Tuesday, September 30, 2008

Updates on Blog

This is a post meant to show off (or maybe draw attention to things which might fetch brickbats). Anyway this is what I have been up to on the blog front in the few days that I have been at home. I have added: -
  1. My own Blog roll - finally!
  2. Rearranged the list of other blogs I visit so that it looks like a left-justified pyramid - this is because I liked the way the 'Reluctant Rebel' had done it!
  3. A slide show of some samples of my pathetic attempts at photography - This is why I love digicams- they let everybody attempt fancy photography without wasting the 'reel'. :-)
  4. An application which should show us all the 'Endangered Animal of the Day' - I liked this. Period.
  5. An application which should give us one bit of completely useless information per day - Hopefully this should keep the four people who read this blog interested even during my inevitable and long absences - i.e. if they even notice the absences.. :-)
  6. Two lists - one which tells you the books that I have recently read - i.e comparatively recent; and the other which tells you the books that I am currently reading. Note of caution - this list may not change all that quickly if the rate at which I am currently reading books, continues!
  7. And the list of my 'followers' as Blogger calls it. Though why I chose to make the fact that this blog is not widely read, public, I do not know. Maybe it is simply a way of saying thank you to the kind soul.

That's it. this post was also a way of masking (unsuccessfully) the fact that I have nothing substantial to write about. So till I do, Cya.

Tuesday, September 23, 2008

'Twitter Updates'** (with footnotes an' all)

Well, have been meaning to post on a number of issues for some time now. But I blame it on lots of work, unfinished thoughts and general ennui that I haven't actually got around to doing it!. But now exams are done, I've bid farewell to the last monsoon semester in college, am at home and free, so I thought that I must record some of the many things that I have been meaning to post about throughout this very-eventful semester.
Things I Loved: -
1. Few classes and lots of free time.
2. Playing TT nearly obsessively (till even the teacher tired of me and the game), the occassional walks, serious 'netting' (I love this word) and watching season after season of sitcom after sitcom which replaced movies in my list of 'best-ways-to-spend-evenings/nights-in-hostel'.
3. That the monsoons hit us earlier than usual. The recent paving of the college path held up and the days of water logging and wading through knee deep water to college became a thing of the past.
4. The library AC too functioned beautifully, perhaps chilling to the bone people who decided to spend long hours there, but invitingly cool for those like me who 'visited' the library only for small stretches of time.
5. Batch 'bonhomie' as evident CR (non) elections [take a bow, Mallu], in every joint class, The Committee*** (non) elections etc. The friendship that quickly developed between the 9 members who were 'thrown together by force of circumstances' and practically lived in one particular room of the university, that we had gotten through four years of law school without killing each other etc.
6. That we won the most number of medals in Indian Olympic history, including the first gold in.. in don't know... forever!
7. Oh and ofcourse that our very own lovable-know-it-all-who-also-tries-to-be-modest-about-it*** moved back into hostel after a whole year!

Things I hated: - (as a response to each of the above points)
1. I hated that from the last week of July onwards, I had li'l or no time to generally chill. Projects, and presentations, subject vivas and exams all rushed in- with almost no break in between. I have been running headlong into one deadline or the other with hardly a break in between. It could be yet another dispatch or innumerable other follow-ups, or another rough draft or project to submit and presentation to give and finally exams to prepare for.
2. That I slowly gave up the various activities that I had taken up. Also, annoyingly, reading came down. I hate that these days that seems to be a recurring phenomenon.
3. That my umbrella got flicked. And so had to move around with a eye-catchy-red-and-white-(bravery colours) umbrella . Clarification: I am very grateful though for having been lent the umbrella. It was very handy, thank you so much my dear "know-it-all"! :-)
4. That faulty electrical wiring in the college meant that whenever any other AC (in addition to the library AC) in the university was switched on, the power would trip! Also, that not once did the extremely expensive power backup for the conference room work when it was desperately needed.
5. That some things that I had taken for granted turned out to be false. E.g. Had thought people were smart enough to know when it was something that you could control and when it was something that you couldn't. All the abusing and the name calling and the cold shouldering conclusively proved that I was wrong. so...
6. That we as a nation are sad enough to call ourselves the next in-thing in the world and yet celebrate like no tomorrow for the three measely medals that we have won! Surely a nation of over a billion people ought to be expected to be able to put up a better show - at the very least in the opening ceremony even if nowhere else! and NO, it is not a conclusive proof of either (i) that we have moved beyond cricket (we have just stopped winning here too and so it is no longer on the front page all that often) or (ii) that our sports infrastructure has dramatically improved (the three medals were won despite the State and not because of it)
7. Am mildly surprised that dear know-it-all seems to have unlearned all that we had manged to teach her about not HAVING to know everything so as to be in a position to give all exams on a moment's notice!
8. Oh and the realisation that I have only one semester left in college! cha!!!!!!
End notes: -
** This concept was stolen from a feature that I saw and liked, in this blog but was too lazy to add. [This is what comes from acknowledging what you stole from where, over a course of 45 projects - it becomes a habit!]
*** This is my effort towards coding things and people so as to "protect their identity" that I learnt from this blog. Though I must admit that the author of the referred blog is far wittier and much better with nicknames than I will ever be!
P.S: - Since the concept of endnotes itself was stolen from this blog, was beginning to wonder whether anything was original in this post at all! Well at least the list is. I promise.