending is just a way of pepping it up a little.
Call me crazy. Are you ?