“Once in your life, if you are very lucky, you will meet the person who divides it to the time before you met her and the time after.”

(from a movie I just saw)

College Life..Fifth Semester

As the summer vacations come to an end, I find myself surprisingly longing to go back to College. Even though my previous experience  tells me that I'll be aching to get out of that place after a month or so. I'll be weary of my friends. I'll be frustrated with a few professors, or many professors if you ask me.
But I've thought  of a few things that I'll try to do next semester :

1.Make sure I have atleast one good professor where I can regain some lost sanity.Though the scene looks grim as of now, I might just be able to pick up Multani Ma'am's course.

2.Try to keep the room neat and clean and buy new speakers. Try to keep the customary intra-department gossip sessions out of my room and me out of them.

3. Stop myself from using the 'IIT lingo' as people call it. Alarmingly I had inadvertently started using some terms  last year.
Actually the whole college has this self-obsession thing going on (always discussing 'IITians and IIT' etc), and I'm fed-up of it.

4.Be more active in sports.Having found it hard here to gather my rather lazy friends for a soccer session or playing anything really, I realized how lucky I am to have so many  people willing to play in college.

5.Try to avoid banging the door and asking my roomate to open it, when actually it is locked from the outside.

6.Visit Priya more often.Nice place - McDonalds, a good bookshop and Ofcourse- movies.

7. Try to be more friendly with animals. I've decided I'll start off with the small ones.Hope I dont end up bitten and diseased! This inspired by one of my friends.

Random Thought

Everyone learns to Talk, but what most people in this world really need is learn to be Silent.

Dune

She tries to distract him by making his favorite dish. But to her irritation,the boy gobbles it up quickly and goes back to his reading. Shes puffing up..like a volcano about to erupt.But her experience in motherhood holds her back. Her intuition tell her that shouting at him would only increase the distance.Perhaps he'll escape to some other room.How long is it going to last? She expected him to help her in her work once he got back from college. All he has been doing ever since his return is reading a darn book.

But she doesnt know that her son is not home, not yet.He is far away, caught in the affairs of a planet called Dune.

Deadlines

I've been reading some other students' blogs of late,and that has reignited my desire for writing again.But surprisingly,I've been finding it hard to.Perhaps I'll start with what I've been thinking of doing since a long time - course criticism.In any case it would be a lot more useful than those movie criticism and food criticism blogs flooding the internet these days.And maybe it will help people chose electives without running after seniors .

But as of now I've been totally surrounded by deadlines. I've to submit a questionnaire for EDS by Tuesday, prepare for Mastermind Finals , write a term paper for my Linguistics course, prepare for Probability and Stochastics minor which is on Thursday, write a paper presentation for CompArch , write an article for Maths Magazine and find myself something to do for the summers!

Well, the Ides of March have gone

Like Lava was the passion

with cracks and crevices developing on the way

Foggy friendships shaken by quakes

All that remains is a cloud of thoughts

and thought and thoughts and thoughts....

Semester 3 Chronicles

Christmas does make you do weird things.I just did something which I have been stopping myself from doing for the past..well..approx.....2 years and 2 months.
Also Look! a mysterious absence of laziness has driven me back to this dashboard for this long overdue post.
I hope the last semester does not turn out to be my best ever in IIT.(in the same way I hope that my 2nd semester was the worst I'll have to face).It was so fast paced that I cant even remember all the eventful moments, and Im sure my summary wont even come close in covering it up to an appropriate extent.

Academics :Linear Programing was a strategic folly,but I'm more or less satisfied with the overall performance.(or maybe so does it feel after the torturous 2nd semester).All the professors were good,and the coursework was interesting.

Quizzing:Aah! This was probably the thing that turned the semester from good to 'wonderful'. I had suspected I might meet with some success in 2nd year,but I didnt know it would come so fast. It all started with a surprise-completely out of the blue- victory as wildcards in the Movie Quiz.Then 2 consecutive wins in QC comps as rep.Then Rendezvous happened,and then Antaragani,and then there was no stopping. I timed my entry in the Hostel Team to perfection as we recovered from a disappointing 4th from the previous event to another win.
The regular Quizzing time-pass with pradeep and gainda were also great fun,as were the Kutub Quiz meets.If this sounds like any self-praising kind of thing,it is because it is my journal ! :)

Swiss music: I needed to write abt it else I would have surely forgotten it. "You need to listen to some cool music to relieve the mind of exam stress" said pradeep- an example of his "so-pathetic-that-it-might-just-work" attempt of convincing me (to join him for the music event) As is usually the case with following impulsive behaviour just before exams,it turned out to be a joyous moment..made memorable by a certain ...Leia Eymann...

Rendezvous: I was surprised that almost everybody found this year cult fest a letdown.
My (attractive?) quizzing secy did bug me a lot,but it didnt stop me from having a great time.
On the contrary,I developed quiet a liking of watching her shout.
Missing out on qualification by .5 marks or starred question did cause a lot of -"Shit I was so close" moments,but the finishing 3rd in Sphinx and a nice Fantasy quiz event with pradeep made up for it.Hitting the last question Connect in Sphinx and rising from 6th to 3rd was my definitive moment of Rendezvous.


Antaragini: As the semester threatened to turn dull after the Rendezvous blizzard(which probably happens every year),I found an escape route to Kanpur. Playing Poker all night with Kumaon seniors,and qualifying for all events except the Sports Quiz and Bolly quiz(thankfully!) made it a better experience than Rendezvous...
(aaah! Sports Quiz hurts....so close..I told 'em teammates to write Clijsters and Burnley and cudnt remem. Fiorentino Perez and Paarko.As it turned out,Aritra also had a similar experience and had his own bloopers,and we missed by 1 mark)
Plus theres an added sence of pride and pleasure when you are representing your college somewhere else.Hats off to Avinash Mudaliar for conducting some beautiful quizzes...
(I'd always remember Et tu Brute and Alfred and Irene Adler !)

The adorable Professor: I dont know in what words to describe my liking of Angelie Maam.When Abhinav said shes just overhyped and is prejudiced etc..I felt like blurting out a bunch of swear words.
Her's was the class I looked forward to all week,rarely missed it on purpose(just once maybe)
.uff...I still cant describe it...The class was just...cool. The way she communicated with students, her extremely friendly way of conducting the tuts etc etc.
I'll never be able to describe it. Maybe after a couple of more courses under her.

Algebra: Well Linear Algebra was a surprisingly smooth ride.Actually the surprising part was I was scoring more than others without studying..and trust me..thats an awesome feeling.Though I still am amused the way I messed up my majors.Modern Algebra was a beautiful subject.
and well..even though those guys think that my Algebra project was not worth a KVPY scholarship,it was a different experience.

Swine Flu Mania: Ha..I dont remember that time much,as it was very early.Though living with parents in the guest house was VERY comfortable,it really hampered my grades.As it turned out I dint really have it,and by a striking coincidence which may appear very suspicious to the public,I came out of illness as soon my test results came out to be negative.

Movie of the Semester : The Sound of Music (last semester's was Star Wars )
Music of the Semester: Western Classicals
Book of the sem: Well...surely there were better books and more acclaimed writers ..but Harry Potter has always been my weakness.
Semester grade: 7.18

Other Notable memories: Optimization TA(lol), T(r)unkush, EEP,2012,Rock Night! , Maths magazine and last but DEFINITELY not the least- Bhattappa and Billi Studappa


I'm sure I've missed many many things,and I'll update this post as they come to my mind.

Confessions of a Swine Flu suspect

Oh my simple cold and cough,
I request thee- leave me alone
For People have been ringing the alarm bells
They mistake thee for something else!

They say you hath something to do with swines
They say its dangerous and contagious
The public places-they say I cannot explore
But I know you're just common cold and nothing more!

Aah! my poor Throat!
your attention deficit syndrome -I understand
But that doesnt mean you go so Sore
Canst you see its causing an uproar?

and you---my nose?
This was not expected of you
Either you leak creepy fluids- or set up a blockade
Such extreme behaviour! Why have you betrayed?

Fear turns even the staunchest of atheist -
into believers firm
Help me Jesus,Allah -my Lord Dear
I'm just an agnostic-and one not so sincere!

Sine of Madness II

An astronomer, a physicist and a mathematician are on a train in Scotland.
The astronomer looks out of the window, sees a black sheep standing in a field, and remarks, "How odd. Scottish sheep are black."
"No, no, no!" says the physicist. "Only some Scottish sheep are black."
The mathematician rolls his eyes at his companions' muddled thinking and says, "In Scotland, there is at least one sheep, at least one side of which is black."

'Can I have a look at Uranus, too, Lavender?'

Finally I'll have a semester in which more than half of the courses are of my interest. Electromagnetics, Linear Algebra, Discrete Mathematical Structures(Mathematical Logic and all) , Linear Programming, and the best- Contemporary Fiction. And this Fiction Course requires us to read Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban! So my plans and attempts at forgetting HP (so that I can enjoy it all over again after a few years) have failed. I'll have to reimmerse myself into that world this year only. Yippee!!!!
P.S: Harry Potter critics- Keep away your disparagin eyes from this post,and try to keep your disapproving comments to yourself.