My Soft skills classes are a hit. I love them, the only negative part is that they are very strict about time...that means on Sundays I have to reach college at 8 sharp or 5 minutes to 8, to be on the safer side. :D

Btw, today I reached class at 8,50 instead of 8a.m</i>. :D

I should punctuality a habit and forget that punctuality is the virtue of the bored.

Shaastra is the annual technical fest of IIT-Madras. This site - Shaastra, is soley dedicated to their techincal fest! And the thing to be awed is that, this fest has the distinction of being the only student organized event in the world. Read their little introduction, if you like.

I checked out this site only because my friend(senior)said he would mostly be going to IIT-Madras to take part in Robotics. He asked me to check out this site for more competitions. I'm glad, we could actually strike up a conversation which included mentioning Shaastra. IIT produces the best engineers out of India, whom, even the richest and successful companies are waiting to pull them to their side with heavy pay packages. So it is obvious that taking part in a fest organized by such a university will bring all the big brains which totally includes students from other IITies. Now, if I have a desire to participate in a such a fest, then I should be broad minded and open to learning rather than thinking about winning, because I stand a tough chance there. I will be total happy if I could only be a participant and witness most of the competitions, just for the heck of learning.

IITians carry the tag of being nerds and bookworms, but that site hardly shows any of it. The impression I get is that, they are people who are there to understand things completely, seeking information, constantly updating themselves and not really be bookworms. They seem to be lot more fun-loving than the other universities. Their writing style in the site is also awesome! If only my textbooks were written by them, my studying would have been easier than it is now.

And their sense of humor is not bad either. ;)

This is what one of the FAQ's list:
Can we copy answers from other teams or use mobile phones to circulate answers?
There is a word for such activity and it is called cheating. You will then be promptly escorted out of the hall and be disqualified for the event.

And Shaastra is a sanskrit word which means science. (I love the way sanskrit is pronounced - I mean the language, itself. Hope I learn it someday soon.)

The new guest lecturer in our college is rocking!

This is the way he intoduces himself - "I'm a hardcore hard rock fan"!
Hu! to hear something like that from a lecturer, when he is something like 60+ years old and a Brahmin - truly amazing!

He looks like an aristrocrat, well-behaved, well mannered, high class, with calmness of an ocean refleacting on his face --- and he being a rock fan, huh! I have NO WORDS!

Apparently auditions for our new college rock band and fusion band is going on - and he is getting the hell out of everyone with his knowledge of music. (I meant everything in positive way. he is just amusing even the hardest rock fan with his knowledge of music - rock music). He is hell good!

The saddest part is, he is not taking any classes for my sem. :(

Onam was celebrated in college on 27th August.

The important thing or the amusing thing is that, Onam is a Keralite festival and not a Bangalorean’s (or Karnataka’s) festival, and hence it is not common to celebrate it in schools or colleges, yet it was celebrated in our college. Why? Because there was a significant number of mallus or Keralites.

So, the classes were suspended, programs and games had been put up and some atmosphere was created. (It is not possible to have the complete atmosphere of Onam, in a foreign land, without spending lots of money.)

The official start of programs, were announced by the arrival of Mahabali in Bullock cart. He lit the lamp and gave Banana chips and sarkaraperati to Prinicipal, administrator, HOD’s and teachers. All this was happening with a back ground music from the Chedakottukar. Then we had little speech from our principal and then started the games. There was Sack race for boys and men lecturers, lemon and spoon for the girls and women lectures, then there was tug-of-war (I was missing to see the action between the branches). I did not participate in any of these, but made a last minute decision with my friends to join the Pookala Malzaram.

We did not get our flowers nor did we have a design in mind, everything was just on-the-spot decisions. The organizers had some flowers which they gave according to first come first serve basis. Since we were the last to register, we had to content ourselves with the available and rejected flowers (includes stealing and begging and borrowing flowers from the participating teams.)

We finally zeroed on peacock for the design. My friend N, who is a good artist, drew the peacock on the ground. The rest of us started plucking out the petals of flowers. We were very skeptical about our work, but decided to finish it. When we finished, and took few pics of it, we were showering ourselves with praise for what we have done and ridiculed everyone else’s design.

The party pooper was - the results. Our team did not win and now we ridiculed the judges for lack of creativity. *laughs with disbelief*
Maybe it was because we had put in as much as we can, to come up with some thing nice and creative at the last moment! Whatever that was, it was a fun day, with no regrets of loosing (atleast now. :D).




Our design
( More pics )

P.S: Maybe neatness is where we failed. We started some one hour late, how could we do it better!?