I made three overnight bus trips, each of about 300 km, between Hosur and Madras within a span of eight days. The last one being on the night of August 8th, it was a Saturday and a wet Saturday night. I don’t know if I’ve ever told you about my karmic connection with the rain Gods. If not, it is about time. The situation is this – every time I leave a city for another, it rains either that evening or the night. This has happened each of the last ten times that I’ve travelled. The most recent one being the ride from Madras to Hosur. Thankfully, I was already inside a bus when it started to drizzle. Then the coach began to get stuffy with fellow travellers shutting the windows – it spoilt the ride, the rain I mean. The whole four days that I spent in Hosur were characterized by bright sunshine, outdoor sport, and being outside for the fun of it all. But it poured like hell on the evening of the 5th, the night of which I was to leave. It happened in Alwar and in Madras. The bally thing is spooky.
But besides all that, I am now back in Hosur and have been assigned an entire shop to myself. This is the Protoshop and I help build new vehicles that are designed to meet export requirements. The part I like most about it is that the shop is the analogical equivalent of a hospital ward and the trucks are babies who need to be looked after until they’re fit to be released to the wild world. I’d have hated the assembly line, this is more in tune with what I wanted – freedom.
However, with just a handful of skilled workmen and an enthusiastic trainee, it falls on yours truly to also get the ol’ arms messy with whatever oils and greases and coolant fluids and power-steering oils and other hydraulic oleic substances. I can’t make knuckle cracks anymore, the movements of my knuckes are smooth – I can feel it dammit!
Another fun bit is knowing that the vehicles are all over-powered with high power to weight ratios. I had a chance to be taken on a road test. The 9 tonner was flying at 110 km/h with a payload consisting only of the driver and myself. I had the seatbelt on but I have to tell you, that seatbelt was of no use. I was clutching the seat with my left hand and the door with my right. The engine hissed all the way and I could feel the thrust quite like what one is likely to feel in an airplane taking-off. It was awesome, absolutely awesome.
The morons from Quality came and gave some sign-off points – they pointed out missing stickers and the out-of-spec wheel nut covers. Poor sods, they don’t know what the baby was capable of. Haha! The boy was a ‘Pass’ as far as I was concerned. Man, what a ride.
Oh, and I am incharge of whatever goes on in my shop. I’m technically, a process owner. My boss says it reflects well in a resumé. I have arrived and hello, I’ve hit 500 words!
A polygraph testing machine has an accuracy of 61% (No, you don’t need citation, I already checked it up). 61% is not an impressive figure, it is only marginally better than flipping a coin and expecting a result you called for. Be that as it may after extensive research, the results from a polygraph test are not final and binding (ask any investigator – nothing is better than plain evidence linking the suspect to the crime scene). A polygraph picks up many physiological changes – perspiration, heart rate, pulse and breathing rhythm. Research also reveals that any knowledge of controlled breathing (to calm the senses) means that you could beat the machine four times out of ten – at least (and if you’re a Russian spy, you could beat it every time!). A test typically consists of Irrelevant questions, Control questions and Relevant questions all in a random, jumbled and mixed order known only to the questioner and the analyzer. Only after several rounds of questioning, can the analyzer make comments with regard to the integrity of the subject (suspect).
The paragraph that precedes this contains all the facts required to quickly deduce that it requires considerable testing and analysis to tell a lie from the truth. Do you still want to watch and believe a TV show like ‘ The Moment of Truth’ or the desi version ‘Sachh ka Saamna?’ The only working argument is that people don’t watch TV for any reason, only to kill time. Watching the show is fine but believing the gaff isn’t.
Assuming you’re like me, with a fairly limited knowledge of breath control and you are asked – “Have you ever tried tasting Fevikol?” you say ‘no’ even though you did try it once during craft class in the first grade; your palms sweat and the machine you’re hooked up to records deviation from regular patterns – it will be deemed – a lie. If however, you’re asked – “Will you taste Fevikol if it was kept in front of you now?” can you judge the response as a lie or truth? The whole situation painted for you is hypothetical and therefore makes no demands as to the integrity of your response. You could say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ or even something like ‘yes, provided you give me a straw to sip it through’ or ‘Is it flavoured?’
The TV show does exactly that, based on audience response to the stimulus. A vector summation of total audience response of ‘Yuck! Gross!’ is more appealing to the public and naturally, a response in the positive is needed. If you say ‘yes’ the whole humor of the response falls flat, but if you said ‘no’ and the machine thinks you’re a goddamn liar then the audience is enthralled and finds it very amusing.
A majority of our population is uneducated but literate, too bad this blog boasts the readership only of the fortunate minority that is both literate and educated.
Statutory Warning:
1. Viewer discretion is advised as far as reality TV is concerned.
2. Ingesting Fevikol can be injurious to health; physically speaking, if your oesophagus is clogged with dried adhesive, other more palatable items may not pass through – ice creams for instance.
Work hasn’t become so monotonous that I come up with something as disturbing as Marx’s manifesto but really, I can’t wait till I am informed about my eventual location and my key result areas. However, two things happened over this week and the last, that have given me immense pleasure.
Federer took the French, a prediction I made last year, aghast at his shock defeat at the hands of jungle-brute Nadal in the lawns of Wimbledon 2008. Nadal received a solid whipping from silent Swede Soderling in the Round of 32 . When he(Soderling) fired his forehands, particularly the inside-out version that very few players are able to pull off, Nadal was clueless, absolutely beaten for speed and power. A sore loser that Nadal is, he said he let Soderling play his game. The cheek of the blighter!
But on other fronts, did you happen to catch Leander Paes getting smashed in the eye with a perfectly well-guided tennis ball? What was he doing there standing erect right up at the net? Dlouzhy was smart enough to keep his racquet close to his face anticipating a shot like that. What was depressing though to see was Paes exulting and howling like a mentally challenged gibbon after every point he won as if he couldn’t believe he was winning.
The second exciting thing was the way Chris Gayle lay waste the Aussies. There are no words to describe that onslaught. There could be words in the Caribbean for this sort of thing; words like ‘blow-dem-ay-way’, ‘jingo-lo-ba’ and the like. The Windies showed them the way out alright. They made 170 runs look like a paltry total as they knocked it over with 5 overs still to go.
Finally saw some children going to school in the morning. I hadn’t seen that in the last two months – vacation time. It appears that come hail or come shower, this place will never move on from twin-plaited-ribbon-tied hairdo for little girls not to mention the boys with their shorts buttoned above their navels and all you can see is the zipper flap on the front. Madras is unaffected by climate change and this dubious distinction is something the city shares with Indian Politicians. I was browsing books to read at a nearby store standing absolutely still but the volume of sweat I was drenched in would have easily misled the casual observer into believing that I had just run a mile in under two minutes. What with the quantity of fruit juices that I am ingesting? It never seems to be quite enough for I am practically drowning in my own sweat [this would make a great story for Stephen King]. Until work picks up, I thought I’d resume the pencil sketching that I used to do.
You might have to wait a long while for another post.
Other than the occasional (read frequent) mistake of engaging the third instead of the second gear, I face no problems with riding a motorcycle. I am convinced that more satisfactory results may be obtained as February comes to a close. My second month in Alwar was very fruitful. Myself and two colleagues climbed 6 kilometres uphill to Alwar Fort (called bala quila by the locals). We learnt that the fort is under Police control and that there’s a limit with regard to how many visitors are allowed in a day. There are also timings to be adhered to. We gathered exactly why the arrangements are this way when we reached the fort. It is in tatters. Unless reinforced with concrete, the fort will tumble downhill with the unfortunate payload that went visiting. Judging by the maintenance, this could happen sooner than one might note. Large langurs also sit beside the roads curiously watching frightened tourists. Purse, phone, and eatables are snatched quite frequently. For a moment one finds it hard to ascertain just who’s in control of the fort – the police or the monkeys. Conscience usually agrees with the latter. On the other hand, the view of the valleys and the town of Alwar from up there was simply wonderful. One had to be very careful not to use cameras in full view of the long-tailed vagabonds but yours truly still was able to capture some images on his phone. Returning downhill was the easy part and on the way I was able to spot some really pretty birds (I mean birds of ornithological interest please!). For example there was this bird that looked like a sparrow with a very huge appetite but just as active. It wouldn’t sit in one place. It has brown foliage with a yellow beak and sports a tail like that of a dove. I am not sure where to begin searching for a name. Humming birds were common and so also were peacocks and peahen. In fact I have spotted a lot of new birds just living in Alwar. I had never seen any one of these in Delhi or Madras. At the factory, the management has taken an initiative to rear a gaggle of geese within the premises and I get to see them in action too. Quite a cool bunch that. They sound like old tractor horns tooting around and taking walks in the park under the sun. Apart from these, there are white egret-like things within the town. I hope to take some pictures of this fauna but you know how birds are. The Sariska trip is still on the cards. The tigers apparently have resurfaced and offer a wholesome experience of wildlife. That is some time away. I visit a local library and browse books on botany. I couldn’t find one on ornithology. I need those names. Any suggestions?
Perhaps the worst thing our superiors could have done was let us know about our Out-Bound-Training program just 2 days before it was to happen, and that they did. Writing about it is very difficult because there was just no structure, no starting point, and no clear goal. Surprisingly, the OBT was successful and pleased our superiors.
The entire batch of 22 of us was divided in to 3 teams of 8-7-7. All teams were to meet the following objectives:
My team of 7 had 4 non-sporting, more than slightly obese entities so we were covered as far as the food department was concerned but on the athletics front, our performance was poor. We brain-stormed on dishes and learnt that only one of us knew to cook. So we decided on my idea of simple-practical. A common gravy of tomato-onion with the usual spices for the two dishes (cottage cheese and chicken). And as for dessert, we received a suggestion to make coconut laddoo.
We had just 2 hours for shopping the previous evening for our inventories that included 3 serving bowls, 2 cooking pots, a gas stove, LPG cylinder, spatulas, serving spoons, refined oil, spices et all. We were totally stuck when we discovered that the whole town of Hosur was out of cottage cheese. We hunted for a substitute and zeroed in on Soy chunks, its called meal-maker but that night it was a savior. Phew!!!
I was second to reach the destination, very close to the catchment area of a dam. By making good time I ensured that our team average time would be mediocre and not abyssmal. We won 1 out of 4 management games mostly due to the athletics handicap, and finished either 2nd or 3rd in the others. The time finally came for us to prepare the meal and it was agreed that I do the dessert. I don’t know what a coconut laddoo is but that day I got my hands rogered in a paste of dessicated coconut and condensed milk. Sticky, and I couldn’t even scratch my nose when it itched. I had to seek assistance. I came up with a dessert item that was so much in demand that we couldn’t meet it. It won praises from all who were lucky enough.
Chicken was exquisitely prepared and it was rated the best among the 3 chicken dishes. The soy preparation was very salty. The lady in the team had no sense of proportion and dumped too much of it. It had to be doused with more masala. It turned out that we were the first to deliver- 5 minutes before the bell. We won the food challenge and since we used just half a litre of refined oil, there was none left. Our oil waste was minimum, no waste in the dessert, no chicken wasted and all the food was finished. No waste other than some plastic from the packaging. We got the points on waste and inventory management.
But sometimes when things are going too well, something must be wrong. So along came the news that athletic ability weighed higher than food preparation and we came in second. I expected to be third when the OBT began, but we did better than that. This post is dedicated to the team that accomplished it. Cheers!
I’ll spare all readers disgusting pictures of this latest natural assault. We are dealing with something I’m not sure of but hurts very much when I type. Who’d have thought that a pang experienced during a leisure walk would result in rendering my right second finger painful and useless, albeit temporarily. First a monkey, and now a wasp or a spider which couldn’t mind its own business. Had it checked up by a doc a few moments ago. He was clueless but said he’d treat the wound.
Speaking of monkeys, recall the family of monkeys mentioned in the last natural assault. This family has many more off-springs now and thrives in the college campus. I spotted a really fat one that had trouble climbing onto a dustbin. There’s something about monkeys and dustbin raiding. I saw a drunken fool rifling through a municipality garbage bin the other day. Getting back to the monkeys in college, there is a paramilitary training exercise for the newly born. These guys a scaling the walls taking advantage of the slender grooves carved in them. Watching this from the classroom is quite a distraction and its confusing to learn that spider-man does similar things. Monkeys are a nuisance. It took a few rare breeds to delay an otherwise very slick project that I was working on.
… Federer loses to a rare Fish after thrashing every other, much higher ranked (than Fish) opponent in the earlier rounds. And just yesterday, Djokovich also loses to a practically unknown Kevin Anderson. And why are test matches even being hosted when no team today plays to win them? There is no winning strategy. First team piles up the runs, bats for two days, the other team then bats for two more, to pile up a few more runs than the first. Its just hard labor for bowlers and fielders.
IPL meanwhile is going full steam ahead right into a wall. The reason– spectator response to ICL matches with as much star power is practically zilch. Are you watching ICL matches on the tele? Flip a few channels and if you spot aging cricketers decked up like clowns, that could be ICL. IPL’s not going to be any different– just more clowns.
My project is stuck, and isn’t expected to cut some slack any time soon. Humphf!!
It happened in a bus today. My team mate and I were returning home after putting in a good day’s work at a Brazing unit somewhere outside Madras. The only seats available were on the last row, under the rear window panel. We were a bit uncomfortable, so we asked this old cracker, sitting alone on a seat in front of us that was meant for two, if he could swap seats. He refused before we finished requesting and turned the other way, I thought we heard him mumble something. I moved to the seat next to him, and he began saying something about the seats at the back row reserved for “ladies.” Then began a monologue, where he expressed his disgust at the whole idea and how women misused the feature. He related an incident where four men had occupied the seats and three women had come aboard, one old woman and two in their 30s perhaps. One of the men offered the old lady his seat while the others sat. The two women blatantly asked the other men –”Does it not occur to you to get up and offer your seats to us?” He then asked, facing me , what the ‘ball-talk’ was about equality, and if women wanted to be equals all the time, how about having only as much right to seat as a man? The only thing I stood by was that reserved seats for women on a public transport was not a sign of modern society, and neither is it a sign of a growing one. They should just have two seats reserved for the physically challenged, that’s all.
The man then went on to talk about his work, a machinist at a well known manufacturing firm. He was cribbing about not having an air-conditioner at work. The whole time we just waited to learn where he’d get off. I finally asked him about it, and soon enough his destination was in sight. Any longer and my friend in the back seat would have probably exploded. He got off and my friend took his place next to me. Our destination was about forty minutes away, we napped. Phew!
Our slightly lazy superhero commutes on a bicycle, and loves it. Its funny that flabby people would rather use a fixed bicycle at an air-conditioned gym than ride one out in the open, and feel the wind, and the distance, and the effort.
Meanwhile, yes there hasn’t been an effort to type out a post, but there was an article(as promised) which was posted a month or so ago. You will find it in the “Showers” page, look closely, there are sub-pages in there. Its a take on the whole pointless task of classifying and separating things and people alike, and is also music to my comrades– the Mathematically dyslexic. Its perfectly alright to hate all of Mathematics. Haven’t you heard of Kurt Godel? Google him. I can’t believe he is missing in all math texts, but then I can. What we see and read about in textbooks is just mass hypnosis. The mathematical community didn’t think it would be right to change all the rules so suddenly, just because it was pointed out so late, so they omit all talk about it. How different are they from those that tagged Galileo a heretic?
One can expect a post now and then about haircuts, especially when a scalp such as mine serves to confuse barbers. So guess who’s sporting a Novak Djokovich haircut..or..er.. something like it. I look different after each haircut, I think I can make a career out of disguising myself. All I need now is a cape, some tight underpants, an alternate lifestyle and voila! Your friendly, slightly lazy superhero.
And how am I to just figure that a hardback book titled “Beethoven” would be all about hearing aids and aural improvement? There is creativity, and there is creativity seasoned with rudeness.
What-ho! Looks like I just made it in time to save November 2007 with this albeit incoherent and purposeless posting, only to let everyone (myself included) know that an article is due and awaiting approval from my intuition. Wish me luck.
Yes, this page is going to be updated only once a month hereafter, unless (confound it!) something I fancy should come up, uncertain as these things are.
The time finally came, for us to select electives that we wish to study in the semester to follow. There is some politics involved here. From about 7 possible electives offered, the class is allowed to pick 3, one that will be common to the class, and the other, a choice based on whether the paper chosen has at least 25 students wanting it. So, can you imagine what went on in my head when Operational Research received only about 12 responses? A sizable, limited IQ section of the class opted for a visibly mundane paper on Maintenance of Machines, which is best left to people wanting to become foremen or supervisors at a manufacturing unit. This abominable section of the classroom has the student representative amongst it and knowing what kind of people these uneducated leaders are, this person was volleying for Maintenance of Machines. I wasn’t able to tolerate this misguided utilitarianism, its the reason this state of Tamil Nadu and much of this country is what it is.
Temperatures rising all around, other folks that were for Operational Research needed the paper as an added advantage for higher learning. I went around the department speaking to staff concerned with allotting us electives and the effort has been well rewarded. Now, Maintenance of Machines doesn’t even figure in the list. Its me against the classroom. A classroom of 50% or more clots with no scope in Engineering and the rest of us slightly more passionate folks.
Meanwhile, I just downloaded several eBooks. “Origin of Species” by Charles Darwin, “The Special and General Theories of Relativity” by Albert Einstein, four Wodehouses namely “Love Among Chickens”, “My Man Jeeves”, “Right-Ho Jeeves”, “Mike and Psmith”.
Right-ho Jeeves is the funniest Jeeves story I have read, second only to Ring for Jeeves. I could send these to anyone interested.
toodle pip!
It has been 3 months and 2 weeks without an update (I changed the template if that’s any consolation..) I am now in the penultimate semester of my undergraduate degree course and it is already showing promise of being an eventful semester.
Let me begin with a traditional overture (an interesting look at my new set of lecturers..ahem..professors).
One guy is so unbelievably boring and annoying, at the same time; He is lecturing on a supposedly problematic paper, but he goes on and on and on, slowing down time. Some folks in class fell asleep but he wouldn’t tolerate that either, he walked across to the dormant section of the class and woke them all up! What a nuisance…”Wake up and listen to this new lullaby.”!?!?
Quite in contrast is another chap, fairly youngish. He doesn’t care if students sleep or go yap-yap-yap. The problem is that as the yapping grows louder, so does he. Its that sharp and loud voice he has that irritates and stresses out the inner ear percussion. We haven’t understood what he intends teaching us, so his method is anything but effective.
Computer Integrated Manufacturing is an interesting and well established field of study, the prof comes well prepared for the lecture, but we students are not. There are these long pauses that activate the sleep system and just when the curtain falls, he starts off from where he’d left. Its quite the ordeal sitting in class.
We have an electronics paper also, and this guy is just up our arses the whole time. He talks fast and doesn’t stop till the clock signals close of play. By the time he’s through, we’re out of breath. Phew!
Wimbledon 2007 ended on a happy note with Federer taking the honors as expected (like anyone has a chance). He teased Nadal in that final set when he faced 5 break-points in two successive service games and came out stronger. When Nadal couldn’t make much of it, he took the match beyond Nadal. I liked Soderling’s psychological tricks in his game against Nadal. Nadal was just furious. Nadal pulls his shorts out of his ass-crack after every rally and Soderling deliberately imitated this disgusting act with Nadal watching, now that must hurt. Hehehe.
A large group of monkeys have started to live on the college campus. They are multiplying as well. The college management decided to set up cages to trap them. Surprisingly, these cages have a couple of tomatoes for bait (and the whole time I thought they liked bananas!). The cages were around for a few weeks but now they’re gone (the cages I mean, the monkeys remain). I guess they must have found some staff member trapped in one of the cages trying to steal the tomatoes. I mean, my God!
Have you ever been assaulted by a large monkey while you were just minding your own business? huh? No? Then you probably don’t know how I feel.
Photographites has moved to a blog of its own, that should turn into an art gallery some years from now.
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…and other gymnasium accounts for the doin-nothing-right-now reader. All these are true accounts of people I know and I have not exaggerated any of them. I shan’t be mentioning any names so as to protect identity and prevent embarrassment(‘cos one of these is my own). Without further adieu…
“The guy made me do 4 sets of 10 barbel movements with 20 kilograms of effective weight. I felt great afterwards until I reached home and hit the shower. I realised that I could not rub soap on my chest, my biceps were so bloody stiff.
The “guy” in mention is the trainer of course, and our case now does 25 kg barbels in a closed room so no one has to hear the screaming or for that matter watch the grimacing.
“I couldn’t climb down stairs, walk, or run after four different leg exercises. Not to mention that I couldn’t sit in a slow controlled way or even try and get up. My quadriceps were hurting. Must be those abominable squatting exercises with a load of 25 kilos on my shoulder exclusive of my own weight.”
Then there’s this guy who does bench-chest presses with 75 kilograms effective free weights. He had this to report.
“I sometimes hear a ‘click’ on my lower back when I walk. My wrists are numb so I’m not able to judge how much I’m twisting the throttle on my motorcycle and I think I broke my brother’s hand when I shook it yesterday. And some lesser known muscles under my chin hurt when I laugh. I suspect its those funny facial expressions that I make when I’m ya-know pushing myself.”
I have not seen this guy for about 2 weeks now. I suspect he’s changed timings or is at a local hospital. There is this large lady who’s been at the gym for at-least 3 months on a weight reduction program. She’s lost only time so far. The trainer was as nonplussed as she. He asked her to get some medical tests done—she probably has a thyroid problem is his hunch.
Moving away from the gymnasium some 35 odd kilometres, at my college, we are quite pained by one paper in particular called Heat and Mass Transfer. The former head of the department engages the class and I must say, its nearly as productive as the one-and-half hour bus journey to the institution. All the seniors are celebrating their final days at college. The men showed up in “traditional south-Indian” apparel, which basically is a white single bed-sheet folded around the hip restricting normal walking movement. Running of course is out of the question unless you’d want to be an amusement.
A very eventful 3 weeks went by. We got to see the Oscar winning documentary “An Inconvenient Truth,” and if politicians and other dumb rich men world wide still don’t get the hint, its time to kill them all. They’re just lucky I don’t own a gun with a bore as wide as the North Tower of the World Trade Center.
That thin layer of atmosphere is thickening because people go around in cars…alone, just because they can afford it. In 50 years or less, there’s going to be no water to drink, then we can all see what these idiots can afford. Everyone below the age of 50 must use public transport or car-pools. This should be made a law, because unless that is done, people think that they should just live their wretched lives and have as much fun as possible. Knuckleheads!
Moving on to the microscopic level, to things that concern me, Ashok Leyland came to our campus and picked me from a possible 60 and some post-graduate students. That’s where I am headed after I graduate. Must have been that biofuel project that I am doing, and my performance in their “stress interview” as they call it.
Fellow bloggers will be proud that I too have a month missing in the archives. Its been a long break, one that I am glad about. A quiet holiday at home transformed in to a series of one-night-stands at various places. So, after about four christen-our-crib-with-fusion-music performances, I am now back in college to begin cramming for semester 6.
I never thought a lecturer qualified to instruct us in Automobile Engineering could drive me to such extreme boredom that I lose interest in cars altogether. We had to get him substituted. The Head of the Department takes Heat and Mass Transfer and he has not stopped cursing us since. While we are still getting used to his method of instruction, he has such high expectations from us that its reflecting as anger and impatience. We really are heading for an equilibrium there if the second law holds good. I had a choice between ‘Numerical Methods’ and ‘Quality Control & Reliability’, the choice was easy to make. Numerical methods was to be taught by a real prick so, it was axiomatic that I chose the path of least resistance and opted for Quality Control only to learn that it is as interesting as it is relevant. I have also to write a paper in Powerplant Engineering which involves a lot of last-minute cramming theory.
There are some big decisions to make soon and I wish I make them in a calm, sober, and relaxed state so they don’t sound outrageously eccentric.
The new article has been posted in ‘Passing Showers.’ Its called “Interrupt” and only because I didn’t quite know what else to call it. Happy reading!
As for regular posting, there should be something after Diwali sometime.
Just thought I’d do something before there are missing entities in the blog archive. The promised article is still in drafting; been way too busy. Which also leads me to think that I probably started this thing only because I had a lot of time on my hands(in hostel).
But the first two years of this Engineering syllabi were not as demanding as it is now. Meanwhile, I changed the template. WordPress guys have been gifting these quite regularly, and I have been switching to newer, more elegant ones ever since.
North Korea is proving to be a bit of a handful for the United States. I quite like it. So the North Korean leaders have also taken some hints from our man Ahmedinejad , who said in an interview that Bush must change his foreign policies. The world cannot see his stature diminishing on a regular basis like it is now.
If 98.4 F is the normal human body temperature then 100F is the threshold to normalcy, proper response to stimuli, and functioning of the human body. I know. I lived with that for three days last week.
It began in a bus ride back home from just another day at college with just a mere throat infection that I have never had in the last 20 years. Never thought I’d hate the bus so much. I don’t remember a damn thing of that journey, just that I was glad to get off and hit the sack.
I made it to college the next day, and it grew back in the afternoon. This time the medic at the college gave me a Dolopar. This stuff is a lifesaver. Its a paracetamol-caffeine combo with a punch, although the concentration is comparable to a Crocin (500mg). Kept me going for the rest of the day but it didn’t solve the throat infection. Some anti-biotics have taken care of that. Amidst this fracas, the college’s Mechanical Engineering Department (that’s us) had another edition of its Technical fest and it was a grand success compared to last years’ mayhem. We finally had the right guys on the job.
Oh I completely forgot about my latest set of Professors and lecturers. Let me not waste any more time.The best one we have this semester is our Machine Design prof. He is loud, clear and doesn’t mix up the fundamentals. If only he’d wear his pants a little lower…at the waist atleast. Very jovial fella and we keep him in good humor.
Dynamics is taught by the same nut that taught us kinematics last semester. From the moment he gave us a worksheet with “Peace, Meditation, Love” typed at the margin, we knew we were dealing with a confused mystic, caught in the wrong job with a virtually non-existent knowledge of English grammar.
Our Hydraulics and Pneumatics prof shows how to start and end a sentence with an ‘ok’, sprinkle a dozen ‘ok’s in between and still talk complete sense as far as hydraulics is concerned. Talented blighter if there ever was one.
The worst of ‘em all takes Metrology. The paper in itself is boring and quite self explanatory, but this man can combine that with his monotonous voice, dull face, and a frightful temper.
Gas Dynamics is spoken too fast in broken English to qualify for an assessment. With a blue uniform and a matching hat, this man can pass off as the in-house janitor cum garbage sorter.
Our Ethics lecturer could have been better…. sigh.
