Better than what i've been writing

The biggest regret i have regarding the batch trip is not that i was a part of it, but the things it made me miss out upon. I was ready to sacrifice my weekly dose of "News on the loose" but i was surely not ready to miss out upon two back to back man of the match performances by AB de Villiers. But as it turned out, de Villiers not only delivered perfect play on the pitch but also managed to send me a feeling of regret via post (why post?, there was no cellular network in the distant hills) .

I btw brought up AB only because i was afraid you would die under the load of the statistical debris of what is called Sachin without even knowing the name of this exciting talent.

Moving on, it's been quite long since the new sem has begun and it has taken me all this while to select a proper elective for myself. I have so far actively participated in all the three (or two, depends on the way you look) add/drop online routines. What this active participation meant that i have had the opportunity to jump courses at will after a test period of one week (much like Barney's lemon law). Anyway these are the courses which i tried as an elective (read alternative).

1) Molecular Architecture:- After reading the generously prolonged over view, i decided to opt for this course even though there were only 5 precedents. But after turning up for the lecture, i was pleasantly distraught to see that there were only 3 of us. The next time around there were only 2 of us and i decided to give the course a cold finger* myself.

2) Religion and culture and .........(i don't know):- There were 120 of us and i somehow managed to miss both of the classes held during our week long association.

3) Read on a bit more

In came a mail, preceding the D-day saying that only 75 members could be enrolled for the afore mentioned course and also that Molecular Architecture had passed away with 10 members on board. Having seen the growth control program, i decided to jump the religion plank as i had already run out of half the ammunition*. So i opted for English Literature which at present stands afloat with a bench strength of 19.

I am yet to attend a class of this course, so we will have to wait and see how it goes.

A guide to the above post:-

Cold finger-> a pun on cold shoulder subject to the meaning of pun as i am myself not sure what a pun means.

Ammunition-> We have only 4 reprievals per sem and i had already utilized 2 in the first week itself.

Blog state:-

The turn out for the previous post was far more than it actually deserved. It was kind of a 'masala' post but this one here is certainly better than the previous one. So i shall wait and watch out for this one's reception at the blog-office.

Errata:-

I can't even begin to comprehend how i got mixed up with "the week that wasn't"  and "news on the loose". Cyrus doesn't even have a chance against Vir Das.

A (B)ache trip to nowhere

I would like to start on a bright note, for i am afraid this post is only going to go down hill from there on, as it will try to deal with some not so perfect happenings. The bright note happens to be that i had no intention of writing about all that which happened or didn't happen on the tour.

The reasons being :-

1) I don't usually write about things which are boring.

2) I don't like being equipped with less information than the reader (or rather the person who reads).

3) Everyone remotely associated with blogging on the tour will write about it.

So i saw no particular reason in lambasting the ill organized tour with my own words. Having said that, i know many people on the tour, who might feel better seeing the pit falls of the trip being ripped open.

So here goes something....

Day 1:-

We start at 18:00 after loitering for about 3 hrs in front of the canteen as if we were stray dogs waiting for left overs (pardon the insane and completely uncalled for comparison). We reach Vizag at 15:00 the next afternoon courtesy some bus troubles and their equally sluggish drivers.

Day 2:-

Having survived a 24 hr ordeal on the road, we "refresh" for a couple of hours and head out for the beach which shows up only at around 19:00. I don't know what kind of a tourist shows up on a beach well after sun set especially when a navy week's in progress. However, after wetting our tired **** in the water for some 3 hrs, we hit the sack only to wake up at 5:00 in the morning to catch a train to Borra caves.

Day 3:-

After catching the train (which btw was the only thing which went according to the plan), we realize that traveling in a general compartment on a Sunday to a tourist destination, ain't the brightest idea. So having slugged it out for about 4 hrs in the train we reach Borra, only to be greeted by a swarm of buzzing tourists who threaten to ruin the already ruined tour.

Anyway we do manage to explore the caves, but the crowd meant that we lost invaluable time which lead to Araku being dropped from the touring list. Anyway we embarked upon our return journey at around 16:00 and reached the college at various different times( not before 16:30) depending on the bus we were in.

Each bus had it's own problem:-

1) White bus - most notorious of the lot in both content and performance

2) Yellow bus- allegedly an a/c bus minus the a/c

3) Pink bus- (had me on board :) ) seriously though, some of us had to take an APSRTC bus to complete our return journey

Psst:-

I have barely given an outline of what conspired on the tour. The details are far more telling but i have chosen not to reveal them today, for there are many gaping gaps in the details i know, as of now.

Conclusion:-

It was a completely mis-managed tour which was simply not what we had expected. The organizers though, aren't to be singled out as we all are equally responsible for the fiasco. We have learned a lot from this experience which will enable us to stand in better stead in the times to come.

I would like to point out that the above written conclusion is just bureaucratic bull**** and that i am not even remotely related with such thoughts.

We just rode and rode and rode and were rarely away from the road (which was not so smooth by the way).

psst:-

looks like i have made a hash of tenses

Slipping away

England literally slid out of Euro on a rainy night yesterday courtesy of their defence which at times was even more slippery than the Wembley surface. It would have been extremely unfair if England went through especially because of the players' lack of commitment towards the well being of their national team.

Barring Gerrard and Beckham (on occasions), none of the others seem to give a 'fish' about the team. I have always failed to understand the reason for Lampard's abysmal performances when on national duty. I am surprised that he is even compared with Gerrard because he simply lacks the drive to drive a team through difficult times.

I pity Gerrard for being born as an English footballer. He would have certainly won more tournaments had he been playing for some other country. As a matter of fact, he hasn't even played in a major final (i think).

Speaking of the match, Mclaren once again proved what an a** he could be, by opting for a 4-5-1 formation. What's more insane was that his lone striker up front was the lanky Crouchy who was handicapped by the absence of Beckham in the starting line-up. The defenders at the back looked somewhat off color considering their defensive 'prowess' while playing for their clubs.

I shouldn't even begin on the performance of the goal keeper(if you could call him one). The team might have been better served, had they brought in Boycott's mum from Yorkshire in his place. Even after all the defensive howlers, the English men could have got off scot free had it not been for Mr. Scot Carson.

The result is actually quite good for English football because this defeat hopefully, might bring about some much needed changes. I seriously hope these much needed changes won't relate to the number of overseas players in the premier league because they are the ones who keep it going.

Disclaimer:-

This post was rushed through, so any mistakes made are regretted.

Boring's the Theme

I am kinda self-censoring my blog (which means no more comments on the profs a.k.a death eaters) for it has started appearing in the college blogroll. What this means is that, my entries may become as insipid as an Indo Pak cricket match (which by the way happens to be today's point of discussion). I hope that my blog in the long run, doesn't end up like  Sanjay 'Neela' Bhansali's latest movie "Saawariya" which is being dubbed as the most boring blue film ever made (statement 'inspired' from Tv).

Changing track (to stem the rot), Dale Steyn looks simply awesome this season. His bowling exploits not only made him the leading wicket taker in tests this year but also made the otherwise boring series between RSA and NZ, a bit entertaining (this bit, by the way is bigger than that of Ind v Pak). I have always hated watching Indo Pak matches of late, mainly because there seems to be no professionalism on view. Both teams just turn up, play boring cricket through out the day and at the end of it, just jump on to the party bandwagon.

When on the field, each player seems to be playing accompanied with a hangover. What else can explain the recently concluded ODI series which was even less interesting than the recently held test series between Australia-Sri Lanka and South Africa-New Zealand. May be we should keep Shahrukh away from the cricket grounds because he seems to be having a lot of bad influence on the teams. The cricketers these days have started to behave as if they are in front of a camera enacting a role of a cricketer !

What's even more excruciatingly painful is to see Sreesanth, who overcooks his role and in the process, his emotions. He has a lot to learn from Andre Nel who manages to portray this kind of a role with panache and a lot more grace.

Prediction:-

I wanted to watch Euro 08 minus England but Russia have somehow managed to put the last nail into their own coffin (pardon the cliche).

Pen is........

The oft used phrase "The pen is mightier than the sword" is valid only as far as the plots of movies and T.V shows go. In the real world, even the lamest bookie would back a geek with a sword rather than a gladiator with a pen (a keyboard might complicate the matters but the phrase doesn't read "the keyboard is mightier ...", does it).

Fortunately or unfortunately, the intersection between the real world and the reel world happens to be an empty set. The problem with this however, happens to be that the reel world more often than not forgets to maintain sanity in the proceedings. This is more evident in the TV shows where the script writer has the viewers at his mercy for sometimes as long as 5 years.

In his world, he can kill off many characters at will and he usually does kill off many a interest with each passing episode. Even the script writer of "How i met your mother" seems to be undermining the importance of a plot a bit too much. The changes are more often than not a bit too foolishly far-fetched which some how get covered up by Barney's witty comments and Robin's charm.

So never ever use the phrase " a pen is ...." (again) because it's just a dumb cliche made up by journalists to instill some much needed confidence in their peers to ward off their eventual doom which, unfortunately has arrived today for what we get these days ain't true Honest Journalism, it's just an ethic less vocation meant to satisfy our hunger for daily morning breakfast entertainment.

Tv, Tv everywhere but not a thing to see

I spent the bygone week long vacation dreading it's eventual end. How much more pathetic can one get ? Fortunately not more than that.
Apart from that, i spent most my time oscillating between the laptop, the desktop and the Tv (reminiscent of 'the good, the bad and the ugly' with the difference being that nothing's actually good here, just as in the movie one might say). There was nothing much interesting on Tv excluding the second ODI, which was interesting only because of the way in which India let go of the match. I did happen to watch the mid-week mid night 'extravaganza' of the Champions league which was also not up to the scratch.

The channels which irk me the most these days are the 24*7 news channels. These channels start out fine but once they gain popularity, they begin romanticizing their stories. They indulge in this so much so that the plot is eventually lost much like in a Sanjay Leela Bhansali's picture (by the way romanticizing here, stands for all sorts of things).

The stories these channels present are just an  hour full of thrash designed to just fill in the time. As an example, consider this scenario which occurs every time the festival of lights comes around. Prior to the festival, all these anchors line up wishing you a happy and prosperous Diwali and blah blah blah blah. What happens the next day is that, they air a special program on the pollution caused due to Diwali. These people usually want to play the role of both the hero and the villain in every film. They may be excused if they do that once in a while, but that's not exactly what they do.

Wherever there's a hartal, a Medha Patkar follows (at least from what i see on Tv). So this woman here, seems to be so sick of her body, that she decides to go on a diet every time she gets a chance. Sadly for her, her body doesn't seem to follow suit so often, considering the way she looks, even after all these diet free days.

Speaking of suits (not exactly), i hope that you must be well acquainted with the Tv show  'How I met Your Mother'. In case you aren't,  you better suit up and start watching it, for the series is nothing short of legen(wait for it...)dary.

My friends from my college deserve some mention in my blog(modesty has rarely been my staple diet) for they came in at  third position in the all India programming contest (i think). So please put your hands together, wherever you are for these three wonderful gentlemen ( i sadly know only 1 of them and his name's Anshuman). Whats more, they even have a chance of going to the land of Robin Scherbatsky (you people should really start watching some serious Tv) to compete at the international level. All the best folks.

Prediction:-

They will make the trip.

Rubbish Gossip

Rahul Dravid scored a double century earlier today in a Ranji match, but does that mean he is ready to come back into the team. I personally don't think so. The selectors should have made it clear, that he was dropped, not because of his poor form but because of his lack of use for the team. It may sound surprising but there's no longer a role for Dravid in the ODI team unless Yuvraj or Uthappa get injured. The "youngsters" like Gambhir and Uthappa are on a high of late which is arguably the main reason for Dravid being dropped. Everything is relative you see.

Dravid is without a doubt, a much better batsman than either Gambhir or Uthappa but as far as the team is concerned, he is as of now, less valuable and more dispensable.Changing tracks, i would like to ask your opinion regarding which one of these two leagues of gentlemen is the most imbalanced (these gentlemen were by the way linked courtesy of the media)

League A- Tiger Woods, Roger Federer, Thierry Henry, Rahul Dravid

League B- Rafael Nadal, Wayne Rooney, Sreesanth

I personally think Nadal is extremely unlucky to be associated with such a low lying scum like Sreesanth.

Moving on, i have been fortunate enough to be able to have access to the movie library of some of my illustrious seniors who keep downloading movies all the time (some of them even before the theatrical release). So the latest movie in this genre was  the "American Gangster", which i happened to watch a week earlier even though it was released (in US) only on Friday. Coming to the movie, it's first half is a bit boring but it really steps up a gear or two in the second half which makes the movie the best movie i have watched, at least in the past week :) . The movie, by the way stars Russel Crowe who allegedly, is going to buy a team in the Indian Premier League.

The match between Arsenal and Manchester United was actually quite similarly paced, as the movie. Speaking of the match, i had predicted a 2-2 draw and prior to that i had also predicted a 1-1 draw between Arsenal and Liverpool, may be i should start predicting more often about Arsenal's matches. Having said that i ain't yet ready to predict the outcome of their champions league fixture for fear of this fictitious bubble being pricked by a realistic needle.

Anyway, reading this post i feel that i have managed to keep the flavour of the season going, by making this post more interesting towards the end (at least that's what i feel personally).

Notice:-

I have holidays going on, due to which i will not be able to update my blog all so often. So please search for alternate reading material in the mean time.