@ Non-Alak readers: Yes, I know.
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
Alak Library Booklist
http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0Ap1q21wjXbzBdEVrUWlFVTlaNWVvbHZmTUo2WjVFbWc&hl=en
@ Non-Alak readers: Yes, I know.
@ Non-Alak readers: Yes, I know.
Saturday, April 11, 2009
Tell it to my face, you bastard!
Ah.. rant post. I hate it when people go around talking shit about me behind my back. If you must abuse/insult/feebly attempt to rape me, at least be mature enough to do it to my face. If you have a problem with what I say or do or how I do it, come spit it out on me. Don't do it behind my back like a half-assed little girl who hasn't got a quarter of a ball to speak of.
I'm not naming any names here.. those who do such vague shit know it themselves. Does it matter how powerful, well connected, intelligent, quick witted, or popular you are, if you don't have enough fire in you to come say something, however trivial it may be, to another guy? Are you that much of a pussy?
The only reason to hide your opinions from someone is when you're either scared of voicing them, or you think the other guy is going to rip your ideas and thoughts to shreds because they're made of nothing more than hot air with a lot of methane in it. And to the guys in question: I assure you, its a hell of a lot of methane. Despising someone just because they don't like to do the same stuff as you is just, to put it colloquially, fart.
I don't care who you are. I don't give a damn about what you can or can't do. Your opinion, so highly prized by so many around you, is worth less than an eczemic rat to me if you don't have the nethers to come voice them. Fuck you.
PS: If you think this is addressed to you, drop me a line and I'll tell you why you're right
I'm not naming any names here.. those who do such vague shit know it themselves. Does it matter how powerful, well connected, intelligent, quick witted, or popular you are, if you don't have enough fire in you to come say something, however trivial it may be, to another guy? Are you that much of a pussy?
The only reason to hide your opinions from someone is when you're either scared of voicing them, or you think the other guy is going to rip your ideas and thoughts to shreds because they're made of nothing more than hot air with a lot of methane in it. And to the guys in question: I assure you, its a hell of a lot of methane. Despising someone just because they don't like to do the same stuff as you is just, to put it colloquially, fart.
I don't care who you are. I don't give a damn about what you can or can't do. Your opinion, so highly prized by so many around you, is worth less than an eczemic rat to me if you don't have the nethers to come voice them. Fuck you.
PS: If you think this is addressed to you, drop me a line and I'll tell you why you're right
Sunday, February 8, 2009
The week that was (contd)
Here we go again, after a much longer break than I'd anticipated (or heck, maybe I'm just lazy :D)
Day 1 - Probably the most irritating morning of my life. Never thought there could be a hundred different tiny things that could delay a large event's start. Personally, I was asleep till 9 AM.. the other two coords bravely headed out at 7:45 (my excuse being the previously mentioned late night practice :D). With Paintball scheduled to start at 10, I saunter into the arena at 9:30, expecting everything to be in place and ready to go.
And what's happening at the venue? No facilities, no tables, no chairs, no WATER, no electricity, no extension boards... To cut a long, sad story short, we finally got everything up and going at 11:15. And this with people storming the damn desk expecting registrations to start precisely at 10, not to mention our "special" pre-registered people who, at least, expected insti stuff to work according to insti time.
Another thing I forgot to mention.. one of our "special" people was a reporter from Deccan Chronicle, a Mr. Harish Prakash (must be respectful about the Press, now). He was one of the people who ate into my supposed leisure time during Day 0.. but it was worth it. Check out http://www.dc-epaper.com/DC/DCC/2009/01/22/ArticleHtmls/22_01_2009_103_001.shtml , and I SWEAR I NEVER SAID THAT (or beamed it, or whatever. Earth to Spock.).
After a pretty chaotic morning, stuff settled down around 2 PM. We wrapped up registrations for the evening pretty quickly. SpEnt quiz followed at 2:15, in which our team (Vibhu, Aneesh, and I) missed qualifying by a whopping 3 points :(. Light Music group (aka Tarang) was up next, where we played two Rock On songs (Yeh Tumhari Meri Baatein, and Pichhle Saat Dinon Mein), and a third song.
Our lead singer for the first two songs was Aswathy, and MA freshie (mm-hmm, first year..), who was actually pretty incredible. Do check the videos out on my Orkut page/YouTube (search for the cuppers). For the third song, we didn't have a singer. For the simple reason that we were forbidden from "singing" that song. You'd have guessed it by now.. we'd planned to play Sutta on stage.
What did we end up doing? We played and let the crowd sing along (thankfully, it WAS full of our friends.. you ROCKED, guys). The coords had no reason to throw us off stage/cut off our music/shoot us, so we finished our set well. And as Soccer put it, we had ChuChu on drums, Shaggy on bass, Soccer on vocals, and before that, Aswathy on vocals (the "singer" forgot that he was playing rhythm. And he didn't sing a word). All hail Soccer. MAX RESPECT!!
The day wound up with Choreo Nite, which I was too tired to sit through. I did watch NIT Trichy perform though, and their theme based performance was simply brilliant. Kudos to them.. they did win first place.
Day 2 shall follow. Soon. I hope.
Day 1 - Probably the most irritating morning of my life. Never thought there could be a hundred different tiny things that could delay a large event's start. Personally, I was asleep till 9 AM.. the other two coords bravely headed out at 7:45 (my excuse being the previously mentioned late night practice :D). With Paintball scheduled to start at 10, I saunter into the arena at 9:30, expecting everything to be in place and ready to go.
And what's happening at the venue? No facilities, no tables, no chairs, no WATER, no electricity, no extension boards... To cut a long, sad story short, we finally got everything up and going at 11:15. And this with people storming the damn desk expecting registrations to start precisely at 10, not to mention our "special" pre-registered people who, at least, expected insti stuff to work according to insti time.
Another thing I forgot to mention.. one of our "special" people was a reporter from Deccan Chronicle, a Mr. Harish Prakash (must be respectful about the Press, now). He was one of the people who ate into my supposed leisure time during Day 0.. but it was worth it. Check out http://www.dc-epaper.com/DC/DCC/2009/01/22/ArticleHtmls/22_01_2009_103_001.shtml , and I SWEAR I NEVER SAID THAT (or beamed it, or whatever. Earth to Spock.).
After a pretty chaotic morning, stuff settled down around 2 PM. We wrapped up registrations for the evening pretty quickly. SpEnt quiz followed at 2:15, in which our team (Vibhu, Aneesh, and I) missed qualifying by a whopping 3 points :(. Light Music group (aka Tarang) was up next, where we played two Rock On songs (Yeh Tumhari Meri Baatein, and Pichhle Saat Dinon Mein), and a third song.
Our lead singer for the first two songs was Aswathy, and MA freshie (mm-hmm, first year..), who was actually pretty incredible. Do check the videos out on my Orkut page/YouTube (search for the cuppers). For the third song, we didn't have a singer. For the simple reason that we were forbidden from "singing" that song. You'd have guessed it by now.. we'd planned to play Sutta on stage.
What did we end up doing? We played and let the crowd sing along (thankfully, it WAS full of our friends.. you ROCKED, guys). The coords had no reason to throw us off stage/cut off our music/shoot us, so we finished our set well. And as Soccer put it, we had ChuChu on drums, Shaggy on bass, Soccer on vocals, and before that, Aswathy on vocals (the "singer" forgot that he was playing rhythm. And he didn't sing a word). All hail Soccer. MAX RESPECT!!
The day wound up with Choreo Nite, which I was too tired to sit through. I did watch NIT Trichy perform though, and their theme based performance was simply brilliant. Kudos to them.. they did win first place.
Day 2 shall follow. Soon. I hope.
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
The week that was... Two weeks ago
I know I'm incredibly late in writing this, but I've finally wound down after Saarang, and (hopefully) recovered enough from the insanity to actually make a coherent sentence. So here we go, day by day, play by play.
Day 0 - What I thought would be my last day of chilling out turns out to be one of the most hectic days ever.. who thought setting up a paintball field could be so much damn work, even when you get the pros! Work started at 12 noon and ended around 7.30 pm, with everything from electricity to rope causing problems. The only thing that seemed to be right on the spot was Unni's (more on him later) temperament, which would be that of a jolly Godfather regardless of whether everything was running smoothly or the damn walls where collapsing inwards.
With everything finally set up and the demo games played (for the news reporter who never showed up), we went and saw Kanyakumari's ensemble of 50 violinists. With people between the ages of 7 and 70 on stage together, playing the same note at precisely the same instant, it's a sight to behold. Beyond words.
Next up was Shobana's Maya Ravan, which, frankly, was a horrible letdown. It started off well enough, with the story accurately portraying events of the Ramayan, and some exceptional dancing by the entire cast. Interest waned after an hour, though, when it got both monotonous and outrageous at the same time. I mean, how can you possibly portray the Vaanars as dancing to some stupid gult number which goes "Rock n Roll" every 3 seconds, and expect the audience to love it? We aren't exactly 3 years old, ma'am (four, to be precise).
After that I had to go practice for Tarang till 4 am, which, though it did pay off in the end, was incredibly irritating given my state of mind.
I'll post about the remaining days tomorrow, rather tired right now.
And before I forget.. Unni (or Retd. Squadron Leader Unni Nair) is the director of the company which organized paintball for us. He's old, speaks incredible English, and has a sense of humor that's more puzzling than funny. I can shoot a target with a paintball marker more accurately than him, though, so paaack :D
Day 0 - What I thought would be my last day of chilling out turns out to be one of the most hectic days ever.. who thought setting up a paintball field could be so much damn work, even when you get the pros! Work started at 12 noon and ended around 7.30 pm, with everything from electricity to rope causing problems. The only thing that seemed to be right on the spot was Unni's (more on him later) temperament, which would be that of a jolly Godfather regardless of whether everything was running smoothly or the damn walls where collapsing inwards.
With everything finally set up and the demo games played (for the news reporter who never showed up), we went and saw Kanyakumari's ensemble of 50 violinists. With people between the ages of 7 and 70 on stage together, playing the same note at precisely the same instant, it's a sight to behold. Beyond words.
Next up was Shobana's Maya Ravan, which, frankly, was a horrible letdown. It started off well enough, with the story accurately portraying events of the Ramayan, and some exceptional dancing by the entire cast. Interest waned after an hour, though, when it got both monotonous and outrageous at the same time. I mean, how can you possibly portray the Vaanars as dancing to some stupid gult number which goes "Rock n Roll" every 3 seconds, and expect the audience to love it? We aren't exactly 3 years old, ma'am (four, to be precise).
After that I had to go practice for Tarang till 4 am, which, though it did pay off in the end, was incredibly irritating given my state of mind.
I'll post about the remaining days tomorrow, rather tired right now.
And before I forget.. Unni (or Retd. Squadron Leader Unni Nair) is the director of the company which organized paintball for us. He's old, speaks incredible English, and has a sense of humor that's more puzzling than funny. I can shoot a target with a paintball marker more accurately than him, though, so paaack :D
Sunday, November 30, 2008
Of Slippers
What's the weirdest thing rain's done to you? I was walking along the SAC road one fine Thursday evening (the day the endsems ended!)... the day was anything but fine, what with cyclone Nisha literally banging away all night long. The SAC road (err... road from now on) is one of the lowest-lying areas in the whole insti. Currently, that means waist deep water. That also means water flowing downhill with river-like force.
So we're walking along, trying to get to CCD in one piece so that we can speak to the guys who we hope will be arranging Paintball for us at Saarang. Juwa: "Yaar SAC road se chalte hain". Okay, so we start walking. The water gets into our slippers; its fun! The water gets till our ankles; its fun! The water nears our knees; its fun!
Then, we get to the uphill part, where water's flowing down at us. Not only is it hard to walk up, the current is tugging at my slippers. And then, without warning, my right foot hits mud. Why? My slipper's decided it loves the current more than it loves me, and has followed it into the IITM wilderness (which looked then like a big, random lake just placed there).
Picture the situation. My right slipper's floating downstream, its pouring cats and elephants, I have an umbrella in hand, and I'm chasing my slipper. I try to stick the umbrella in front of it in the hope that it'll stop. And guess what? It does! For a few seconds, at least. Then, the umbrella decides to fold into its upside down position, and the slipper goes past.
That alone was annoying enough. But while running after one slipper, the other one decides to come off my left foot and follow its partner downstream. No doubt they're making love in one of the insti swamps right now. Make me godfather, guys..
I did eventually make it to CCD.. barefoot, soaked, and extremely annoyed. At least the sight of the exceedingly cute Planet Adventure representative was uplifting.
PS: Put our writeup back on the Saarang website, ya bozos
So we're walking along, trying to get to CCD in one piece so that we can speak to the guys who we hope will be arranging Paintball for us at Saarang. Juwa: "Yaar SAC road se chalte hain". Okay, so we start walking. The water gets into our slippers; its fun! The water gets till our ankles; its fun! The water nears our knees; its fun!
Then, we get to the uphill part, where water's flowing down at us. Not only is it hard to walk up, the current is tugging at my slippers. And then, without warning, my right foot hits mud. Why? My slipper's decided it loves the current more than it loves me, and has followed it into the IITM wilderness (which looked then like a big, random lake just placed there).
Picture the situation. My right slipper's floating downstream, its pouring cats and elephants, I have an umbrella in hand, and I'm chasing my slipper. I try to stick the umbrella in front of it in the hope that it'll stop. And guess what? It does! For a few seconds, at least. Then, the umbrella decides to fold into its upside down position, and the slipper goes past.
That alone was annoying enough. But while running after one slipper, the other one decides to come off my left foot and follow its partner downstream. No doubt they're making love in one of the insti swamps right now. Make me godfather, guys..
I did eventually make it to CCD.. barefoot, soaked, and extremely annoyed. At least the sight of the exceedingly cute Planet Adventure representative was uplifting.
PS: Put our writeup back on the Saarang website, ya bozos
Saturday, March 22, 2008
Updates, I promise
"Imagine...
I see a vast expanse of land. Behind me, a hill rises up almost vertically, topped off by a highway. My feet are on grass, not the soft, short grass of a well-manicured lawn, but the rough, uneven grass that grows in the wild. There are bald patches in areas, where sand replaces the grass. To the right, an impenetrably thick, tall forest blocks off all access.
Straight ahead, the land becomes more and more dusty, as the grass yields to a riverbank. This is the bank of th"
I SWEAR I'll start updating again, soon.
To anyone who cares,
Shreyas
I see a vast expanse of land. Behind me, a hill rises up almost vertically, topped off by a highway. My feet are on grass, not the soft, short grass of a well-manicured lawn, but the rough, uneven grass that grows in the wild. There are bald patches in areas, where sand replaces the grass. To the right, an impenetrably thick, tall forest blocks off all access.
Straight ahead, the land becomes more and more dusty, as the grass yields to a riverbank. This is the bank of th"
I SWEAR I'll start updating again, soon.
To anyone who cares,
Shreyas
Friday, February 1, 2008
Relationships
A guy meets a girl, they find each other interesting, go out together for a while, all's rosy and amazing for three months, and then suddenly they meet other guys and girls, and everything's over, usually with one big heartbreak.
Two people studying in the same school/college get interested in each other, get to know each other better, talk about everything (including spending the rest of their lives together), stay together for a few years, and then the illusion evaporates for one or both of them.
Or maybe the exact opposite happens.. maybe things DO work out after all and they (as Baz Luhrmann would like to say) dance the funky chicken at their 75th wedding anniversary. The question is, how do you KNOW until you've TRIED?
One thing, of course, is to go extremely slowly. Know the person for a year or two, their ins and outs, their goals/ambitions/desires/adaptability/mumbo-jumbo, and then decide whether to be together or not. This might work for some people, but then it isn't really falling in love.. its more like putting all the variables into some goddamn equation for horizontal and vertical velocity and factoring in the hardness of the place you're about to land in. It formalizes love, makes it a calculated gamble instead of the wild, growing, mutually nurturing thing it should be.
That obviously doesn't mean that you end up going out with every random stranger you meet.. but you also don't need to know every small detail to even think about a person seriously. After all... hope is a good thing, maybe even the best of things...
"You're afraid of me! You're afraid that I won't love you back! Fuck it, I wanna give it a shot! At least I'm honest with you. " - Minnie Driver in Good Will Hunting
That just about sums up a very common attitude towards relationships... fear of rejection or of the fact that things won't work out. Well, what if they don't? You'll be hurt, sure... perhaps you gave your 110% but things still didn't work out...then what? Is it all over? Is life done with? Most importantly, was that time wasted?
My answer to this is NO. After all, what is life but the sum of the experiences you've had while you lived? Its the journey which matters, because everyone's destination is the same. A bond which lasted a few years and then ended was not a waste of those years. Instead, in all probability, it made both parties evolve into better people, and enriched their lives in a way that only they could, for each other. As Lord Tennyson would put it, its always better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all.
Lastly, of course, there are moments. Things that no one can ever steal away from you... the most special things that people do together... be it walking together down a moonlit beach or just having an ice cream fight... these are things that no one can EVER take away from a person, no matter what happens. And in the end, these are probably ALL that count. After all, life isn't about the number of breaths you take, but about the moments that take your breath away....
Two people studying in the same school/college get interested in each other, get to know each other better, talk about everything (including spending the rest of their lives together), stay together for a few years, and then the illusion evaporates for one or both of them.
Or maybe the exact opposite happens.. maybe things DO work out after all and they (as Baz Luhrmann would like to say) dance the funky chicken at their 75th wedding anniversary. The question is, how do you KNOW until you've TRIED?
One thing, of course, is to go extremely slowly. Know the person for a year or two, their ins and outs, their goals/ambitions/desires/adaptability/mumbo-jumbo, and then decide whether to be together or not. This might work for some people, but then it isn't really falling in love.. its more like putting all the variables into some goddamn equation for horizontal and vertical velocity and factoring in the hardness of the place you're about to land in. It formalizes love, makes it a calculated gamble instead of the wild, growing, mutually nurturing thing it should be.
That obviously doesn't mean that you end up going out with every random stranger you meet.. but you also don't need to know every small detail to even think about a person seriously. After all... hope is a good thing, maybe even the best of things...
"You're afraid of me! You're afraid that I won't love you back! Fuck it, I wanna give it a shot! At least I'm honest with you. " - Minnie Driver in Good Will Hunting
That just about sums up a very common attitude towards relationships... fear of rejection or of the fact that things won't work out. Well, what if they don't? You'll be hurt, sure... perhaps you gave your 110% but things still didn't work out...then what? Is it all over? Is life done with? Most importantly, was that time wasted?
My answer to this is NO. After all, what is life but the sum of the experiences you've had while you lived? Its the journey which matters, because everyone's destination is the same. A bond which lasted a few years and then ended was not a waste of those years. Instead, in all probability, it made both parties evolve into better people, and enriched their lives in a way that only they could, for each other. As Lord Tennyson would put it, its always better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all.
Lastly, of course, there are moments. Things that no one can ever steal away from you... the most special things that people do together... be it walking together down a moonlit beach or just having an ice cream fight... these are things that no one can EVER take away from a person, no matter what happens. And in the end, these are probably ALL that count. After all, life isn't about the number of breaths you take, but about the moments that take your breath away....
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