AIEEEoooww

So six lakh souls appeared for the AIEEE today. I was just one of them. Sitting in an inconsequential corner in a room filled with students who had come all the way from Bihar, Orissa and places that I never knew existed, I wondered at first whether I was at the right place. The venue of the examination center didn't make matters any better either. I mean, fine that it was Ryan International School - a decent enough and rather well known institution in Delhi.... but whoever told them to open a branch right in the middle of a village! Opening a school of Ryan's repute in the village of KONDLI defies logic... at least mine. Agreed that it is a part of Mayur Vihar (Phase III, to be precise), but it still is a village after all.





Rickety chairs, creaky tables, fans from the neolithic era which circulated anything but air and an 'obnoxious weed' (Pardon me, Mr. Hayden) like invigilator made the examination an ordeal to remember... or rather, forget. On the contrary though, the paper itself was not too arduous. One hundred five questions in all, thirty five questions each for Physics, Chemistry and Math and a straight forward marking scheme - +3 for correct, -1 for incorrect and NPNL for answers left blank. Physics was by far the best of all the three. And as always, Chemistry was responsible for a few minor hiccups. I sincerely feel sorry for all those outstation candidates who came to Delhi all the way from..... I don't know, wherever they came from..... and were forced to face such pathetic examination conditions.
By the way, thanks to the pitiable traffic management arrangements put up by the school, it took me thirty minutes to exit the makeshift parking lot and get my car on to the main road.... a distance of merely twenty meters at the most.


Till then...



Smart Alec said: "Which of the two can be more easily roasted - Metal Sulphides or Butter Chicken?"

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."

a la Renaissance

After the two odd dormant years (a rather long hiatus i must admit), I hereby proclaim.... drum roll.... MY RETURN TO THE BLOGGING WORLD...
Yeah yeah, I know that you ladies missed me a lot, but eleventh and twelfth standards were just kicking the asses out of me. I hardly had time to sleep. But now that school's been done and dusted away with and the fact that I need something better to do than just roam the streets with my friends like a bum or watch silly old claptrap movies because my 'oh-I'll-watch-this-flick-after-the-exams' list is now exhausted, I thought I might as well go ahead and revive my blog. I agree that just as the name goes, the posts on this webspace will be as remote to sense as Adebayor is remote to a clean first touch... but hey, he does score the goals after all, so you also might as well drop in and take a read of all the drivel that i write... I need to extend my boredom to others in some way or the other you see.
Just as I am entering a new phase in my life, i thought it would be fitting that I abandon my previous blog and start afresh... and hence, to all my loyal supporters who kept visiting my earlier blog during the hiatus in hopes of some new posts, worry no further. All you need to do is just change the letters you type in your address bar and .... voila... you'd be refreshed with an all new and improved version of me and my webspace in cyberspace.

Till then...



Smart Alec said: "Do Indians break a coconut even before starting a new blog?"