Thursday, August 24, 2006

Sleeping in the Class.....ZZZZZZZ.....

I have or rather since the last one year I have developed this habit of sleeping in class. In my first year, the very idea of sleeping in the class and missing what the prof. is teaching used to trouble me a lot. Now sleeping in the class has become a daily routine.
I got into this habit after joining IIIT, Hyderabad as a student of Computer Science and Engineering. Generally, in IIIT, students sleep after 12 AM (and we wish each other "Good Morning" before sleeping !!). And that's what changed my clock cycle. I also adopted this habit and usually slept(and still sleep) after 2 AM unlike at home where I used to sleep ( and still sleep) usually before 11PM. Since I went for PT ( a compulsary activity for a semester) at 6:30 AM in my first semester, I (as well as others) found myself sleeping in the class. It was the combined effect of both lack of sleep and tiredness since I was not used to PT ( It was only in school that sometimes once a week I had a P.T. session, but nothing more and here, in IIIT, 4 rounds of the football ground left me exhausted with only the minimum energy required by the body !!). And be it anyone's class, I never discriminated. I slept in second row in the same way as I slept in the second last row ( I mean I slept like a baby wherever I was sitting in the class)!!

Morning P.T. in the first semester..... it made me sleep in all the four classes in the morning, from 8:30 to 12:30, no class was an exception to this, I slept in Prof. Jawahar's class (the most dreaded prof.) and even in our Dean's class......, I slept in the afternoon's english's class...... and so I gradually became (in)famous among my batchmates for sleeping the most in the classes. I even slept in the lab sessions, in tutorials and even in some talk by some great persons ......, the only places left were mess, toilet and exam hall, of course I slept in my room but I did so even while studying...... the strange thing was that I slept only while the lecture or talk is going or while I was reading any course material.... during breaks between classes, I could never sleep !!! nor could I sleep while watching a movie !!!
The fact that people recognized me because I slept a lot in the class and that they regarded me as a professional sleeper, made me feel great, but not for long. I got disasterous grades in the first semester in those subjects in whose classes I slept and I also had a tough time writing the exams. But still I sleep in the classes. :) :(
There is a peculiar way in which I slept and still sleep in class. I sleep only with my eyes closed, rest of the body is sitting erect on the seat and since I wear a pair of spectacles, so maybe the prof. is unable to make out if i'm sleeping or not, since the lens of the spectacles tend to reflect light to some extent (I'm just trying to explain the reason, I might be wrong !!). But I've been caught once or twice but it's still too less for a person who sleeps everyday in all the classes.
I still fail to understand how my batchmates manage to stay awake in the classroom when they haven't slept well.
Though now a days I don't have to go for PT at 6AM, and on half of the days of the week I have my class starting at 10AM, I still manage to sleep in the class (this time I'm sitting in the third row).
I tried sleeping early in the night so that I can stay awake and concentrate in class the next morning, but after one or two days, I unconsciously switch back to my normal routine of sleeping at 2AM.
Well, sleeping in the class is bad and to cover up what the prof. has taught, after the class is not an easy thing to do. So I have to give extra time towards the syllabus and so others think that I study a lot. In such a scenario, I can't be called studious, I just try to cover up, I just try to survive !!

Thursday, August 17, 2006

The hunt continues ........

Since one year, I've been on a random hunt. Not hunt in real sense but still something of that kind.
It all started after coming to IIIT, Hyderabad.
Since my father is an officer in the Indian Army, so we don't live for more than a few years in one place. This in turn means new place, new people, new friends and of course old friends left behind! :(
Though such things happen in life, but not so frequently.
Before coming to IIIT, Hyderabad, I hardly used computers or internet, but since last year i've been learning new things, and in a way new methods to find old friends who use internet!!
The best source for me till now has been Orkut. Though last year I hardly came in touch with a few old friends and the only people in my friends list were my friends of IIIT(they were not even 100 !!). But during the last 4 months, i've been able to find many, seriously (count increases to 180) !! And even they found me on orkut. Thus I saw the real power of internet and orkut...!!
I earlier used the search option available in the menu bar quite leisurely but it came in handy. And when I found some, I joined the community of my old schools and some other communities which also helped me in this venture.
I made a list of names of all my old friends I could recall and the so had some 30-35 names. Yes I was quite determined to hunt them out from wherever they are. But my limitation was orkut itself. Google search was not helpful, it couldn't give me their e-mail id or any other means of contacting them (though I actually found a friend through google search, though it's because he has a website, his own tutorials on data structures, C++ and has made a few projects on VB and VC++).
I hope the others, whom I've not been able to find till now, realize the importance of Internet and Orkut, so that we might meet again. It's just a challenge for me to meet them again, in which they can decide my success.
I'm just doing this to see how many of them still recognize me!(kind of crazy,I know), but almost all recognize me, so it's a happy situation.
To come in contact with a person after many years becomes more interesting because time brings in a lot of changes in that person though only superficially. The person as a person is just the same as he/she was. Even our perception towards life changes during that period of time.

Confidential :-- In the past 3 days I send friend request in orkut to 10 of my old friends (Non-IIITians) by using the search option in the menu bar.

"The hunt still goes on....."

Just a start.

Hi Friends !!
I have been thinking about writing a blog for a long time but always delayed it. Actually since many of my friends and seniors were blogging, so I also got excited but wasn't excited to such a state that I could start with it. I lacked a topic to write on.
I've been reading a lot of blogs and have been commenting on them, so now I have a fair idea on what is expected of blogs.
My blogs will only be on the interesting experiences of my life and some of my crazy observations.
Well what I feel is that "Truth is stranger than fiction" and that "Life of a common man makes the most interesting story".
That's why I love to read blogs and that's why I really admire those authors who write stories about life and emotions. This is what makes literature, i suppose!! :)
In these 18 years of my life, I've observed something interesting, "Life is beautiful".