Of a nubbinectomy and death to the rastrapharians

I am unable to think up new titles any more. I am losing my creativity. I didnt even have a nubbin to begin with. Aaargh.

I met up with boubou, minku, datch and ramya today. Minku and I had decided to go to satyam early and book tickets for the movie. But everything except vettaiyadu villaiyadu was sold out. I had already wasted 10 dollars on that dumb movie, I wont watch it again even if it were for free. So we decided to go to coffee day but before we reached the place we were soaking wet. The tropical icebergs didnt really warm us out.

I also realised how sadly out of touch minku and I are with dumbC. We were almost beaten by the “(we are) dumb c (!) team”. Death to the rastrapharians. And to minku who didnt know what jerusalem was famous for. And to minku again for saying “coffee bar”, “coffee lounge”, “coffee place” “coffee day”, “coffee shop” but not “cafe”. For those curious souls and the dumC team, rastrapharians is a word we just made up.

The dumC team dont have a life. They suck. Sigh I should stop missing them even before I leave chennai :

Minku and datch, goes without saying. Stinker, for all the times hes beaten me up. And for all the “youuu thinkk you are a funnny pannii aaa”. Nabil for making firstbench life fun. KR for all the manU rub-ins. I should really stop now.

I have a 2500 word essay to write on how the cold war affected relations between India and singapore. I have done about 110 words now. I need to submit it on thursday.

The lecturer said we could add pictures. I asked him if each picture couted as a 1000 words.

I am just glad he found it amusing.

I dont like writing essays. The last english assignment I did was writing directions from the railway station to my school. LS was so amused by my answer that she read it out to the whole class, shouted at me and then made me write the thing 10 times.

Making jokes about one’s ears is fine. Not everyone’s left ear is slightly longer than the right. Or even one’s hair. After all, not everyone has wavy hair.

But umbrellas, I feel, are above such things. They should not be commented upon, or made fun of. They shouldnt be broken in half either. Flirting with disaster is a dangerous passtime. As is making unfunny comments which are better kept secret.

I need to stop typing for the sake of moving my fingers. This is yet another nonsensical post written when the author is half drunk, half sleepy, and half wondering why USSR had to break up. The author also comes to the conclusion that three halfs make up a very weird post and a half baked essay. I guess by now most of you want to give me a half, right …

The super supper and everything else

I woke up at 4 15 today and…one sec, 415 in the evening, it was 7 by the time I slept. So anyway, I woke up at 415 and didnt want to go to the canteen for lunch coz by this time I would only get “pratas” at the Indian stall or mongolian chicken at asian. I was getting sick of both so I decided to make my own lunch. I “cooked” two packets of noodles and brought them to my room and sat in front of my comp. By the time I was done irritating varatha and enquiring about two little kids N and N, the noodles had become soggy. To spice it up a bit I added some crumbled oreo cookies, and just for kicks, added some pringles too. Oh well whats life without a bit of adventure…

I just found out my friends’ friend’s friend is my friend. Its a small world after all.

I miss home…St.Mary’s ground…the 5 rupees lime juice…making fun of froggie and bk…hand tennis…compsci labs and dumbc…beach football…planetYumm…trying to finagle treats out of random people for no reason…kabab factory…scotland and oompha loompha…plotting world domination with minku…sigh life moves fast.

Its 4 AM now, just for the record. Some things, atleast, dont change.

NATO and autos

Bargaining with auto fellows is an art. Some have mastered it, some are fine tuning it while yet others have to learn who is an auto man and who is a policeman. There are various techniques of bargaining. Read on and be amazed as consumer awareness takes on new meanings.

BK is considered our resident bargaining expert. He has a standard policy of offering rs 20 below what the auto fellow asks for. Now this works fine in most cases except when, say, the auto guy asks for 25 bucks. Once, spidey bk and ninju were trying to come to the beasant nagar beach from mylapore. The normal fare would be around 35 and the auto guy asked them for 40. Now bk being a man of principles tried to bargain for 20. No sane automan would let bk inside the auto for anything less than 30 and ninju wasnt feathers and leaves either. They finally ended
up walking half the way and still paying 35.

There was this friend of mine from CV(to whom we shall refer to as SP) who redefined the word “bargaining” (and along with it, “mathematics” and “logic” but you shall understand as you keep reading). There were three of us and we were trying to get to his house which was somewhere in T.Nagar. We hailed an auto and this is what ensued.

*the conversation happened mostly in tamil, translate for appropriate effect*

SP : Anna, T.Nagar *some place* poonum.

Auto guy : 45 ruppees.

SP : for 3 people 45 aa?

Auto guy : amam…

SP : Appo, for one person how much?

Auto guy : ??

SP : Ille, 3 people 45 na, 1 person rs 15 dhanae ?

Auto guy : ???????????????????

SP : Adhu dhanae maths. logicala paarungo.

Auto guy *looks totally bewlidered*

SP : Ippo, 15 na, then for 3 people only petrol will be extra…so 25 ruppees ok a?

I decline to mention the conversation which followed. The auto man displayed a colourful vocabulary and we had to find another auto. Well no harm in trying I guess.

And some of you maybe wondering where NATO comes into this post. It actually doesnt. I rhyme for the heck of it.

The banian and the bird brain

Author’s note: This factual piece is entirely fictitious . Any resemblances to real life “characters” and incidents are purely coincidental

Story 1 : If you can’t practice what you preach, just shut up.

Once upon a time, there lived a group of kids whose relation to each other was that they had studied in the same class. All of them had also just passed out of school and were spending their “well deserved” holiday as fruitfully as possible. They played basketball and cricket everyday and football at the beach once a week. Among them was a certain character called N.VinVin. This VinVin had once injured his “pinky” while trying to catch a tennis ball and was supposedly not allowed to play games for a week. And so he didnt turn up for the cricket games but when the class played football, he made a not-very-dramatic appearance. I guess he came because he heard kadalai at the beach was very good.(Hey, I mean the eatable variety ! honest !). And so, since he could not play, he took up the post of Sven Moron Eriksson. As fate would have it, he took it upon himself to reposition my entire team and finally, the only people standing anywhere near the goal keeper(me) were the two forwards of the opposite team. Needless to say, we lost badly and it wasnt too hard to find a scapecow scapegoat. But it really was his fault.

This story doesnt end with the preaching though. The next week, Mr.VinVin’s fingers had become alright and he wanted to prove to us that he wasnt all talk. But sadly, or maybe unsurprisingly, Wayne Loony couldnt score a goal. And whats more, he managed to miss from 3 feet in front of the goal. He then decided to be the goal keeper and who can get past the great Buffoon ? Seemingly everyone. And he blamed it on the north wind.

The following is based on another one of those “characters” in the above mentioned fictitious class.

Story 2 : You should give up on cricket when…

Rameez hits you out of the ground. Or when Deepan’s kid brother(who is about as tall as the bat) hits you for 6 runs in 3 balls. Or when the opposing team has scored 22 runs in 7 overs and 10 of those came in your first over. Or when you take 15 deliveries to complete one over. Or when the only person who thinks you can bowl is you.

Some valuable lessons in life he needs to learn…

Common sense 101

Repeating the same joke 10 times doesnt make it funny.

Saying “fp”(feel pannadhae) everytime someone says something you dont understand is not really a smart thing to do.

But then, you wouldnt be doing that if you were smart.

When you make a joke, run it through a spell checker first. That way, you will prevent people from laughing at the wrong things. But then, that might be the only way you can get anyone to laugh at your jokes. Decisions decisions….

When you are called a bashibazouk, dont start with “As if…” and stop there.

And they lived happily ever after.

(The names in the title are interchanged. Pardon the artistic liberties)

Memoirs of a rush(i)a – Chapter 3

I just realised that I have never really talked about what went on during phsyics classes, the most “happening” periods of school. This means a lot of things (other than physics) happened during these classes. General scene during a physics period :

1st bench : Swarun(anon2) avidly listening to every word the teacher utters

2nd bench : Sriram prasath bugging kaushik, needless to say neither of them listening to a word

3rd bench : Ashwin messaging siva who is messaging vinod(might be worthwhile to mention that
the 3 of them sit a few feet away from each other).

4th bench : Man and pointerram thinking up complex problems, somewhat related to whatever chitra is talking about.

5th bench : Nabil furiously copying english answers

last bench : me and ninju playing bingo(we always use our physics classworks)

and suddenly

Chitra : At about Niranjan, what are you doing ?

Ninju : 23

Me : 14

Ninju : 5

Pointerram : dei ninju she is calling you da…

Ninju : uh ? oh..er writing notes ma’am

Chitra : ok…nabil..can you please get up and answer this question ? You seem to be copying
something from that time…

Nabil *gets up, grins at everyone who is sitting in front of him* : I dont konw ma’am

Chitra then goes on to ask sriram prasath, kaushik, brainpraveen, tb and datch, none of whom seem to know the answer.

Vinod *after suddenly waking up from a cell-phone induced slumber blabbers something*

Chitra : Adhu ille ma. I think rushi knows the answer to the question. pleasssse get up

Me : Eh ? oh that..oh yeah… i remember…wait wait….

Ninju *turns to me and grins like a fool*

Me *thinks for a couple of more minutes* : Um..ma’am can you repeat the question ?

Chitra : sit down, sit down
*and promptly goes on with the lessons. nothing wrong with the class today*

Once in 11th, we had csc as the last period. Kvkk didnt notice the bell ringing and was still standing inside class and talking to swarun(anon2), not letting us leave. It was already 3:20 and we were trying to find ways of politely letting kvkk know how late it was. I came up with this wonderful idea. Only, it wasnt very effective. This is what happened :

Me : Sir, is TIME.h supported by a gcc compiler ?

Kvkk : yes, it is supported..why do you ask ?

Me : We are using TIME.h in our project sir and we were wondering if we would be able to SEE
the TIME in a gcc compiler.

Kvkk : yes yes you can see the time

*and promptly continues talking to swarun(anon2)*

Finally, swarun got the hint and told kvkk that it was really late and he let us go.

And we played football again today. This time, my team had the non existent defence but we still managed to hold them to 11-6. Some weirdo joined our team halfway, I dont think anyone knew who he was. His vision seemed to be restricted to members of the opposite sex and no one else was getting the ball. But Aatha(frog) was our hat-trick hero though if you ask datch, he would tell you that frog should have scored atleast 5 more goals with the number of chances he got. I agree with him.

Motocross madness and Life in an 8 inch diameter

All due respect/credit/thanks/apologies to Microsoft and Star Sports

It all began with the forging of the great rings, three were given to the elves, immorta.. that day when we were playing cricket at St.Mary’s ground. I didnt have a ride home and was looking for a lift. I didnt want to walk home coz it takes 49 minutes and frog (er..navneet) would probably be my only companion. I already had the unfortunate experience of walking home with him once and apart from bugging me about how he was walking so that he could correct his figure and correct figures in college, he also dumped me when we reached his house. I had to walk the rest of the way alone, I wasnt really complaining though.

Well so holy cow Vinod offered me a ride and I gladly accepted. So, to say vinod drives like ..or shall we say wants to drive like Valentino Rossi is an understatement. As we overtook Splendours and even Honda Citys(mind you, we were riding on a tvs scooty(i think)) on the Adyar bridge(or the “Thiru vi ka bridge for the wise), he reassured me with the words “when you ride with me, you have to risk certain things. like your life…” and we nearly avoided buying an old lady on a tvs 50 a premature ticket to heaven. As we were coming down the adyar flyover at what I would put at 65kph(and passing a nearby skoda octavia), the bike started wobbling a bit. And this is what happened :

Vinod : Dei stop shaking da..
Me : I cant help it..its the way you drive !
Then, Bang
Me : What was that ??
Bike starts shaking madly
We roll to a halt
Vinod : Er… I think the rear wheel is punctured
Me : Oh.. um… so what am I supposed to do ?
Vinod : You can get off the bike for starters and help me push it off the road

We got stranded in the middle of the road, aptly, right in front of the tvs service station. But we pushed the bike over to a nearby puncture shop and the guy gave us a bill of 85 bucks. Vinod unfortunately didnt have a single paisa and I paid for the whole thing. Quite an adventure huh.

And today, at the Stadt de france Beasant nagar beach, the greatest football match with the goal 15 size 11 adidas shoe steps wide took place. We were 8 on each team and well it didnt take too long to figure out who were the better team.

In my team, there were two strikers, kvt and vinod, zero mid fielders and 3 defenders, stinku, pointer and shaik, and Js who was running around not really doing anything. Soumi was on our team too but Im still not sure what position she was playing(not to say that she was bad ofcourse). And me was goalkie. The other team had 2 defenders ninju and sridhu(some may argue that this amounts to more than two but I will let the debate continue), 1 midfielder, the mystic(who was a bit rusty today I think, I didnt see her kick the ball farther than 3 feet) and the rest of the team playing forwards.

It turned out to be a slaughter and by the time we had the first drinks break, the score was 8-3, our team on 8. But no one bothered to get the poor goalkeeper(me) any water and I was dying of thirst when the second half began. Anand and Ajit joined us, Anand on our team. The slaughter stopped. It turned out to be a massacre. The final score was 16-8 or somethinglike that, I lost count after 12. Kvt scored most of our goals, though this was due to a non existent defence. They would have scored quite a few goals too, with kr and dd kicking free kicks from everywhere towards the goal but the great goalkie was there to stop them(most of the time). Some of you might now be wondering with concern, what happened to the poor goalkeeper who was dying of thirst? Well the rusty mystic took pity on him and got him some water. But most of it was finished off by stinku and siva. sigh….life…

Next time, we should probably have a wider goal on one side and lesser number of frogs who cant even spell “offside”, let alone know what it means, playing to even things out. Maybe it will do the trick. Maybe.

There never was much hope, just a fool’s hope.

(All apologies to Gandalf)

Memoirs of a rush(i)a – Chapter 1

RP for the first(and the penultimate) time, decided to give us homework in 11th. She gave us about 10 sums to do over the weekend I think. Needless to say, there were 7 people(out of 46) who had actually done the homework. So she made the entire class(without the 7) stand outside and gave us all blackmarks. As a means to redeem ourselves, she gave us 10 more sums that week and asked us to complete it. This time, there were actually 8 people who had completed it. The whole excercise was repeated. The only thing that happened out of this was RP decided not to give us homeworks again.

And then there was typing class. There is a guy in class who we shall call ASK. So this ASK suddenly wanted to make paper rockets and let them fly inside the typing room. But only problem was he didnt know how to make paper rockets. So he asked me and I made one for him. Well, genius can always be imitated and he made some 20 rockets and started a rocket fight with two other idiots who were sitting opposite to us. I think these two idiots should have known better seeing one of the idiots was the class leader. So the next day, typing sir promptly reports the matter to RP . She comes to class and this is what happened.

RP : So , who were the ones responsible for throwing rockets in class ? Was it Niranjan ?

*He was on her goodbooks even then*

* Ninju immediately protested his innocence and claims that he wasnt even in our batch(which is why he escaped I guess)*

*RP turns to ASK who was the assistant leader*

RP : So ASK, who threw the rockets ?

ASK *gets up and acts as if he is in a great dilema*: “Rushi Padhuman threw them. And……*he names the two idiots very fast hoping RP wont hear their names*…

Me : HUH ??? WHAT??? I THREW THEM ?? WHY YOU #%&@^*&$

RP *Turns to the idiot who was the leader* : I am very disappointed in you. Please go apologise to your typing sir*sends both of them off*

RP *turns to me* : I should have known. Well ?

Me : I didnt throw the rockets !! I just made them, I didnt throw even one !

RP : So they flew by themselves ?*grins*

Me : Ahem…*Looks menacingly at ASK who grins back stupidly at me*

RP : Go, go apologise to him(she meant typing sir).

We go to typing sir who says he didnt even complain to RP. He says babu did it.( I actually dont know who threw rockets in babu’s class even now). But he made me take all those @#$%@# rockets with me for some strange reason. So I carry them along and on the corridor meet who else but LS.

LS : Rushi Padhuman, what are you carrying in your hand ?

Me : Ah er..uhm….paper rockets ?

LS : Yes I can see that. What are you doing with them ?

Me : Uhm…typing sir asked me to throw them away ..so im er..taking them to the trash can..

LS : Hmm…were they used in class ?

Me : Uh..no no *looks like ahem lost sheep*

LS*actually believes me* : Hmm…ok go.

Later in class, she complimented the class leader for being so skillful in papercraft Sigh there was a time when teachers were actually taken in by my innocent looks…

Blast from the past

As I was trying to think up a new title for my blog, I suddenly felt the urgent desire to rant about what happened exactly half a year ago.

November 1

It was a cloudy day and there was a threat of rain. It was also the day of the culturals organised by the Computer Science society of Anna university(or whatever they call themselves). Ashwin, NR and I had registered for the quiz and the first event was the prelims. The questions werent too hard but they certainly held a surprise. None of them had anything to do with computers or computer science(except maybe “Expand GPRS” to which Ratha( one of my classmates who was also in the quiz, though in the other team) had answered “Global positioning Random Systems”). We thought that maybe this was just for the prelims and the finals would be different.

(At this point, the historian would like to mention that as much as he would like to write about everything that happened, he will have to digress and his editors have politely requested him to refrain from doing so)

Well so there was also dumbC for which we hadn’t registered. dd, kr and I decided to give it a whirl and while we got “absent minded professor” in 44 seconds(the cutoff being 45), we failed to get “Akbar”. Then we went to a spin-a-yarn competition. We did a nice job of bringing together RP, south african jails and jailers, parking tickets and and partial differentiation in the 2 odd minutes he let us speak. But we didnt even get selected for the finals (Not that we expected to though). The judge told us we didnt get points because we didnt stick to the topic(which was “Math teachers always multiply something something..”). Forgive me, I thought this was spin a yarn.

There was also a written adzap kinda thing(I dont know what they called it), we had to design posters for a theme. We picked airlines and actually came up with a smashing poster. We had an awesome tagline (“One wing to rule them all, one wing to fly them. One wing to bring them all …”), it was beautifully symbolic(we named it WTC – Wright Through the Ccenter). We had amazing illustrations(by dd) showing our plane go (w)right through the World Trade Center(think WTC) buildings. The plane was, ofcourse, un(h)armed. We had cool stats showing how much beer we had on each plane. Or champagne if thats your poison. We had stats to show how many of our planes crashe in a year. We also had a cool logo showing The One Wing.

And then there was the Sacred Heart team which painted their poster in shocking pink and fluttered their eyelashes demurely while turning that abomination in.

Guess who won and who didnt even get a mention…….

The judge was this stupid looking guy who wore a violet designer jacket(so lets call him VJ). He acts like some Slim Shady clone(or tries to talk like one) and makes jokes, 9 out of 10 of which fall flat. We couldnt hear the tenth due to some problem with the speaker. So we are all sitting in the auditorium and this VJ dude calls up the Sacred Heart girls and gives them the first prize. And then he asked them if they wanted to take a photo with him. But sadly, he recieved a nose job(read cut), they said they had to leave and…left. With the prize though. We would have gladly taken a picture with him if thats what he wanted…sigh. Hey come on, it was 500 bucks !

After this outrage, we were all standing near some building where we are asked to stand for some reason which I still am not aware of when we heard that the dumbC finals and after that, the quiz finals would be starting at the main auditorium. This place was at a considerable distance from where we were staking out and suddenly it started to rain. Actually, it was more as if the sky was falling on our heads. Holy co.. Vinod got his bike and gave me and dd a lift to that place but all three of us were soaked to the bone. When we entered the auditorium, there stood a smarty pants(to whose blog I shall not link here) who said “Hey rushi, your hair is finally flat now!”. Ha ha.

Both the teams had qualified for the quiz finals. And surprise number 2 : None of the questions in the finals were about computer science either. Apart from being woefully underprepared, my team also had the advantage of having some brainiacs in it.

There was one question in particular.

“This gadget is known as the untiring soldier, ever faithful, ever accurate and never misses.”.

Most of the teams were going on about heat seeking missiles and nuclear bombs when the question passed on to us.

Me : Dude landmines.

Ash : You think so ? I dont know…

NR : I think it is cell phones.

Me : Cell Phones ??? What are you talking about??

NR : Yeah, never misses, always accurate…

Me : What kinda weapon is a cell phone ?? What do you do, shine the light into your enemy’s eyes?????

Ash : I kinda agree with nr here…

Me : Dude no dont do this

Quiz master : So team 4, do you know the answer ?

Ash : Cell phones.

Quiz master : ??? *thinks he has not heard him right* Come again ?

(Well I dont blame him, he was hearing lots of “Panzer tanks” and “F-15s” so cell phones were kinda new to him)

Ash *decides to elaborate* : Cellular phones you konw..mobile phones ?

Quiz master : Uhm no..thats not the right answer.

And guess what the correct answer was.

Landmines.

That question was worth 5 points.

We came 4th.

The third place team was 5 points ahead of us.

This is called rubbing salt into the wounds.

Did you guys see..

..the promo for the new “Ju”"Man”ji movie ? Heard it is sci-fi horror. One of the lead characters acted in “Neal and NIKKI”. Anyway, here it is.

source : The Hindu(now you know who you can blame the bad quality of image on)

PS : Dont know what possessed the photographer who took this.

PPS : Ninju remember, violence begets violence !

So near and yet 5 days away

Well chemistry got over today and um I will reserve my comments till after I recieve my marks.

But I do hope that my paper goes to a kindhearted examiner.

Who has had a good breakfast with lots of vada.

And lots of hot tea (or coffee if that is their poison).

I wouldn’t mind if they win a lottery the previous day either !

Well back to reality. While I was wading through p block and organic chemistry, some sudden bolts of illumination struck me. I will share them with you now.

Name a chemical test to detect emotions.

Fe(h)lings test

Why is it destructive to convert benzene to aniline ?

It requires Annilation

And finally, Give reasons why BK will cause holes in the ozone layer(besides the obvious ofcourse)

He is a FreeOn (for the ignorant and the unenlightened and, if you ask me, the incredibly luck(believe me, if you havent heard him, you are lucky), he keeps saying freea vidu)

And Paddy Van Gogh is back with yet another masterpiece. This one is going to the Louvre. So get your autographs now before it is too late.

I call it the “Ze lady with ze Bajaj(Think sunny) smile”.

Thank you thank you !

PS : Some of you have been asking me why I havent posted “in a long while”. Please note that I last posted on March 13th which was 4 days ago. And we ALL have/had board exams so kindly bear with me if I am not posting everyday. It will soon change though !