The Days Of Our Lives

I gave my last midsem for a long long time yesterday and what a relief it was. Since I have no immediate plans of continuing my higher studies, my tryst with examinations would come to an end after 2 more months when I would be having a last look at those sheets of printed paper which have managed to torture me slowly yet painfully for more than 18 years now.

Now, although I am a budding Computer Science Engineer, my present semester courses have been hand-picked to be the easiest, most non-technical courses available, one of them being Cognitive Psychology. Why this course is taught to us Computer people is beyond the scope of my comprehension, but thank God for that!!!

Now I have never been a 100% attendance student (except in school when there were incentives to do so ) but I particularly enjoy this course's lectures. One main reason of that being, that the course is being taught by this dude -

Mind you, this is not a morphed photograph. It is an actual pic put up by the prof on his website for all to see.

Moving on, I usually keep a low profile in most lectures and prefer to sleep on one of the back-benches but this time I couldn't but help being noticed by this dude. And this was because of the fact that I naively told one of my friends to proxy for me when I decided to bunk one of his lectures. Most of the time it is a petty and harmless crime, that is unless you get caught; which is exacly what happened to me, unfortunately. So there I was, sitting in front of this prof, when he called me to come and meet him. Things turned out quite nice actually when in the end, not only was I able to convince him that I had a credible reason to bunk that day's lecture, but I also expertly manipulated the situation to make it look like someone was out to do me harm by signing for me falsely. All this while, holding back my laughter.

Anyway, during the midsem exam, it so happened that I had not studied much for the course. (I am about to pass out, the last thing I care about right now is my grades!) So the question paper was a complete surprise to me. I tried to answer quicky and concisely (esp. since I did not know what to write) and was over with my paper in about half an hour. The allotted time for the paper was 2 hours. As much as I wanted to run out of the exam hall, being the first one to leave usually implies that either you knew it all and you cracked the paper or you knew nothing and the paper cracked you. Hence, I did what the other guys sitting in the hall were doing, I waited for someone to get up before me. So there we were, some 20 of us looking at each other, waiting for someone to make that first move. Needless to say, for the next 10 mins, nobody moved.

In the meantime, my restlessness was noticed by the prof who was wandering about amusing himself looking at students' answers. The fact that he remembered our previous rendezvous was established by that devilish smile on this face as he approached me. Then all of a sudden he went "So, how is the paper?" and the only thing that could come from my mouth was "Uhm...who me?". Then all of a sudden I looked at the question paper was if looking for the first time and then gave a much more sober "Its OK" reply. A few raised eyebrows later he moved on down the hall.

If that wasn't enough, at that very instance of time, some girl sitting in front of me asked for a supplement answer sheet. That was the last straw!!! I had barely managed to fill in 3 1/2 pages of crap and this chick had completed 14 full pages and wanted to write more. Without a care in the world and without thinking of the "who's gonna get up first" game, I stormed out of the examination hall.

As most of you would already be knowing by now, I am an avid comic book fan. I read just about anything which starts or ends with 'comic'! At home I have airbags full of American comics ranging from Superman to X-Men to what not. As a child I was hooked to comics for the colourful artwork; these days I'm hooked to the storylines and the wonderful characters which have gradually developed over the years. I also tried to read Indian superhero comics but was always repelled by their unimaginitive stories and single-dimensioned characters.

My favourite is Batman (for the uninitated - he's not exactly a super hero but he does get to run around in a bat costume with people not throwing their daily groceries at him. Thats something!!) but theres someone I love even more than this beloved comic hero - the psychopath killer with a pale face with a wide grin painted on - The Joker! (He is Batman's arch nemesis who is his complete opposite - he's a bad guy, he kills, he smiles!)

Anyway, what follows is a sequence of panels extracted from the comic book - "Batman : Killing Joke", written by the great Alan Moore, which pits the aforementioned rivals against each other (as usual). The extract shows the point of tension when Batman finally confronts The Joker after a gruelling chase. Try to enjoy!!



Long live comic books!

Since I don't have much to write, I'll make one of those arbitary, yet enjoyable, postings. Check out this awesome Indian ad discovered at YouTube. Its freaking hilarious!!!

P.P.S.: Notice the new sidebar and the animated Yahoo emoticons!!

My return landed me deep in the middle of my exams and being in final year, none of us final-yearites feel like studying, obviously. So we end up doing crazy shit. A preview follows. Read on! (If you don't have a clue as to what is happening, don't feel left out, neither did gaurav_419 :P )

BUZZ!!!
Shaggy: u thr?
Shaggy: urgent
gaurav_419: no
Shaggy: alfred
gaurav_419: ???
Shaggy: i need the batmobile
gaurav_419: what??
Shaggy: take it out of the batcave immediately
Shaggy: ASAP
gaurav_419: f*** u
Shaggy: home in on me
Shaggy: and get the batmobile
Shaggy: quickly
gaurav_419: go away
Shaggy: quickly i say
gaurav_419: get lost
gaurav_419: u suck man
Shaggy: no no alfred
gaurav_419: u r the sickest nbat 've ever seen
Shaggy: don't lose hope
gaurav_419: bat*
Shaggy: we will survive this together
gaurav_419: who the f*** is losing hope
Shaggy: don't give up on me now
gaurav_419: we
gaurav_419: i am not a gay
Shaggy: alfred
gaurav_419: u silly creature
Shaggy: calm urself
Shaggy: i need assistance
Shaggy: u remember how to drive don't u?
gaurav_419: ya i do
Shaggy: robin is dying
Shaggy: and joker is laughing
Shaggy: gotham city needs u alfred
gaurav_419: oh my gsh
gaurav_419: gosh
Shaggy: respond alfred respond
gaurav_419: sure i'll be there
Shaggy: thank u alfred
gaurav_419: it's ok dude
Shaggy: i knew i could count on u
gaurav_419: it's on the way
Shaggy: thank u alfred
Shaggy: u're a life saver

P.S.: BTW, this is my avatar on Yahoo! ----->

I have loads of work to do which I keep postponing to some mythical day in the not-so-near future. I also plan to get out of the city soon 'coz sometimes I get stifled. Dunno how I'm gonna explain my absence to my guide, but I'm a staunch believer of the (self devised) Could-Be Theory Of Procastination - "Things which need to be done, get done on their own!!" :)

Anyway, I've been tying new ways to keep myself busy (anything which doesn't involve academics :P ). As readers of my blog must be aware of already, I really loved the movie Rang De Basanti . There was this scene in the movie where 2 guys stand on a ledge and do bottoms-up till one of them finally loses balance and falls (safely) in a pool of water.


In the meantime, if any of you have any suggestions for killing time without actually doing anything productive, do comment. :)

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This drastic measure had to be taken when my mom gave me the option of either getting a civilized hair cut or living the rest of my life in the garage.

Not hard to guess which option I took up, eh?

Ladies and Gentlement, I present to you the new look of my blog. It uses a highly (self) modified WordPress' Kubrick template and a random header image generator, so that no one gets bored seeing the same image over and over again (the main reason why I grew sick of my old blog). Refresh my blog to be instantly entertained. :P

Thanks to Rustagi for giving me the inspiration to finally change the template.

The look is classy to say the least. I'll try to add some more oomph factor to it but right now more important things beckon me...food and sleep! :)

If any of you happen to run into me, don't mind me shouting...I'm in the process of going deaf. :)

Presently, the Kala Ghoda Arts Festival is going on in Mumbai. Its an annual cultural festival which takes place around January/February and deals with music, dramatics, dance and cinema. Its one of the things which makes Mumbai the city it is. I'd never gone there in my 3 years of living in Mumbai but I was determined to attend it this year knowing that my association with this amazing city is going to end soon. :( So, today, my friends and I decided to go all the way down to south Mumbai to attend a rock concert. My actual blog entry starts now.

Heres a confession - I completely love rock music. People might say that rock music is nothing but noise. I strongly disagree. I've been hooked on rock for as long as I remember. Sure, as a little kid I used to watch some stupid pop music videos on TV and sing along and all. But what do little kids know anyway? :P This semester, I've taken up a course on Indian Classical Music Appreciation just to get back to my roots. Still waiting to see how that works out. I love the lectures though - you enter class to find music being played and the professor himself starts singing too - its almost like going to a pub. :)

Another thing I completely love is driving. The thrill of racing a mean machine on smooth terrain overwhelms me. Although, I prefer the roads of my hometown Delhi, Mumbai highways offer a pleasurable ride too, esp. at night. And Mumbai being the city that never sleeps, I've had enough oppurtunities to do a lot of night driving. Going to the rock concert meant driving all the way down to south Mumbai, about an hour drive. All throughout, we had loud rock music blaring from the car speakers - in anticipation.

We reached there to find a crowd of about 60 people, most of them being elderly men who I'm sure were just wandering about and decided to see what the fuss was all about - very unlike a rock concert crowd. But as time passed, the hardcore rockers came in, wearing the classic rock concert uniform - black tee with jeans.

Now the concert. Two Indian bands were to perform - a local band, Zero, and a quite popular Delhi-based band called Parikrama. The show started with Zero pelting out some pop numbers and some rockish items. Obviously the crowd was not pleased. The hardcore rockers started moshing - hurling themselves at each other and the crowd. The elder people looked all shocked. I'm sure moshpits didn't exist some 20 years in the past. Infact I learnt about moshing only recently so can't really blame them. For someone who is unaware of the concept of moshing, those rockers must've looked like drunk kids trying to pick a fight. :P And oh, there was this one dude who was trying to do all sorts of Indian classical dances when the music was being played. To some, he was far more interesting than the band.
Zero ended their performance and then out came Parikrama. And man oh man, things got rocking all of a sudden. Anyone who's heard a decent share of rock music would tell you how talented their lead singer is - not only can he imitate the high-pitch voice of the AC/DC singer but also flawlessly render amazing covers of Coldplay/Pink Floyd numbers. Simply awesome. Another unique thing about Parikrama is that their band includes a tabla player and a violinist. A violinist!!! Its like an entire orchestra!!! The band knew what the crowd wanted and made sure they delivered. Another amazing thing about them is that all their original songs are available on their website for free download. My advice to anyone reading this is to check out their song called "Open Skies". Its mostly a violin instrumental but awesome nevertheless.

Do notice the lack of synonyms in this post and the excessive use of the words "awesome" and "amazing". Mind-numbness is one of the after-effects of attending a rock concert I guess. Other after-effects include neck ache from the head-banging, sore feet from the jumping about, body ache from the moshing, a splitting headache from all the loud noise, complete loss of one's voice from all the singing along loudly and loss of atleast 5 kgs of body weight (which I consider a good thing, so its accepted). All in all an amazing concert...simply awesome!! :P

A man goes to the doctor. Says he's depressed. He says life seems harsh and cruel. Says he feels all alone in a threatening world where what lies ahead is vague and uncertain.

The doctor says "The treatment is simple. The great clown Pagliacci is in town tonight. Go and see him, that should pick you up."

The man bursts into tears. He says "But doctor... I am Pagliacci."

The following is the sequence of status messages set on Yahoo Messenger by my friend and I; I being Batman ofcourse. Final year is making us crazier I guess.

Batman fixation!
Here comes Batman's nemesis Ballman!!
Batman is slapping Ballman silly!
Batman is emotionally weak!
Ballman has issues!
Batman stole Superman's underwear!
Ballman doesn't even wear underwear!!
Batman listens to Britney Spears.
Ballman enjoys Kenny G....in more ways than one!!
Batman has crotch ball dislocation!!
Ballman has a fungus problem!!
Batman isn't even a man!
'Ball'man is such an ironical name!!
Batman wets his bed because he has nightmares about ponies riding his car!!
Ballman was "probed" by aliens!
Balls to batman!
The question of the month...Where is "Ball"man going to rent a second b*** from?
Batman was nicknamed the filthy foetus!
"Ballman" was "Ballsman" once!
Batman is the superhero version of spam!
Ballman was born a girl!!
Batman's childhood dream was to become a bus conductor!
Ballman IS a bus conductor!!
Batman sucks at innovation!
Yes ladies and gentlemen...u heard it right..."Ballman sucks!!"
Batman sucks at imitating too!
Batman has a Batmobile....Ballman has a Ball-bicycle
Batman blinded himself to go on a blind date and that is why he wears a mask!
Ballman's sidekick....Cousin It (ref: Addam's Family)
Batman makes up stupid jokes and laughts aloud!
Ballman doesn't have a sense of humour! (And that is why this status mesg is not funny....he wudn't understand it then)
Batman burps while sleeping and thinks he is funny!
Ballman thinks a blind date is a "BLIND" date!!!
Batman has a split personality and thinks he is a house keeper!
Ballman's greatest enemies are little kids who can read!!
Batman thinks George Bush is cute!!
Its not Ballman fault that he was adopted!
Batman thinks collecting coffee cups is cool!
Ballman spends all his free afternoons trying to find his missing funny bone!!
Ballman thinks Batman owes him a coffee!
Batman says tmrw at shack :)

Shaggy: i go sleep now
Shaggy: bye

gulti: me too
gulti: cya

Pritam, Dasa and I decided to go shopping today. And when 3 men go shopping for groceries...well...God save the queen. :)

We went to a nearby super-market where we picked up all sorts of stupid stuff ranging from Hershey's Chocolate Syrup (I have a major time chocolate fixation see...and I just love it!) to ultra-cheap t-shirts. Unfortunately, what we didn't realize was that today was the first Sunday of the month and hence, the supermarket was overflowing with people buying whatever they could lay their hands on. So after an hour of picking up completely useless items, we reached the paying counters to find queues ending at the other end of the supermarket. This left us with only one sane option - to abandon our loot and walk away empty handed (and happy).

On coming back to hostel, we found out that one of our dear friends got a fellowship. A treat at Baskin Robbins followed naturally (IIT Bombay people try and get the pun :P ). And by God's grace the ice-cream shop was in close vicinity of the supermarket. So after loading ourselves with ice-cream, we visited the supermarket just as it was about to lower its shutters for the day (a good 3 hours after our first visit) to find our abandoned treasure basket still waiting for us at the exact spot where it was surrendered. 5 minutes later and 1500 bucks poorer we were happy pirates again. :)

P.S.: Meet the new love of my life. I call her 'sweety' :)

Yesterday night, I went and watched "The Chronicles of Narnia" at a nearby theatre. Although I really wanted to go see the Hindi remake of Oldboy, titled Zinda, to compare the 2 versions, my friends just would not agree for it. So in the end we turned up for Narnia. Now seeing my previous posts, one would imagine me ranting about the movie and how much I liked it. None of it this time. This time are are more important details which cannot go unmentioned. :)

For all those familiar with the movie, you would realise that the title I mentioned above (yes, the one in bold) is incomplete. The complete title of the movie is "The Chronicles of Narnia - The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe". I heard this title while on the way to the hall and I could not stop laughing out hysterically for 15 minutes. I mean come on, what kind of a movie contains the word "Wardrobe" in its title? "The Lion" I can understand - you know, majestic creature, king of the animal kingdom, the perfect beast to symbolize a figure of authority, blah blah. And "The Witch" - gives the feeling of this evil female well versed with dark magic and capable of resurrecting the dead or some crap like that.

So, when I heard the title "The Chronicles of Narnia - The Lion, The Witch...", I said to myself "WOW! This movie must be amazing!!". I could almost imagine an adventure in a far away fantasy land involving raw power on one hand and evil magic on the other. Then I heard the rest of the title "...and The Wardrobe" and well, I went into these hysterical laughing fits. For me it was hard to imagine a wooden piece of furniture which contains clothes being involved in anything remotely resembling an adventure. Don't wardrobes just stand around in some corner of a room? Its what they're good at. Its the only thing they do!!

I for one, would never ever name any of my creative outcomes such ridiculous names. Imagine a movie called "The secret agent from the future, his wife and their wooden spatula" or "The mystical adventures of Bob the lamp-post"! I think I'm gonna stop writing for now. My stomach is hurting from all the incessant laughter. :)