harsh in kinesphere

Experiences dictate how you feel, in general or otherwise. This is no different thing.

I’ve heard of people like him all the time, first they start off as the teacher’s pet that mature into the professor’s pet, I never thought I’d get a firsthand experience, but I was in for a surprise. They are very easy to spot; they laugh at the senior’s/boss’s jokes the hardest, or greet them with a twinkle in their eye only to bitch when they are gone. They’ll interrupt you when you are speaking and reiterate everything what you’ve just said while talking to the boss. And the one I know is gifted in the sweet talk department, let me illustrate with an example:-

Me- (talking to myself) I am so mad at him, how could he blame it on me? I am going to give him a piece of my mind!
Chaatu- hi! Kya chal raha hai??
After 10 minutes, Chaatu’s leaving to ‘socialize’ with others.
Me- !#@#@$#@$!!! Where’s my wallet????!!! And why the hell am I NAKED????????!!!!
Chaatu- (with my money and my clothes) Sucker!!!
In situations like these having a speech impediment sucks big time!!!!

What I’ve learnt till now is that being a sweet talker is like being Neo, you just have it in you, and no one can take that away.

Well, its just about time he starts getting on people’s nerves (or off mine!) until then, I’ll sulk as he goes for a coffee break with seniors. I’ll stand aside for his twinkly eyes and cheeky smile. Until then he’s the chaatu I dislike, the one person I want to be.

It’s been ages… and despite my attempts this is turning into a ghost blog; it’ll be one amongst millions unless I do something about it.

Trying times are upon us. It could’ve been a fairly tale IT story, but that would be soo boring!!

Boy idolizes uncle, boy decides to be just like him- the ‘IT’ factor, working with the cutting edge with the all the money……. naaah, it was about the money. Boy gets job amidst the Global Economy Meltdown! Was it all just meant to be?

But many (read parents/ relatives) are glad that we are in the worst case scenario from the start. ‘It’s better if you face the worst in the beginning, that way even by being a fresher you’ve seen it all!’ but hey! during the layoff drill that was carried out by thee I was stirred, shaken and what not. Fresher’s don’t have to worry about such things you know, most of us aren't in debt, with zero responsibility. We’ll probably go crying back to our parents complaining about ‘the bad client who’s bankrupt and who made the big guys @ office hand-out pink slips’.

Let’s hope for the better.

More to come.. Or as the wannabes say ‘more to cum’!!! lol!

Being a fresher is tough, many are thinking “he may have the aptitude, but why did they hire a guy?? They could’ve hired a stunner, that’d be more exciting!”

Couple of days go by doing absolutely nothing, just “observing”/* translation- watching other people work for a while-> getting bored-> singling out anyone and counting how many times that person leaves the cubicle*/. The exciting days pass and the BIG DAY finally arrives.
Apparently no one says “get him a computer” instead they say, “allocate machines to the new resource” /*Ya, I know that’s a turn-on! */.

Its THE day I get my PC. It arrives and suddenly the cubicle starts looking a lot smaller. Since the computer isn't configured,I am not allowed to touch anything.After much hoopla the guy (let’s call him IT guy1- for obvious reasons) arrives to set up my ‘machine’, but I guess copying names written in block letters off a paper posted on the soft board isn’t his specialty. Apparently he has a knack for misspelling people’s names. These guys are weird, don’t know if they are tagged or not, but they are definitely IT. The IT guy1 was at it for almost ninety minutes; then called his colleague over to help him out, but the colleague brought 3 other guys with him as he was ‘off for lunch’. They made a huddle as they discussed the possible problems

IT guy1- don’t know what’s happening over here

Me( sitting besides him)- ????!!!!!!

IT guy1- actually I don’t have the access rights yet, I joined last week

ITguy2- why didn’t you say so? I was making access profiles just before the lunch break.

They discussed/argued/commented but like almost all meetings, they decided lunch was much more important. This experience taught me that-

‘The competence of the IT guy can be gauged by the force with which he presses the ‘Enter’ key’.

So, the other day my computer refused to accept my password, I knew I was a goner when the IT guy bashed the keyboard. They are they black sheep in the power tie, sharp suit and branded shirt crowd, like even if the power is disconnected, it’s an IT dept problem and a reason to curse the minions of networking. And 'they' are NEVER your friends.

That’s corporate life, Eh?

Experiences maketh the man.. ohh wait, that’s ‘clothes maketh the man’, clearly I have unaddressed issues.

But recently I had an experience that makes a man.

I met the devil’s real world identity- the dentist.

There’s an ongoing war between the almighty and Satan. So when Satan created the dentist, god created the anesthetic but then Satan created injections got the lead.

I am not a needle friendly person; I get panicky whenever there’s a syringe in the same room as I am. And the dentist was getting a kick out of all this, I’m pretty sure I caught him smiling when he saw my expression as he wielded that syringe. I knew I had a chance to escape as the door was unlocked but I was frozen in fear. As he was in his act, the calm expression gave no indication of his barbarous intention; he managed to keep his cool when I was a step closer to cry like a little girl.

I lay in the chair and I realized how bad I had been when looking into the bright light became difficult. Maybe that’s why I was in the chair. Take the position in the chair and you’re a sitting duck. You allow some guy to put pointy things in your mouth. At that point you’d even give your soul if he’d just ask. That’s why I’d be logical to send criminals to the clinic instead of the lock-up /*now that’s an idea!*/.

The doc has concluded that the acidic nature of my saliva is to be blamed /*what??*/.

What do they do if they have some dental problems??I’ll try to make him laugh or shout so that I can get a good look at his teeth. And what do you do when your girlfriend is also your dentist; nobody would want to say no to her!

Once upon a time, there lived a little boy in a Mumbai suburb. Contrary to the misconception, this boy was special. He could remember minute details from school and the most trivial promises that his parents broke at bed time. So one night, it was around 10.30pm, way past his bed time.

“Our craft teacher has told us to make a Greeting card tomorrow” he said.

His mother thought he was talking in his sleep, that’s what she wanted to believe. But she knew her son too well; this had happened so many times that now she’d stopped freaking-out. She looked towards her husband who was hiding his head under the blanket by now.

The mother son duo headed to the hall, she fetched everything she needed for this undertaking from a shelf that resembled a mini stationery shop.

“So what kind of greeting card is it?” she asked the boy who was sleepier than before.

“Our teacher said something about Indian integration” he murmured.

“Fine, I’ll come up with something, go to sleep. I’ll be there in a while” she said as her brain went in overdrive.

I’m not totally against craft, infact I love origami they taught us during that class. I love drawing a pond with little fish that my paper crane will eat for food, but telling a 10 year old to make a collage with newspapers is being a little kooky. Most of the craft periods in my school would have competitions like ‘Rakhi making’, ‘greeting card making’ and we’d also make different type of boxes. On one such ‘rakhi making competition’ one of my friends thought that it would be very cool if he used an Éclair /*chocolate*/ as his rakhi centerpiece. The competition results were declared and the rakhis were returned, that friend of mine was surprised to find centerpiece on his rakhi missing. “competition ka jaane de re, par chocolate kyo liya?” were his exact words.

Craft teachers go over the top and come up with innovative reasons for parents to curse them, from collage to pop sickle stick houses; no one can guess what they’ll ask for, and all such projects come bundled with the misleading line ‘Use ordinary household waste’ /*hey I didn’t know we had 100 something plastic spoons or a bag full of pencil shavings just lying around*/. I remember a Work Experience project when we had to use grains and pulses as colors. As I didn’t want to bother my parents, I generously sprinkled tur daal and chaaval I found by myself but to my mother’s horror I had knocked Dal tadka and Kashmiri Pulav off the menu /* in my defense, like a true artist I used the best I materials could find*/.

Mother hasn’t been supportive of my projects ever since.

According to Educationalists, Craft and Work Experience are meant for the overall development of the pupil as he/she has the opportunity to think creatively beyond the curriculum and observe the world we live in, but I’m sure parents have a slightly different opinion. How does the administration come up with such stuff?? For instance, my niece had to make a rainy season wear thing on chart paper. I was making rubber cutting that somewhat resembled gum-boots and my Sis-in-law was drawing clouds on crepe paper, all the while my niece jumped around singing “Ringa rainga roses, pocket full of…..” . Indeed that was a big learning experience for her/*insert sarcasm here*/.

Many people make a fortune by displaying their craft project rejects as ‘art’ and the subject is meant to improve hand eye coordination and I feel that it should be primarily be focused on class work rather than making the parents go through the ordeal. But by the time that happens, go nuts!

Love thy donkey work

“They expect us to become engineers through clerical work”.

-An ideal engineer

/*who happens to be my friend*/

Just like a good movie that has a climax at the end, each semester has the dreaded submissions /*No, it’s not kinky, it’s brutal*/, and just like the climax, submissions decide your fate for the semester. Collectively a month of each year is spent writing innumerable assignments, photocopying notes and question papers, memorizing the trivialities encountered during the practicals –all in the name of submissions. Oral exams are added like the cherry on top of a sundae /*to give it ‘the’ effect*/. All this gets translated to term work /* its professor’s assessment of the student’s performance throughout the semester, marks are given out of 25 for each subject +25 marks for orals*/.

The concept of term work and orals is mainly based on karma, and the professors love playing god. You don’t want to catch their eye, you don’t want to stand out of the crowd, you’ll make a point not to wear T-shirts that have one liners or anything that resemble alphabets that the professors just love to read.

They are Santas for the day, so when they ask,” How have you been this semester?” your poker face only succeeds in making them go ”Ho ho ho ho” with laughter.

Teacher’s pets enjoy immunity at this time of the year. During the oral exams for a subject say, Computer organization and Architecture they’ll be asked idiotic questions like “what does ‘PC’ stand for?” while the notorious ones are bombarded with questions viz,” what does ‘Pentium’ mean?, Describe the Unix architecture or Please explain Booting of the computer”. Open your mouth to answer and get jabbed with comments like,” Did you expect standard questions during Orals?” ……and you are one step closer to a nervous breakdown, in front the professors.

Those who can’t do, teach. Not these guys, they want to teach. They give 15 to 20 page assignments even when they know that the result will only be 60 /*that’s the class strength*/ identical copies of the assignment. The assignments are duplicated to such an extent that leaving the variations in ink color and handwriting, any word will be found on the same page, on the same line and on the same place in any of the 60 assignments. Made to scribble that doesn’t remotely contain anything that you’ll be studying for the actual exam. The hand keeps writing till the wee hours of the night, rewriting things that have been heard throughout the semester, without knowing, without caring, without living. As the days pass, the files keep getting fatter and heavier, but as Miley Cyrus put it-This is the life! The files get submitted and it’s the face value that counts.

/*ehem! */As the rumor goes, the assignments /*or the answer papers for that matter*/ aren’t read, they are skimmed at roll-your-eyeball speeds, so if you manage to write lyrics of your favorite song and add some relevant terms in between, it may even be considered as a model answer paper!

If you can’t beat em, join em, thereby everything gets decorated with clean legible handwriting, neat borders and diagrams. It’s for your own good and that’s the only reason to comply.

NB is just an average guy, and no matter what he thinks of himself he will still be an average guy. What’s most intriguing is the way he goes out of his way to unsuccessfully convince you that he’s something special.

Couple of days back I was coming home and I met NB (wishing he didn’t have something to brag about). So we were talking about general topics like college, exams, music (yawn). But as I was making an effort to talk to him, he kept scratching his arm; I figured since he doesn’t have a hand in his pants, everybody is a winner. So after about 5 minutes, he started folding his T-shirt sleeve and looking the other way so that I could get a clear view of his arm. I caught a glimpse of some abstract shape tattooed on his arm. And I had to ask, “Did u get a tattoo?” and I just made his day! He went on to explain how tattoos are cool, I takes lot of guts to get one meanwhile I was cursing myself ‘look what you’ve done’. I patiently kept nodding and he went on and on about best places to get tattoos. It was dummies guide to crap- ultimate edition. The tattoo was, err unique in its lame way. The tattoo was what I used to draw as a kid on my favorite wall and I also remember being scolded by my parents because according to them, “that’s not a drawing!!!” Who’s laughing now? And my subconscious answered “certainly not you!!” Frankly, two dragons humping as they barbecue with their fire breath would have been a better tattoo. Then I figured that the idea must have been beyond the artist’s comprehension.

I don’t have problems with people getting tattoos but going out of one’s way to show it totally negates the whole purpose of getting it. In fact I am relieved that he didn’t get one on the small of his back or his thigh, coz that would have been traumatic.

Has anybody observed how all the fairy tales end with ‘… and they lived happily ever after’? Surprisingly this line (with all its cliché) does find its way into our normal lives. As a student, this line is thrown at as a last resort to make you do what you have to. Think of it as a ‘Bramaastra’. I distinctly remember my school math and science teachers convincing my peers (who were least interested in these subjects-> thereby taking arts, home science etc) with white lies like ‘it’s the last time you’ll encounter math and science so it’s best if you have pleasant memories about them.’
Through incessant lecturing about the seriousness of the board exam, teachers/ parents would often cite examples of students (distant cousins or neighborhood chaps) who scored and made it to their dream colleges. These role models would be projected on the other side, living the good life and like those TV marketing commercials they would end it with, “..all this only if you….” Back to square one. This would go on and on day after day, everyday. These exams bring out the best and worst in parents, just when you thought that your pops couldn’t hurt a fly, during your 10th and 12th he’ll be possessed by Hitler.
Some parents have a professional approach. ‘Do this and you will get that laptop you’ve been eyeing at Croma’.
No matter what you do, there will be a new challenge and another ‘happily ever after’ behind it. At times I wish they’d stop but then, what would be the teenager’s expression (who’s been working his ass off for an exam and doesn’t want to even look at books for sometime) when his parents say, “its not the end, there is graduation, post-graduation a good job…..!” .Parents and teachers are like that, and there is no greater joy than seeing satisfaction in their eyes after you achieve. We need to stop perusing our happily ever after, accept that there is no such thing and stop complaining.

I just couldn't resist and so i am posting this before time!

Had our BE farewell in college a couple of days back and to say the least, IT ROCKED!!! After coaxing out fees, fines, charges etc the college management finally decided to spare us all by not giving us a lousy send-off. Good food, so-so DJ and cut short speeches by the faculty ensured that the farewell was just perfect. It was the best way to say goodbye to engineering.

Having made tons of friends who are fellow Aishwarya Rai worshippers, tech fanatics and music loving geeks. It will be hard not to miss my friends and the engg timetable. But I know that I will get over it pretty soon, thanks to orkut and the internet, It’ll be easy to keep in touch with the gang and getting nostalgic will be even easier.

The best part about farewells is the chance of doing most embarrassing things and getting away with it, may be that’s why all of us danced with the most weird/funny/freaky dance moves EVER! I’ll have to admit that I am not the person who’ll hit the dance floor, but this time it was different. All the lights, deafening music and great company set the mood. Most unlikely people danced that night because we were celebrating the end of everyday college drudgery and the fact that in few days the spenders would become the earners which is a reason to celebrate in itself. After the music stopped, our pictures/*from different events*/ were displayed on the projector with ‘Alvida’ playing in the background and every one got emotional /* the organizers decided to end the event on a sad note*/.

It marks the end of late night assignment completion, vivas /* where mugging up didn’t help!!*/ and file submissions. It also means the end of open eyed siesta fests and not bunking lectures, but then you realize those were the things that brought you guys closer. Suddenly you realize what we've become ( theIT crowd in our case)- GOD HELP US ALL!!!!!

Its just one of those days when u can think of million places where you can be, that day of the week, which in the history of most boring days is at the top of the list(as yet). The entire space surrounding you is supersaturated with boredom. The entire batch is dead ( atleast they wish they were) resembling the zombies from resident evil movies, even the teacher’s pets who appeared to be interested have thrown in the towel and stopped asking stupid questions.

There is an eerie silence in the room (except for the humming of the air conditioners who make it the best place to catch the zzzs) , which normally any professors would long for, broken by the professors occasional infuriating comment like, “It doesn’t require this much time” and everybody in the lab divert their blank gazes away from the computer screens, looking at the son of Satan (S.O.S) for the blasphemy. As even the he knows that nothing worthwhile can be acquired from the bunch at this time of the day. At his table he is secretly looking at the watch himself, wishing the hands could turn a bit faster. Its days like these that make him regret his decision of taking up lecturing as a profession.

Not knowing what to do and not having any interest to do anything brings us to this situation. Top it up with the professor who is delivering nothing but lullabies, despite of his apparent attempts to do his best. Forget talking during the practicals, even looking at your friends computer screen unleashes the wrath of the S.O.S accompanied with taunts like- “how did u ever get in BE?? This was already done in the lower semesters” and you just sit there, so desperate that you will even try jumping out of the lab window just to get the hell out. You are mindlessly exploring the network, not because you are searching something, but you can’t bear to do what he says anymore. You come across a folder titled ‘flash’, opening it is just a reflex. Suddenly you are happy.. You must be smiling; an entire folder of flash games seems like a sign. The guy upstairs is watching and can’t bear to see you like this. Time just flies away.

The bell rings, the entire batch has been given the kiss of life, its over.

Everyone is rushing for their bags. Wanting to escape from the torture chamber, everybody is in a hurry. Just as everyone is making their way out, he calmly says “we will continue next time” , there is nothing you can do, you just remember the computer you were at.