I AM BORED

5/17/2007 5:03:11 PM

It’s day 14... A fortnight into the summer vacation… It’s official… I AM BORED. Most of my friends have already reached this stage. There was something or the other to keep me occupied for so long but here I am in a posture that I am dead sure is bad for the stature but what the heck! I am bored. I will do what I want. My best buddy...my Lappy is here of course and Microsoft Word… guess I haven’t got bored of that as yet. Listening to the ABBA music CD that I wrote for my dad with all his favourite songs. At 2600W, my music player redefines ROCKING! It seems more like the room is resonating! I wonder what will happen if I play Linkin Park.

The phone buzzes to life. Is it ringing? I must be hearing things. The things a bored mind concocts! It WAS ringing. Yay! Someone else is alive too and bothered to ring up. I wish you could see my excitement. I stopped typing, jumped out and paused the song being played. Actions just mentioned don’t just happen. The seriousness of the issue is, hence, clear, I presume. Oh! It was Dad! Checking up on me I guess. Not so dejected coz it was an event after all. Somebody called.

That brings me back to square one. I AM BORED. It’s not that I have nothing to do. I have a lot of movies on this very Lappy, a few magazines lying around, a couple of books waiting to be read, a desktop with net connection, a television with quite a few channels, a DVD player and DVD’s, my cell phone, some cooking fundaes etc.. There is simply no enthu to do any of these activities today. Till yesterday everything was fine. I was proud that I am not feeling bored when the entire world was complaining of being bored but today; I am surprised at myself. I AM BORED.

What exactly leads to this ‘I AM BORED’ syndrome? I thought it was lack of things to keep you occupied but clearly, that is not it. What is, then, the cause? I stop here but the song plays on.

Bang!

There I was sleeping peacefully on my bed. Ten hours into slumber and no plans of waking up. No surprise there! When was the last time I had plans of waking up anyway? I generally sleep with my face down and today was no exception. I lifted my face up, albeit half awake, just to check up if the world around me was still the same as when I left it. It was. That means I can afford to continue my sleep. I would probably have continued anyway. Fair enough! So I brought my head down on the pillow or so I thought.

Sometime between the point when I woke up and now, something eerie occurred. The iron railing of the bed shifted by some finite distance towards me. I came to know of this the hard way though. My forehead met the railing instead of the pillow. Bang! That ought to have hurt and you bet it did. My roommate got jolted in spite of the fact that she was watching a movie on her computer with headphones. She must have got freaked out and more so when I gave a weird dorky smile in return for the confused look on her face. I mean, what else did you expect? The fact that you are going to continue with that well deserved sleep increases your approach velocity towards the pillow and it is far from bliss to end up on the hard iron railing instead of the soft pillow.

That, I would say, is the worst possible way to wake up.

Making inroads into sports.

[ The original version of this was written for my hostel magazine but I didn't submit it to the editors. I am not very sure why though! ]

It is said that we discover our true identity during teenage. Life has been quite ordinary till date but all of a sudden I find myself transforming into a totally different person exploring newer dimensions. The fact that I’m presently living in a hostel, far away from home, is mainly responsible for this. The unrestricted freedom, the tremendous amount of resources and, of course, the brand name IIT is the perfect combination for a wonderful hostel life.

One of the most drastic changes that took place was sudden interest in sports. I wanted to master as many as possible. A thrilling urge to become a sport enthusiast. I started with the one sport I used to play decently; Badminton. The enthusiasm in sports activities in my hostel is quite high, that is, when RG’ed with other spheres. I got to play with my batchmates as well as seniors. It was a nice way to get acquainted with the seniors especially since I was new to the place. Technically speaking, I was playing baddy only but tennis and cricket also found their way in. ;)

I then ventured into athletics. It requires a lot of stamina, they say, but I wanted to try my hand at it anyway. What was there to lose? I cannot possibly get any lighter than I already am. [;)] Well, jogging does wonders to your body. I am not talking about all that standard information that fitness trainers brainwash their clients with. What I felt is that this boosts up your stamina or in technical terms, takes the “yield point” to a new high. (not that kinda high! ).

It was time to give the next sport a go. Tennis - I’ve always liked watching the game but never got the chance to play. You need lots of energy to play tennis it is not just a high-funda version of badminton as is the general opinion or at least my opinion. :D It was nice to get the basic fundaes from experienced seniors.

The next one on the list is Throwball. It is like playing Volleyball, with lesser probability of injuring your hands. I don’t have any comments on this one because I don’t classify it as a sport in the first place. :|

Basketball – truly a magnificent sport - I wanted to try my hand at this also. The only difference was that this was not a passing attraction like most others; I wanted to master it from day one. Form trying out a few shots to dribbling, I also got fundaes from a senior who was all smiles to hand down the tricks of the game. It turned out that there was a particular way of orienting the ball before shooting it. Who would’ve guessed that there might be such rules to this game? There is even a way of dribbling the ball. It is not just arbit up and down SHM!

The thing is I put a lot of enthu when I play and what do I get out of all this? A swelling, and that too, double the diameter of my arm thanks to badminton, a numbing sensation in the legs after running all over the athletics track, a chance to, almost, but not quite, fracture my finger during tennis, a scar having run into a pole while following every twist and turn of the basketball with utmost concentration and an excuse to get a Gurunath tea to pep me up!

Making inroads into sports, indeed!

My ID110 notebook

Okay... I admit it. I had a notebook and that too a 200 pages unruled one for ID110. (FYI this is a course I had in First Semester titled Concepts in Engineering Design. A weird course, with professors changing every week or so, this is the kind of course for which people count their attendance very carefully to just make it across the 75% barrier. Of course, I don't belong to that type. I attend classes regularly.) :)

A couple of days back I found this book in my shelf. At first glance, I was amazed at the amount of notes written. You will be amazed too. Twenty pages back and front! Now that is serious news. It even had one of those "topics covered" zones. I wondered if this was really my own book. I got freaked when I saw that I had even used a black pen to underline the subtopics. Whoa! The book was totally crammed with graphs and figures and technical terms. After all, the professors were only trying to make engineering design as theoretical as possible but it is a totally different issue that they ended up making it as boring as possible.

Flipping through the pages ( twenty pages back and front, remember!) , still flipping... Yawn.. nothing much for some nine pages; just plain boring notes until a blank page! Now that was slaisha surprising. A blank page! I guess I was absent for a lecture and left a blank page to write down what was taught in that class. Oh yes! now I remember... I asked so many people for that day's notes but sadly (?) that page is still blank. Wow I have changed so much since first semester. Not a single book is as well maintained as this unique ID110 book.

Even more surprises in store for me! Last month of semester one. I guess I was no longer the same person who joined IITM or may be I felt like going back to school days. Either way, what the book had in store was that the notes written on that day were not like the ones written usually.The topic was Philosophy of engineering design. The professor put a lot of emphasis on the aesthetics aspect of design and was trying to make the class interesting. This is how it begins.
"Should've sat in the last benches! "
"Nice time to realize that! At the end of the course."
Aristotle supposedly put forward a theory named,"Theory of Causation":-
"Phew! Optimism: At least Aristotle didn't teach us ID110!"
Observation: The professor chooses one particular arbitrary word and uses that in all his sentences till it gets monotonic. First word of the day was "aesthetic" and the second one was "potential".
'Aesthetic expression and quest for perfection.', 'Intellectual and aesthetic needs.', 'What do we do in design? (er.. design??!!) Technology and aesthetics' (lol)
"Whats up with th prof,da? Babbling on and on with the aesthetics funda."
It was a part of that Aristotle's theory. Potentiality and Actuality. Whatever! :-
"How pessimistic! Don't remind me of potential! PH101 Argh!"

That brings us to the last written page of the book. Ciao!

Lived another quiz.

Yeah! lived another quiz. Wait a minute, technically speaking, there is one more subject left but since it is three days away most of the normal people will agree with me. How better to start the celebration than attend all classes with a broad smile?! (I am not being sarcastic) so here it begins-freaking out after quiz2, or so I thought.

There was nothing out of the ordinary with most classes today, except, of course, the one class I like to blog about - ED- a course about engineering drawing, graphics and CAD. It is supposed to be interesting and fun. Note that the emphasis is on "supposed". Anyways all that you need to know is that (x,y,z,t) is (classroom for ED theory, just after a heavy lunch).

It all started ( Herge style! ) when a friend of mine interrupted us when we were busy watching a movie to remind us about the class. Argh! the guts to disturb and remind about this class! It took a lot of determination to ditch the movie and make the long ( er.. not that long. This is just to add to the dramatic effect) journey to class.


I thought that the three of us can rock the class as usual but it turned out a big time flop. One of them starts behaving like a geek and began doing next week's assignment with my stationery. I tried to snap her out of it but ended up complaining to the girl next to me who ( another geek at times) takes her stationery out saying ," Hey, good idea"! Imagine my situation. In a desperate attempt to save them ( and myself in the process), I snatched all the pencils lying around and then needless to say there were some vain attempts to snatch them back. One of the guys behind us passed a lazy comment," Sir, girls are doing mischief in class". He said that it was good entertainment for him and far better than listening to the lecture. Entertainment it seems! The arrogance!

For a change I listened to the class and actually understood what he was trying to draw but after some time the board was overflowing with lines and planes and that's when I officially gave up. Having learnt the important lesson of not playing silly games in class ( refer previous post), I decided to put my pencil to work today. I felt my artistic skills needed rekindling and ended up filling the page with random sketches ranging in diversity from tortoises to ducks. The proffessor must have suspected my unusual interest in the assignment book I was drawing on and asked me for a pen (to explain planes? Fishy, don't you think?) I got some compliments for my sketches too, from my pals, of course.

When I am thoroughly bored, I start scanning the class. I thought I'll start with the fellow who passed the entertainment comment. His arena would be visible only through the corner of my eye. Wait a minute, he was not there! He had crashed on the desk, head down! From uncontrollable bombarding of doubts five minutes back to dozing off peacefully; he sure has a unique ability to change moods in a jiffy. There was this other guy on whose desk the professor placed a cardboard model of a pyramid. This lone wolf was actually staring at the pyramid as though it had just landed from Mars. My eyes then drifted to a trio who were discussing ( ED? ) all over the assignment book in front of them. I wonder why everyone was interested in ED, of all subjects.

I guess this habit of inspection of the class is contagious. My usually blind friend seems to have taken to my ways. I did not witness this though:
I turned back because some jobless fellow asked the equally jobless professor, who could have found something better to do than bore us with ED, a doubt. These guys were holding strips of paper, bent at different places and at different angles. It seemed like they were planning to build Eiffel tower out of those strips. I guess it is a part of some projection of solids funda. Who knows, who cares?

Boredom, at its best

I took some time to digest the fact that I had arrived early to class. The class was just starting to get filled up and I was already there in the not-so-usual second bench. You might be thinking this is some high credit course which I would not miss for anything in the world but you are sadly mistaken. This lecture is very much in the competition for most boring lecture of the semester and I am sure it will win too. I saw that my friends had already arrived. I asked them if they were out of their minds for having arrived so early and one of them replied that there was nothing else to do and so she came early. Excessive studying is not good for health. I was firm in my decision to not listen in this class for I had no plans of losing my sanity.

As soon as the professor entered the class my brain started processing ways of staying awake. It might have been the result of this excessive thinking but I ended up deciding to play a silly kindergarten level game of join the dots with lines. I know that this is the height of being bored but as always I had no plans of dozing off in class. A few minutes into the game and I felt this was the most boring game of the century, in spite of the fact that I was not losing. I got distracted for a while as I paid attention to some few minutes of the lecture for no particular reason. I asked my pal ," What did u do?" I actually meant to ask which line she had drawn and she answers with a straight face, " I drew a line." This is what happens to people who are taxed with uninteresting classes all day long. I, however,lost the game because I overlooked an obvious winning move. I declared that this was the most boring game and not worth playing under any circumstances no matter how bored one might be. I gave up the idea of playing games during a lecture (well, I would have played NFS during any lecture) and sought other ways of keeping myself occupied.

I could see the entire class from where I was sitting. The positioning of the bench relative to the other benches as well as the angle of sight was just right. There were some people who were as disinterested as ever while some others who seemed to be doing other nerve-wrecking work. There were others who were listening to class but the sensible people among them gave up halfway. I realized that there was quite a substantial number of students in class which is quite odd for such a lecture. They must have calculated their attendance earned till date and not been satisfied with the observations.

My eyes fell on a guy whose beard was singularly different from beards that I have seen. It resembled a lawn that was half mowed at arbitrary places and watered for a few days. My attention then switched to another guy who seemed to be engrossed in a sword fight using his palm as the sword. On closer observation, it turned out that he was listening to class intently and was trying to visualize the projections and elevation views (it being a drawing class). The next person I set my eyes on was nodding his head so badly that it seemed very likely that it might fall off. Eventually the class came to an end, officially. It was time for the much-anticipated attendance sheet. It turned out that the professor had forgot to bring the sheet.

Ten bucks

"How much more do we have left?",he asks.
"10 bucks."
"Well, u keep it then."
"No, what will I do with it? Let's finish it off."

These coupons are valid only for one day. I looked around frantically trying to find out something worth 10 bucks. Maybe its the increased cost of living these days, but there was nothing much for 10 bucks. I was almost going to give up when my eyes fell on the packaged food stall. Bingo. Haldiram's Moong dal. "I like moong dal very much and its exactly 10 bucks", I blurt out like as if I was Columbus and I had just discovered America. "Okay then. I'll get it.", he blurts equally well. Of all the things that had to go wrong, the packet refused to open. It was no use trying to open it and it was getting late. So he asked me to keep it. He searches around for his cycle like it was a needle in a haystack. I was terribly amused at the amnesia he suffered but tried to control myself lest he should feel any more embarassed than he already was. After a long hunt, he succeeded in finding his cycle. Then, fiddled with the lock for some more time. After what seemed to be an eternity, we climbed on board our respective cycles, rode side by side for some time and then went our separate ways. I looked at the moong dal packet and wondered why it refused to open. Feeling bad about not having said a proper goodbye I decided to send a text message- "Thanks for the company." and as always.. no reply.

In my shoes

Zoom.. I practically fly on my cycle. It is not so surprising taking my weight.. er.. weightlessness into account. I like it when my cycle tyre is filled with air. The weather is just right but I will have to spend the next one hour attending a lecture. I try to drive this thought out of my head and concentrate on my cycling. If this road was never ending or the class cancelled for some reason, I would have cycled on and on. But alas, nice things like this never happen.

I park my cycle and take the usual path to the classroom. I enter the same old class mechanically with questions in my head and unlike most of the time I have answers too. Why am I here? Oh yes, attendance. What do I get from this class ? Oh yes, knowledge that is supposed to be useful for my future profession. Why do people make boring things seem interesting and make a mess out of it? I guess that is what they are supposed to do for a living. More mechanically than ever, I take my seat as usual in the first bench. I seem to have arrived earlier than usual. There are not many people around. There is a drastic increase in the sensible people who decided to bunk class.

I have no idea when the class began because I was lost in another notebook. It was when my neighbours started writing frantically in their notebooks that I realized that the class had officially started. In a vain attempt to make a new beginning, I started writing notes which were better off not written in the first place, taking my handwriting and negligible enthusiasm into consideration.

I am not very sure what the topic exactly was but it was not in the least interesting. You must keep in mind that I am talking for the normal people of the class excluding nerds for obvious reasons. Anyway, class went on as usual. A few minutes into the lecture and I realized that I had not worn my watch. That was hard to digest because I will not be able to know when the torture will end. There is nothing much to do now, is there? No watch to stare at, ticking, second by second, nobody to talk to as the others seemed to actually listen to the lecture and no electronic gadget to kill your time. Imagine my situation.

The professor seemed to be talking more than usual today. I also noticed that he was walking in a wobbly manner, but then again, it might have been the effect of drowsiness in my eyes. "How much more of this left?", I asked my neighbour, who experienced a lot of difficulty in taking her mind off the class. She did reply however, "25 minutes." Gulp. The information is being processed. Twenty five minutes is a lot of time when it comes to classes like this. I felt the powerful urge to make a dash for it. Even though I am almost invisible, the finite strength of the class would make it amply conspicuous if I dared to do anything as silly as that. Moreover, the attendance sheet had not reached me. So I had no choice but to wait and keep waiting.

I am not very sure what happened between then and now but I am guessing that I dozed off or listened to the lecture for want of nothing else to do. Well, I got out of the class after it got over and walked mechanically to the cycle stand. I was back to my own self. I hopped on board my cycle and zoom..