Mental Note

It has taken 164 days for the feelings 'Oh man! It's over! I'm not a student of BITS Pilani Goa anymore, those were the days, etc.' to sink in. Don't like it. It's weird.

10.4.12.164

loca11 *grin*

friends

nicknaming

eg dumbos

walking around in the campus

workshop

sc at twilight

white blocks

ch3/bh5

non midgets

dumb c with ms and bk

water/power shortages

jesus of suburbia

black out

dc++

woodstock

midgets

trivia

awesome corridor mates

troubling hostel assistants

sitcoms

mess opt out

soooo cuuuuteeeeee

my 'green' table lamp

lemon iced tea

veg puff at monginis

the sc merry-go-round

tt

sac

waves

bogmalo/vasco trips

ps1

new music

nabana/sock band

stealing IC's from lab

surviving cdc's

reports

football as b'day gift

junkyard groove

lounge

spree

9th may

ps2

testimonials

end of sem7

jhopdi

21st birthday

john's seagull

lasagna at fidalgo

terrace (hostel and audi)

fisherman's wharf
vgh

melange

farewell

P.S.- Add more in, these are just the 50 odd things that I could remember at this ungodly hour.

A-Z

Imagine a hypothetical situation in which X is a student in BITS-Goa, which has awesome mess food, but for some weird reason X missed all the meals and it is 18.30 in the evening. Oh and X also has an exam the next day so X needs to stay up all night and study to get a decent grade. This is also one such situation where X actually cares about the grade. Ok, now X's friend (Y, who also has the exam) and X set out at 20.00 hrs to see what's in the mess for dinner and decide that they don't want awesome food and that they are ready to sacrifice it for some mediocre food. Now, they contemplate between J and N and decide that N is a better alphabet and go there, make a disgusted face seeing the food available there. The two of them then wonder about the other open options and decide that the next best alphabet and the one closest to N is of course, M. M has the usual food and nothing extra ordinary. Oh oh, now Y gets a brainwave that this place, lets call it S, has Top Ramen and that they both should try it. So they walk all the way to S which is farther than the J by the way. When they reach there, all they see are Maggi packets. (Tomato flavoured X-|, X hates tomatoes) Y buys soap, as usual. (X suspects that Y eats soap when hungry because she buys them at the rate of 5 a month). Options options... Food could be ordered from P which gets delivered at the campus at 10.30 pm. That looked like a very good option. After a long discussion they finally managed to decide on what to order. Ah sadly, this wasn't the end of story. They don't have the number of P and so X messages 2-3 friends and no one replies. And, finally when they do get the number they realise that it's too late and P doesn't take orders after 21.00 hrs. Sigh! The two of them laugh at their pathetic situation and decided to settle for Bread, cheese and jam as their dinner. :-| 

Not so Fool-Proof :-/

Just when I got to thinking that the 1st of April went without any "mishaps", I was proved wrong. 4 of us (2 high, 2 sober) were peacefully sitting in a restaurant in Vasco and one of us(X) gets a call from a friend(Y) in College. X answers the call, face growing tensed by the minute, tells us that Y and another friend got caught (and disco-ed) at the gate and that the 'mascot of vodafone' was at the gate checking and at least 15 people were caught. All of us get very worried and wonder how to make it in safely. None of us realised that it was April 1st and this would make the perfect prank! We come back to find nothing, and only later did we realise the whole plot :-/. The first time that I was on the falling-for-a-prank side (as far as I can remember).

Hope y'all fell into/devised some pranks that were successful!

gg

Hop on, Hop off

Less than 15 min after getting off the train in Chennai, I saw this bus that said 'Hop on, Hop off'. On asking mom what it is, she vaguely said some Chennai tour thingy and that the tourism department has introduced one to Mahabalipuram too. I make a mental note of this, forget all about it within a few minutes, get home and start planning for the Pondicherry trip (Plan-A) which was long due. Due to technical glitches I realised that the trip isn't exactly possible. So, I started looking for a Plan-B. Then I decided to find out more about this 'Hop on, Hop off' tour (I'll call it HoHo henceforth, kinda sounds like Santa doesn't it?:)) ', I didn't really understand how this worked, called a couple of numbers, wasn't happy with the answers the TTDC officials gave, finally decided to go to Mahabalipuram!

The whole HoHo tour has buses at 1 hr intervals and has a number of stops (tourist locations) on the way (11 to be precise). We could get down at any of these spots and take the next bus that comes on the way. The whole thing didn't start off well 'coz we had to stand in the 1st leg of our journey. We hopped on at Thiruvanmyur and hopped off at Dakshina Chitra which is like a center for promoting art/traditions of south India. Interesting place and has a nice craft bazaar. Roamed about for 2 hours and then decided to go to crocodile bank from there (skipped some water ride thing and sea lion show in between). Oh my god! I've NEVER seen SO MANY crocodiles in my life! A cage/pool contained abour 400 crocodiles! All just lazing about all day. Crocodiles are lazier than me for sure! After this, we directly went to Shore Temple in Mahabalipuram and I was certain that the heat'll kill me. Humidity just made things worse. Summer is NOT the time to visit these places! The Shore Temple is now under the Archeological Surbey of India and was maintained lots better than what it was a few years ago. After a late lunch there, we moved on to the Five Rathas. Brilliant sculptures built on a single rock, eons ago! Simply marvellous! 

Ah, I'd like to mention a small incident that happened when we were entering this place. All these tourist sites have different rates for Indians and foreigners (no clue why). Shouldn't they be happy and charge them less/same rate? Ok, we've decided to loot the ones that come from abroad. This lady (non-Indian) was wearing a saree, married to an Indian guy entered the place and walked a few steps . The security comes from nowhere and says 'madam you have to take a different ticket, this one isn't valid for you'. The lady was so bewildered when this happened. Atrocious, don't you think?! It just got me thinking on whether other countries behave the same way with their guests, are they as discriminating as we are? And soon after this it was time for us to get back. We boarded the bus and had a peaceful ride back to Thiruvanmyur. Nice experience on the whole, and punctuality of these buses definitely needs a special mention. They are on time at each location. And, the other locations I missed were- VGP, Mayajaal, MGM, Tiger Caves and a temple (don't remember the name)

No surprises that the journey from Mahabalipuram to T'myur took less time than from T'myur to T.Nagar thanks to the traffic, it was ten times worse because of the humidity, temperature and the crowded bus. 

Chennai! :-/ 

(All those who want to start arguing about Bangalore being the same, don't! The weather there doesn't make you feel that you are going to drop dead any moment because of dehydration/heat and that wasn't the point of the whole post!)

Dear Diary,

Inferiority complex isnt something that ive always had but seeing the number of ideas my blogger friends have constantly and come up with some creative thing or the other, i'm beginning to wonder, should i let my blog sleep? Or should i use the tiny li'l thing in the head of mine called the brain and sacrifice some amount of sleep and peace that it can get? Anyway, it's been too long since i wrote anything decent, 240 odd days and so much has happened since. It is impossible for me to recall the interesting stuff and write about all that thanks to the memory of a goldfish that i have.

Yeah, finally coming to the title, a few friends of mine and I were discussing about how we maintain diaries and other stuff related to that. I am one person who definitely needs to maintain one constantly so that it'll be easier to recall things! How many of us maintain diaries (not an e-diary or some such thing)? Write things personal/can't be told to others/ something thats bothering us etc etc. in it regularly? Well, i don't think many people fancy writing to typing or paper to word these days. For me, its so much more satisfying to write something at the end of each day, be it the events of the day or something funny that someone said (dont i sound like joko , so darn vague! :P) or even some random thought that you recollect that happened ages ago. Naming a diary is not something that i've done so far (Nadine, is that you?) but doing that makes you feel like you actually are talking to someone. :-/. And, reading old diaries bring back such pleasant memories and tends to life your spirits, doesnt it? I still can't understand how an e-journal can substitute pen and paper! As usual, I cant think of a fitting way to end this post, it's been quite a while since i wrote anything, i better wipe the dust off my diary and write in that as well!

Toodles!