Wednesday, August 30, 2006

The drumroll’s begun.

It’s not too loud or insistent….but we’ve been waiting for this beat since the day we heard about the obscene salaries those wholly undeserving and ordinary people got when they landed a good college through the CAT (course, I wasn’t in yet). It’s been getting stronger with each stage…the preparation, the application, the initial rejection, the IIMs rejection…and we’re on the last lap now.

Especially since yesterday, when 4 guys from the ISEM (Industrial Safety and Environment)course were the 1st bunch to formally accept job offers from the 2007 batch. Me not mentioning the company…but the offer’s been hiked to 9 L..a cool 1L jump from last year by the same folks. These heroes now get to smirk at us as we run around pondering about the pending marks…the stuff to prepare for…the resumes that need to be refined...the whole ant running deal right up to Jan 07.

It also marks the end of my Peter Pan phase on campus. The last 12 months were a seriously awesome time…for all the moaning I did about the lack of girls in my batch ( 5 of them..against 83 guys. 4 of those 5 are committed.)…it did release a whole Lord of the Flies world…one where I’ve played, read, slept, watched movies, discovered music and lazed around to a degree of which Calvin would approve. This, after 4 years of poking around full imperial drawing sheets and lathe machines. After 6 subsequent months of hell at work. And there’s really no adequate way in which a Mumbaikar who’s been fighting for breathing space in the local trains for the past 7 years would be able to describe 65 acres of green campus (with all it’s rats and snakes, yes) half an hour from his flat.

But yeah…Neverland’s drawing to a close. The stakes are high. The competition is really smart..and already far more accomplished. Even us junta who want to chill get psyched looking at previous drinking buddies suiting up and planning careers. My only regret through it all has been that I wasn’t a full fledged reckless fool…nor a fully sober serious types. I’ve been sitting on the fence and smiling wryly at both sides. Typical.

This sobering up to a schedule business of mine prolly goes the same way as my previous studying to a schedule attempts. I now make the standard disclaimers about self being a useless bugger with no regard for his own word. But the dude’s got to get serious…this is what it’s all about, after all.

Havent had beer in 2 weeks though.

Song of the moment

Thick as a brick
Jethro Tull

Sunday, August 20, 2006

random

Thinking's supposed to clear stuff up in your head, not muddy them further. I've lost faith in my thought processes recently.

I'm in the process of shifting rooms. I've had the keys to another room for a month now...this one has better access to sunlight, but the bathroom's shabbier looking. Plus the accoustics of the place are somehow better.

I've wasted ALL of the time since my last post about how much work I had. With a vengeance. Self administered studies on self indicate that I'm a wee bit more productive when the room door's left wide open. I'm guessing it's about maintaining some appearance of responsibility or respectability.

Here's what :

I’ve got nothing on my mind: nothing to remember,
Nothing to forget. and I’ve got nothing to regret,
But I’m all tied up on the inside,
No one knows quite what I’ve got;
And I know that on the outside
What I used to be, I’m not anymore.

You know I’ve heard about people like me,
But I never made the connection.
They walk one road to set them free
And find they’ve gone the wrong direction.

But there’s no need for turning back
`cause all roads lead to where I stand.
And I believe I’ll walk them all
No matter what I may have planned.

Crossroads - Don McLean

Thursday, August 17, 2006

Insomnia briefly reawakened...

The rat smell is still on the mattress. It's been raining non stop thru that damn week, and the fan wasnt switched on once thru it all...so the rat smell's very much on the mattress and pillow. And given the way I always have to sleep (on my stomach, hands wedged under pillow, to bury 1 side of face and nose into it...), it was inevitable that I chuck sleep attempts.

It's still frigging raining. Not drizzling, mind you, but pouring away through the day. I'm tired and sleepy, but the damn mattress...its moments like this that make 1 wish for a bike and a spare set of house keys.

There's suddenly a terrifying amount of work to do here in campus. Most of it's piled over from earlier, overdue committments, but still...wayy too much :

A weekend project for a leading national insurer. Boring, crappy work..but decent brand name. Plus the only finance weekend on sight yet.

Preparing the ARTH (college's mutual fund) website. It's mostly done...but the last 10% is always the hardest for me to get through. I also have to get thru the last 10% for their monthly newsletter.

Preparing a case for a Prerana (our annual fest) event. I cant talk about it yet, due to fears of the idea being filched by competing B Schools..but it's stuff that hasnt been done here before. What compounds the problem here is..the last 95 % is left, and thats kinda hard too.

Regular classwork assignments that should be relegated to the last minute. Not that my work ethic's suddenly changed (*snort) , it's just that the last minute's arrived.

The laptop is belting out the song "Donegan's Gone" by Mark Knopfler. It's not even on my favourites...just this singular moment of irony.

And the vacillating $#^%#$@ classmates here have gone ape on finance...those who were earlier perfectly happy with whatever happened to them on placements day. All these chowderheads have enrolled for highfalutin certification courses during my absence. Now..my resume screams finance..by pure chance...but more on that later. Now it will have to jostle with about a dozen CFAs and an orgy of other certifications, for a clutch of banks.
This means I have to read up on finance now.Catch up is more the word. Ebooks. Online reports. Xeroxed notes and library books. Newspapers & magazines. Maybe even stay awake in class.

Blech. Yes, reading this was pretty blech for you too...but now that damn mattress suddenly looks very inviting to me. So I'll stop assaulting your senses and hit the sack.

Attack of the lover rats

There's no feeling ickier than that when opening your cupboard after a week and finding your stuff covered in pellets of rat dung.

I'd gone to Bangalore through the previous week, so the room was unused in that timeframe. Then there was this totally useless side window in my room, which had it's netting pecked out by a family of stupid songbirds foraging around (when I had gone for summers). Now add a bamboo lattice kept tied close enough to the window, so that worker dudes could get the hostel plastered in time before the rains.

You will land up with Papa and Mama Rat making their way through whichever godforsaken...rathole they emerged from, climbing up the lattice, and walking in through the non existent netting. And then they go about their family making business RIGHT IN MY FUCKING CUPBOARD!!!. They even had the gall to snuggle up inside a very cosy blanket through it all. (Evidence Exhibit A : Shit infested blanket from cupboard)

And then i hear the tale of how a snake climbed up the same lattice to the room above mine, and peeked in enquiringly at the window. Mayur had to blink twice, and poke at in a friendly manner, before being rapidly convinced it was a snake. A snake. On the window of a bloody 4th floor hostel room.

No1 here is sleeping too comfortably with the fact that we've got entire food chains crawling up bamboo lattices and making our rooms their rain retreats. Not that my hostel's too big on sleeping anyway.

But the next time some fool sends out college promotional literature waxing lyrical about the pristine forests we coexist with, and how we are becoming one with nature here....the dude is in for some really scathing words.
Or maybe a glowering look
Or maybe a glowering look and some scathing words at what he wrote, rather than him himself.

Tuesday, August 15, 2006

Chucking the compass

This blog has had issues with direction for a while. I suspect every blogger goes through this at some point, this stage where he hasnt the foggiest why people would want to read what he's written, or what they would want to read when they come over, and what I would want to write about regardless. Loftier authors may have legitimized refuge behind writers block...but we humble souls can only shrug and smile sheepishly, and resort to typing in this space out of buzzed happiness or sheer boredom.

Cues from other blogs say I could talk about stuff that happens around me, at a global / impersonal level. I could devote it to musings about one or more hobbies, should I chose to develop any. Take up a 3 sentence incident and weave a hopefully funny story around it. Reveal more about the state of affairs of my head and my heart. Espouse my own philosophy, or bitch about other people. Rant and moan. Put up videos and pics.

What I've looked for when I go blog hopping has been good arresting writing, irrespective of its theme. But all of them have had some theme. Some road map by which the blogger's decided - ki dudes..this is what you should usually find here. This probably gives him / her the trigger to blog when he does, and leaves him with an established body of work from which he can model what he's currently writing.

My issue with this is that I'd hate having idlipaav typecast. I'm not trying to make it masala fare either. As stupid as this sounds, whats stopped many a nascent post from taking final shape has been the wonderment about whether its too jointed or too disjointed wrt the previous one.

It is symptomatic though, to be stuck in this position. Trust me to be the cretin who breaks down every little imagined problem into compartmentalized, sequential ones that would take weeks of chewing over. Be it about asking a girl out, or learning the bike, or making an omelette.
Writing was supposed to be something I'm decent at...but my personality caught up with that too.

The redeeming part about the whole affair is, there are solutions at hand. Atleast half a dozen posts waiting to be written...in no particular direction. I'll just assume that you too are simply looking for decent writing yourself. The drunken posts will be there, all unscheduled ones...but I'm not totally leaning on them anymore. Then again, I'll qualify that. I'm still a lazy bastard.

Cheers


Currently listening :
Rudiger - Mark Knopfler

Sunday, August 06, 2006

:)

Moderately buzzed now. With a combination of stf=uff most of you would wag your heads disaaprovingly. Or atleast I hoped you wouldnt.

5 am here, Sat morning, back in Bangalore, this time for the placements pitch. In a place I am going to call home for several years atleast, regardless of whether I actually get to stay there or not. We're a team of 4, hoping to pitch to a good number of comapnies so that they come down to campus and hire our class at the end of the year. WE'll be here for the week.

I am buzzed, and high. Well, buzzed enough during the last 4 posts too, but high for the very 1st time. this ppost has all that to say in the gist of its subject line.

And, btw, my Orkut account hasnt been deleted. I can swear that I clicked thru the motions and got myself booted out in good measure.But I went thru that stuff buzzed too...and I tyupe this when buzzed too. You are at the horns of a logical dilemma.
And if you truly are so, welcome, my man. How could I miss you in Bacchus land?

I am going to get this off my chest too. Bacchus is the name of the Roman/Greek/European god of wine. As is Dionysus in some greek/Romean/Europran mythology. Dennis is a derivative of Dionysus. So if I could type a coherent blog even when well buzzed, its because I am the God of this rum bottle.

Coherent , yes. Focussed, insightful, never mind

Came up with a pun for you too. This post hasnt got a point, because of all the pints imbibed by its author. Its not a pun, but you gotta read it aloud to appreciate its delight value. A few pints wud help u appreciate it better.

Monday I work. Monday I be studmuffin who got companies for placements abroad. Monday I enhance college brand, hone presentation skills in duel with sabre teethed HR dudes, appreciate the joy of a day spent intent on hard work and success.
Fopr now I watch you check yourself in the mirror for having read till here.

Currently listening

Clocks by Coldplay