Exams

My mid-semesters start from day after tomorrow. Has any bloke ever liked exams? Do not students all over the world rant about the fruitlessness and torture of this wasted endeavor? But I wonder when exactly do these fun loving school boys turn into the grim adults? Why and when do they forget what they had once felt, what they had once dreamt , what they had once loved, what they had once cursed?

What enlightenment do they get, the light of which shuts out the dazzles of childhood? Strange it is.

There I got carried away by "Peter Pan"? I had thought to write about what I feel about exams. My father always said it is equally important to be a good student as well as to be a good examinee. Ha Ha Ha ! I never gave a damn to whats practical and I don't give a damn to it now. Lets leave that to shopkeepers. I am an idealist with a difference. I don't blow up dreams in smoke and moan about how the mundane world will never let me do what I want to do. I know despite what I am advised my convictions will triumph over others experience. I may not win the first battle or the next but I shall win the war.


What a drunken driver I am who has steered off the road twice in 5 minutes. Okay no more diversions. I always have fared badly in exams. Heck!! I have failed a couple of times. But i have never given them a thought as I know they don't prove anything. How does remembering a thing matter when all your life you will have books and references beside you to guide you. What matters is if you have understood it? How this simple thing has been eluding educationists for centuries is beyond my faculties to fathom. Why do we have to remember derivations and definitions?

But I guess all of these rhetorical questions are mere whistles in the dark. They don't matter and they certainly aren't suggesting a better way of doing things. The options that form in the mind are too nebulous and impracticable for the society to be implemented.

PULP FICTION

There are 2 things I would go crazy without---Books & Movies. I will spare the reader of pedantry and skip over extolling the virtues of books. Lets talk about movies. I can do it for hours..in fact I do. Am thinking about writing my opinions on the best movies that i have seen.
Let me start with "Pulp Fiction". I will not go overboard and shout it is the best film ever. But its a work of art(am resisting a big temptation to liberally use the "F" word). After all its Pulp fiction I am talking about.

Whats not great in this movie. The narrative style, the unforgettable characters, the apt scores and the crown---the dialogs. Tarantino is a genius who doesn't allow a cliched syllable in the entire length. We enter the heart and minds of the low hit-men. Its makes an interesting thought that central figures of here are the lowly flies in the movies that the hero disposes of in a blink. There we don't give them a thought but here we realize that despite all the works different people do they all have a heart. Indeed at a deeper level this movie is about real people very real ones...not the difficult to distinguish robo-sapiens of the Matrix .

They make "Hamletic" speeches about what to do and what not to do. They brood on right and wrong. They betray, they obey, they love , they kill. Before stepping into the killers liar Bruce Willis talks about pancakes, Travolta & Thurman do drugs, Jackson swears with his breath but they all seem good people. They do what they do but they are what they are.

Over the past 1 year I must have seen it a dozen times. Each time I learn something.

Jules' fiery dominance, Vince's smoothness, Mia's insolence, Butch's goodness, The wolf's unperturbed "work" and I think even the speech by Wallace on pride will all leave an imprint. My sole cause of sadness after the movie is that I wont be able to use such sparkling lines in my everyday talks.

Darkness

For the past one 3 hours i have been sitting in a dark 8x8 ft room reading an E-book on SQL Server--good one from Wrox. Anyway it just struck me many would be there who would find stepping into such a room unbearably stifling...my parents among them. Both of them have almost a fanatic attachment for bright light and fresh air. I on the other hand feel most at home in complete cool darkness...whether idling away time or studying something. I just typed away 4 lines of gibberish I wrote down for no reason. Anyway i love the dark. I feel stronger, more confident, more focused in complete darkness. I feel like some vicious animal waiting stealthily for his diurnal prey to make a mistake in the unfamiliar darkness. Its in the company of others that I feel most lonely..."they" always have something to talk about...usually that something is something i am not interested in. I enjoy my solitude...its never a complete solitude...its the silence of nature...something that always makes a buzz in your ear until you are "aware" of it. Think about it & slowly the orchestra of bugs, leaves and distant people recede into silence. Ideas good and bad keep popping up like a cork in water, I feel a sort of unison with the larger nature...I discover the rhythm we have long lost in the din and bustle of this sad, bad and mad world

Computers

Let me tell something. I don't know when or what struck a spark in me to pursue computers. Before I joined Engg. people would have laughed on seeing this boor asking the cyber cafe owner to switch on the PC for him(yes! i didn't know where the power button was). But within a space of a year i was the troubleshooter guy in the hostel...the person one would call if he had a crash, virus attack, networking problems anything...sometimes i knew what i was doing..other times it was a calculated bluff..but i did the job all the same. The deeper i dug, the base of this pit kept shifting off farther and farther like some mirage. In that glimmering darkness of the subterranean caves could I see more clearly now how everything was connected. Various disparate disciplines seemed to be the same thing. Even thinking of our day to day life with a technical perspective shows how similar arts, science and all other great things are. Computers are not calculators to ease our lives. They are like an old friend who reminds us of our primitive & simplistic past, helps us understand the chaos of the present and shows us visions of the grand future. Along the lines of its development we can trace our own. Knowing them is to know us.

Back to square ONE

Practically I'm going to start over my blog all over again...a discontinuity of 6 months is not a discontinuity,its death & resurrection..ha ha. I think this is the first time that i have laughed here. Indeed...I must say for a person who bitches so much about how he alone has all the woes in this sorry world there would be many who would say I am a very funny in person...my brand of humor has a certain sardonic cynical touch with a heavy vocabulary....if u want to hear something intelligent come up to me for i am not going down to you...am i conceited?