Monday, October 31, 2005

Change of Article

Hey, this article is just to get the article about the flatulence off the numero uno position. Really, I have been getting a lot of attention for talking about a taboo. As I have realised, talking about flatulence in social circles is a big n0-no. And although my blog does not constitute a social circle (and does not even try to pass off as one), I felt that the readers' wishes ought to be respected. It's like this : Person A cannot stand talk about farts and other bodily gaseous wastes and Person B can. But does that mean Person B is wrong? Although each person is entitled to his opinion, the opinion of Person B is wrong. Person B is an idiot, according to (as I found out) Rules for talk AT Social GATHERings. (RATSGATHER). This, obviously, is not a web-site; it's a figment of my imagination. But then, I am a person A type of person, who is conscious about etiquette and knowledgeable talk. (Actually, knowledgeable talk is not exactly my cup of tea. You will find that out if you go through my other posts!)

Anyway, I hope this article serves it's purpose (which is, in case you have forgotten, which is what I wanted you to do in the first place and therefore I am defeating the whole purpose by explaining tha purpose of the article! Geesh! That was one long sentence.) So, here goes. The purpose of this article is to get the focus off the previous article. I have received a lot of hate mail for having put up such obscene stuff. And as a newly accepted member of RATSGATHER, I think it is my duty to refrain from such activities. Therefore, unless there is a really pressing reason for me to put obscene stuff up again, like America screwing up in it's efforts to rehabilitate the world (which is going to happen pretty soon, so you can expect obscene stuff pretty soon), I will not do so. And I hope you have forgotten the reason for this article.

Saturday, October 29, 2005

Indoor Air Pollution

This post has got nothing to do with a similar post elsewhere. Specifically, at Serious musings of a Questioning mind. I maintain that the person who writes that blog is one of my multiple personalities. Other personalities, about whom you might have heard, are indulged in society improving activities such as murdering politicians and corporators, cleaning the gutters of Mumbai, etc. Well, not really. Cleaning the gutters of Mumbai is not exactly a good thing to do. Getting rid of the blood stains is easy enough : you can look it up in the Murderer's Manual for Dummies. But the stains that one may get after cleaning the gutter are unimaginable. Who knows what sorts of pollutants enter the gutters of Mumbai? Which brings me to today's topic of pollution inside houses.

There is a simple remedy to prevention of pollution indoors. Which is this : Ban the production of all sorts of protein containing beans! Yes! Nature has given these beans the power to generate flatulence, in an effort to reduce the human population by sheer force. In the sense that nature wants people to die trying to hold their breath rather than take in what is probably a malicious odour! I will try to explain the phenomenon of flatulence, which in some crude and un-informed sections of the world, is called a "fart".

When you eat something, the food that is chewed enters the bronchial cord. No wait. I think it enters the fallopian tube. Oh, just forget it. Whatever does enter, finds it's way to the stomach. And nothing can be said about the food that remains in the mouth, because given the highly advanced tooth brushes we have today, there is every probability that you are using the tooth brush in a "wrong" way and hence it is not serving it's purpose. So, the food that remains in the mouth probably remains there your whole lifetime and get's removed only in your old-age, when your teeth fall off. But I am deviating from the topic at hand here. We were at the stage when the food has reached the stomach, after it's journey through the vestigial tubes. In the stomach, the food is broken down into two major categories : solid and gas. At this stage, this particular phenomenon is fine, because the gas that gets produced in the stomach comes out only as a "Burp!" from the mouth, and is usually non-smelly, unless the food stuck in your mouth has been degraded very badly. And if you have some manners and etiquette, or sheer skill such as me, you can disguise the burp quite effectively, making it sound like a car back-firing in the neighbouring building.

After the stomach, the solids travel through another set of tubes. Sometimes I wonder why all the systems in humans need to have tubes. I mean, the food we eat passes through tubes, our blood travels in tubes, there is a tube in our ear, etc. There is even a tube through which liquid can pass, though it is external to our body. No, you perverts! I am not talking about the bodily organ involved in reproduction. I am talking about straws with which we sip our cold drinks. Sheesh! These days you got to be careful to ensure that you are not misunderstood. It is in these tubes (not the straws, you dummy!) that the problem of flatulence finds it's origin. There are some bacteria planted there by nature, who have malicious intent. Any time they find any sulphur, which is present in unnaturally high quantities in beans, they go into over-drive and start a war dance around lighted bon-fires. Actually, what they do is called "Fermentation", which is a Greek word, combined from the Latin words "Fer" and "Mentation". Fer means "around a bon-fire" and Mentation means "to dance". So, these bacteria do what they were put into the human body for. Namely, they convert harmless food substances into smelly gases. And this is where the problem begins.

The intestinal tubes, or wherever it is that the gases are produced, are located quite close to the brain. And the gases make you "heady", if you get my drift. So in an induced seizure caused by the "high" brain, the tubes collapse, forcing whatever gas is there inside them to come out of the body with an amazing amount of force. To understand the magnitude of this force, consider the following example. If you "farted" in the vicinity of an ant, you would probably find it thrown away quite a distance and on inspection and scientific analysis, you would find that it is dead. The reasons for it getting thrown away are not yet clear. But you know why it is dead : Lack of Oxygen! Anyway, flatulence, as I said earlier is quite a nuisance and is also a biological hazard. Hence, it has tremendous potential to be used as a Biochemical warfare weapon. This is probably the principal reason why the US desperately wants us to sign the non-proliferation treaty. We, as a country, consume around a zillion "pounds" of proteinaceous beans everyday. And given the unpredictable nature of the south western monsoon winds, who knows which fart may land where? Currently though, it seems that all the flatulence in the country is finding it's way to places like Kurla and Bandra, which is why they are smelly. Not to mention the pubs and the bars which smell really bad. This is an example of indoor air pollution. It is very dangerous and immediate measures need to be taken to handle the situation before it gets out of hand!

Thursday, October 27, 2005

The other blog is up!

To enhance my quest for some free publicity, I have put up another blog.

You can visit it by clicking the post title or by clicking Serious musings of a Questioning mind.

This is a sincere and honest attempt at gaining double the existing recognition, by utilising two blog pages for advertising my writing prowess.

Jokes apart, the other blog is going to be about serious stuff, and is probably going to be updated on saturdays only. (The only day I have some leisure time and can devote it to some thinking. This blog doesn't require me to think.) The reason for this being that Saturday is the day when I can read the newpaper at leisure, without having the niggling thoughts at the back of my mind about impending assignments, lab reports, etc. Those niggling thoughts are for Sundays!

Tuesday, October 25, 2005

Moving the Earth

Archimedes had said : Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world.

I have a plan to move Earth too. But it centres around the concept of Newton's Third Law of motion and not the concept of the lever. Now, I know that the regular readers of my blog (as if there are thousands of them!) are probably wondering if it is indeed Govindraj who is writing the post, because even after as many as three lines, there has not been a funny word, forget a funny, rib-tickling sentence. It is indeed I and for once, I have decided to be serious about my blog posts. I have realised that every person should have a challenge in his/her life. And the person should think of things other than whether he has taken a bath in the morning or not. I, for one, do that every day. Not the bathing. The thinking. So, this morning I decided to challenge myself to write an article that was mentally stimulating and would be well received in scientific circles. These scientific circles like to indulge in what is called "Mental Masturbation". They stimulate the brain cells and then they do nothing more interesting than solve some problems such as finding the distance between two stars located three hundred zillion light years away. As if that is of any real utility to the poor dumb species that inhabit this planet. A more practical research would be to find out how to make oneself disappear. This will be of particular use when a person encounters an embarassing situation.

I say this because I recently was invited to a party where the hostess was a huge lady, who had a booming voice. And she was boring everyone to death by voicing out her opinions about the state of the country. The only reason all of us remained seated where we were was that the sound waves emanating from her mouth had such force that they kept us rooted to our seats. Another reason was probably the fact that dinner was yet to be served and her chef was known for doling out exotic and exquisite delicacies. Now, due to the divine smell wafting in to the hall from the kitchen tingling my nasal sensors, I had developed a primal urge to make a dash for the kitchen and eat whatever it was that was giving off the smell. And I had nearly made it to the kitchen when the hostess saw me.

Hostess : "Where are you going, Govindraj?"
Me : "I was wondering what the distance between Alpha Centauri and Sirius could be! So, I was making my way to the gallery to find out"

As you can see, the ability to disappear would have served me much more purpose than the distance between the two stars (I have a niggling doubt if they are even two different stars. I think they are the same star!) So, I think that the scientific cirlces should get their act together. But then, they are the only ones who are the most respected in the whole world. Which brings me to my topic for today's post, which you have probably forgotten by now. I want to propose a method to move earth so that I can be well-known in the world, once my critical review of the mechanism of the earth's rotation and the way to change it has been accepted.

Some posts ago, I had proposed the idea of all the local train travellers in Mumbai jumping off together to trigger an earthquake. That I realise, was unscientific, in the sense it was a bad idea to ask people to jump off the train. They might hurt themselves in the process. And of course, there was the small matter of the earthquake, which would probably send tsunamis to the neighbouring country, about which I care two hoots. Anyway, I have come up with a better plan. Which is this. All Indians should stand in straight lines extending from Kanyakumari to Srinagar and then walk from the west towards the east. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. This will result in the rotation of earth in the opposite direction or atleast a stopping of rotation. For rotating the earth in the opposite direction, we would need to enlist the support of the Chinese.

Now, you will be tempted to ask the practical utility of this. Well, for starters, we could maintain day over India whenever we wanted to. Better still, by preventing the motion of earth, we could have a extended night, so that we could sleep till our heart's content. To continue the night, we could take turns at walking in the straight line. And we could black-mail the sparsely populated western, developed countries into submission to our demands. The idea is infallible. Now you probably understand why they say that India's population is it's strength. I think we should put this plan into action as soon as possible, along with the Somalia mosquito plan (The Powai Lake and National Interests) We will very soon become a super-power!

Monday, October 24, 2005

Google Page Rank

Hey, check out what Google claims is their way of "ranking" a page. And their own page has a Google Page Rank of 8 / 10!
Google Toolbar Help

And my blog has a page rank of 3 / 10! I hope I can raise it to 9 / 10!

Sunday, October 23, 2005

Musings at 0000 hours

Hmm. Long day ahead tomorrow and no inkling in my mind as to what the coming day has in store for me. Maybe I will get some sort of an inspiration from somewhere, that will change my life by converting me from a lazy slob to a workaholic. And maybe Bangladesh will win the Cricket World Cup in 2007. In case you haven't noticed, both of these are highly improbable events, seeing as my biggest daily activity is moving my bodily self from the hostel to the Centre for Environmental Science and Engineering (CESE, where I study) and back. Notice, I say my physical self. Never have I claimed that my mental presence is in the class room. My mental presence is usually back at the room, sleeping. I leave it every morning, lest it lose it's beauty sleep!

Zzzzz....

Friday, October 21, 2005

Centre is East : East is Left.

What I am going to say now will not be looked upon as news by those in the know. For those in the don't know however, this will come around as quite a shock.

I had set my first foot in the world of blogging with an intention of writing serious stuff, things that mattered to me, things that made me sit up and take notice. But somewhere down the line, after writing as many as two posts, I decided that the world was too serious already. I mean, if you surf around the blogger site, you will find loads of people unloading their emotional baggage, reeling off their worst fears, the facts about how the government is ruining the country and what not. I decided I wanted to be different. Similar, but different? Don't get it? Well, here is an explanation :

I love to lament about the state of affairs in my country. Believe me, I have so many facts and so much data about how and what is going wrong, when and where in the country, I could have written pages for a single post! This data I have gleaned during my travels around the internet, browsing through magazines, tabloids, and of course the news papers. Also, since I have access to the internet for free, I have also had time to look up some porn sites. But that is besides the point. What I would like to state here is that I am a well read person. And even if you wake me up in the middle of the night to ask what is the capital of India, I will nonchalantly say Kolkatta.

No, this is not a joke, as you might be inclined to think. Think about it. The government at the centre is currently being so pressurised by the Left, I sincerely believe that it is being run from Kolkatta. The centre is being forced to give up good plans that can work for the better of the country due to the lack of foresight (origin : from the word four-sight, meaning a person who wears double battery spectacles) and Bangla jingoism ( if there is any such thing ) of the Left. How else do you explain their acceptance of FDI ( Foreign Direct Investment, for the uninitiated ) in West Bengal and their vehement opposition to the same at the centre? Really inexplicable. Even more so, because all these people are guys and not females. If all of them were females, I would have just put it off as a sex thing. But I now I am seriously beginning to doubt their sanity. I think I will write a letter to my Warden and ask him to send those guys to spend their time with me here at the Mental Correction Institute.

I'm sorry. When I had started out writing this post, I had every intention to be as serious as possible. But I lost it after writing about three words. But I believe that the point I wanted to bring out has been dealt with. Which is this : Centre is Left. And although Left is not right, they have the might!

Laws : Love - Hate Relationships

I HATE LAWS. No, I am not a law-breaking red-neck. I am not talking about the laws made by the puny humans to keep other miserable planet-fellows under control. I am talking about the laws of nature, the ones which govern each and every minute particle in the entire universe. My problem is specifically with the Law of Conservation of Mass.

Let me get a bit technical here. The Law of Conservation of Mass states that the absolute value of the tangent of the angle between the roof of your house and Maitri station in Antartica (or wherever it is that the Indians landed) is the root function of the inverse sigmoidal square root of the weight of the earth. For the non-technical people : this essentially means that the author has a knowledge of science which is numerically equal to ZILCH! Actually, it is somewhere in between zilch and a little more than zilch, but I know enough to understand what the Law of Conseration of Mass means. ( I asked my 17 year old nerd neighbour to explain it to me! )

What the nerd said has really amazed me. He said that basically, all the things in this universe are indestructible! Imagine! And my mother used to scold me in my youth for being a destroyer of so many things! So, he explained to me, that mass cannot be destroyed. It can only be converted from one form to another. This gave me an insight, which once I reveal to you, you are going to wonder why you didn't think of in the first place. But if you had been that intelligent, you wouldn't have been guessing the answer of 2 x 7, back when you were in school.

The insight I had is this. If mass can never be destroyed, then where does it go when someone loses weight? Huh? I will tell you where it goes! It goes in someone else's tummy! Yes! This is the truth. You were wondering all these years how you were putting on weight? Well, there is the explanation for that! And this insight made me think of an idea to improve the world as a whole by making myself rich! Here is what I plan to do.

I have been putting on a lot of weight recently for no apparent reason. So, I plan to read tomorrow's tabloid (very famous newspaper) and find out which celebrity has lost how many kilo gram of weight. I am sure they will include that data. They have the penchant for printing absolute rubbish that has absolutely no utility. So, if I find a celebrity who has lost EXACTLY the same amount of weight as I have gained, I will threaten him to start loosing weight myself, thereby ensuring that his efforts will be in vain. And that way, I can black-mail him to make myself rich. I realise that this is an unethical way to get rich, but I cannot help it. Life is not fair and even Nature will second my thoughts. Why else would I have gained weight without even hogging? Here's my daily diet :
Morning Breakfast : 2 cups of coffee, black, with 4 tea spoons of sugar
Two egg omelet, topped up with a full glass of milk and honey

Afternoon Lunch : Usually some form of read meat or chicken, preferrably the fried variety, with three servings of rice, around a dozen chappatis, give or take three. Lots of daal (protein intake!) and around 500 gram of salad

Evening snack : Two cups of coffee, black with 4 tea spoons of sugar
Repeat of breakfast, basically

Night Dinner : I usually have a light dinner, as advised by my dietician.
It consists of : Macher jhol (Fish curry, in Bengali), Pot Roast, Corn on the cob, along with an extra large serving of butter chicken, a steak which has been well done (I hate rare steaks!)
All this is I drain down my system with around a litre of alcohol in the rum form. Occasionally, if I feel like it, I have a double or a triple sundae. It depends on whether I am dieting or not.

As you can see, I live a hermit like life and no one can accuse me of putting on weight for lack of diet control or non-existence of exercise. Why, I actually walk all the way down the hall to fetch the paper every day, a distance in excess of twenty meters! Not to mention the amount of exercise I get shifting the couch daily, so that I can have it in front of the television where I like it.

The reason I said I have a love-hate relationship with Laws should be evident to you now. If it isn't, I guess you must still be wondering what 2 x 7 is. The reason is as simple as this : I hate Law of Conservation of Mass because it makes me fat and I love it because it is going to make me rich! Can't live with it, can't live without it!

By the way, 2 x 7 = 17.

Wednesday, October 19, 2005

Straight Dope : Those were the days

Back when the Internet was young and the porn sites were yet to make an impact, there was in existence (and still is) a web-site called Straight Dope. This was one of the first sites dedicated to humour. Of course, now-a-days, it's readership has decreased, thanks to yours truly writing such excellent humour columns! And I think that this will be the status quo for a long period of time. As long as Dave Barry doesn't find out that I am copying his writing style of booger journalism, not to mention the word "booger journalism" which I believe he himself has coined!

There is a very interesting idea expressed on Straight Dope. It is this : If all the Chinese in the world jumped of their collective chairs after climbing on them, would the earth be thrown off it's course? Intriguing? You bet it is. And this has led me to today's blog. What will happen if all Indians jump off their collective chairs? I shudder to think of the implications.

But there will definitely be some hindrances in the process of jumping : the primary one being that not all Indians possess chairs. And those who do possess them have ensured that regular maintenance of the chair has been a non-event. Therefore, I seriously doubt if all Indians would ever be able to jump off at the same time. And even if they did, I think the effect would not be momentous, mainly because of the Green House Effect and the fact that the sine of 53.58 is 0.80468660605489181240281217497668. Also, one would have to take into account the local factors for India, like corruption, untruth, and the fact that a significant population of India is travelling in local trains of Mumbai at any given time. I think we should change the question to what will happen if all the local trains of Mumbai collapse at the same time. An earthquake is a given, with other possible repercussions being major Tsunamis in the Arabian Sea, which will drown the better part of Eastern Africa. Such is the population of Mumbai. These statements I am making on the basis of unbiased and intelligent research; deep and qualitative thinking done over a period of two hours and a few tequila shots.

Anyway, before I stray from the point at hand, and this usually is true about all my posts, seeing as that I am drunk most of the times, I would like to make another authoritative statement. This is regarding the state of Population in Mumbai. I recently read a survey which said that more than 70% of the metropolis' population is compromised by... oops comprised of people from the Northern states. Now, I am not a person like Mrs. Patkar, a well known publicity stunt specialist, employed by the World Bank, and I don't crave for attention. I am not an attention seeker, probing here and there for some unasked for publicity. Hence, I will not call the people from the Northern states "Bhaiyyas" as they are called in Mumbai. I will not call them such names, because that is the kind of person I am! And the authoritative statement that I wish to make is this : If all the people from the Northern states who reside in Mumbai jump off the local trains of Mumbai simultaneously, the ensuing earthquake would measure a whopping 9.3 on the Richter scale. Also, it will prod the dormant Salsette mountains of Mumbai into a lava spewing frenzy. Yes, this is true. It is the result of another hour of thinking at my favourite haunt.

Barman! Get me another Tequila shot, will you?

Friday, October 14, 2005

The Bad Phase

There comes a time in every person's life when he or she has to look back at his/her life and wonder.... "Where the hell did I keep my underwear?"

Seriously! All people, some time in their life, go through this phase of life, searching for their underwear frantically in the cupboard, under the bed, and finally finding it right beside the dining table. Your guess is as good as mine as to how it reached there. It is one of those inexplicable vagaries of nature. But this article is not about missing inner wear. This is about the bad phases in life, although missing underwear does constitute such a phase.

People have bad phases in life so that they can appreciate the good phases better. Yeah, right! I sometimes wonder if the person who wrote this sentence had the brains of an ant-eater. The person writing this sentence is a certified intellectual, you dodos. I am talking about the person who came up with the first sentence of this paragraph. There is no such thing as a good phase in life; there are little less worse bad phases. As you can probably make out from my comments on life, I am a Murphy Lobbyist, if there is any such thing. I believe the Murphy's Law. One form of which I would like to reproduce here : Nobody dies a virgin : Life screws everyone.

I am not going through a bad phase myself. Atleast not right now. I am talking about the neighbouring country. Unfortunately, they have been hit by an earthquake. And all my sympathies are directed towards the poor souls affected by the tragedy. I am talking about the people of the neighbouring country who survived! What could be worse than living in such a country? I mean, living in a place that smells of rot and crap 28 hours a day? I have heard that the colleges there have declared an indefinite holiday for the students. No, I'm just kidding. There are NO colleges there to speak of. The educational courses available there are as follows :

IIT : Islamic Institute of Terrorism
JEE : Jehadic Entrance Exam
GATE : General Aptitude in Terrorism and Extremism
M. Tech. : Masters in Terror Technology
IIM : Institute of Infiltration Management
CAT : Career in Al-queda and Taliban
IAS : Iraq After Saddam

Personally, I wouldn't want to even step in that country, forget attending any of these courses. Also, as a disclaimer, I would like to state that publishing the list of these courses on my blog does not mean that I approve of their existence. Nor will I recommend them to anyone. I don't want lawyers at my door-step.

So, I will pray for the poor people of my neighbouring country. I will ask the Good Lord to provide them with a permanent shelter soon. I will ask for HIS DIVINE INTERVENTION to end the misery of these people once and for all. That will be accomplished as soon as I can find the patience to pray without laughing or having sadistic thoughts in my mind...

Tuesday, October 11, 2005

26 posts and still going strong

Okay. I know I was bad in the last post. And I don't want a repeat of the hate mail I have received. The only reason I put up this title for this post is that I couldn't think of anything else.

Today I am going to talk about an issue that is very close to my heart. This is the matter of utter national concern. Solving the problem which I am now going to describe may well result in world peace in our lifetime and change the world to a better place. The thing I am talking about is DOGS. Yes, dogs have the potential to change the human race for better. And we can help our cause by GETTING RID OF THEM ONCE AND FOR ALL!

Before you animal lovers out there jump out of your safari suits with your anti- anti - environmentalist pamphlets and start canvassing the utility of dogs and other miscellaneous miscreants created by nature, let me tell you this : I am an environmental engineer and according to esteemed scientific research (conducted by a certain Mr. G. S. Umarji) it has been conclusively and beyond doubt that the lack of dogs on this planet isn't going to hurt the eco-system much. On the contrary, it may help improve the overall scenario, because all the problems in the world can be attributed to one single thing. Yes, all sorts of problems, like making misteks in speling and Engisj and typos, and poor mathematics can be described in four simple words : Lack of sleep! And where do dogs come in? They come in by the gate, dammit. And they spend the better part of the night in the open ground that lies just outside my home, barking away to glory; giving vent to their age old frustration of being seen by everyone when they have to do private things, such as smelling their own poo!

Dogs are a nuisance. And it's not only because they keep barking all night long. They have the uncanny habit of turning up in all sorts of places. I pop my head out of my window and the chances that there is a dog in sight is minimal. But that is because I live in a Correctional Facility for the Mentally Challenged and my room doesn't have a window. But that doesn't discount the fact that the dog population is getting out of hand. I think the dogs are secretly planning to take over the world. All this loyalty stuff is just to keep us off our guard when they do finally make the assault.

Dog 1 (with vaguely cheerful expression that is a characteristic of all dogs) : Damn that Zanjeer. The traitor found the bomb we had planted in the Petrol pump.
Dog 2 : He will be taken care of boss!
Dog 3 : See to it that he is taken care of. Keep reporting to me.
Then they all sniff each other butts in appreciation and head off in the general direction of : nowhere. Because their brain to body mass ratio is very small. They can't tell what they will be doing the next moment. This is why, for the moment, that we are safe from their attack. Every time they try to escalate an assault, they change their minds because a cat crosses their path or one of them suddenly has an insatiable scratching urge. Scratching is to dogs what yawning is to humans; it is contagious! Thank heavens for the fleas. We wouldn't have been here if it wasn't for those small creatures that don't let a dog live in peace.

Which reminds me, the smallest things in this world are the ones that are the most useful to man. In case you are wondering why I am deviating from the topic at hand, it is because my dog is watching over my shoulder to see if I have dropped any eatable on my laptop's keyboard. If there is indeed something on the keyboard, he will lick it up and in the process, clear up all that I have typed. And by the way, you will have to excuse me now. I have a sudden scratching urge.

(Secret conversation : recorded earlier)
Flea : Sir! The Bhandup Regiment of canine miscreants has been neutralised!
Me : Excellent. And tell the guys to work extra hard tonight. I have a big exam tomorrow. I need to get my beauty sleep today!

Friday, October 07, 2005

25 posts and going strong

Well, well, well! 25 posts old and still young at heart.

In case you are wondering what I am talking about, here's the lowdown. This is my 26th post! That means, before this post, I have typed 25 posts. Can you imagine that? 25 posts! I could go on the whole day about this, you know... 25 posts is no mean achievement. I mean, its not everyday that your blog informs you that you have now 25 posts. Man! Twenty Five is indeed a HUGE NUMBER, isn't it?

Anyway, enough of the number 25. I know you will have grown tired of it by now. But still, if you get the time, just sit and ruminate on this fact that my blog has completed 25 posts while you guys are still stuck at the blog of a self-obsessed person who can do nothing else but gloat on his minimal achievements! I wonder if the cow does ruminate 25 times...

So, back to today's post : Enough wallowing in my own glory for now. I know some of you guys will say that no gloating is good enough when your blog has twenty freaking five posts. But then, this is the kind of person I am. I hate to delve repeatedly into self-glorification. I mean, I could have turned this entire post into one huge self-praising post. But I haven't, have I?

I am so busy these days that I wonder how I ever managed to get those earlier 25 posts online! These days, typing 2.5 lines has become a leisure for me. Actually, I do type a lot these days, but that is for my Seminar work over here at IIT Bombay. I hardly get any time to type for my own pleasure. Its really a miracle that I am being able to put up this post. I had to put up this post however, or the fact that I have already put up 25 posts previous to this would have been lost on my reader-folk! Anyway, I will stop saying this now. If I say this again, please remind me to refrain from doing so.

My guide for my seminar says that I should be working harder. And that I keep committing the same mistakes again and again. She thinks I should get a mental check up done because she thinks I have a poor short term memory! What a load of hog-wash! Me, Govindraj and having poor memory! Ha! That's a laugh! Which reminds me, did I tell you that I have posted twenty five posts till date? No? I'm sure I must have mentioned it somewhere. I think I have. If you don't recall me having said it, well, there you have it! And in case you really don't recall me having said it, go get that MENTAL CHECK-UP DONE! :-)

Saturday, October 01, 2005

Exams and other hazards of Education

This title is inspired from Dave Barry's Book : "Babies and Other Hazards of Sex"

I am not against examinations, actually. It's just that I think we would be better off with a system that doesn't give mother's a chance to compare their respective wards! Wards! What a funny word! I remember they used this word in our school to ensure that the children don't understand that they are the ones who are being talked about! This could cause real trouble to the Municipal Corporator of a certain ward of Mumbai.

Class Teacher : "Sir, your ward has been in a lot of trouble these days!"
Municipal Corporator of Ward S (Father of Ward XYZ (I was thinking of MD, but his dad is not a Municipal Corporator!)) : "Yes, I know. We have had a lot of trouble with the roads this year."
CT : (to himself) 'Roads? Oh, ah yes. Code language! I understand!' (To the MC) "Also, there has been news that your ward has been flooding a lot lately!"
MC : "Tell me about it! The amount of trouble I have had to go through to get the water out of my house after the 26th of July!"
CT : "26th of July? No, no. Your ward was caught flooding in the bathroom on the 29th of July. And it was on the school premises, not at your house"
MC : "Oh, so it was flooding here too, eh? Get in touch with my junior, we will do something about it in say about a hundred and twenty nine years of time!"
And so it goes. The reason that I have not tried to make this part funny is that I don't want to infuriate the Municipal Corporator of my ward! Who knows when he'll cut off the water supply? Fine mess that would create.

But this isn't about the 26th of July and allied problems, this is about exams and the worst thing associated with the exams : The Results! Yes, undoubtedly the thing that scares children the most is the exam results. More than being caught studying by a close friend. They are not scared of the doctor's needle as much as they are scared of the results these days, the kids.

Doctor : (to apprehensive looking kid) "Now, now. The Tetanus is a must, you know that. Don't be afraid!"
Kid : "Is there any vaccination for adults?"
D : "Yeah. There are many!"
K : "Can you make me a vaccination to make a person disappear?"
D : "Why do you want that for?"
K : "I want Mr. Murthy, my class teacher, to disappear before he declares our exam results!"

And, unfortunately for the kid, there is no such vaccination and he has to hear his result from this Murthy fellow. And then there is the rigmarole of showing the report card to his parents, getting it signed from them. (This is an unusual and unnecessary step. It has been designed by sadistic people at the Board of Schools. They derive pleasure from seeing kids being berated by their parents! They were probably abused in their childhood! :-))

In conclusion, I would like to say this : Exams are fine. Get rid of the results!