30-second comedy at its best. (Follow-up)

Labels: Hindi

You know what I always think? People try to do too much on breaks. And, I've got no qualms with it if they do it, it's just that I hate being dragged along with them on these unfortunate excursions. What do I want to do when I'm on a two-and-a-half week break from the murderous college lifestyle? Sleep, eat and futz around on the Internet. Perhaps meet up with some old friends, visit the good ol' school, read a book or two, learn some new characters; you know, fun stuff.

Still, there's always the minimum number of window shopping I must go do and get dreadfully bored doing it, attend a certain number of parties and marriages and get dreadfully bored doing it, listen to a lot of people who meet me every time I come back home after a stretch and who always ask the same old questions and repeat the same old things and, without question, get dreadfully bored doing it.

Still, somewhere between dreadful boredom and the intense bliss of sleep, there are some rather good "things" I've come across recently. One of them is PotterCast, which is this podcast about, as can be easily guessed, Harry Potter and they recently had J.K. Rowling on the show for two entire episodes of considerable length. Now, normally, I tend to stay away from Potter-ness on the Internet in general. It's not that I don't like the topic - I love it immensely - but that, just like being able to speak, say English, fluently doesn't get you much in terms of credit in this world anymore, being a person who knows about Harry Potter wouldn't give me the same pleasure as knowing about something rarer would, something about which I would be one of the few people to know about. And, as much as I love Harry Potter, I know that thousands others love it and know it with the same intensity as I do, and so, the market is, as the economists say, saturated. Still, if you like to talk about Harry Potter with friends of yours for hours on end, this PotterCast thing is indeed for you.

As far as entertainment material goes, I have also recently been able to watch some episodes of "Jeeves and Wooster", a TV series of whose existence, I was hitherto unaware. Adaption of some of the stories written by P.G. Wodehouse, quite amusing and everything. Jeeves is played by Stephen Fry and Bertie Wooster by Hugh Laurie (who is now most popular for his role as Dr. House in the TV show "House"). Worth a look into if you're a Wodehouse fan.

And lastly, another neat thing I've recently stumbled upon is this website with Sino-Platonic papers on it, a bunch of which are available for download for free and some of them are a delightful read, although I would be remiss if I did not mention that it is only interesting if you are at least a little interested in Sinology in the first place, as the writers generally tend to assume that you are, er, in their fold. If you have tried to learn Chinese in the past and have banged your head against it, I highly recommend "Why Chinese is so damn hard"; the cathartic effects are unmistakably remarkable.

Labels: English

As I've mentioned before, there are lots of joys and sorrows you can get in school and college, but there is pretty much no indescribably satisfying a joy nor devastatingly mood-ruining sorrow as that of the end-quarter grades. So, let me just say right now that I have been fucked this quarter, fucked badly. Apparently my conception of "working hard" is miles away from what I need to be doing in my third year of college and I need to get my act together next quarter onwards if I want to be able to look myself in the face every morning.

Anyhow, I shall deal with my grief in my own good time, namely, by having lunch.

Labels: English

Food. Finally, something I can call proper food has reached my craving mouth after an entire year. My craving for proper home-cooked food pretty much describes all of last week which I spent wishing for some awesomely cooked Arhar ki Daal, Bhindi ki Sabzi, Dahi and Karari Roti. Oh man, this place is brilliant.

On the other hand though, the air pollution situation in Delhi is getting seriously out of hand. If you step out of the house and breathe in the air, in pretty much any place with half-decent air, you'd begin to wonder if your house was on fire. I am not kidding. Delhi pollution is bad year-round but it's worst of all in the winter when the dust and smoke settles down and causes devastating smog and constant smell of burning substances. I suppose if you live in Delhi long enough, don't leave for a year and come back, this might feel normal. But, it totally is not.

On the bright side though, more food tomorrow, meeting up with some old folk and going to school!

Labels: English

We have this week before Finals' Week that is known as "Dead Week". Freshman, naive as they are supposed to be, are always in awe when they first hear about Dead Week from upperclassmen, who are, in reality, just fucking with them; only on the Friday of Dead Week does the naive Freshman realize that pretty much the only thing that was dead about the week was himself.

This week, I've had one oral report, a skit, a problem set, a final project and the usual 50-60 pages of reading for the history class. Sure, I didn't do the reading for the history class or go to section, but I felt guilty about it! I didn't need to have that guilt weighing me down. I also believe that the professor for the Compilers class is being unnecessarily bitchy by having both a final project (which I just finished on Thursday) as well as a final exam. Now, I have one weekend – about 30 hours starting now - to study for two extremely difficult exams on Monday (ignoring the exam on Tuesday altogether) and somehow, also start and finish a 10-page paper that's going to be 40% of my grade for that class.

On top of that, the weather has become ridiculously cold. OK, I just need to survive four more days before I'm flying home.

Labels: English

I couldn't even tell you an accurate definition of what a tailgate was without looking up a dictionary. That's my level of interest in football (read: American football). But, anyway, Stanford's biggest football game of the year is taking place as I write. It is always against the University of California at Berkeley (which, for sanity's sake, is shortened, by everyone, to "Cal"). For a long time now, the reluctance Stanford has shown towards winning these "Big" games is comparable to that which most members of the male gender show towards castration. However, things might change today... or, in the most probable case, not.

Anyway, football is the least of my worries. What's annoying right now is the sheer amount of work I have to finish by next week. As school terms go, we have three quarters in a year and there are ten weeks in a quarter. There are three clearly defined phases in a quarter, which are "Beginning", "Midterms" and "Finals". Beginning and Finals are the first two and last two weeks of the quarter respectively; midterms go from weeks 3 to 8, and that is arguably the most frustrating part of my academic life – the midterms just never end. Once the finals are done, it starts all over again next quarter.

But, soon, very soon, I will be flying back home and enjoying the most delicious food on earth for what will be an extremely brief two and a half-ish weeks. That's a thought worth living for. 真的不想活下来

UPDATE (7.44pm): Unless I am very much mistaken, we just won Big Game.

Labels: English