"HEAVY METAL" IN A HYDRAULIC JUNGLE!!!!

I realize that my posts have been getting progressively more mundane. Thanks to my lone reader for pointing that out. But I guess my life is reflected in these posts, and this blog is about life in the slow lane! A typical day at work(if i may take the liberty to call it that) will tell you exactly how hackneyed my life here is... So much so that a role reversal has taken place.. Can't wait to get back to India!!

Begining at 6:50 am, the stereotypical weekday takes me out of the house at 7:25 am, the office being a good one hour commute from home. Reaching early and having no idea what to do, I settle into the couch in the lobby that I have made my home. The couch that I spend the time in which I dont watch people screw tubelights and consequently, my head...The first day was captivating, but the rest of the days so far have been becoming more and more trite..All I have to do is count the hourly output and voila! I'm done..Work ends at 5, home at 7:30..Day over...What else could I ask for? A little work, perhaps?? And how about keeping the 63tonne press and the 100 tonne press from a full frontal assalt on my ears?

Two reasons I miss India:
1) Feel outta place. No car, no life....or so they say.. Enjoy your set of wheels before daddy gets back!
2) Messaging has gone out of vogue, and all people want to do is call.. There is nothing like seeing two pissed people engaged in a fiery messaging match...Ask Raghu and Kandath!...

Now I'm going to run the risk of getting a 10 foot pole up my backside by running a reverse countdown:T-41 days to India..

FOR THE SAKE OF WRITING

Another homecoming, another idea for a blogpost.. The past trip was, aimussay, one of the most hilarious Ive ever had .. That with the benefit of retrospect I say, although at that time it was absolutely exasperating.

It all began with a scenic trip to calicut. The Mallu countryside was absolutely serene, the greenery exhilirating. Calicut airport ,on the other hand, was nothing more than a glorified cowshed. With the most haphazard checking-in ever, including babies prancing around on check in counters and an excruciating two hour long wait at check in, I could only barely hold myself back. The icing on the cake was undoubtedly the immigration, with the officer checking my passport actually having a "War of the worlds" badge. Boy, talk about an irony!!
All that passed and three hours later, I was in a not-so-rickety AIX flight. Being one of the last passengers to board, I was positively aghast when I was told that it was a free seating flight. At this point, I would like to thank my fellow passengers(read:SUCKERS!!) who duly reserved for me the emergency seat.

Meanwhile, India continues to simmer in the never ending cauldron of the quota issue, with one institute after another joining in the ruckus. The government, adamantly pushing for the ridiculous increase, is stuck in a vicious cycle. Very soon, the "upper class" will feel like the disadvantaged lot, what with only half the students competing on merit. In another corner of the press, hullaballoo is created over, of all things, a harmless piece of fiction, The Da Vinci code. Will we never lose our apetite for agitation? What is also depressing is the need of every HRD minister to attempt to sensationallly amend the existing scheme of things, what with MMJoshi wanting to reduce the fees of the IIMs and our dear Arjun Singh being the initiator of the ongoing melee.

P.S:Dubai is booming, and how! I leave for my first day of training (sob, how muich i've grown!!) on saturday unsure if I will recognize the Shaikh Zayed Road skyline from four months ago!

HOW KAAVYA VISHWANATH GOT RICH, GOT CAUGHT AND GOT RUINED...

Kaavya Vishwanathan, the Chennai born Harvard Sophomore whose first book deal was estimated to be worth a whopping half million dollars wallows in the mire of a plagiarism scandal, finding herself disgraced and left to face the ignominy of what she has done. This riches to rags story has been dominating the pages of the newspapers for the past few days, although whether so much attention has been paid to it because she is Indian, she is so young, or because of her mega bucks deal..While that is left completely to personal opinion, it wouldnt be such an inappropriate time to ask ourselves, are we really that surprised at this? After all, she carries with her the indian legacy, the only prerequisite to making movies is owning a dvd player.. Where movies are remade with amazing audacity and chutzpah, where music copyrights are infringed with horrendous regularity, where perople dont have the courtesy to delve into the treasure trove of literature at their disposal..Where a person lifts music from every conceivable band but when a foreign group tries to use a sample of his song, he sues their pants off. Inspite of being from such a land, where originality has been out of fashion since time immemorial, she has gone ahead, written a book, used her unmistakably indian instinct and landed up in the most unenviable of situations. The hullabaloo that is being made out of this supposed plagiarism, one would not be mistaken if he thinks the whole book has been lifted. All this for what forms a bare chunk of the literature.

Is it fair to let people off for copying movies and songs but drag others down for similarities between parts of their book and another??

OF LOTPICKING AND BRAINPICKING

After the heady reaction to the last post, I couldnt help but put finger to keyboard again so soon..Thanks to all that appreciated it, both those who commented and those who didnt, those who read it off the lan and those that read it on the web, although the general mood of this post will be a lot more somber, thanks to april 19th,2006. A date which will be etched in my mind for a long time to come.. A date which changed me more as a person than any other date i can care to come up with.. A date which shook the very pillars my college life is based on..

The day began quaintly enough, with what we thought would be a rocking strings concert.. After reaching the venue, which in itself was less than impressive, being all but a set of flimsy asbestos sheets held together by god knows what..we decided to judge the concert for a while before shelling out 200 precious bucks on what many manipalites predicted would be a fiasco.. Turned out they knew what they were talking about, and after half an hour, we realized that this would be not "STRINGS: LIVE AND LOUD", but "UP CLOSE AND PERSONAL WITH STRINGS".. Promptly making our way for the exit, we could hear the emcee desperately trying to cheer up the crowd with trite chants like "I cant hear you" and "Come on Manipal".. And the crowd whimpered back..We'd heard enough!!! And what better thing to do than pimp in manipal? And where pimping is mentioned can Kandath be far behind?? He, in fact was at the forefront of it all.. Unfortunately, the girl didnt have as rollicking a time as she'd hoped, our minds obssessed with catching the last bus back.. We got through the trip alright, fighting a frustrated conductor and an equally frustrated newspaper reporter on the way.. Only to be confronted on the way by a staggering decision that befuddled us all, what it was doesnt matter anymore I suppose, with the dust settling on the final decision..Amazing how a trivial thing like picking which room to stay in next semester can stir up the most combative sensations in people..

But things move on, people move on. I have already learnt to laugh at the whole rigmarole, not with scorn or disdain, but with a heartfelt pity for the protagonists of this theatrical saga. I guess a sarcastic look back at this incident and the way it changed us forever was all that I ever needed to feel good about myself. Thank god for the word WASTAGE..


P.S: The more things change, the more they remain the same... "High hopes" is still looping, a heartfelt guitar lead is still the most beautiful thing in the world, and classes are being bunked with frightening regularity, "Black" by Pearl Jam can still arouse the deepest emotions in me.. Editing a music playlist is the hardest thing in the world after grasping Linear Integrated circuits, and I have learnt to stop worrying and love the blog..