Matchmaking?

It was on one of those days that a considerable number of the class found itself outside the classroom. I shouldn't have to specify that it was English period.

That was the day that we decided to bunk as many English classes as we could till there are no more left to attend.

Sigh. Happy days.

During one more such period, bunked by a significant chunk of the class (this time it was Chemistry), we found ourselves on the football field, audiencing a football match. I was there to watch a Specific. The Specific was playing beautifully, slide tackling his way through the strikers.

Yeah that's it. He was playing beautifully. And even if there were better players, hell, I'm sorry but I was just watching the Specific.

So it was quite sad that his team lost - it was the first time I've watched him, watched him like that, uninterrupted, as a spectator from a distance, and it's going to be the only time, as far as I can see.

Do I hear someone arranging a re-match? ;)

Pretty Paints!

I sound like I'm listing down what I did all day in my previous post!
Sigh. Like anyone cares how my day was spent.
Sob.

Anyway, I've been a-painting!:

Sigh. Pretty paints. I love pretty paints.

"Chorni kahin ki!"

Can you guess what I have in front of me right now?
No?
It's a pack of Sunfeast Dark Fantasy. :D
They are fresh and crisp though, because it's a new pack. I could leave it out for a few days, but going by my skin, the air isn't exactly humid.

Today was one of my "fits" days.
Among other things (like calling a guy sitting next to me "Papa" in a nasal voice continuously, throughout coaching), I also stole a very tempting-looking sheet of stickers from a sticker-book from the book fair in school. Very cute stickers, they are. I'm eyeing the sticker-sheet below the one I took.

The chemistry teacher and the maths teacher gave the class a laugh at my expense. Which I didn't like. But on the other hand, was saved the embarrassment of singing aloud in class when several people came to my rescue and told the teacher (who was randomly picking out children and forcing them to sing/dance in class because we didn't want to study) that I sing horribly. Sweet.

And after the Dean of Admissions of the Nanyang Technological Institute gave a presentation about his institute, I heard many people consider defecting to the foreign-admissions side. All patritism that had arisen after the teacher introducing the Dean said that the NTU was way better than the IITs had evaporated.

I end this post with a cup of soup again.
Cheers.

Cranky.

There's tomato soup in the air and a pack of cream biscuits, slightly soft (I like biscuits that are slightly soft, like when you've left them out in humid air for sometime. Just the way I like molten chocolate more than fresh-out-of-the-fridge ones) in front of me.

Homeostatis it is, for a hungry soul.

I was going to write about ... stuff. This is the fourth time I've erased and begun all over, so I think we'll skip those stuff. They weren't important anyway. Seriously!

In the past 2 days, I found out things about my classpeople. The conclusion to be drawn really, is that apart from the fact that they really love to "talk", they can't keep things to themselves. No respect for personal privacy either.
To be honest, not much concerns me. But I'm beginning to realize that not every person says, "Dude, it's as much about them as it is about me, so I really don't want to talk about it." It being an event or incident that is about 2 people and that can really do without being broadcasted. Am I any better? I don't think so.

Another thing is a "sautan". I understood what it meant due to the context it was used in. But for some reason it really, really turned me off. I can't pinpoint the exact reason. I mean, I know it's being used as a joke and stuff, but it kinda reeks of being-used-ness. Reminds me about the guys-are-playboys-but-girls-are-sluts?-fuck-off! debate.
And I thought they were nice people!

And as I type the last few words of this post, all that's left of the biscuits are crumbs. Instead, there's a cup of red tomato soup with lots of butter and lots of pepper. Cuz that's how I like it. :D

Pottering Around.

You know what I'm currently in love with? This guy's photography!

Fucking brilliant.

"I Thought We Were Supposed To Learn To Program, Not To Deliver Children."

"A stack operates on the Last In First Out principle. What you Push in the last will be Popped the first. To define the Push and Pop functions, you have to initialise the top of the stack with a -1. Now let us say the user runs Push 5 times and Pop only 2 times...". The computer teacher continued about Pushing and Popping.

"Dude. It's so weird when he says Push and Pop so much! It's so sexual!"

"It sounds more like a delivery actually."

"Yeah! Push and push and out pops the kid."

Feezyx

Physics Intersection Quiz prelims made by me and Sacman.

Level: Class 10th

1. The name of this popular dance move is an oxymoron, since low gravity would make it very difficult to perform. What are we talking about?

2. What does applying torsion to an object do to it?

3. When these devices first came out, they were called “optical masers” where maser stood for "Microwave Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation". What name do we use for them now?

4. One of black light’s uses is to detect trace amounts of pet excreta. What is black light made of that causes cat’s urine to glow in it?

5. In acoustics, what is the unit equal to 0.1 bel?

6. Katherine K. Whitcome of the University of Cincinnati, Daniel E Lieberman of Harvard University and Liza J. Shapiro of the University of Texas, won this award in the Physics category this year for analytically determining why pregnant women do not tip over. What prizes are these?

7. Who said “All science is either Physics or stamp collecting”, while rejecting the Nobel Prize for Chemistry?

8. Connect: Ladle, the Alaskan state flag, Saucepan, the Plough.

9. "I lowered my left foot and the thin crust gave way. Soft contact. There, it was done. A Cernan bootprint was on the moon." Who said this and what is he famous for?

10. On the Mach scale, how much is the speed of sound?

11. According to the Edwin Hubble’s system, E0, E 1-7, Sa, Sb and Sc are classifications of :

a) stars                                                                 b) galaxies
c) pulsars                                                             d) orbits

12. Which 1921 Nobel laureate and theoretical physicist was offered the post of the President of Israel?

13. ______________ is used to deviate a beam of light by 90 degrees. Of its 7 faces, 2 are silvered and 3 others don’t participate. Variations of this optical instrument are used in cameras.

Try them out. Answers in 5 days. I'll just add an update on this post and publish them. So.

Answers: 

1. Moonwalk. Surprisingly, very few got this right. There were ballets and a pirouette and salsa. Somebody even wrote "flamingo". I hope they meant "flamenco".
2. Twists/turns/rotates it
3. Lasers. Most people answered microwave. :P
4. UV light
5. 1 decibel
6. Ig Nobel Prizes. Yet another one that hardly anyone got right. Practically everyone wrote Nobel Prizes. Ha.
7. Ernest Rutherford (I read this in some places, but no biography of Rutherford mentions this. So I'm assuming this is just a rumour. Sorry about this.)
8. Big Dipper. The Alaskan flag has the Big Dipper and the rest are names for it in different countries. Just cuz it said "Connect", one team's answer was: "The Ladle made the Alaskan state flag using a plough and a saucepan. And 2 more wrote these words down and simply made arrows between them. They took "Connect" a little too literally, I guess.
9. Eugene A Cernan - last man on the moon. I was surprised to see that no one got this right. EVERYbody said Neil Armstrong. Like, WTF?
10. Mach 1
11. galaxies. The classifications are made based on the shape.
12. Einstein.
13. Pentaprisms.
This time round, we asked the kids to name their teams and allowed upto 3 teams per section. One of the unanimous favourites was called "Herd of Nerds".

Two States - Bad and Worse

The last time, I left you with photographs from Diwali.

This time, I intend to write a little. Not that I have anything specific to write about. My days consist of trying to stay awake in class and trying to sleep at night and trying to study when I'd rather watch TV instead.

I had intended to write about the austerity drive when it was still a hot topic, but never got around to it then, and I won't get around to it now. Instead, I'll diss Chetan Bhagat's latest book, 2 States for a change. It's been a long time since I've khule dil se dissed something/body! (Thanks Ish, for getting me started on this..)

First of all, I could done a better job with the book's cover. I hope they improve it in the reprints and reduce the intensity of the red. 

The story, as the book says, is the story of his marriage. A more melodramatic marriage I cannot imagine. In one part of the book, he kneels down in front of his girlfriend's family with 4 big rings and asks all of them to marry him.

This is the fourth book by him and the central female character (the "heroine", shall we say?) stays quite the same. She is really goodlooking, she wears Indian clothes and behaves like a girl you can take home to your mother and yet, she leaps into bed at the slightest provocation and isn't as conservative as you would have thought. After his first two books were made into movies, it seems like that's what he keeps in mind while writing. 

In this book, he has tried to portray cultural differences between North Indians, in particular, Punjabis and South Indians, in particular, Tamilians and how love crosses all boundaries and emerges the winner. Somewhere along the line, you wonder whether it is mocking all those failed inter-cultural marriages that you keep reading about in the newspaper. 

In an attempt to bring out the differences, Chetan Bhagat has stereotyped the Punjabis and the Tamilians, doing a far worse job with the former because the story is written from the point of view of a Punjabi guy. Some stereotypes are of the mildly funny category where you can laugh at yourself if you're Punjabi and say, "That's so much like us!" But most of them show Punjabis as a money-loving, bragging people who would prefer their son marrying a girl who finds operating MS Word difficult over an IIM-schooled person. And how first impressions are drastically altered because they find out that the girlfriend is fair and good looking.

Some things, I will admit are prevalent in the society, such as the obsession with a lighter skin tone and the obsession with getting or giving a good dowry. And perhaps it is my prejudice against the existence of such practices that influenced my view of this book. But there is no denying the extreme Bollywoodisation including, atleast, five places earmarked for a song-and-dance sequence.

Chetan Bhagat's happy endings rarely manage to be inspiring like other happy endings. Perhaps the overly dramatic narrative has something to do with it. 

Procrastination

I keep intending to blog and never get around to it. Bleh. 

First of all, everybody, I post pictures of Diwali, including my benzene-ring-structure inspired rangoli. :D

Laiiiights. From my house. The blue ones aren't visible. Bleh. I like blue/violet lights.

Credits: Organic Chemistry. ;)

"Taash party? All I know is Bluff.."

And that is what we played. Bluff. 

We did have one game of Teen Patti however, but since no real money (or houses. Or kidneys) were being bet, everyone bet freely. So yes, it was back to Bluff and one short game of Truth and Situation.

You know what I like the best about Diwali?

I like the muted bangs and fizzes, the lights in everyone's houses, the vague smokiness in the air and the little cold that tells you that winter is approaching. I like the evenings under open sky, when it gets dark quicker than in summers. And I like the free firework displays visible from my windows. 

I don't like the actual day, Diwali as much. There's too much noise and there's always the hazard of walking over an about-to-burst cracker.

Happy Chhoti Diwali, everyone!