Twists n' turns

It was supposed to be a very boring and gloomy day, that had to be spent, with my face buried in the uninteresting pages of Roger Pressman's Software Engineering book.

 

Yet, what happened was very different.

 

Run, jump, think, outwit, hunt, treasure!! This was my excited view of a treasure hunt until first semester. But, one single participation in Agni '11's treasure hunt was enough to bring it all down. That day, was a very tiring one. The long runs from one end of the CEG campus to the other, didn't yield any fruit too. After then, I'd decided to, not participate in any treasure hunt.

 

Intecho '12 - MIT E&I

 

My friend Ramu had invited me to the General Quiz, and so we went, our group of friends. Attempted the quiz prelims and didn't qualify because of some exact terms that the quizmaster expected.

 

So, next what shall we do? There was C debugging. Ok, attempt that atleast. Wrote, didn't qualify. I think there is a jinx against me and debugging :D

 

I was very near to being pissed off and at that time, Ramu invited me for the treasure hunt. Oh, no! I wouldn't go. Then, Harikrishna said, he'd go in my place and I replaced him in the quiz finals with Shreeraman.

Oh, whatte quiz! A narrow difference of +-2 points continued between ours and one other team for 2nd place which eventually ended up in their winning. Till then, this was, in no way better than Roger Pressman.

Then, two good news. Ramu had qualified for treasure hunt finals and Hari had qualified for Circuitrix finals. So, again I replaced one teammate of Ramu's in the finals, since he had work to do and left.

Treasure hunt finals began at 3:20 p.m. The first clue was an anagram, to be figured out.

O' MENDING FIN

For a guy, who has adored Marlin and Nemo enough to watch the movie a dozen times, it was only a matter of milliseconds. Eh, the organizer was surprised at how quickly I retorted the answer.

We had five clues and one common theme. The clues were straightforward, but if someone didn't know their way around MIT, they were surely screwed. We went from Hangar-1 to the IN 252 aircraft to Golden Jubilee Park to the RO plant and collected our remaining slips and submitted them. Our theme was Harry Potter.

 

Finally we'd won something. When we went to collect our prizes, surprisingly we found that there was a thrid place or quiz!

\m/

On a day, where I went for quiz and didn't qualify;

On a day where no prelims were cracked by me;

On a day where again, debugging got the better of me;

On a day, where I participated in treasure hunt after  years, to win it, was sweet :)

All in all, the day was one to be enjoyed purely due to the mixed happenings!! :D

The Devil

"An idle mind is the devil's wokshop."

I don't know how true this is, but one thing that I do seem to infer; The devil's mind is rarely idle. Sounds weird? Well, it does, even to me :D

The devil, who is it anyway? Someone? Something? I'm not sure about that either. To me, the devil is an idea, a notion.

A childish prejudice, a narrow-minded fantasy or even a weird case of OCD! Who knows?

The red colored guy with the cute horns and the grumpy voice sitting on your left shoulder nudging you? Yeah, he's the one, I call the notional devil.

More often, these devils are developed through narrow-minded and illogical thoughts that would seem very logical over the course of thought, whereas, the rise in absurdity would be only exponential to the curious observer. It most often happens, when we seem to put ourselves in others' positions and imagine what we would've done.

So, where does it start to go wrong? The "imagining" part! Bingo, most would say.

So, solution? Don't imagine. Oh, how stupid!

That where it goes wrong is the, "If I were him/her...." part. You're not, you're never gonna be, and you're not a genius all-situation-factoring-in future calculating machine! So, why even suppose? Think for yourselves, for I leave the question open.

So, the next time someone asks you and you say, "சொல்லு மச்சீ, வெட்டியா தான் இருக்கேன்", think twice. The devil could be right inside you :D

\* unleash your thoughts */

The Search

14.2.

Decimal? No. The 14th of Feb.

Where's the year? Well, who cares. Was it gonna make a difference? Nope. It would be one of those countlessly many normal days when the sun rose as usual, set as usual and everything else happened as usual including my routine sleep in class. Anyway, one among the few teenagers, who thought so, was me.

Feb 14th. Valentine's day. Oh my god, Oh my god! The best day of the year. Wonderful day. Beautiful day. Day of destiny. The others probably thought like this.

However, this day, this particular day became a particularly and curiously interesting one.


*cough* *cough*


No, I am not going to tell a love story, neither did I see the girl in green chudidhar again. If you were hoping so, please close this tab.

Thus, I begin my narration of "How I found my bag!".

Yes, my bag. Bag, bag, bag.

Starring : Guruprasad.
Co-stars - Myself and Kaushik Jaganathan.

It all started at 1:15. Lunch was over and I had to go to my dept(CSE) and finish off small works there. Guru was sitting at the sundial, apparently waiting to go out(probably for lunch).

"Dei Guru, I'll go to the dept and be back soon, will you take care of my bag until then?"
"Sure da. Text when your work is done."

I went to the dept, forgetting the fact that 1 to 2 was lunch break. I had to wait until 2 and my job was done. I came to the sundial and to my surprise, my bag was gone. So, was Guru. I called him; not reachable. I called two others and they didn't have it. Then, Guru called back and asked me to check in the Z hall of EEE dept where he'd left it when he went there to meet some of his pals.

The Z hall was empty, "empty". I searched every nook and corner, but no, my bag wasn't there. I called Guru again and said this. He called back n said that Kaushik might have it and he called Kaushik.

In the meantime, Kaushik had taken my bag, which Guru had forgotten in the EEE dept and took it to his home(in Alwarpet). I sighed and thought, "Phew! Atleast its there; I can get it now."

But, anga thaan director twist vekkaraaru! (This is where, the twist of things happens!)

Kaushik's friend had his birthday today and he had gone to EA to buy a gift for him and Kaushik wouldn't be back until 5:30 p.m. :-P My German textbooks, workbook, bike key et al was in bag and, thereby, I could neither go to German class nor go home.

Guru called. "Dei, I'll get it for you da. We'll go in my bike."

But then, Fate wouldn't make it so easy for me. Guru's license was in his uncle's home and so, he went by bus and was back with my bag. Time - 6:10 p.m.

Phew, man, I was glad to see that bag(never been so much!). Hung it around my shoulder, thought of going back to German class.

But then, decided against it. "I've had enough entertainment for one day. Let me go home.". And, so I came back home and laughed at the irony of things because, today morning I decided, "Innikkavadhu German class ku time kku pogalam!"(Let me go to German class, on time, atleast today!"). HAHA.

Whatte day! :)

Queens

We went to an event called 'Creative Maths' as part of the Maths dept symposium. They asked us to write a poem related to maths.
Here is what I could come up with in 10 minutes.

Assemble all, from kings to pawns,
Everyone has their pros n cons;
Not a sword that will clatter,
Neither blood that will splatter;
A real world war is a bloody mess;
But, beauty describes best, a game of chess;
Were there a prince, his dad is a dummy,
The real savior is our mummy.
Through plus n cross, her wrath is seen,
All hail the mighty queen;
Oh what would they do without your help?
Be hit n defeated, they'd merely yelp;
Voila, another queen, this one of sciences,
Oh my dear math, what is a world without you?

25 minutes

Humph, and I woke up, "Oh my god, I've missed my alarm!!". Sat upright, searched for my phone under the pillow and looked at the time. 5:59 a.m. One more minute to alarm, thank god. My usual dominating lazy self ordered my head to bury itself under the pillow, and so I did. Then it flashed.

It took a moment's ponder to come to a conclusion that it wasn't a dream but that it had happened the previous evening, for real.

Ah, the lady in red. The lady in red never fails to catch your attention. But, then again, this time, it wasn't the lady in red, it was a lady in green. A green chudidhar. But that was not the first thing that I noticed. I had just gotten a train and was on the way back home; I found a place to sit, and as rarely as that happens, that jet black hair caught my attention. She was reading a book. Or rather just turning pages.

Station number one, gone. She raised from her stooped posture. A phone call, I assumed, and a phone call it was. It was then I saw her face. My first thoughts were, "My, my, what a pretty lady!". I couldn't help but observe more, as there was nothing special to do on the train trip back home.

She was holding the phone in her left hand, and I thought, "I usually hold my phone on the left hand too, dont I?", and then I thought, "Now, why did I think that?"

The forehead was as square as the stones that they cut, that they polish I should say. There wasn't a bindhi. A Christian, or Muslim, I assumed. But what does that matter?

Station number 2, gone. She was speaking for quite a time, and her facial expressions were funny for the distant observer, which in this case, was myself.

More time passed, and I was admiring her little square nose. Should someone keep a marshmallow and she kept her nose behind it, it would beautifully vanish, I thought.

Black beady eyes, and yeah, the green chudhidhar, the distant observer was still admiring those. By this time, I had lost count of the stations that had past. She closed the magazine in her hand, and put it in her bag, when I noticed, it was Aval Vikadan. Knows to read Tamizh I thought.

And, finally my gaze drifted away at the station board read which read, "Chrompet".

Where I get down. Instinct, I thought. I hurriedly got down.


What her name was, where she lived, what she did, what did I know?

P.S.: It takes 25 minutes from Guindy to Chrompet.

D for Dialog

It was only today that I saw one of the most awesome, charismatic movies that I've ever seen so far.

"Voilà! In view, a humble vaudevillian veteran cast vicariously as both victim and villain by the vicissitudes of Fate. This visage, no mere veneer of vanity, is a vestige of the vox populi, now vacant, vanished. However, this valorous visitation of a bygone vexation stands vivified and has vowed to vanquish these venal and virulent vermin vanguarding vice and vouchsafing the violently vicious and voracious violation of volition! The only verdict is vengeance; a vendetta held as a votive, not in vain, for the value and veracity of such shall one day vindicate the vigilant and the virtuous. [laughs] Verily, this vichyssoise of verbiage veers most verbose, so let me simply add that it's my very good honour to meet you and you may call me "V"."



If you haven't figured it out it by now, the movie is "V for Vendetta". Of all, this dialog was so awesome that I wanted to know what it meant to the fullest(Come on, you didn't get most of it, either!).

Voilà - French for 'here'.

Vaudevillian - a theatrical performer.

Veteran - expert.

Vicarious - to take/experience something as a substitute for someone else.

Victim - Prey.

Villain - The bad guy.

Vicissitudes - Unfortunate turn of events/circumstances.

Visage - Appearance.

Veneer - a thin cover/veil(that's a V again btw :-P ).

Vanity - Pride(usually excessive).

Vestige - A trace.

Vox populi - Latin for "Voice of the people"(denotes the oppressive times, that the movie is set in)

Vacant - Empty.

Vanished - Disappeared.

Valorous - Of bravery.

Visitation - To visit(as simple as that :-D )

Vexation - To be vexed.

Vivified - Brought to life.

Vowed - To have sworn.

Vanquish - To destroy.

Venal - Corrupt.

Virulent - Dangerously poisonous.

Vermin - Relating to pests(rodents, mostly).

Vanguarding - The first line of defence.

Vice - A bad habit(euphemistically put).

Vouchsafing - Granting permission.

Violent - To mean physical harm.

Vicious - Grossly immoral.

Voracious - Insatiable.

Violation - Breaking of rules.

Volition - The act of choosing.

Verdict - Judgement.

Vengeance & Vendetta - Revenge.

Votive - A wish.

(in) Vain - The outcome being fruitless.

Value - Price.

Veracity - Accuracy.

Vindicate - absolve/clear of suspicion.

Vigilant - Cautious.

Virtuous - Upholding moral values.

Verily - A derivative of 'very'.

Vichysoisse - A culinary item(a soup).

Verbiage - Relating to words that are too much technical.

Veer(s) - To deviate.

Verbose - Containing excessive number of words.

V - Eh? That's just V. And it's also the name of our hero.

Now, I'll keep the known words. Here's the easier version of it.

"Here! You see, a humble expert performer,cast both as prey and the villain, by the unfortunate twist of fate. This appearance, not a mere curtain of pride, is a showcase of the voice of the people, that is now, vacant and vanished. However, this brave visit of a bygone vexing event, stands revived(animated), and has vowed to bring down these corrupt and destructive pests, that defend and permit the violently immoral & insatiable, breach the freedom of choice. The only judgement is revenge, a revenge held as a wish, not in vain, for, the values and the conforming of such facts one day, shall absolve the vigilant and the virtuous. Verily, this word-play most deviates on the sheer quantity, so let me simply add, that its my very good honour to meet you and you may call me "V"."

Clear, but not charismatic! :-P

What a dialogue! I could only "Wow!" at the end of it.

\* unleash your thoughts */

P.S.: Then again, if you're looking for the guilty, you need only look in the mirror.

Farewell

The unforgiving clock moves forward as one more year starts to draw its curtains. There is much to look back, yet the forthcoming times are those which the hold the most important of all - "Hope".

The learnt lessons aside, towards the end of this year, I'd like to say

->Thanks to those who've taught me things, the lessons were worth learning even though the learning experience was hell.

->Sorry to those who I may have hurt, intentionally or unintentionally.

->Goodbye to those who're going to leave me.

->A warm welcome to those who came into my life.

->And a huge hug to my friends who'd been with me, through thick and thin. .That you ppl were there no matter what, was my Herculade.

Carrying forward the lessons, memories, the brunts and the scars, I say goodbye to you. Farewell 2011.

Bienvenue 2012. Happy new year :)