53.Another year to look forward to....

Another year goes by, and yet another year comes...Just had my last supper(er..of the year) now-(got it parcelled from Broast :D). I so badly wanted to see the last sunset of the year –Sigh! only if the beach had been a bit closer to the campus :( .....

Talking about the sun, did you notice the sky today? It was so gloomy, the entire day. The sun looked like a 40 watt bulb!!:O Apparently there is gonna be/ there was a lunar eclipse tonight. But, why did the sun look sad if the moon was going into hiding for some time?:O

As the last few minutes of 2009 tick away, I look forward, wishfully, to what 2010 has in store...

On a personal level,

· * I’ll be shifting to a new house next month, leaving the house where I had lived for the past 21 years. (Should I be happy or sad? I’m confused!)

· *My cousin will have her surname changed....hope my brother too gets married soon!!( i so badly wanna do some extravagant shopping!)

· *My underweight evil twin will start earning. She’s gonna work in some ‘Boasting and Consulting’ company :P

· *As for me....I’ll have earned my very first degree....but...Ah! a future all so bleak awaits me. Neither have I a university to boast about, nor a job to fall back on,yet. Never did my life seem so ...so...uncertain..undefined...

On a global level,

*Spain will take over the Presidency of the council of the European union from Sweden on January 1

*The Burj Dubai, UAE, will be completed in January. It is already the tallest manmade structure ever built.

*The longest annular eclipse of the 21st century will occur on January 15·

*The Harbin international Snow and Ice festival, in China during, January

*Winter Olympics Vancouver, Canada in February

*Winter Paralympics Vancouver, Canada in March·

*The 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa, during June- July.

*The First world YOUTH OLYMPIC GAMES 14 - 26 August 2010

* The 2010 commonwealth games, Delhi in October

* General Motors is expected to produce a commercially viable model of its
hydrogen-fueled drive.

* The East African community will implement a common currency called the East African shilling

Looking forward to it? HAPPY NEWYEAR!!

52. Another random post

I never really didn’t want to write this post, until she made the remark, “You are gonna blog about this aren’t you”...”Well not really” was my clichéd remark...but here I am!

Last week we had this school-reunion, wherein I met up with friends from school, after almost 4 years. Though I couldn’t spend much time doing ‘reunioning’ with everyone present, I had a fun time there! I was taken aback when many of them asked me why I hadn’t updated my blog for a long time. Wow! That was unexpected –people who barely are in touch with me, gets updates on me through my blog.

(Mental Note: I should censor future posts)

(Mental wish: i wish they would leave a comment when they read!)

Anyways, just knowing that there are people who read and enjoy my crappy posts, and giving feedbacks(er... that I have a ‘weird sense of humour’) itself was kinda thrilling. I didn’t need to explain them that 4 years in college have changed me a lot(except my hindi speaking skills) –the blog did that job too. They even asked me to consider writing a book. Yea right! LoL! (But seriously I wish I would one day....sigh!)

Later, I was horrified to realize that I had forgotten the names of atleast a dozen of my batch-mates!! I had to resort to asking awkward questions like, “Hi, what was your full name? I kinda forgot your surname.”, “I think I lost your e-mail id...what was it again?”...But I guess that’s not as bad compared to the situation in college where even after 4 years, I don’t know even the names of half of the guys in our batch. (Sheesh!..Neethu, you need to socialise!)

The journey back home in a friend’s car was..umm...interesting, I experienced Einstein’s time-dilation. ;) –a 5-minutes journey turned out to be a half an hour journey (No insults intended Neeta, I know you are a careful driver, and the traffic was horrible ;)

The day was good... it is good to know that friendships span time and distance. :D

(Note to the friends: Hope to meet you all again for Ragam ’10 .You better come!!)

51. The final phase

The final phase began today. Can’t really believe that 4 years could have gone past so fast. Time flies indeed!

So as I was saying, classes started today, after what could hardly be called a vacation of a couple of days. Our counterparts in other NITs and IITs are enjoying their month long vacation. Hmph! But no complaints though –hardly 4 more months in the campus –I bet we’re gonna cherish each and every day of this sem(we better do!).

As usual the registration day was one heck of a day. Every year, the registration –a process which though it could be completed in a matter of minutes almost always eats up an entire day -is just an indication of how the rest of the sem is going to be! This year was no different and the day saw confused, frustrated, people running helter-skelter, shuttling between the Academic block, the bank and the department building, standing in long queues which move at snail’s pace, fighting over course electives.......At the end of the day, all that one can look forward to is exhaustion, frustration, exasperation and cursing of the whole damn system! No matter how much technology develops, no matter what new sophisticated computerised facilities they implement, the registration day continues to be a bedevilled day.

And my registration especially, invariably turns out to be doubly jinxed. This time, I lost the ATM slip of the fee payment and I learnt the hard way, the value of the puny little piece of paper. Last time, I had lost my college ID card and the year before, I had lost the password to my internet banking -each leading to enduring the yelling of N number of people from inside the college as well as outside... “You cant even remember a password, and you have come to study engineering?”... “Can’t you be responsible enough to atleast keep your ID card safe”... “You won’t be able to register unless you get a written permisson from the registrar”... Man! The people here can be really mean! All said and done, the last registration in this campus is over. Sigh! That’s a little sad..... :(

The first day was ‘perfect’ too. As usual I timed myself to get ready by 7.50am so that I can have a 5-minute breakfast and make it to the class at sharp 8. I count on my ‘Cruiser’ (ladybird cycle :P) for my last minute escapades. And guess what awaited me today? –A drenched cycle with a flat tyre! The gardener chechi always asks me to keep the cycle away from her garden and this time I got her message loud and clear...and a little wet too:|. I had no time to wipe off the water and rode on the wet cycle. On my way to the classroom, I had to carry my bag quite low, lest people should talk about my ‘wet back’, behind by back. I noticed the flat tyre only when my ‘cruising’ became unusually tedious; I decided to pedal the rest of the way, anyway. My calf muscles were cursing me the whole day.

Luckily we had only intro classes, but we are already loaded with assignments and seminars. What’s more, we have every day, afternoon classes too! So much for the no-study-just-chill-out final year myth! But hope we have a blast of a sem! keeping fingers crossed! :)

50. SIGH!

The sun sets down on yet another sem....a semester marked with so many defining moments, so many first-timers, so many eventful events...yet as I stand at the fag end of it, and look back, it seems so bleak –nothing tangible was achieved out of the semester...Just a sigh!

Like a deep sigh –involving so many complex co-ordinated actions of the diaphragm muscle, the intercoastal muscles, the rib cage and the lungs –yet seen as nothing more than a simple sigh...a longing for something...a desperate grasping at the invisible air...

PS: Btw...this is my 50th post.Sigh!

48. The Chicken?...or The Egg?...

This infinite-loop question was brought once again to the surface by Bro during one of our casual chit-chatters.(Well…Umm…er…not a casual talk exactly –Bro was actually trying to ‘train’ me for GD(group discussion), which I’ll be inevitably facing in the very near future…as hopefully companies might soon start plying the campus).

That got me into thinking…(yea I do think at times)… and imagining…and googling…

I wonder if the chickens would be as interested in tracing their family trees as we humans are! :P

If you are a staunch believer of the Bible, then you can easily conclude that chickens came first –It was on the Fifth Day of Creation Week that He created every winged creature (Genesis 1:21) complete with the DNA to reproduce that kind. Then He blessed them, saying,” Be fruitful, and multiply" (using that DNA). For the chickens, this meant lay chicken eggs. Problem solved! :)

However big shots like Stephen Hawking and Christopher Langan along with Darwin argue that the egg came before the chicken.

While ol’ Aristotle seemed to be unable to come up with a definite solution and played it safe. He was quite puzzled by the idea that there could be a first bird or egg and concluded that both the bird and egg must have always existed.

Another popular theory holds that genetic material does not alter during an animal's life. It does however change in the egg. Therefore the first bird that evolved into what we would call a chicken, probably in the era when dinosaurs roamed around at large, must have first existed as an embryo inside an egg. Confused??? To put it in simple terms, two non-chickens mated, they may have been the same species of another bird, but some mutation happens. It mutates in the cells that created the egg. Thus, the egg hatches the first chicken.Voila! :D

In this light, both the egg and the chicken evolved simultaneously from birds who weren't chickens and didn't lay chicken eggs but gradually became more and more like chickens over time. Hmmm…..

But if the dinosaurs came first, who laid the dinosaur egg?... And again, it is no easy path from dinosaur to bird either, as legs must become wings, scales must become feathers, solid bones should turn hollow, cold-blooded should heat up to warm-blooded. :O

"The origin of birds is still up in the air.";)

So the question now becomes: Is a "chicken egg" an egg laid by chicken or an egg that will hatch into a chicken? Any "eggsperts" out there who can explain??

Wiki says, an equivalent situation arise in engineering and science known as circular reference, in which a parameter is required to calculate that parameter itself(van der Walls equation, Colebrook equation). To fella civil engineers, another example is calculation of thickness of roof of a tank or structure. To calculate the thickness requirement, we need to know the self weight of the roof, which is possible only by already knowing the thickness. This situation is solved by initailly assuming the parameter and by repeated iterations converging towards finer values…Alright that’s too much of tech!!!

I come up excitedly with all these facts and findings and blabber them to Bro, only to hear from him, “Whichever was ordered first, came first” .…(Argh! Talk about IIT level PJs! :)

Disclaimer: the post contains a lot of stuff from the web and a lot of my bullshitting too. So if anyone feels like suing me, go ahead :P

47. No more a teen :(

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Around 262 months back(ie. 1048 weeks to be precise), an army of Spermies entered the territory of Ms. Eggy. One brave li’l Spermy, fighting against all odds, succeeded in conquering Ms. Eggy, and so was I conceived!

Days passed and months passed; and my mommy kept growing fatter and fatter( so much so that the docs even thought that she was gonna have twins). After days of practicing kung fu and martial arts inside my comfy abode, I was forced to come into this world(harsh, wicked and cruel). My cries of protest was mistakenly taken as a ‘good omen’ by the docs, as they started shaking and spanking me(yea, I was already subjected to the brutality of the world!)

Days passed and months passed yet again; and I kept growing and growing…(er…though the process wasn’t really a fast paced one!) And today, here I am, turning 21 –though some think that I’ve got the units and tens placed mixed up!(How rude!)

Alright! Disclaimer: I do not have a growth retardation nor do I have any genetic disorder –though some people think so. If anybody thinks so, all I have to tell them is that, I was just grooming myself for doing the ‘Santoor’ Ad. (But only that ...um…now they might give me the role of the girl who comes running, calling “MUMMY!” )

And one heck of a B’day did I have today. No, I did not have a B’day blast. But I did indeed have a nice day spending time with my loved ones and reflecting on the wonderful life that God has given me, and the ways in which He has led me throughout

“For you created my inmost being;

You knit me together in my mother’s womb

I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;

Your works are wonderful,

I know that fully well.”

-Psalms 139:14

And there were surprises in store for me! Loads of ‘em.

I got a domain, MY OWN DOMAIN! all for myself. Thank you so much Mr Red Pill! I seriously never thought that you were serious about the gift!

Thank you MultiMamma, for the ‘BLAH’sphemy! I was expecting a post from you, but you gave me a whole blog. Wow!

Well, the list doesn’t end there(but my day does.Sigh!). I’m so grateful to have been blessed with a wonderful set of parents, bro, kith and kin, who have made my life so wonderful in this world(yea the same harsh, wicked and cruel one!)

46. The thread of love

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In this era when sibling rivalry is a more heard of term than sibling love, it’s good to take one day off to reflect on how our siblings influence our lives, how much they are a part of our lives, and how much love they deserve from us.

It’s funny that our siblings are the only ones whom we can hate as much as we love them. It’s amazing, how the first rival of our childhood, over the years, transforms into the one we love, admire and adore. Differences, how many there may be, our siblings are made of the same stuff as we are, and has been at our side, (whether figuratively or literally)from the beginning.

One needn’t necessarily be a blood relation to be your brother or sister. There are so many wonderful brothers and sisters out there, who make life so marvelous for us.

Today, is that special occasion to celebrate this wonderful relationship –by tying the holy thread which ‘pulsates with sisterly love and sublime sentiments’. And indeed I'm elated to, have ‘tied the knot’ today.

HAPPY RAKHI BROTHER!

45. ROCK, PAPER, SCISSORS.

The compartment was empty when we entered it. Phew thank God! We have the place all for ourselves! The sun was fading behind the horizon, as the train slowly gathered speed. Each of us(She I, She II & Me) was in a rather contemplative mood, and therefore the empty seats by the window side helped us much. Time passed by, and we were lost in our own world (And of course, we have a whole lot of things to think about –life, studies, future, guys, films, dresses, friends, politics, world peace, economic crisis…yea, the earth would stop spinning if we stopped thinking:P) when all of a sudden, a little commotion at the door woke us up from our reverie.

It was a couple with two small kids, who had just boarded the train.Alas! We had to bid goodbye to the comforts of the lavish empty seats (and to our privacy) and resign ourselves to the side seats.

Back to the contemplative mood……nah! The two pesky kids were making too much of a rattle for us to engage in any ‘serious’ thinking. Hardly half a dozen year old, the kiddos were chattering away to glory(Perhaps they too must have thought that the earth would stop spinning if they shut their mouth!)

The ‘Grown ups’ –(yea the 3 of us again) –try to engage in some ‘serious’ ‘grown up’ talks throwing irritated skeptical glances at the kids every now and then. They had now started playing ‘Rock, Paper, Scissors’…

The compartment echoed with their – ‘Rock, Paper, Scissors’… ‘Rock, Paper, Scissors’…chant.

Having exhausted our topics to talk, we next sought refuge in one of our lappys to evade boredom…listened to some songs, watched some video clips…

Rock, Paper, Scissors’… Rock, Paper, Scissors’…the kids kept on chanting.

The kids just wouldn’t go to sleep! Don’t they have anything better to do? Isn’t that a dumb old worn out game? Come on kiddos, grow up!!!... The ‘grown ups’ smirked.

Time ticked by. The lappy ran out of charge. Once again, we found ourselves having nothing to do.

‘Rock, Paper, Scissors’…‘Rock, Paper, Scissors’…

We threw meaningful glance at each other. We badly wanted the children to go to sleep. Come on! Stop it! Go sleep! We waited…

Rock, Paper, Scissors’… Rock, Paper, Scissors’…

Finally…finally…after tiring us out(rather than tiring themselves…)they settled themselves down, pulled the sheets over them…and went to sleep for good! Phew!

The lights were turned off…only the dim glow of the night lamp lighted the compartment..

The watch displayed the Titan Ad.

Out of the darkness, silhouetted against the dim light, appeared three hands and in the silence of the night, in almost muffled whispers, there could be heard, a faint chant… ‘Rock, Paper, Scissors’

Two tiny heads popped out from under the sheets, and gave the ‘grown-ups’ a meaningful smirk.

Author’s note: This happened when RAC, Crazy and I were going home for Easter. The kids were actually very adorable, though quite annoying.