New Year Blues

I wouldn’t call it a perfect way to start a new year this time. Nor could I call it the past three years either. Reason – exam time. Joining engineering has made this season grim for me for the fourth year in a row, and I just can’t stop complaining. Added to the misery this time was that, one subject (VLSI circuits) which was scheduled on 27th of December was postponed to 19th Jan! Reason – Assembly bypolls! I just cant stop wondering why politics affects us so much when we dont want it to.

This New Year was particularly special (grrr grrr) because, the last paper before the postponed one was on Jan 1st. What did I do on the eve? Sit with Crypto text till 11 and slept off without wishing anyone. I seemed to have answered a few calls in my sleepy state itself and people were wondering if I had celebrated the New Year by getting drunk for the first time in my life. Thankfully, (or not,) my image was too clean for the idea to become a strong rumour.

As usual, I didn’t remember what I wrote in my paper after half an hour from coming out of the exam hall and was oblivious to all the post-exam-discussions. I was too happy that 18 more days were there before I can touch books .

That apart, I went through a rough patch with WordPress when my account was suspended. I emailed to Support reporting the same and asking for an explanation. To keep calm and stop myself from erupting with frustration, I googled a bit hoping to find an explanation. 20 hours of anxiety later, I got a blank-looking message saying that my account was restored.

The only solace during the exams was the long discussion on my previous post. This was special because, I posted it 5 hours before the exam and it turned out to be pretty good, rather, better than what I expected. It was very good flexing my grey cells to answer the comments in the most ethical manner I could. Probably, the tiredness arising out of the combined attack of exam-blues and hyper mind activity before it (during the preparation phase) kept me off blogging for a considerable time.

Meanwhile, I stumbled across a very good platform for discussing blogging related issues here. I thought it would be something like the same old experiments to focus on bloggers and stuff, but I got the hang of it pretty fast and am enjoying my time there. Since it is pretty new to come, it is easy, educative and fun to speed up your popularity rating. Hope to see as many of you as possible there.

Lastly, I need to clear off an important debt. I owe my body a lot of sleep which I snatched away from it during the exams and the short enjoyment stint thereafter. Time to repay it with interest. I hope to sleep for at least 12 hours for a couple of days so that I’m relieved of the fatigue .

By the way, a belated New Year greetings to everyone. Hope this new set of 365 days entertains you with 365 types of joys, adventures and good times!

Hello Tweens!

So, after a long time of ten years, the digit in the tens’ place of my age is gonna change. On the last day of my teens, rather, on the transition from teens to tweens, i am writing this post to go down my memory lane and possibly, take you too.

I was not very fond of my birthdays in my childhood because i felt more comfortable in my school uniform than in the new birthday dress. The idea of standing in front of the whole class and telling that it was my birthday, and holding a box full of chocolates was not very entertaining. I felt like a clown being applauded for his dress sense! In spite of these feelings, at the end of the day, i used to feel good because people treated me like a VIP just because i was born on this date a few years ago.

By the end of my primary education, i almost gave up the idea of celebrating birthday at school, but then i had to shift to a different school, where, for the first time cupid struck me (the same cupid who was murdered by Nikhil recently ). On the very first day in my new school, there was a girl’s birthday. And she looked like an angel from a special heaven made just for me. So, to share that special heaven, I had to dress up for an occasion. What better time could i ask for, than my birthday! It was supposed to come soon.

At last, the day came. For the first time, i felt like the dress and i were born together and re-united after so many years. I demanded my father that i should distribute Cadbury Eclairs chocolate. I was late to school and as i entered the classroom, the class teacher shot an angry glance, but became merry immediately upon seeing me in a colorful dress. Later the whole class sang for me, and after distributing chocolates, my day was normal. In the lunch break, this very girl came to me with a hand-made paper greeting, bearing the sweetest words i can ever remember – “Happy Birthday Greetings to a Lovely Friend.” Later in life, i could relate such feeling to only one song – “Pehla Nasha” (Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikendar). I considered that my first birthday present.

Next few years were not very eventful, but i did not hate birthdays again. One reason because, it would be a fun-filled day ending with a dinner in some restaurant. Another reason being that i got a few valuable gifts. My mom presented me with a Fastrack Watch on my 17th birthday and it was just the way i like it – metallic, macho and yet, simple. On the next, when i entered adulthood, i cursed the university for scheduling the exams on my birthday.

I was feeling bad when my 19th one also fell between exams. I was preparing for my fourth semester subject Control Systems, when my father came home in the afternoon and asked me if i was done with the preparation. I was confident about the subject and told him so. He asked me to join him on some important work and took me off on Outer Ring Road. I had no idea about what was in store until i found myself standing with a widely open mouth in front of Bajaj Showroom. He booked a bike for me, the one which i love to flaunt anywhere, anytime – Bajaj Avenger (Feel like GOD). My joy knew no bounds. I could not believe it when i learnt that my dad had kept it a secret even from my mom. No other day would have been as good as this for the purchase. And for the delivery of the bike, there came a day which is equally rejoiced in my household – my brother’s birthday – 2 weeks later. Added to this, my friend gifted me with a perfect key-chain for my bike – my name (Harsha) carved out of teak and superbly polished.

And coming to present tense. Hurray! its exactly the stroke of midnight as i type this! Happy Birthday to me! I was the first person to wish myself . And as for the gift which is to come tomorrow today, i too am in the dark. (I am guessing it to be something that i don’t have now.)

P.S : I take pride in saying that i share my birthday with the great vocalist pandit Sri. Balamuralikrishna. (Its a different matter altogether, that i don’t share anything else with him )

At Last…!

Finished my Microwave Communication (MC for short) paper today! The first thing that i did on seeing the paper was counting how many marks i can attend to. Finished! Then I had to set the time frame. Finished! Oh i forgot. I prayed to god to help ONLY me to the max. To all others… not as much as me. Now starts the race. The cap is down, nib on paper, answer in mind and imagination to support it. GO! All the time, i was cursing the paper-setter for being so student-unfriendly! At the same time, i wished that the man valuating my script was some old prof fond of students. Can’t help, it happens in engineering.

Midway, I just woke up and realized that I’d wasted one hour on the first question itself! (We are to answer 5Qs of 20 marks each). Now, that’s bad. So i made a small prayer, hoping that evaluators be given with an ‘any handwriting analyzer’ to understand what I’ll be writing for next two hours. The race just got interesting.

Sometime later, i was satisfied with my progress, but had to halt to think about an answer. I thunk, thunk, and thunk about it and finally started off with a song to relax myself. WOW! it was such a soothing experience. It was one of my favorite song and i got engrossed in it. Later, I was able to recollect what all had occurred in the movie after the song too. Cool! I sure have a good memory!

There was some disturbance in front of my eyes (i was open eyed) and realized that someone moved out of their seat. So, was it interval time? I was feeling hungry and was thinking about having a quick snack. WHAM! It struck me then. I was not in a theater after all! The person before me had finished with his paper so fast. I saw my watch. There were only 45 min left and i had more than half of the bloody answer script to complete.

That was too much. I got frustrated. ENTER WAR MODE! I thought of Adolf Hitler for a second, drew some very important inspiration, and started it – THE BLITZKRIEG ATTACK. Word after word, line after line were completed with blinding speed (i wonder if my pen is still alive after withstanding it). Pages rolled by and finally…, there i was spent, tired, partly angry for my trip to the movie, but rejoicing it more, and lastly, felt like being on cloud 9^(9^(9^(9^(9^(9…

PS: Its gonna rain heavily tomorrow. Because I’ve to come down from the clouds and give ITC (not Indian Tobacco Company… its Info Theory n Coding )