I Take Offence

Today we had a session on social change communication jazz by a man whose looks and first few words spoke of fundamentalist and idealist views. Very close to a typical JNU person, if I may say so. Nothing wrong with that - my patience levels are growing, and I can respect your opinion if you are making even a tiny bit of sense. But what do I do with people who major in subjects like politics, work on civil society agendas, and are involved in a lot of advocacy but do not know what economics is! How do I listen to them go on for 90 minutes!
I would expect such a person to at least have a holistic view of what all economics entails. For god's sake, at least not assume that economics is limited to stocks and GDP growth!! And be so narrow in thinking that anyone using terms like 'inclusive growth' must be from an economics background. Or talk about the Human Development Index and not even know its components. It is not 1,2,3, and a few other such components! It is an INDEX - it is defined! And you are working in the social sector, blasting the state and corporates even for their mere existence, quoting dramatic figures from unknown reports, and then do not know your basics!! If I quote some of batchmates here, there will be too many profanities to handle. But I SO wanted to give him a piece of my mind. Maybe he will respond to some emails.

But it is not just him. Majority of the people equate economics with the stock market. Most of these do it out of mere ignorance, but I never understand how people's worldview is based on so many assumptions and simplistic ideas. I do not assume anything about things I do not know. Or at least am open to what others have to say about those things. People!

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Apart from that, please put your hands together for the new official creative brain on the blog. Second ad creative assignment in a row which was much appreciated! Yours truly obviously works only on the copy. Art work is still ART. :P

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Oh, some more people are a major piss-off -- those who believe that they can talk all day and get away by not doing any work. Unfortunately, but obviously, I am working closely with a few such people. I cannot believe the kind of fancy shit they produce to impress some more mortals who have a dimmer wit.

HMPH!

Who all are sending me flowers next week?

Act II

# I have been having cold coffee every night for a few nights now.

# I tried my hand at table tennis. Will learn in the coming months.

# Buying a badminton racket tomorrow.

# Still suck at carrom. I remember never enjoying it because I am terrible at striking that thing!

# Went for a walk uphill and lay on the road midway to enjoy the moon.

# Also checked out the moon early morning from my window recently. Super pretty!

# Irritated by a couple of things.

# Somebody tell those Bongs to shut up or I'll end up hating them all.

# Missing Economics like mad for some reason. Caught a classmate today and forcefully explained inflation to her. :P

# Nobody ever managed to hurt my ego more.

# I am alone in this room again. And shall be so till the end of the semester. :-)

# Lots of travel scheduled for October. I am looking forward to it.

# Sick friends made me utter the 'chu' word twice in one day! And then got strange kicks out of it.

# Dilli is known for all the wrong reasons, man! And unfortunately, along with people like me, the stereotypes have also come here.

# Talked to Neha and Tarun, both today. :)

# Listening to a lot of Indian Ocean instrumental and Zakir Hussain nowadays. The tabla rocks!

# Fungus is growing on everything in my room. And in the entire girls hostel. EVERYWHERE!

# The gym is almost ready. I shall meet the treadmill soon. :D

# I watched a real art film (parallel cinema is the correct description =)) yesterday - Bhumika by Shyam Benegal. I do not know if it is coincidence, but the more I am thinking about gray, the more I am experiencing or seeing it. And so the cycle is continuing.

# I am back to clicking, and am focusing on manual only. A little difficult, but funn!! :-)

Now I need to sleep. So see you soon.

P.S. Belated wishes for World Photography Day! :-)

Tonight - on the road - Swetha, Debby, Akshay and I

Ping Pong :D

Carrom :-/

Amrah (left) is holding my ad creative assignment in which we (Priyam, my partner and I - so called non creative minds) got a star. :D :D

In the mess - tasty chhole day :D

Eventful days' drama

I had my freshers party on the 30th night. Friends say I was drunk. Pictures suggest I was, but I was just happy. I knew what was happening. In fact, it helped me dance to that non-stop progressive electronic stuff tha the damn DJ played all night. Bloody! Of course, I was enjoying it later, but initially it was annoying. Anyway. So we had fun. Came back to the hostel dead at 3:00 a.m. Slept for EIGHT hours! :D :D Studied on Thursday for a regular Friday feature - test. I might just not flunk this one. I was happy, counting down days for my trip home. And then came a bomb! Meeting and elections for a club. Yours truly stood for the VP's post, and got elected! Event on 15th August, tickets to be cancelled. Cried and cried.. now I won't get to see anyone till almost end of November. It's not even funny! Thankfully, Priyam came to my room and distracted the bloody mind. I don't even feel like celebrating. But now I am okay. Just posting some pictures from the 30th night. No, I was not drunk. :P

Amrah, Swetha, Nidhi, Ridhima and Vindy - All sober before leaving campus

With Maria and Priyam
Ridhima and Swetha - make up still fresh

Ridhima and Akshay; hee hee - me too :P

Swetha, Akshay and Shagun. I wanted drama - spot me! :D


Priyam!

Venky and dearest Sahil!

Yep, Vindy lost it too!

Random Play

My corridor. The room at the end is mine. 223. :-)

Seminar Hall 01

I saw the most beautiful post-sunset sky ever today. There is a helipad on campus and I had never visited it before today. It is obviously on the edge of the campus with the entire view of the valley from its boundary and a breeze stronger than in the rest of the campus. The sky, apart from the orange and pink hues, had a turquoise. It was splendid. And of course, as it has become usual now, I did not have my camera. The first class today too had a lot of team activites which were fun and I wanted to click with my team at the end of it. But! This really sucks!

The process of losing weight has finally begun. It is combined with loss of sleep as well. Last three days have been unbelievably crazy! So much so that I took a bath last night (nights are cold here and there is no hot water at that time) to keep myself awake for a few extra hours.

My birthday is approaching, please send some sleep as presents. It will be appreciated immensely. Btw, there is a holiday on that day, and the next day is our weekly off. Party time away from this village! :D :D

Vindy, Ridhi, and demented Shwetha

Oh oh.. my calendar is receiving a lot of appreciation here. :D

Signature analysis was not a happy thing. With so many positives, the one negative killed it all. I need to make changes now. And it is hard. I tried doing it today and it was so difficult to not do what I have been doing for quite a while now.

Firewall has been installed. So Orkut and Facebook are dead. Unfortunately, so is Flickr. :(

I am coming home next month for Rakhi. Yayiii!! Diwali will be here itself though. I don't even want to think about that now. But I might get to spend some time later during winters in Delhi. If it works out, it's gonna be niice.

My still under construction home

When EOD is 6:00 pm, it feels good!

I finally have LAN in my room. Roommate is also here. Work is getting crazier too.

Had my first photography class today. Technical stuff, of course. Good that somebody is teaching; it's fun. Also found a classmate who will teach me otherwise. So he showed me what the BULB mode along with zoom burst does. Awesome it was! Also how I can use this lens for macro without going to the auto macro mode. I think I'll be taking lessons from him only. And he offered to lend me his 70-300!!! Vibes, I tell you. He thinks he can trust me. So boo to those who refused to even let me handle their cameras and lenses. :P

I noticed that I have an unbelievable number of left-handed and ambidextrous people in my batch. My value has gone down. :( But really, more than 10% of the batch is a little too much!

I also realised that I really AM a cleanliness freak. At home I didn't have to do anything, so the skills never got an opportunity to be honed. But here, even when I have no time, I'd be cleaning tiles in the bathroom, or sweeping the floor, or just tidying up the place. Yes, we do have housekeeping people to do all this. But it's so much fun!! :D

I think I am going to forget a lot of birthdays in the coming days. If I forget yours, advance apologies please. I don't even have my birthday list now because this jack of a laptop crashed last week and had to be formatted. Yes, an hour before a presentation of which I did not have a back-up. Hands on management training I am getting!

Being online is making me miss home. When I didn't know what the world was up to, I was fine. This is hard.

I am extremely sick of mess food already. A slice of pizza from the other world brought the biggest smile on the face the other day. Uh!

And now I shall go. Will upload a few pictures soon. Have not been able to catch the sunset even once because the cloud cover is always too heavy. But most days I am in class when the sun sets. Anyway.

See you soon, tada!!

It's All New

Disconnected from the world. Feels a little strange. But there really is no time. I don't have time to miss home. It is strange. The weather is keeping me unbelievably happy. The breeze is a constant here. Rain, sun, cold... they all change. Breeze is supercool!

The faculty is much better than I expected it to be. The campus still has a lot of issues because it is still not complete. But it is nice to be out of the crib mode. AND! The concept of MBA=common sense is clear to me. There are people who have no common sense. They need to be taught all of it. Marketing is super-exciting. Other papers are all media-oriented so far. Still to be introduced to a lot of modules too. The research teacher is a scare crow. Purist to the T, but otherwise crazy. I am hoping the purist in him will keep me happy. I am living in a twin-sharing room alone. :D My roommate is still to arrive because of some dumb issues.

Have nice people around me. It's a big deal. City is far far FAR away. Today I had plans of catching the 5:30 bus to the city, but finally got hold of some free internet time, so gave the thought up. I guess the internet addict is still not dead. :P

Not getting time to click. It sucks! And anyway there is nothing except hills to click. I have already done that.

And it was research for a presentation tomorrow for which I had come online. Have already killed an hour. No idea where that went. So the thoughts are not flowing. Will try writing a bit next week.
Hope everyone is fine. :)

Wrote a little right after I came here...

July 4^th, 4:00 a.m.

An AC 2 compartment, soft lights, and comfortable bedding; still not out of the comfort zone supported by parents. Walk out and open the coach’s door to face darkness and heavy wind. It was almost ripping through me. And there was nothing that I could see. I was speeding through nothingness to a place I knew nothing about. It was like a drama unfolding in the head. The drama titled ‘life’.

July 5^th, 3:00 p.m.

The view from the corridor was splendid. I could not believe that this was going to be home. I was ‘in the hills’. Cool breeze present throughout the day and the clouds making for the loveliest canvas around.

The night told of the home thousands of miles away. Not because I sat alone to feel depressed over the change, but the view from the same end of the corridor had lights far far away. That is where civilisation must be, where people must live, where family must be. I was in a dark but scenic world.

July 6^th

From morning to evening, people talked about having a passion, having self-esteem, and working because you want to. I know I have come for all the three. And a little more. But it is more than education that I have come here for. It is more than a degree that I want from this place. I am going to work for it.

Somebody also made me applaud for my parents. I cried. I know that there is nobody in the world who can match up to their love for me, and to whatever they have done for me.

From the train

In the train


My room on Day 1

View from the end of my corridor