To Sleep or Not to Sleep?

So here's your usual everyday situation. Prof teaching in class. Guy sitting on the last bench and dozing off. First benchers listening intently to prof. Rest of the guys half-heartedly listening or 'conversing' or staring into space. It's the middle of quiz week (so most of them would be sleepy anyway) and it's a nice, pleasant day.

 

Somehow the prof notices the guy sleeping at the back of the classroom. Attempts are made to wake him up. Dazedly he realises that the prof is talking about why students should not sleep in class and that this topic was in fact brought about solely because of him catching his forty winks.

 

And hence followed one of the best conversations I have ever heard in class:

 

Prof: Why are you sleeping in class? Don't you sleep in your room?

 

Guy: Sir, I couldn't sleep last night.

 

Prof: So you sleep in class. Next class onwards you will sit here in the first bench, where I can see you.

 

Guy: ... 

 

Prof: Why didn't you sleep yesterday?

 

Guy: (And this is the best part ... He could have said that he was mugging for quiz, which the prof would have more readily accepted. But, no ... He had to say:) Mosquitoes, Sir.

 

Prof: ... Mosquitoes? Ah ... Ok ... So they bit you all night?
 

Guy: No Sir, I woke up at 3 a.m. and killed as many as I could.

 

Prof: You're an engineer, you should have improvised upon your methods of preventing the mosquitoes from entering your room in the first place.

 

Guy: Yes Sir, I woke up and I covered all my windows. (That's how the 'engineer' solved the problem.)

Prof: You could just have used mosquito coils or All-Out or something like that.

Guy: Sir I can't use mosquito mats because I'm allergic to them.

 

Prof: (dumbfounded) You have an answer for everything.

 

Our 'engineer' had made his point :P

Q: I use my cell phone for?

A: Apart from taking and receiving calls (or perhaps giving missed calls :P), I'm guessing the top answers would mostly be these (in no particular order):

• Taking photos/videos
• Playing games
• Listening to music
• Text messaging
  
• Internet browsing
  

However, nearly the most innovative and interesting use for phones that I have ever seen, I got to see today in Tifanys. (Sorry about the pic clarity though.)



An idli on a phone .. Awesome! Never even imagined I could use them like that!

So .. Next time you don't have a plate .. Well, you know what to do. :)

MSB = M?? Sciences ..

A very straightforward question to anyone who's reading this.

What percentage of the institute's major landmark locations (hostels, messes, facility centers etc.) is an average insti-resident actually aware of?

Normally I would not have given this issue much thought, since most of the people who I know had explored the place inside out within the first month of their arrival, and the rest knew most of the place before the end of their first semester. However, after this incident that happened yesterday in the mess, I was shocked to hear the things I heard, to put it mildly.

So I was talking to this MA freshie. General stuff, how's life, how're acads going .. the usual blah blah. However, as I casually asked her which hostels her friends are in, the "conversation" somehow turned into somewhat of a ragging session about locations of hostels, much to my delight. And the replies I got delighted me even further.



Here's how the conversation went:


Me: So how many hostels do you know of?

MA Freshie: I think 15, right?

Me: (with a very sweet smile) How many of those can you name?

Freshie: Come on da, I'm almost done with my 1st year, why are you ragging me now?

Me: Aww, come on .. Tell me. I just want to know. (Sweeter smile)

Freshie: Ok .. So there's Tambi and Pamba and Narmad and Godav and blah blah blah (She listed some 13 of them, leaving out Alak And Jam. Fair enough.)

Me: So which ones are the four newly constructed hostels?

Freshie: Uh, let's see .. Those are Tambi, Pamba, Mahanadi and Tapti. (Lol)

Me: Ohkay .. Then which is the hostel in front of Guru?

Freshie: (with a huge confident smile) Narmad.

Me: How about the hostel in front of Himalaya?

Freshie: Uh .. I'm forgetting the name .. Wait, I'll tell you in some time.

Me: Okay .. Then which three are the ones at the end?

Freshie: (again confidently) Ganga, Mandak and Mahanadi. (She didn't realise she'd already located Mahanadi elsewhere.)

Me: (smirking now) Nice .. Where's Alak?

Freshie: Behind Narmad.

Me: Ah. (huge grin here) Nice. How many floors does Tambi have?

Freshie: Come on da, it has four. It's one of those last hostels.

Me: .. (Lovely. What's next?)

Freshie: And then there's Saras too right, in front of Basera, next to the football field.

Me: What's the football field called?

Freshie: Ok, wait a sec. I know it's called something, it's definitely not Sangam, I'm forgetting the name.

Me: ...



My expression? LOL. And it got better ..



Me: Ok .. So pack hostels, how many departments do you know?

Freshie: I know most of them, not all though.

Me: Where's Navarch?

Freshie: It has this big wave tank right, I saw it once, although I don't really remember where it is.

Me: Biotech?

Freshie: Somewhere at the end of the main road.

Me: Chem?

Freshie: Near basky courts. (I figured pointing out the difference between Chemical and Chemistry wasn't really worth it.)

Me: ESB?

Freshie: I know where all of these are da .. Why are you paining me?

Me: Ok, what does CRC stand for?

Freshie: Classroom Complex.

Me: ChLT?

Freshie: Chemical Lecture Theatre. (Lol again.)

Me: CLT?

Freshie: Classroom Lecture Theatre. (Double lol.)

Me: Ok .. MSB? (Warning to Mech junta: BRACE YOURSELF)

Freshie: Mathematical Sciences something na?



Yay .. Whatte freshie!


(continued)

Me: Uh huh ... (Imagine the expression I had.) Okay .. Okay, that's good. HSB?

Freshie: Ob I'd know HSB da, it's the Humanities department.

Me: Ok .. where's HSB?

Freshie: 2nd floor of CLT na ..

Me: And where's MSB?

Freshie: 1st floor of CLT.



That was it. The Lol-Theorem had stretched beyond limits by now. I couldn't take it any more. And thankfully by this time, she had finished her dinner and made some excuse about going to mug. And I went over to some Chem junta and told them this story, from whom I got reactions totally appropriate for Mathematical Sciences Block. Of course, I got some chiding for ragging people like this at this time of the year, but I could sense it wasn't whole-hearted.

Anyway, nice dinnertime entertainment, I gotta admit.

And you might want to rethink the answer to that question after reading this, if you had it all figured out :P

And yet another one :)

I guess my blog is pretty much on its way to be the official limelight for all those silent, living-in-the-shadow creatures that are found in the campus, as all of you readers are going to very solemnly acknowledge by the picture that I am uploading in this post. I really don't know how they do it, but somehow all of these guys seem to intuitively navigate their way right in front of my camera, and they seem to do tiny little animal/insect dances (which may or may not be cute, depending on the life form). From cats sitting on my windowsill in the middle of the night, to leeches stickily climbing up my door; from bulls with raging hormones to red ant infestations, I'm just like an animal magnet (Not to be taken literally).

Anyway, this guy is officially the most recent addition to my list of weird creatures to have posed for my camera.


Beautiful, ain't he?

And despite the poor thing having only seven legs, the determined struggle that he put up against my desperate efforts to sweep him out of my room really deserves special mention here. Sometimes I really feel like applauding all creatures like this, who have tremendous abilities to invoke inspiration.

Anyway, I have to admit, Spidey here has certainly inspired in me a huge new-found respect for Little Miss Muffet, and she has my complete sympathy and understanding for jumping out of her tuffet (which, by the way, I did too .. only that it was a chair and not a tuffet). Anyway, I salute her too .

And lastly, I guess it's time I changed my blog description a bit: The lemonades aren't being given to you to freshen you up, but they're necessarily required to be there just in case you need calming down. What say? :P

Hello?

I've been here in the insti for only one and a half years. Not a very long time, but then, the variety of ways that the people here use to draw my attention towards them, has diversified to such an extent by now, that I feel a post is absolutely required to highlight the most interesting ones. Of course, there's the usual occasional person who adds me on GTalk using ids like rakhisawant or yellowredboy, and the frequent forwarded message from unknown numbers belonging to people who are too "shy" to tell me who they are .. But these two specific instances definitely deserve special mention. (And I will be adding more when they happen.)


14th February, 2008: 3 o' clock in the morning. My phone rings.

Me: (groggy voice) Hello?

Guy on phone: Ya, hallo, is this Akshari?

Me: Yeah .. Who is this?

Guy: Ya, uh .. um ..

Me: Hello?

Guy: Mumble-mumble.

Me: Sorry? Didn't get you.

Guy: Ya, uh .. I just wanted to say .. uh ..

(No sound for 10 seconds)

Me: (still groggy) Hello?

Guy: Ya, uh .. Sorry. (Whispering in background)

Me: Hellooo?

Guy: Ya. Uh .. Uh .. Happy Valentine's day.

Me: ("Huh?") Oh .. Same to you. Who is this?

Guy: Uh ..

Me: Hello?

Guy: Ya .. Uh .. So .. Uh .. I have pizza, you wanna eat?

And at this point he hung up, so any chances of me getting to have pizza with completely vanished, as did his identity. I'm still reminded of him whenever I have pizza.



13th January, 2009 (today): Noon. At CRC. Walking back to hostel.

I feel something fall on my head. Okay, maybe a twig or something and I brush my hair to make sure nothing's there, and I keep walking. Then it strikes me: There are no trees above me.

I look back to see what fell on me. There it was.

A tiny piece of chalk. Of all things.

Okay, maybe someone meant to hit someone else, I continued walking.

And there falls another piece on my head.

And another comes down next to me. And another ..

And that's when I realise that the culprit is some guy sitting happily on the 2nd floor of MSB, who understably stepped back when he saw me looking.

Awesome. So IIT contains chalk-throwers too, pizza lovers aside.


My conclusion: Some people never grow up, do they? :P

P.S. If any of these two guys are reading this, please do leave a comment saying it was you. :)