Monday, May 11, 2009

EXAM TIME-3..Tanny and and an affair with his (E) book

I know I am not that big of a blogger (am I ?). OK I am not, but so what…..i try to start my write-ups in a different way. But this time I am caught, caught in a big fishhhhhh……
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[This was what I got through when I looks at just 1 post in the month of may..but the experiences of the second week made my fingers ….travel round the keyboard as under……]

Don’t know him ,never even thought about him..he is some protégé of Berkeley..California university. Made some system called the MINIX., and yes married some Dutch(poor she..tch tch..). so that’s it,nothing more, NOTHING MORE , till came the networks subject, and got just 3 mins of swashbuckling intelligence in a 3 hour long paper. So what was to be done, I thought of buying some intelligence from this Dutch’s husband. Well , he was ….Andrew S. Tanenbaum. T. A..N E…N….too tough a name , lets call him..”Tanny”.

So Tanny wrote a book on Networks, and I had to study,for that I had to have a book, which I had not, so I had it have it, technically speaking, I was out of one book and had to buy it. You know buying for me is a tough task as I carry a euphemistic wallet with not so euphemistic “ only 50 Rs. in it”. Now I was at the crossroads of taking a “udhaar” (sorry don’t know the the right English) …then going to the bookshop, and getting success in galore or just….walking towards the gallows of the backpaper. Talking of the udhaar I got nothing, neither the udhaar nor the book shop.

What I got was a network phobia, what to do…all those protocols …what to do….those layers that were like piling up likelayers of my grave….what to to….and then tired with all those what to do’s , my trembling hands went to that Brin’s and Page’s miracle GOOGLE ..and typing some free ebook and passing through the seas of links ….at last found 1 Rapidshare link. And so I found a real friend, as if rescuing me in those gallows like a counter terrorist, I found Tanny’s book, without udhaar and the shop. They use to call it the E-book. So a new relationship…was in the making…

This e-book of mine , was a strict disciplinarian ,like Tanny I guess. I have this knack of feeling a book, touching its pages with full passion…but this time when tried to do it with this book, it said,”DON’T TOUCH, we’re here for study so don’t be PHYSICAL.” Unlike all my books at the almirah, kissing dust at every nook and corner, this new aristocrat friend of mine resided on my Rs 40,000 prized possession ,the lappy. And we used to look at each other , and just look,….sometimes scrolling , just to feel that we were alive. This e-book thing was turning out to be a boring marathon. No flutter of pages, no division of books, no pride of the possession of a thick book. Just scroll, read ,scroll, read…..

Prior to this event, I used to develop an emotional bondage with books. I used to be filled with passion when buying a new book, smiling on seeing the attractive paperback, elated on finishing each page, celebrating while finishing it all,even crying on torn pages. But this time I was just, as I said before scrolling, scrolling. I was like a man who married a lady who took over my mansion and now I was just..scrolling and scrolling. Also I had to digest the wide eyed looks of all the mates on seeing me and my electronic partner together.

So 10 days got over until a paper came whose real BOOK I had and I just caught hold of the book, and instead of reading its content , I held it and cried and cried.

(The deluge has not yet ended, still operating with that e-book( electronic name for studying), lets see what happens in the paper.)

Friday, May 1, 2009

EXAM TIME-2 ..OF MIDSEMS, IPL AND NETWORKS

Teacher : How many states are there in India?
Student: 8
Teacher: Name them?
Student: Punjab Kings, Delhi Daredevils,Kolkata Knightriders, Deccan Chargers, Chennai Superkings,Bangalore Royal Challengers, Rajasthan Royals and Mumbai Indians.
Now your chance , what would you expect teacher does, a slap, a tooth busting punch,or a scolder ,well all wrong , it’s a shot of Rs 100 in the table on a match between KKR and CSK by the teacher. Quite a cliché now but “such is the madness of IPL these days.”
And back in our island, our hos, we are in a situation where we got to realize that the difference between 12 in the morn and 12 in the dark is just that the former is white and the latter is pitch dark as the ” sleeping factor ” has been taken by a chronic devil called Midsems. Period where we get indulged in a 5 days relationship with books, fall in love with the notes ( of others’ of course..) and marry all those booklets that give you a fizzer that these are the Q ‘n’ A that there in the papers.(the otherwise always happens though ,but you see it’s a marriage).
But you know the IPL , phew…..its like South Africa are the exam centres, and the match statistics are the questions, of course Lalit Modi being the paper checker. The tradition seen in the matches is the one following which Azharuddin missed in centennial test by a whisker, of course BETTING From 5 to 50 to 100 to 1000 everything for you players. Its all happening out there. Even the smoking of Marlboro Light by SRK is talked with as much delight as a sixer hit by Tendulkar.
So coming back…. apart from the festival that we are celebrating from 4:30 to 12:30 in the night (IPL). We get to remember that we have our midsems too, of course sometimes this chronic devil gives us the taste of its blood. So it was our Networks paper , morning 8 ‘o’ clock, we reached the centre containing the madness of the game played last night, but then, ooh then, what to tell?. Seriously how can you describe a paper 3 hrs long and you know just the 3 mins portions of it.
Well that paper was an incident as most of us , the normal guys had to pass the 3 hrs- 3 min of that paper without moving the pen. Apart from few scribbles of some protocols, some of us were( esp me) were there thinking about the chicken that we were to have the same evening, some were practicing their shots with their wrist cum bat just emulating the hero of last night . And some tch tch tch for them who were trying to spend half of their time in the toilet.
So these days with Midsems on and IPL blazing , networks also rolling somewhere near, its all happening here in this outlandish campus the other way round….yes we are “:watching xams and writing matches.”
Lets see what happens in the endsems.
(P.S. : Humble appeal to ICC not to keep any INDIA matches in that season.)