Random Shit

Finally saw Inception a coupla weeks back. Fucking awesome. Totally deserves #3 ranking on the IMDb Top 250.

I also recently had the chance to read Haroun and the Sea of Stories (Salman Rushdie) (As you can see, I'm not concerned about my acads at all. And this after I've "promised" both my parents and the VC good results. In rather concrete terms). I liked it. Quite a bit.

Nallud Part 2

There's a couple more quirky faculty members I'd forgotten to write about in the last post. I shall do that here.

English teacher: Calls the girls of the class "May-dum." Has no idea how to control the class. Insists we do not clap or bang our desks after a horrendous experience with the aforementioned activities on our first day. Does not know how to handle excessive participation and involvement in plays. Has no idea what to assign as research papers to us and asks US to come up with ideas instead. Insists we make PowerPoint presentations on pointless topics like what is an adjective and where to use a hyphen instead of a dash.

HLCD Teacher (For those of you not in the know (which I guess would be all of you), HLCD is History of Legal and Constitutional Development): For some reason, is known as Chintu among the students. Is much like the Torts teacher. Is also quite possibly the most boring and soporific person I have ever had the misfortune to meet in my life.

Also, the VC in his interview had asked us to sign on a particular target percentage for the first semester. And warned us that if we did not achieve it, he would be setting the bar even higher for the next semester and "upping the ante," so to speak. I made the mistake of quoting an impossibly high percentage. And here I am blogging away to glory while the first terms are only a week away.

One thing I'm really happy about is my roommate. She shall hereby be referred to as S (for that is the letter her name begins with (obviously)). She has great taste in music, movies, books and pretty much everything else that really matters. Wodehouse fan, ardent admirer of almost all Star World shows, and appreciator of good cinema. The other day she wanted to kill me for not having watched Iron Man. =D

To top it all off, she's responsible. She's got her priorities right. She studies, but not too much (unlike me, who has neglected to even TOUCH a book since college started, unless it's fiction), remembers to clean the room once in a while, and yet finds time to read a lot of fanfiction and watch a movie when she feels like it. I need someone like that. I shudder to think what would have happened had I had a roommate even remotely like me. That is, crazy and irresponsible, and without an iota of room-sense, if you know what I mean. We would prolly have had filthy vermin crawling all over our beds.

Then there's I. She lives across the hall from me, with N. But I, S and me hang out together most of the time. There's nothing extraordinary about I. She's just a loud, fun and big-hearted girl. But what I love most is irritating her with dirty jokes and gross talk. She's not used to such things, somehow. She used to get completely scandalized, but I think I'm growing on her. Now she can even handle it if I drop an F-bomb every 20 seconds.

So since I'm already exceeding the word limit for normal-sized blog posts, I shall stop here. Now that I have a laptop, hopefully it'll be configured soon and I'll be able to post more often. Unless I decide to actually study for the first terms.

But that's not likely at all.

Nallud

That's the name of my college by the way. NLUD. I got sick of calling it that, letter by letter. It's so long and drawn out.
Not that anyone I know calls it Nallud. That's just my own creation.

So in this post I'll be telling you a little about Nallud.
1. VC: Tends to talk sense but also tends to ramble on a bit. During the Orientation, his speech lasted for about an hour and a half. And the few classes he's taken, he's spent the whole 45 minutes trying to explain a concept for which a mere quarter of an hour would have sufficed. So yeah, just a tad verbose.

2. Chief Warden: Is also a teacher of economics by profession. But all she knows to talk about is how we have imbibed all the evil tendencies of Western culture and forgotten our own pure, holier-than-thou "Indian tradition." Even in her economics class, according to what the seniors tell us. Has an extreme aversion to ANY kind of interaction between the freshers and their seniors, which she calls ragging. Insists we call our seniors bhaiyyas and didis. Which pretty much rules out any possibilities of a junior and senior dating. Not that that's happened. Yet.

3. Assistant Warden for the girls hostel: Goes by the motto "I shall only smile in the presence of those members of society who have a penis." Is female. Of course.

4. Boys Hostel wardens: Incapable of facial expressions and voice modulation.

5. Torts teacher: Speaks bullshit just to check if anyone's listening. Which they aren't. Her sentences aren't gramatically correct by a long shot, let alone being correct on points of law. Always ends her class by assigning homework because she knows the students' ears will perk up at this and enjoys the satisfaction of people listening to her even if it is only for a few seconds everyday. Teacher whose class it is easiest to maaro-fy proxy in because she goes by roll number and never looks up from the attendance sheet.

And that's the faculty. The eccentric (for want of a better word) ones, at least.

Of cinematic mediocrity

A coupla weeks back, I decided to go for a movie with a bunch of friends from college. Initially there was only me and my roommate. But we figured we could get some more people to come along. The final list came to something like 14 people.
We had initially planned to watch Despicable Me. Or even Dinner for Schmucks. And I had to go home after, so I was carrying my laptop. Big mistake, in retrospect.

Once we stepped off the metro at the Janak Puri West metro station (this is where the nearest cinema hall to our college, Satyam Janak Puri, is located), half the people stopped to try out chuski (most of them being Southerners, chuski generated rather a lot of interest in them), half wanted to go ahead for the movie as soon as possible, and another half went to the ATM to get money. Oh wait...that doesn't add up. Aah well.

To compound everything, it started pouring. I could barely make out the hall in the distance. We finally reached it, after running through the rain and getting completely drenched, and tried to duck under the awning. But being a Saturday afternoon, the theatre was so crowded with people trying to get tickets we could barely even do that.

It turned out that half the Hollywood movies currently in theatres weren't even playing there. And the ones that were did not have any afternoon shows. I was even willing to watch "Grown Ups." Going by its Tomatometer rating (10%), it was bound to be crap. But at least we could get a few laughs out of it. Or The Expendables (39%), simply for the action sequences. But thanks to the SUCKY hall and its SUCKIER schedule, we had to settle for Bollywood. There was a show for Aisha but most of the people with us had already seen that last weekend. So we settled for......Once Upon A Time In Mumbaai.

One of us had already seen it. She wanted to kill herself. And after the movie, so did I.

Then there was the laptop fiasco. They suggested leaving it with the proprietors, for want of a better word, of the adjacent "Juice Shop." You know, one of those shady stalls that for some reason can be found all over Delhi, where the fat guy sitting out front orders the stick-thin guy who actually does all the work to grab a coupla fruits, stick them in a grinder and make the juice right in front of you, while all he does is take the money and if you're lucky, give you your change back, with a look that plainly berates you, to say the least, for having the balls to demand this complex service of them while they would be completely satisfied sitting around in their shop doing nothing all day. They must have a training school for that look. And I was supposed to leave my precious laptop with them. Yeah, right.

Finally one of the senior clerks relented and lemme put it in his office, but not without making me turn it on and checking if there was any weird stuff in there. Though why he did that beats me, it's not like I was taking it inside the hall. Finally he told me, albeit begrudgingly, "Theek hai madam, isse main apne office mein rakh loonga (Fine ma'am, I'll put it in my office)." I was too grumpy and soaking wet to be grateful.

As regards the movie itself, I have never seen so much average-ness in a movie before. Plot: average. Check. Acting: average. Check. Directing: average. Check. Music: average. Check.

Most traumatic experience I've had in a long time. Do me a favor. Don't go watch it. Even if you're bored to death.

Up

Voices: Christopher Plummer, Ed Asner.

Cute, touching and exceptionally wonderful.
Watch it if you haven't already.

P.S.: Officially my first short post. Yay!

PD

It was to be at 6. When we arrived, they told us they would debate legalising prostitution. What followed was 2 hours of a fucking awesome debate, with mudslinging, personal attacks and basically all the elements a proper parliamentary debate should avoid at all costs. Who wouldn't have been attracted?!

One of the thematic clashes was "Masturbation and Toys versus Real Sex." There was also a lot of talk of the fugliest people easily being able to get some without too much effort. There were all sorts of perverted hand motions and expressions like "churning the butter" followed by "you know what I mean, right?" Like I said, a mindblowing-ly awesome debate. Hackneyed expression, yes. But there really is no other way to describe it.

So far we've debated things like "This House believes that incest is a fun game for the family" and "This House believes bestiality should be legalised." Unfortunately the Proposition lost for both of these. There was even "This House believes that Barbie should be a porn star." But the other two were too good to give up for this one.

The first time I went, I adjudicated. I wasn't too bad. The next day I spoke. It was addictive. I found myself wondering how the fuck I had sat there the previous day and listened to all the shit that the speakers came out with without entering the debate myself and telling them they were completely fucking it up and what they should have been saying instead. We won that day.
In case you were wondering, we were Opposition on "This House believes that extremist parties should be banned from contesting elections."

Unfortunately the next three I lost. I opped on "soldiers should be able to sue the government for negligence," propped on incest and debated one other motion I've now forgotten. Losing three consecutive debated has discouraged me a little. I have a major problem with matter and coming up with proper constructives and elaborating on them on the spot.

I've also decided never to be the prime minister. The one time I tried my speech lasted for a measly three minutes, instead of the required six minutes at least. Seven is even better. The problem is again the lack of sufficient matter. At least if you go later, you have stuff to rebut and that can take up half your time. But as the first speaker on the floor, I failed miserably.
I'd prolly be best as Deputy. Do a little bit of both, you see, rebuttals and constructives. I've always found I fit best somewhere in the middle. And not just in debates.

I can't be Whip either because the whip is supposed to completely demolish the other side's case and I can't be that rude or aggressive to people in a debate. In real life, yes. Face to face, totally. But in front of a lot of other people including a panel of adjudicators judging me, nope. Not really my forte.

Even though I've lost three consecutively and have problems with my content, PD'ing is a lot of fun. I don't see myself quitting anytime soon. I can only hope I get better with time. Until then, every weekday at 6 in the evening, I shall come up to the podium, try not to be intimidated by the seniors adjudicating me and debating with me, and do my best to convince them of whatever motion I happen to be proposing or opposing. More often than not, I have no fucking idea about the motion and my mouth becomes an independently functioning unit spewing out words that somehow manage to form coherent sentences when strung together. So the best I can do is bullshit my way into the adjudicator's pants. After all, that's what everything in life boils down to, right? Trying to bullshit your way into everyone else's pants.

Figuratively, of course.

Gaaaaaaaaaah!

Too much to say. Too less time.

First off, I owe an apology to my readers. I haven't been posting for two weeks. The situation is something like this. The IT guy at my university (read fucked-up-bastard-who-knows-shit-about-IT) couldn't configure my laptop to the NLUD Wi-Fi network. Not only that, but he's fucked up my laptop so that the Wi-Fi at MY place doesn't work either. And then he has the balls to say, "May-dum, isko toh format karwaana padega. Isme aapka koi important software toh nahin hai naa(May-dum, this will have to be formatted. Is there any important software in here) ?"
So basically, my laptop cannot possibly work at my university. Which means I'll have to wait until Mom comes back from her trip, for which there is a month left, take HER laptop, and get THAT configured, which'll take another week. And hope to GOD he doesn't fuck that up as well.
I'm INFURIATED. But you prolly already know that by now, thanks to all the upper-case-ing.

Oh and yeah, since my laptop basically counts for shit now, as far as the internet is concerned, I'm doing this on my Dad's laptop. And he's not even supposed to know I HAVE a blog. So much for privacy.
This also means that the most I can do is blog once a week, if that. I didn't even feel like blogging last weekend, but more about that later. I go to the computer lab everyday, lest my email inbox starts to look like it's contracted jaundice (The "new email" color for Hotmail is yellow). So I comment on a few blogs from there. And keep reading the newest QC comics to retain a smidgenny modicum of my former sanity. Or rather, lesser degree of insanity. But working up the courage to actually post something on mine is too much to ask of my already addled brain. Why is my brain already addled? More about that later.

So I realise I'm already exceeding the word limit for a normal post, and I've been getting requests from left, right and center to keep my posts short lest my readers lose interest halfway through. I was rather happy to hear this in fact, since I had always thought my readers lose interest only a quarter of the way through. But my point is, I have a lot to tell you about college and all the exciting new stuff, but it shall have to wait for next week.

And I tried replying to all your comments on the last post, but the comment that came out was WAY too long to be called a comment. So I shall do it here. However weird and unheard of it may be.

@Nyx and Espera: Thou dost grossly overestimate hostel life. I mean, seriously, just because it's like a party in my room every night...ok fine, point taken.
And yeah, that "pretending-to-be-a-second-year" thing actually happened. This guy has to repeat a few weeks of first year because he was short on attendance, but since all the second years know him, he was allowed to aid and abet the ragging. Ok, I guess that wasn't really pretending. But it's pretty much the same thing.

@Midnight Sun: Because it's INDIA.
And yes. Yes you will. Die, that is. Initially I didn't think it was that bad. But now I actually wait for the tea break every morning to brush my hair just so I can do it in the air conditioned academic block. As a result of which, for the first 3 classes of the day, I look like I've stuck black wires to teh top of my head. In a hurry. And this is August we're talking about. Fucking AUGUST.

@Sahil: The cell phone network within our rooms sucks. I have to hang my torso out of the second floor window to text any of my friends. Feel better?

@Sam: Thanks!
@Disguise: Are you still in school?
And also, good for you, man. But promise me, whatever you do, go somewhere with an air conditioned hostel. Unless you LIKE getting up at ungodly hours in the middle of the night drenched in sweat and having to wash your hair every other day because it stinks of sweat. But I'm guessing you don't.

So there. I bet most of my readers would have fallen asleep somewhere in the middle. I wish I could nudge you awake. But even I, sadist to teh core, would never want to inflict the torture of reading all that on anyone.
And if you haven't fallen asleep, well, all I can say is that you have a high threshold of crap-taking.
Until next week.