so finally someone called 'car' (??) who recognises my talent with Snake 1..yup...you got it right...it's damn tough to get a high score on that one without bonuses...in fact that is one of the reasons why i refuse to get rid of that nokia model although it competes with the cordless phone at home in terms of size and weight...

moving on and forward...

48 hours to the first of the D-days...come sunday..and 1135 heads will be bent over sheets of papers with all kinds of questions testing their worth...and strangly enough even if we do meet known faces before we enter...and wish them luck...secretly we will be hoping that the ones sitting around us do not do as well...that is what competitve exams do to humans...sigh!

my greatest regrets...

was born around 3 decades too late...and grew up in the wrong city...
can't write poetry...
sufficiently moved yet insufficiently inspired...and worse still..struggling with language...

one slightly scary movie (scary enough to give me the jitters and scary enough for suhas to make fun of me..) and listening to Coldplay through the night...

Chris Martin is the man of the moment!!

hence in his own words..."Make Trade Fair...eat more chocolate...and listen to more of Coldplay!!"

now after that ...May 1...May 15...bring it on!!

and finally...i have done it!! achieved a top score of 774 in Snake!! do you know how life changing this achievement is...this means that i have actually improved my brain to finger co-ordination through sustained practise and finger excercises over a year...to move from a humble to 333 to 774!!

and to all those who think that this piece of news is completely insignificant...i have just one word for you....HMPH!!

so nearly there but not quite...the nightmares are beginning to happen...but they might as well...they have a role to play too in this exam thingy...and boy! are they playing their part well or what!!

so geeks pulled through the first day at work...called him up all bright and early to wish him luck..just so that he doesen't fall off to sleep on his first day at work!!

and by the way...i am beginning to love math!! i think partial fractions were made for math morrons like me...

Happy New Year peoples!! (belated though..) don't ask...we south indians have a weird sense of chronology...but this time..we are joined by the punjus, assamese (yeah...assam is still a part of india)... and the bongs!! and please to be noting..amongst the southies..its the keralites and tamilians who are celebrating new year...(and not one huge mass of people from the south referred to as 'madrasis' by ignoramuses...)

so we celebrate a new year some four times in a year in india...how cool is that!!

moving on and forward...

have been playing the role of a dutiful daughter to the hilt by helping pa send his resumes to various prospective employers...must say that he is the only one i can impress with my tecchie skills...

so he decided to treat me by taking us out...where do you ask...well...my dad is not much of a 'movie..ice cream person'..so he took us out to the crowded bylanes of colaba to buy a suitcase...yeah..we are like that only...buying a suitcase is a family affair...

but to be fair...i must agree that things have substantially improved since i was a kid...when i was in a foul mood as a kid...pa used to come up with the ultimate remedy..."Let's go for an outing..."he would declare...and he would head straight for the scooter...pick me and make me stand on the footboard in front of him..and off we would speed to the vegetable market!! and i would be squealing away...coz obviously...buying veggies in the dirty mucky slushy markets of bhubhaneshwar was not even in the same pin code as an outing!!

so i think he has finally got the message...that buying groceries or vegetables do not count as 'outings'. so now we convert other trivial middle class pursuits into family affairs and have learnt to see them as outings instead...buying suitcases...taking the car to the service station...etc are now officially designated as 'family outings'!

totally offtrack...

miss you shibbs!! Wish you a happy new year and do bring back some of the bihu (spring in assamese...you morrons) with you!

after four hours spent trying to conquer the world of competitive exams...spent half an hour beating Imran and Sanyam in table tennis....is that good or is that good?

oh by the way...if this world has to be an ounce better than it actually is...then imran has to be discovered...really... something rebellious about him in his own way...his thought process...and yet too modest to talk about it...it's hard to believe that he is actually for real...

someday i will write economics for kids...and it will have stories in them that have characters with funny names...( please to be noting...at this point of time...i am heavily influenced by the question papers i am solving that use the names Ramu Somu and Shyamu repeatedly...question after question...)

so met the tiniest kid with the biggest glares on her nose and with the squeakiest voice ever!!!

and also ran the fastest in a very long time to catch a train...

ok ...am overdoing this superlative bit...

amidst the various books randomly stacked on top of each other...amidst the many sheets of paper with random calculations and stick figures and odd phone numbers scribbled...amidst my various moments spent during a day trying to figure out the complexities of Calculus...

stare at me... three pairs of soulful eyes from the cover page of Alan Paton's 'Cry the Beloved Country'...from a corner peeps a toblerone wrapper that has been thoughtfully converted into a bookmark...

'No shit!' scribbled across the first page after much deliberation...

Rather live with a heartful of memories than with a head that is wiped clean?

Perhaps it will remain like the eternal sunshine of a spotless mind...

and this blog is dedicated to all the horrible terrible math teachers that i have encountered until today!! thanks to you i now suffer from fear of numbers...

so to all of you (especially Miss Castellino) if you ever read this...i hope your kids hate math and go thru precisely what i am going thru every minute of my life these days...

hmph!!

strange are the ways that one copes with failure...from becoming someone who always had 'a plan' i have now become someone who has Plan A- Z!! :)

oh and one more thing...my favourite icon is back on the telly tube...so that means there is new found inspiration!! Malcolm in the middle is back...trust me...his return is more than reassuring!!

Geeks ( the geek from IIM- L) is back for a hot shot summer placement with ICICI!! he was cribbing that he should have chosen GE over ICICI!! snob!!

Geeks also for the very first time questioned my trajectory of thinking..."The IIM has taught me the value of time vibs.." he says. yeah..the IIMs tend to do that...

good ol' pa finally bid adieu to 25 years of service to India's only Development Finance Institution left...IDBI...

never thought of him to be the senti kinds...but he was a little overwhelmed on his last day at work...he looked kinda displaced when he came back home with his files and visiting cards...all neatly arranged by his PA in alphabetical order...

i guess it is difficult to suddenly stay at home and pretend that it's a sunday everyday...trust me it is...for all of us...

so two more months here in this ivory tower of ours and then we will move out to make way for some other Chief General Manager to occupy this house with his family...so that he may come back everyday and tell his kids about what he does in office all day...the different kinds of companies that come to him...the sick ones, the fradulent ones. the ambitious ones, the over ambititous ones, the solvent ones, the ones with political strings attached, etc, etc.

i never looked forward to sunday ever! it was never a great deal for me...but now i do coz i will actually have to look up the calendar to figure it out...

and the good news continues to pour in...funny man Cherian has made it to XLRI!!