Thursday, April 24, 2008

How much garbage does your house produce?

Going by the title, many would not have even cared to proceed and read this line. But this post is not about the cliched issues of 'how-your-trash-is-killing-the-world', 'warming-up-the-earth' or 'depleting-the-ozone-layer'. You see, this was just a question that Mr. Roberto S. Mariano asked me over the phone as a part of my interview for gaining admission into the Singapore Management University.



Yeah, I applied to one of these universities in Singapore called the Singapore Management University a.k.a SMU a.k.a. Simply Masti University (or so the Indians there refer to it as). As a part of their admission process, they called me up two days ago and scheduled a phone interview for me on the 24th of April, i.e. today at 7:45 in the morning. Goddamit! Couldn't ask for a worse day and a worse timing. I obviously could not afford to miss the Barca v/s ManU quarterfinal tie of the Champions League you know... especially when Cristiano Ronaldo failed to score from the spot.... aahh... that was divine.... that expression on his darned face.
So i was basically up till three in the morning watching the match and managed to doze off only by four. It felt that I had just managed to shut my eyes when it was time to wake up again. And guess whose voice did I hear first thing in the morning - Professor Roberto S. Mariano's of course! It took me a little while to get my wits about as I mumbled a Good Morning to him. His terrible Singaporean accent made matters even worse. He must have been absolutely mad at me after the thousands of time that I said a 'Sorry?' or a 'Pardon?' or a 'I couldn't get your question'. But anyways, I finally got used to it. Initially, he was kind and generous and asked general questions like - Why do you want to come to Singapore? and Why SMU? Jaded questions whose answers I had already prepared earlier. But then came the weird part. After asking a couple of questions about current affairs... he veered sharply off course and asked - "How many vehicles are there in your city?".... I was tempted to reply - "WTF" but resisted. Instead, I quickly did some math in my head and came up with a pretty confident and logical answer. Thinking that would be the end, I calmed down a bit... but then came another one - "How much garbage on an average does a house in Delhi produce everyday?" ... Candidly speaking, I had no clue what to reply. "I am no kachrawalla!" was one option that popped in my head... "I applied for an Economics course... not Waste Management," was another... but I managed to keep it safely in the confines of my head. After a couple more quirky questions, I realized that this guy was just playing with me. Asking all these outlandish questions, it was just a trick to measure my confidence and gauge whether I respond confidently and logically to a kooky question or not.... and indeed this was just the case.... or so he told me once the interview finished..... All in all, I think I did pretty well... results will be out in a week or two. Though this is just a backup so to say, but getting one more college in the bag is always useful and worth boasting around too.

In conclusion, if any other prospective SMU student is reading this right now, my suggestion to him/her will be ---- expect the worst --- or should I say --- expect the highly idiosyncratic.

Till then....



Smart Alec said: "China will adhere to human rights? Don't Ti -bet on it."