A Bizarre Encounter

Yesterday, I had an encounter of the bizarre kind. It was peculiar in the sense that I didn't actually have an encounter but came away from the scene feeling I had. This happened when I was getting off the bus and a guy on a bike zoomed past me. Now, rules of the country say that you are not supposed to drive on the embarking / disembarking portion of the bus stop, let alone zoom by. But this character was obviously oblivious of all those regulations. Unfortunately for us, such people (whose brain volume is less than the volume of their bike's engine) are the norm rather than the exception. So, we are going to have to learn to live with them.

On a slightly lighter note (the biker could have benefited from some weight loss by the way) I recently heard of another bizarre incident taking place elsewhere in the world, in a different galaxy. The incident occurred in the Sahara Desert which lies in the Third Sector of the Phytomedia Galaxy, yonder to the Milky Way (tm) Galaxy. Some people reported seeing flying camels and this created quite a furore. Was it mere hallucination or was it the work of some alien technology? In a bid to find out the real truth, I decided to investigate further. (Note of caution : All the material written here is sourced from the internet. Therefore, it is very valid and accurate, if you know what I mean!)

Agency Reports : More camels were seen flying following reports of flying camel sightings in and around the fringes of the desert. While this could be put down to overdose of coffee and lack of sleep on the part of the residents, there are some scientists who claim that the flying camels are nothing but a mirage. (And you wonder why the Mirages with the Indian Air Force crash? They are nothing but flying camels!) This is a serious development according to the American Journal of Research on Inane Topics (AJRIT) (motto : We are researching the correlation between the depth of the Indian Ocean and the recent terror attacks around the world) Mr. John Doe of AJRIT claimed that the flying camels are the latest technology that has invaded the desert and is threatening to disrupt the life of the locals.

"Camels have long been the travel companions of the tribes inhabiting the desert. With some of them now adapting to the skies, owning a flying camel will become a prestige issue and pretty soon we are going to have Sheikhs wanting to have a flying fleet of camels. Soon, they will add to the crowding of the already overcrowded airports"
Sheikh Abdul : This is Sheikh Abdul on Camel Flight 203, requesting permission to land.
Control Tower : Negative Sheikh, we are full. Please try the Cairo airport.
SA : I have just come from there. They are full too. They are having a full convention on flying camels in Cairo and they have people coming in from India on flying carpets, people from Europe coming in on broomsticks, the lot.
CT : If you can hold out for twenty seven hours, we may be able to fit you in.
SA : Okay. But make it quick. My camel needs to take a leak.

Another development could be that the leading software manufacturer of the world (you know who I am talking about!) could soon come out with a game called The Flying Camel Simulator. That would be hilarious. I have heard that the programmers undergo intensive on-site training before writing the software. For this, they would need to go to the Sahara Desert to practice flying on the camels.
Owner of Big Software company : "Guys, have you made it to the Sahara?"
Programmers : "Sir, we are stuck in Nevada. The GPS system is not working. It does not show a place called Sahara anywhere in the US"
Owner : "Try restarting the service. If that doesn't work, try contacting help desk. No, wait. Help desk will not be of any help. They are in the process of changing the hold tune from Beethoven's Symphonies to Mozart's Compilations. You need to figure out for yourself how to reach there"
Prog. : "Sir, we have restarted the service. It is asking us for permission to send an error report and searching like hell for an internet connection! We may have to abort."

If on the other hand, the owner asks the Sheikhs to get the camels to the United States, there will be a great security threat and the Sheikh would have to fill out Security and Customs forms.

Security and Customs form for Private Aircraft owner
1. Are there any living animals on board? Ans. The aircraft is an animal.
2. Has the aircraft undergone any repair work unbeknownst to you? Ans. Not that I know of.
3. Are you the owner of this aircraft? Who was the previous owner? And. I am the owner.
4. Are you carrying any illegal items on board such as drugs, weapons of mass destruction? Ans. The aircraft is suffering from stomach ache and is currently classified as a Biological WMD.

Personally, I think that flying camels is a swell idea. It will be one hell of a sight to behold a humped camel spreading its wings and taking for the skies. I am sure that one will be able to earn millions just from giving out joy rides. I propose to do so. I am just waiting for getting training from The Flying Camel Simulator.

Invigilation Duties

For a change, I was on the other side of the fence. And I was astonished to learn that the grass is indeed greener on the other side. Now you might argue that the grass being greener on the other side is an allegory and that it shouldn't matter much to a human (bovines may beg to differ) This article however has nothing to do with my love for grass (pun unintended) Its more to do with one of the duties that I had to perform as a self respecting Masters student. Mind you, Invigilating for an examination is not the most exciting of pastimes : watching a plant grow is more exciting than standing in an examination hall while students around you are racking their brains, with concerned expressions on their faces, thinking, "If alpha times omega is equal to beta, what the hell was I doing last night instead of studying?". I did not shy away from this duty. As I said, I am a self respecting, righteous, honest and vertically integrated (whatever that means. I heard it in a movie called Miami Vice) person and there was no way I was not going to perform my duties. My scholarship depends on it.

One of the hazards of being an invigilator for an exam which has abstract questions and expects abstracter answers is that you have to stop people from copying or using inappropriate methods to complete their exam papers. While this is bound to happen even in the best of places, I have reason to believe that the country is going to the dogs. In a place which prides itself on being the numero uno technological institution in the country, the level of the students, with respect to their mastery over inappropriate methods, is very poor. It was really depressing to see the students use such archaic methods such as glancing into his / her neighbour's answer book to copy. This method was used when I was pursuing my undergraduate studies some quadrizillion years ago. Not that I practiced this fine art. Since I was an intelligent and hard working student, there was nothing LEFT for me to copy. I always knew the RIGHT answers. Here's an illustration for those stupid enough not to understand what I am saying.

As a result of my RIGHTEOUSNESS, I always managed to score well in my exams. Is there anything more LEFT to say? Okay, enough of those puns. Coming back to life is a song by Pink Floyd. And coming back to the point at hand is the sentence that I use most in all my articles. This is because I have a tendency to stray from what I had started speaking about initially, and which is precisely what I have done in writing this very sentence itself and something which you will realize only after the sentence is over, about which, considering its length till now, you are still wondering whether to report it to the Guinness Book of World Records for the longest, meaningless sentence that tries to explain the futility of my articles with respect to my continual and obstrusive deviances from the topic at hand. (Statutory warning : Reading blog articles with long meaningless sentences may be harmful to the invigilator's health)

Anyway, coming back to the article (Here I go again) I realized that there is a serious need of some good training institute to indoctrinate in the students the lost Art of using Inappropriate Methods to Succeed at EXams. (AIMSEX) I know that the abbreviation is a bit misleading, but hey! Whatever helps business is cool by me. I plan to start such an academy (in conjunction with ASSHOLE) This will help the country by making me wealthy and thereby reducing the need for me to write blog articles. I will write in detail about the methods I propose to teach the students to help them succeed. For now, I need to collect and assess their answersheets.

Positives from the Arsenal vs. Hamburg Game

There is a lot that we can learn from the way we played today:

1. Even though Henry was missing, there was a semblance of pace up front. v Persie did well to win the penalty (minimal contact, but the keeper had the wrong intentions!) and Gilberto converted it with consumate ease.
2. Rosicky!!! Man, the words of the BBC commentator for the World Cup (for the Czech vs. USA match) come to my mind. After the stunning goal Rosicky scored, he said, "That is what Arsenal fans will be looking forward to this summer!"
3. Adebayour : Okay, his finishing skills still have about three question marks on them, but he made up for that with some solid running and some instances of running back and defending. I wish he had got on the scoring sheet. May be some goals below his belt will do his confidence a world of good.
4. Gallas : He looked more at ease in Toure's position than he was in the LB one. He defended well and in general, marshalled Djorou and Hoyte nicely. Maybe we could have these two intern under him or something.
5. Walcott : He didn't feature in the game, but I believe the Hamburg side were a bit wary of him being introduced at a late stage in the game when they were going to be tired and Walcott would run rings around them. That psychological factor helped.

Looking forward to Sunday's game against Manchester United :

Things that worry me:
1. Toure's injury
2. Hoyte's discrepancies in defending
3. Lack of finishing (we should have won 6-0 against 10-man Hamburg)
4. Eboue's lack of clinical last pass
5. Our recent history in EPL against Man Utd

In spite of all these, I believe that we can put up a good show at Old Trafford. Here's looking forward to that.