Just choose!

You can make a choice.

You can decide what you want.

After all, it is your life.

You can choose to

Blame fate.

Cry.

Be desperate.

Curse your bad decisions.

Beg God for something good.

Be depressed about your misfortunes.

Wait for something good.

Ruin your beautiful today.

Hesitate.

Forget and be haunted by it.

Look back and regret what you didn't do.

Or

You can choose to

Take things as they come.

Laugh.

Be patient.

Learn from your bad decisions and move on.

Thank God for making today a memory, or an experience.

Look out for whatever good that you have, and feel, "It ain't so bad!"

Strive and deserve.

Do something that'd make it memorable.

Step-forward.

Forgive and feel proud.

Look back, smile heartily and walk forward.

"I am what I am, because I choose to be.". You are, too. Just choose.

Two years

March 19, 2010. Uff, an end to misery. Hectic schedules would come to an end. I could wake up at 8 after 3 long years. I could watch Naruto from 9 to 5. I could eat and sleep whenever I want. Yes, I had completed my 12th std exams. I still remember, these were my exact thoughts when I came out of the exam hall.

But March 19, 2012. Looking back today, there was much more to it. The year had so many memorable events to it, only to be masked by the insanely important BOARD EXAMS!!

I still remember,

Going to classes at 8 05 and finishing breakfast by 8 10, before the teacher comes, shoving whatever was in the box blindly.

Starting a cold war with Maths ma'am because she didn't let me sit with my friends.

Being an all-boys team and winning the School Rangoli competition.

Coincidental unshaven face becoming a perfect make-over for the politician's role in the drama that we staged.

Writing 3*2 = 5 and missing out a 200 in maths (LOL :D )

Calling friends and trying to put up a schedule for half-an-hour and finally saying "Ada poda. Paathukkalam." before hanging up.

Specifically requesting Thyagu sir to attend the evening batch (All Arul Institute students would know why. ;-) )

Pleading with Arul sir that we'd write tests early morning so as to accommodate the schedule.

Watching  Yu Yu Hakusho, Hungry Heart and AstroBoy and discussing them in class.

Half and hour prep-time for next micro-test that turned into sleep-time.

Wantedly leaving notebooks in the Sanskrit class and interrupting both French and Sanskrit classes.

Echoing CS class answers sitting in the corridor (we were Bio students btw. )

Going flower-searching, the day before practicals.

Playing Kings(Dodgeball or whatever you call it) during PT sessions, because that was the only possible game in our school ground.

Cricket match after the end of every micro-test series.

Singing "Happy birthday" randomly whenever English teacher starts advising.

Records, observations, tests, exams, practicals, revisions. I can only laugh at those memorable times.

Whatever said, school was special because that is where we learnt to have fun, enjoy yourselves and get that 'come-what-may' attitude. College? That's a different roller-coaster, all together.

Memories, and so so many of them. I do miss school :)

The Smile

First of all, I haven't been a hosteler. The last time that I was away from family was during the NCC camp, which was in 9th standard.

 

However, whenever family conversations come up, as they have so many times, most during the 12th standard holidays, "Be prepared to live in a hostel!" was a common sentence, which would inevitably be followed by long speeches, on how bad, a hostel can turn out to be. My usual retorting rant would be, "Ah! No problem at all.. Plus, you wouldn't be nagging me at all times Ma :D ". I'm pretty much sure this would've happened to every single college-student out there.

During sometimes when I was very very jobless(this happened a lot during 12th holidays), my thoughts would drift to "Life as a hosteler". And, I tell you, imaginations can be very hilarious.

But then, I am not a hosteler. I'm a day-scholar(read poor soul) who commutes from Tambaram to CEG, everyday. Travel was, ohmygod, a bad bad nightmare(I know, nightmares are already bad :D ). Getting used to it took almost a semester. Nowadays, though, it is actually enjoyable. For example, like the green chudhidhar. LOL :D

But coming back, as I said, I've never lived the life of a hosteler. Hell, I thought, I'd never miss anyone if I were a hosteler. But yesterday, perspectives changed. My friend Karthikeyan's parents had come from his hometown. You should've seen the smile on his face when he saw them. Wah, priceless.

That was joy, coming at the bottom of the heart. I realized that "Everyone can talk the talk, but only a few, walk the walk" like how uncle says in Jackie Chan adventures.

P.S.: Home, sweet home. Nothing can substitute it :)

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?