No love on the beach

Wow, that was a really long break from the blogging world. How long has it been ? 3 weeks ? Jeez man ! Down with the mid-sems !

So I was back at my favourite haunt - the Bandra Bandstand, with His Holiness Mr. Manish Bhide. The goals were simple - cheese masala pav for the stomach, jogging beauties for the eyes and pelting a couple of stones at SRK's house for the general good of mankind. Ok ok I made the last one up. I mean who would throw stones when much bigger rocks are available on the shore ;-)

Well, finishing a glass of awesome pineapple juice, I began looking at the couples sitting on the rocks nearby. Me and Bhide were trying our best to add to the gay romance angle, but lets face it : both of us are heteros at heart. So I was looking at these couples and most of the girls seemed to be paradoxically unhappy to me. In some cases, the guy was trying to convince the girl about something, his most convincing tactic being holding the girl's hand. Its not the fastest arrow in the quiver my friend ! Logic and women are like vodka and whisky. They just don't mix, and whats more, even if you put them forcibly together, you get a pukey feeling in the stomach and a headache the next morning.

It was then that I started to wonder about one of the foremost questions plaguing the mankind. The likes of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle have spend countless frustrating nights pondering over this, not to mention our own medieval boys like Voltaire and Kant. Apparently the question drove Descartes so mad, that all he could come up with was - "I think therefore I am". As you may already have guessed by now, the question is - "Why are the best looking girls always to be found with the most idiotic looking guys ?". [Disclaimer: This question is nowhere related to my loveless single life].

I began a thought experiment : I imagined going over this question with a good looking girl. Now being with a gorgeous babe is no different than any guy's 'usual' fantasies, except that in this case, there was some talking going on.

So here goes the thought experiment. Me and the gorgeous looking babe (GLB):
Me : Why do you go out with that stupid surly looking fellow ?
GLB : Excuse me ! Do I know you ? Why are you even talking to me ??
Me : Hey! This is a freaking thought experiment. Come on man ! please cooperate.
GLB: Oh ok.
Me : So tell me what do you see in him ?
GLB : You mean apart from the great physique ?
Me : Err....yes. I meant is he nice and jovial ? Does he make you laugh ? Can you discuss a good book with him ? Does he hold your hand while walking on a moonlit beach ?
GLB : Well he spends a lot on me. Buys me superficial gifts. Takes me to pubs and discotheques, buys me clothes that leave nothing to the imagination. Sends his car to pick me up and drop me.
Me : And there are no negative aspects ?
GLB : Sure there are tons! He treats me like a prize trophy. He is happy to be my boyfriend not because he is happy to be with me but because he feels 'extra cool' in his circle of gym buddies. Plus he is a total jerk.
Me : So why not go out with someone more full of substance ?
GLB : Half of them are geeks, just like you....
(Me : sheepishly smiling and also feeling smug as being marked 'full of substance')
(GLB contd)... and the other half dont have the nerves to approach the girls they like.
(Me : feeling confused...aren't I in both these halves? Thats it , I am a spineless geek. Woohoo!)

So there you have it. My thought experiment was conclusive after all. Girls do want to go out with intelligent, sensitive and funny guys. Looks isnt everything. All they want is that the guys should make the first move. As for me, I am an enlightened soul. I know exactly what to do. Its time to pick up those dumbells and pump it up !!! There sure is no way in hell that I will land up a GLB , writing all these crazy blog entries.

No ether in the net

First they announce a quiz barely after I complete 2 assignments. I dont complain but study and give the quiz. Then on the same day, I get _another_ surprise quiz in another lecture. I feel betrayed and robbed off all my innonence, but still I stay quiet. As expected, I screw up the quiz but calm down after just half an hour of hysterics. This is life, I think.

But then, horror of all horrors, my ethernet card dies on me. This one breaks me completely. I can live without food, clothes, water, girlfriends, but I cannot, I repeat, I simply cannot live without those sweet little packets of internet traffic. Suddenly life becomes devoid of all meaning and I feel like dialing the Indian equivalent of 911.

Guess Monday will bring some good news about my replacement card. If that doesnt work out, I can always move back to Delhi - the land of redundant internet connections and the home of the 24x7 tech support.

My world this week

This has been a very hectic and forgetable week. Began with me having long bouts of beer-drinking..sometimes 3-4 nights in a row, just to make up for lost time. Have to admit, watching Australia lose to England, while drinking beer, is one of the most cherishable moments of my life :)

It went downhill from there. Because then came a couple of ultra-sobering assignments, which took longer than usual to complete - thus involving me and Bhide in long marathon sessions of coding and analysis. I dont recall ever spending 3 consecutive days on a single assignment back in undergrad time. Celebrated the assignment completion by a beer drinking binge (what else?) at a local seedy pub, thus causing my first ever beer hangover. Although all that beer induced gas did help me float the next day in the swimming pool :))

Then somewhere between beer and coding, I realised that I have a quiz to study for. I dont remember being so blasphemous in my entire life. I guess if I can pull this week through, I can deal with anything.

As always, thanks for reading.

Non-linear morale curve

With Monday meetings with my guide being the norm, I thought it would be useful to plot my fluctuating states of anguish, panic or euphoria. So here goes nothing, (inspired by PhD Comics)





Salient points on the morale curve:
a) Prev meeting with guide went well. Realizing that the next meeting is far off in the foggy future, morale is at an all time high.
b) Realize that half the week is over and nothing has been done. Panic is beginning to set in.
c) Realize that the problem is harder than thought on Tuesday. Red 'panic' button pressed.
d) A brief spurt of motivation to solve the problem, no matter what. The spirited moment is, however, shortlived.
e) Other students say that the guide is sort of cool if you dont work for a couple of weeks. This news serves as a straw to a drowning man.
f) Realize that you _have_ to work this week because you haven't worked for the previous 3 weeks. (e) is not an option.
g) Unable to solve the problem. Become comfortably numb and stoic. Adopt a "main aisa hi hoon" (this is what I am) attitude for the meeting which is only 2 hrs away. Morale increases slightly because of the 'martyr attitude'. Spend the remaining time calling loved ones and writing the will.

To swim or not to swim

A post after a long time. I was slightly busy with business (if you can believe that!) and pleasure. On the pleasure front, I went to Hyderabad over the weekend to meet a college friend. No I didnt visit the Charminar or have Hyderabadi biryani at a midnight buffet, but I did relax around the Hussain Sagar Lake and checked out the Imax at Hyd's only multiplex.

In other news, I have started swimming. Rather, I have started trying to swim in the IIT pool.
In a daring show of courage and determination, I defeated a kid in a photo-finish breadth-crossing race yesterday :) My coach and manager Mr. Manish Bhide will attest to this fact.
Ofcourse, there are other pool-related cheap stunts, like lingering around the pool area during the ladies slot but more on that later...

PS: Bhide got 5 kgs of grub from his fiancee, so suddenly I have started making demos at his room instead of mine :)

Lecture karma

So we have this compulsory course on Communication Skills that has a 2 hr lecture every week, and that too at as early as 10:30am, which really gets on my nerves sometimes. So this time, Bhide and I decided to unilaterally end the lecture after 1 hr had passed. The plan was to occupy the seats closest to the exit, sign on the sheet and then slink away when the time came. We did take the front row seats but little did we know that God would be so benelovent upon us that the sheet would come to us in the first 20 seconds of the class. Like evil twins who can read each other's mind, we quickly signed our names and ran away like fugitives from prison before the instructor could say "good morning". Bhide created quite a show by taking a fake mobile phone call while going out. Me ? I was just running like there was a pack of dogs behind me. Guess I haven't got Bhide's grace :) Anyway, we behaved like real scumbags and it felt really gooood. Pretty nostalgic, huh ?

Little did I know that the lecture karma would come back to haunt me. A couple days later, I had an afternoon class at 3:30pm. With nothing else to do, I went to my workstation in the institute and was getting pretty bored. Then I decided that I would surprise myself by entering the class at 3:25 and be before time for a change. Well, as I entered the lecture hall, I realised that my supposedly 3:30 class was actually at 2pm and it was in the process of ending when I made my grand appearance. My eyes met the disapproving eyes of the professor and I made an oscar-winning portrayal of a guy who had casually ambled into the wrong lecture room. I slunk away before the professor could stop me and give me the third degree. All's well that ends well.
[Update: All definitely didn't end well. There was a quiz in that lecture in which I got a grand zero :( ]

Oh by the way, did I mention that Bhide is off to meet his in-laws. He flew business class, because, in his own words, "there was no other option".

Front row ka mazaa

Since my only class today got canceled, and I had to collect my air ticket from one of the Air Sahara offices, on an impulse I decided to go to the farthest possible ticketing office in Bombay. Ofcourse Bhide came along since he has nothing better to do anyway. So off we went towards Nariman Point. Realised that to reach the ticketing office, we used quad-modal transport (walked till main gate, auto till Kanjur Marg, train till VT, bus till the office). The highlight of the trip was ofcourse getting to sit on the very front row seats of the top floor of a double decker bus at VT. This was a first for me and was pretty exciting. From up there, every turn and lane-change seems to defy the very laws of physics !! :) When the bus takes a sharp turn, one almost feels that the unstable vehicle is going to topple.

Came back to IIT for some welcome meeting for the new PhD students. Our primary concern was, ofcourse, the free snacks that were to be served after the meet. It is good thing to have a person like Bhide as a food partner because the guy never touches anything oily, desserty, too sugary - in short anything worth eating :) .