Tales from a place called Diamond

Another semester is over and here I am at my computer wondering how much more boring life can get..
It was an insanely fast sem this..
Diamond (the hostel I stay in) saw a lot happen in the last five months or so.. A lot of PEACE.. A lot of fun.. All the mindless 'Kiran Torture' sessions it seems so far away now.. I for one still remember the first day at diamond.. All of us meeting after quite sometime.. Uncomfortably dusty rooms.. Moving in.. The top floor took on this very 'family' atmosphere in the weeks that followed.. And of course there were additions to this family.. Kiran for one.. And there were losses.. Kuttu.. Then came the visitors.. Boy.. Believe me when I say there were A LOT of these visitors.. Practically the whole hostel.. Or rather.. Those who found the time to come to the terrace to enjoy the view and the oh-so-sweet breeze that would captivate your mind.. It was only the few of us who got the 'privilege' to stay on the top floor.. I put privilege within quotes because this was (and is) a debatable issue..
Firstly the top floor doesn't have toilets..
Secondly, all those expectations of privacy (by virtue of the fact that there are only 5 rooms on the top floor) are lost as everyone.. And i mean it when i say EVERYONE visits the top floor in the most unearthly of hours..(not that we're exactly the earliest when it comes to hitting the sack..)
Then i must but mention the thing that almost everyone (except a birthday boy) would wait for.. BUMS!

Yes.. Birthday bums.. I'll rightly say.. This has evolved from being a session of friendly pats on the back to what it is today (a brutal event where one comes as close to his death as to his birthday.. Where one is mercilessly kicked, punched and has a filthy concoction of god-forbid-to-mention-what thrown upon)... And yet.. When it's someone's birthday, the once-victims entirely forget the as-close-to-hell-as-you-can-get treatment that they got.. And merrily join in the proceeds of somebody else's near death experience..

That said.. I can't help but not mention the ragging.. When we were in the first year, the Tamil Nadu quota (or the thambi quota as it was benignly called) never got ragged.. Or rather, we didn't have to, because the entire of our seniors' batch had boycotted.. This wasn't the case, however, with our NRI friends.. They experienced (and we witnessed), what I'd (again) rightly call, the most brutal form of ragging, and now it was their turn.. But sad as it is.. The junior batch turned out to be a bunch of disappointments.. Nobody would face ragging as consistently as my batch mates.. Nobody would carry on the gift of ragging.. Sometimes i wish that i was ragged.. But that wouldn't be necessary, as my nri friends were only kind enough as to share their take with us.. I learned a significant bit from those tales of woe.. And that's when i felt left out having not experienced it first hand..

Then i must appropriately mention all those hours spent at the computer playing nfs most wanted.. It reached clan proportions..(ok.. I'm exaggerating) but it did consume a significant part of our time at diamond.. As our grades would reflect.. Speaking about which.. Our results aren't out at the time of writing this blog.. But really.. The bulk of us aren't too bothered about them.. They'll come out when they have to.. And if some of the results are disappointing, i'm sure we can all go back to diamond.. And the family will take care of it's problems...
(and closing with a very cliched orkut profile name..)
Diamond beckons!!

Are you doing the 'in thing'??

In an age where dressing up, eating, thinking, speaking.. ,well to put in a nutshell, 'living' is influenced by your peers, the average Indian teenager is only but struggling to find his identity. The holidays are here... the whole 'crowd' is 'hanging out', well, you don't wanna be left out do you?

A lovely metaphor that i just thought of.. there's a blind Indian kid in a room.. one side of the room has a fire burning, and the other side is open to a certain-death-due-to-hypothermia land. There are a bunch of other Indian kids (who are also blind) who are ice skating somewhere in the middle of the room (there's enough ice to skate on.. and the air is warm enough to survive).. this group of ppl , ladies and gentlemen, are doing the 'in thing'.. Now why they're doing this is because they've heard about a group of phirangi kids who're ice skating.. and it's just 'cool' to do what they do.. Now what they don't know is that the phirangi kids' parents are reeeeally complacent.. they don't know what their kids are doing right now.. then there comes a point when the Indian parents come to know of their kids' new 'adventures'.. finished.. they're are given a nice beating and shut behind doors.. well.. their time 'serving' for their misbehavior comes to an end sometime or the other.. Now here's the problem.. They go out and try it again.. This time, they're prepared to not get caught.. They go too far into iceland.. and there ends the story of the Ice-skating Indians.

There's only one thing to learn from the above story.. Do what you want to do.. but before that.. just think of all the things that have happened in your life.. ask yourself, if your action will by any means interfere with the ideal that you've been following since you got into your senses.. Do what your heart tells you to.. because your mind is vain.

The era of mobile blogging

It's a lazy tuesday morning and i'm sitting at my dining table eating whatever my mom's made for breakfast.. Wondering if it's possible.. And as i've just found out.. It is.. I'm writing this blog through my phone.. It's simply mind numbing how freedom of speech has truly been given the importance it deserves.. Happy blogging..

The Odd Sheep Out

The second most debatable issue in the avrage Indian's Life, (the first being the efficacy of our education system), is the efficacy of our education system.. (No, that's not a mistake.. I intend to emphasize the fact that the issue wins the place hands down.).


Our third semester is at it's butt's end.. our cycle tests are over.. and we are about to become 3/8ths-of-an-engineer.. and yet, some of us don't know how to use an analogue multimeter... what we do know however is how to get shiny cards (they're called grade cards) with eye-popping close-to-10 GPAs.. Yeah.. I know.. Sad... but true.. painfully true..


Meet Mr.X.
CGPA=9.11
Ambition :
(no prizes for guessing) - Software Professional
Branch: Civil Engg!
Practical Knowledge abt programming: "I can write a code to say 'Hello World!'... does that count??"


Meet Mr.Y.
CGPA=8.96
Ambition : Pilot (#&*k what was he thinking??!!)
Branch : Metallurgical Engg.

Interviewer (Me) : How many 'G' s do you think you can withstand?
Mr.Y. :Donno.. maybe around 13... 14.
Interviewer :(@#$%)!


Practical skill/knowledge is extremely scarce among the three-score-odd people who crowd my classroom everyday during the day and spend thier irate minds innovating new ways to send Short-Text-Messages in class without getting caught.. If only such talent were used toward other viable avenues.. Alas, if only our education system Permits..!!

Scale your skills... Part II

It wasn't as bad as we had imagined.. We had a lot of fun indeed.. and in the process, did bag some pretty heavy stuff(I mean literally.. that one-hell-of-a-heavy trophy, was just short of leaving rashes on my thigh on the way back to the main city, in that one-hell-of-a-cramped bus).. the college was great.. Neat infrastructure, very clean campus.. Yes.. I'm talking about PSNA College of Engg. and Tech.





The first day wasn't bad.. it wasn't bad at all.. we had to write an aptitude test, which scaled right from analytical ability to English skills.. i bagged the Gold in that event among the 84 odd students that arrived there.. But strictly, being students of NIT Trichy, I think the 4 of us had an UNFAIR advantage over the others.. It was the kind of crowd (as I noticed in the ensuing Bus trip) that would make fun of each other and howl at the top of their voices than enjoy some refined humour that had some intelligent wordplay in them.. No, I'm not categorising everybody here.. there were some who would prove my above statement wrong..

After an assorted eat-me-quick-or-i'll-taste-bad kinda dinner, we left in a bus filled with teenage rebels. We slept in a rather awkward arrangement of Dining tables from a marriage hall, and blankets from the i-want-to-be-an-insomniac club.. the outsides were quite deceptive mind you..


[What our night's stay looked like from the outside]


[Contest #1 SPOT-ME]

After a night spent amid lungi-clad natives, looking like aliens from another planet(I'm saying this because we where among the few who didn't know how to wear a lungi and plus, everyone else were rehearsing and re-rehearsing something for a competition that we had gotten to know the name of only a couple of hours back!!), we woke up to find the hall almost empty. For a second i thought we had missed the bus to the college. Tired as we were, we made it in time for the bus to start.

What followed was a full day of hectic activities and competiotions... Almost throught the entire event, I was inly admiring their infrastructure.. Take a look for yourself..


[A lecture hall at PSNA Coll. of Engg.]

Then at the end of the Day came the time of reckoning... The results of the events were announced..

and there it came out of the blue... Arwin Arni , first place in Aptitude test.. Sachin Jay Menon, first place in quiz, group presentation, Ankit Srivastava, Second place Group discussion.. and there we were thinking it was all over.. and then came the icing on the cake..

Rotaract Club of NIT Trichy are the overall champions.. Brilliant.. Just Brilliant!