Potty Takes Priority

I'll make this quick, have two most scary papers tomorrow.

Very important part of life.
Especially when you are on antibiotics.
Especially when the stomach automatically finds out that you are tensed.
Especially when the general state of being of the stomach is anyway effed up.
Also when you eat wrong stuff because the last thing you want to do is be hungry while studying.
And when the campus mess feeds you wrong stuff too. :-/

I forgot: when you have an effed up lower back, potty anyway is a daily problem.

Blah! This is why I am potty-obsessed. My visit to the museum is still due.

O Bijuria!!

God bless the creators of good music on this earth. Seriously.

__

I have found my talent. My art. It is fucking up exams for subjects that I love to the core. And making sure that I never ever score well in those. In school it was biology. I cried every time I got my papers back. In college it was the only subject that I loved - macro economics. I remember crying and howling after the exam because I knew every thing that was there to that subject, and still I managed to fuck it up. And today it was marketing. I knew stuff. It was one paper I was well prepared for. And one should see what I wrote during the exam. If I were to correct that paper, I'd make sure I won't pass.
Icing on the cake? Like for a few other things, this place didn't even let me mourn for it. The next exam was scheduled 30 minutes after that one. And this is where "life is unfair" is applicable for me.

The Grind

I can now differentiate between me and the self. Helps give a better perspective. And heightens the sense of responsibility too.

For now, I am hating WTO for their mere existence, hoping that I really do remember enough economics to write an exam without devoting much time to the subject, and praying that I don't fuck up my favourite prof's paper tomorrow. Yes, it's half a day for three subjects. Shoot me!

Oh, I also felt like a crazy journalist today. I needed to speak with a few industry professionals for an assignment, and I was doing that today because the deadline was in the evening. Aviation was the sector I had to focus on, and I spoke with a pilot when he was gearing up to take off. Could hear airplanes in the background. It was funny. "Just two more questions, please." Felt idiotic for sure, but got my work done too. :P

Achha I'm going to study now. Wish me luck. Byee!!

Doing the jig alone

It had been quite a sucky day so far. Just one of those sad days. But I am thrilled right now! The third set of assessment marks for the first semester just came in. Still remember the first set of marks - I was in the bottom 20% or so of the class. Even though everyone said it does not matter, psychologically I could not come to terms with 'low' marks. The score gradually improved, and now I am out of the 'likely to be detained' list. Anything below 50 falls in that. I am perfectly fine with the marks that I have now. Not looking at topping or anything close to that. There is no concept of first division or anything here. As long as you are on the other side of 50, life is good. And so mine is. Friends on campus have all been this side from the beginning. I took time. But these are just internal marks. End sems' result still awaited. I am just hoping it gets space on the blog. 5 out of the 13 papers are kinda dicey. :P

AS (the deputy director) sent the mail with 'enjoy' in the subject line. We're usually not in a condition to appreciate his sarcasm. Today, I don't mind. :)

Did ya just turn over?

What follows is something that I wrote yesterday but could not post it.

+++

Semester I ended at 8:00 pm on October 11, 2008 after having conducted three exams in one day. That was also a new way of living academia that I experienced. From the average of 5 days that we used to get before every exam, and the 45 days before exam season for 'advance' study, here it was an average of 8 hours for two exams each day. A rather strange week for sure.

Stranger still - we used to get 2.5 months before the beginning of the next session. Here it was not even 24 hours. Semester II from 8 (oops, that was 9) am on October 12. Professional courses, I tell you! :P

But you have to be part of such a system to understand the good and bad things about it too. Also, the jokes.

So frustration levels were running VERY high last night. I wanted food. Good food. Or maybe ANY food other than what this 'mess' offers. Was kinda tired too, I had sneezed enough to lose 20K+ calories through the day, but a walk down the hill to a small dhaba for FOOD (yea, you knew that, didn't you?) was reason enough to gather strength. Food was the standard sweet and spicy mix, but I was all right. Got Dairy Milk and Slice too. :D

There is going to be Art of Living workshops through the week for the burnt out junior batch. Apparently there are five things we have to abstain from - alcohol, cigarettes, tea, coffee and non vegetarian food. Ha! I do not need the word abstinence for these. Let's see how this turns out to be.

++++

I am through with two sessions of art of living. Guess I will write about it all together at the end of it.

Of mood extremes and sanity

As the 20th days of the month, and of the new year rolls in, I realise for the nth time that my blog has not seen anything happy this year. Not that I have seen anything particularly happy myself, but this one's being tortured.

Aside: I am feeling that I'm being tortured too. I want to yell, and I want to write here that I got a frikkin 98.2 percentile in XAT but my goddamn favourite subject - yeah yeah MATHEMATICS - let me down one more time. I do not have an interview call from XLRI, and am not expecting anything from the other institute that I have applied to either! T says that at least I proved that I am smart. When asked, 'to whom?', he says, 'to yourself'. I think if I could shove this information down my readers' throats, I must have done it by now anyway. I did not need two years of MBA entrances to prove that to myself. Never mind, he was just being nice. It's only me who's losing it. Or maybe, I am imagining, this is the failure story of a star of 2030. When she'll be interviewed then, she will tell the world about it. Don't you think so too? All famous stars do have one such story behind them. :P

Coming back. Something happy. Flickr.com is keeping me happy. My increased activity and interaction there will tell that I am happy.
Ok happy is a difficult topic for today. Let's move to sanity. No prizes for guessing - my friends are keeping me sane. There are some asses who piss me off too, but right now we're focusing on happy friends. Here's one for example. My little bitch. :-)

She was in a pair of shorts with a strange print when I first met her eleven years ago. She did have the prettiest eyes though. She also helped me with my english speaking skills. You know, my personal Rapidex english speaking course. :D But she could not help me with handling water colours. I think she had a sadistic motive behind that. She wanted to tell her friends while watching Taare Zameen Par that I can't paint. That's the moment she schemed for. Now I know. But then she did teach me how to sit like a girl. Haan, I needed to be taught that. Having a brother at home never helps in such things, y'know. She tried teaching me integration (maths...ugh!) too. Ha! That ended at the word 'tried' only. But honestly, I am not so bad at maths. I am confident that I'll be able to teach my kid(s). It's just these stupid exams that fuck my happiness!

Ok let's not digress. Don't you wanna know what all I taught her? I taught her how to clean her glasses, and the need to keep them clean. That when I myself did not wear specs. Hmm. I also taught her how to say 'screw the world, I don't care' and mean it at the same time. Don't judge me - according to blogthings I am only 83% sensitive. Rest of the times I do let the world climb a pole. :D Another thing - she didn't know how to use public transport. Her mom trusted me with it, and that is how I managed permissions for us to go out. Oh, we both taught each other how to participate in a cold war too. It lasted a couple of months. It sucks, not advised for my readers.

Ohhh... one of the most important feats that is part of our friendship -- even though she is half, no 2/3rds of my weight, she used to carry me around as pillion on her bicycle. It was always scary, but a lot of fun! :-)

I think I can go on and on, but there is a lot of work that I need to complete before I go to sleep, so I shall stop here. I can only say that it has been incredible growing up with this beautiful woman. She's one of the most important loves of my life.
As always, she helped my mood right now too. Just shows that she does not even need to be physically present to be able to make me feel better. :-)

God bless her...

XLRI n all that jazz!

As most of you know, I am in my second consecutive season of writing MBA entrances. So there has been a series of out-of-the-way exam venues that I have been to in the last two years, but nothing could beat where XLRI sent me today. I live in south Delhi, and I have been to places like Nimri Colony, Ashok Vihar, Keshav Puram, Prasad Nagar and so forth without really complaining too much because I accept the fact that no institute takes into consideration where you live. But today XLRI beat everybody! They sent me to a school called Kamal Model Senior Secondary School in Mohun Garden. This place is anyway quite far from my place, but when I reached there, I could not even allow myself to compare it to a village. It was worse. I know Delhi is huge, and not all areas are as nice as the south, but that does not allow an institute like XLRI to save costs in this manner. Cars could barely manage to go in to the galis that led to the school. And I will really not blame any of the people who reached there half an hour after the commencement of the exam. It took the expertise of my father who's lived here for 40 years AND Google Maps for me to locate that school. And it didn't end there. I think the school has been designed for the ideal stampede, if there is any such thing that exists. Apparently there was only one staircase (OR I think they were saving more costs by not deploying another person at some other entrance to guide people) which would have hardly been one metre wide.
So whatever nice things I was saying about them yesterday because they SMSd, emailed, AND called me to inform me of the last minute change in the test centre (unlike what I heard Symbiosis did last year) got negated because of this beautiful experience I had.
And mine was not an isolated one. I really think they saved money by under-staffing all venues, because Army Public School (which was a fairly decent experience last year for the same exam) was in quite a pathetic state too. Apparently, there were hardly any directions given, and people were running all over the school looking for their seats. One might pass off my centre as a small under-equipped school, but APS is supposed to be a good public school, and there is no reason why such things should happen there.

XLRI is supposed to be one of the best B-Schools of our country, one really does not expect such sub-standard stuff from it!

CAT II

Flowers, phone calls, SMSs, I’m receiving them all. It really is a big day tomorrow, I guess. I’m trying to not think about it now, and am succeeding only partially. ‘Fuck scared’ and more, it is quite a roller coaster. But I think it was one last year too. And like I was just discussing with a friend, I’ve probably been ten times more worried for a lot of college exams. None of the college exams ever gave me the liberty of writing a blog post at 8:00 one night before. It’s just the darn pressure. Screw the pressure (oh, screwing it would take the air out of it. Hee hee hee :P)! Yeah, I’ve become quite a champ at such PJs. Never mind.

I am just hoping that the waking up routine is perfect tomorrow. That is, minus any cold, headache, toothache, backache, etc. And most importantly, I hope the mind is blank & happy.

Praying for myself.

Adios! :-)

Perspective

Aarbee’s never tried so hard to study.

12^th standard boards, 2^nd year exams, and now this! Times when I have really felt that I have put in a lot of hard work. I’ve studied as much as I could. There still probably remain a few things and I am trying to take care of those too. I know I studied last time too, but this time I’ve studied more. So now, even though I am fighting my worst fears almost every day, I am just glad I stuck to my idea of giving it my all this time. I knew I am not going to make another attempt at this, and that is why I also left my job. I know there is nothing more I can do if things don’t work out this time either. It is not a half-hearted attempt. From here, I either go the way I want to, or find another way that I’d like to follow. I will not be standing here and waiting any more. I may be tensed and anxious, but I am satisfied with what I have done. And still, my wall reads that I am better than most and can kick butt when I am in my element….and I intend to believe it until C-Day, and also for the rest of my life. :-)

These days are quite nice. I have found something that negates the effect of all the hellish thoughts that come to my head. Could I be more thankful and happier about it? Guess not. :-)

Bheja Fry

A day that started on a hyper note – sleeping at 0130, waking up at 0500 and then setting and resetting alarms every 10 minutes till 0700 to catch just a little more sleep.
So, with just a little sleep I could hear some buzzing in my head just before the exam. Not a good sign, I hardly ever do that to myself the night before an exam, but I had no option.
At 0900 I was handed such a royal paper that I wanted to walk out of the room within 15 minutes ‘coz I was sure that I would have to repeat the paper next year. This had never happened before! I consoled myself by thinking about all my friends who were in the same situation. Made myself sit there and write. There was a fan in the room that was making a lot of noise and I had told Ritika (the girl sitting behind me) before the exam that when we won’t have anything to write, we’ll just listen to it creaking. I did that for 25 minutes. Ugh! Ugh ugh ugh!

Falling and tripping, I think I am growing up to be a clumsy woman (my biggest confession on this blog). So I tripped on an escalator today, thankfully I was still down, and broke my favourite chappal. Had to live with that damned thing for so many hours (and a little bruise too. :( ).

But I am also learning to take care of myself. I’d like to believe that my fight against my moods is going good. So I decided to go for a movie considering that I have a decent gap before the next exam. Today being a Saturday and Ma being home, I could not possibly have gone alone so I put on my favourite red skirt (taking care of a mood, remember?) and took her along. Bheja Fry!

Bheja Fry has one of the best comic duos that India has today. They started with Channel V, if I am not wrong and have featured together several times – Vinay Pathak and Ranvir Shorey. They, along with Rajat Kapoor, Milind Soman (looked hot!) and Sarika made my day. I don’t remember seeing a better movie than this in ages. I don’t know about technicalities but I know that I have never laughed in a theatre the way I did today. It was outrageous! If you think Khosla ka Ghosla was good, I’d say this is three times better. Vinay Pathak is definitely the man of the movie! It’s about him, it’s his. AWESOME! Classic stuff! And the best thing about it is that you don’t have to leave your brains home unlike for the stupid movies that have started coming and becoming ‘superhits’ too. Plain, clean comedy – that’s what it is.
It’s a must-watch for anyone who wants to have a good laugh.

And now I am going back to have some ‘economic development in my sleep’.
Tada!