Thursday 26 July 2012

Counselling and Catastrophe


Yes, I’m now a certified college student. I’ve just been assigned to K.C.G. College of Technology as a student of Computer Science and Engineering, and I’m happy about it. I mean, it’s what I prayed and waited about 3 months for, so I have every reason to be happy about it. I joined this college using a certain state-wide program called the “Tamil Nadu Engineering Admissions” or the TNEA (commonly called “counselling”), and in this program, students are assigned ranks based on their 12th grade public exam results and get to select colleges of their choice in the order of their ranks. The only constraint is that each college has a limited number of seats, and so, you can only get a seat in the college of your choice if those seats aren’t taken by people with higher ranks. Simple system, and yesterday  I figured out what it was like. And here’s what I saw from experiencing a counselling session in all its glory…
  • You are asked to report two hours before your session. They want you to pay up Rs. 5000 and receive a ticket which states your details and a “session rank” which determines who gets called first to select their colleges. The guy before me got “65” as his session rank. I silently mocked him only to get mine – 132.
  • My session was at 10:30 a.m., so I was to report at 8:30. My family knew that the policy of Indian “punctuality” does not apply to education alone. For example: The long queue of parents who wait from 5 in the morning outside reputed schools every year just for their toddlers to study there. Yes, my friend, education is serious business here. I reported at 7:45, got my ticket by 8, and was asked to wait in the queue.
  • It was then I learnt another Indian policy. Indians do not believe in queues.
  • There was this sidewalk, and for now, it functioned as the “queue”. As typical Indians, my parents cut the line and we sat on the pavement. To one side was a posse of burqa-clad Muslim women and the other side had this guy who decided to show everyone that he had a laptop, and that it was cool to sit on a sidewalk and flash your fancy laptop at everyone. It didn’t help that the guy’s dad was overtly impressed by his laptop-wielding lad, and so spewed out words like “3G”, “browser” and “connecting” to flaunt his knowledge of post-modern computerology. Oh, and did I mention how he kept on walking around him and techno-babble while his son booted the laptop?! Note that this happened on a sidewalk where everyone was sitting squashed between each other and scanning the horizons for would-be queue cutters…
  • Well, I was daunted. Then I took my Symbian smartphone (yeah, I just called a Nokia C5 a “Symbian smartphone”. What is wrong with me…) and opened the browser to check out college vacancies. I was speeding through webpages while Mr “I’m-cool-because-I-have-a-laptop” couldn’t connect. He detached and attached his Airtel 3G dongle a bazillion times to no effect. I smirked as I ploughed through page after page, hearing his dad say “Something is wrong with the ‘3G’ because The ‘BROWSER’ is not ‘CONNECTING’…” (and using all his post-modern computerology in one sentence). It was then I learnt an important lesson: Vodafone has great connectivity. Yeah, and maybe I also learnt not to flaunt…
  • Well, the queue was getting congested, and so my mom sent me on a mission to scout and beat the queue and enter the hall firstusing all the military tactics that Counter-Strike and Call of Duty taught me. I decided to stay out of sight of the security (who chased away everyone he saw not in the “queue”) and pull my mom as soon as the door opened. But as soon as I got up and started to execute my plan, some people who stood around us like vultures, swooped in like eagles to take my place. I shooed off the damn birds and plopped onto the sidewalk again.
  • Well, the gate opened, and thankfully we weren’t that far behind. So we swam through the crowd and finally got in. Then, we were ushered into this big hall, where this guy with the brazen head (you must have understood his scalp’s condition by now) barked at everyone to switch off their phones, and so I switched my “Symbian smartphone” off, and my only tactical edge to know the number of vacant seats was gone…gone…gone.
  • And now, we walked in, got our documents, mark sheets and all verified by some bulldog-like beings, and then waited for the moment that would decide our destiny *drum roll*.  But sincerely, there wasn’t much, the next twenty minutes were spent assembling in another hall, getting called, and selecting our college.
  • Well, it was cool. The lady operating the computer asked me for three choices, I gave her only one, and it was the one I wanted. Done, done, done! And I was whisked away to perform some other particulars and finally, I left the hall, victorious.
  • Thanking God in my head, I finally found my parents, and had to complete one final step: get a physical fitness certificate. What could go wrong?
  • I paid the cash, got the certificate, and then I asked one of the volunteers when it had to be filled in (it looked more like a form). The guy said “Now.” And he said, “Go straight till you reach the ground, and then turn right. You should submit it there, at the Health Centre.” Oh cool, I thought. Just this one last step, and then I can go home and enjoy the rest of my day.
  • When that guy gave me those directions, I expected to reach there in two minutes. It took twenty.
  • We walked, and we walked, and we walked. We saw the banners saying “Way to Health Centre” with a large arrow as we walked. It was our only driving motivation as we trekked the entire length of the campus where the TNEA was held. My mom felt that maybe she needed the health centre just in case she blacked out during our unexpected trek…
  • Well, the ‘physical fitness’ examination required a ‘physical fitness’ test. Only thing which bothered me: what does physical fitness have to do with a course which prepares you to sit in front of computers all day? The redeeming grace was that there was a canteen which had awesome vadas and samosas and tea and all. So my parents refreshed themselves, as I performed the final leg of this procedure.
  • It measured physical fitness, so you had the usuals: height, weight, blood pressure, pulse, blood type and heartbeat. A note here to fellow ‘budding engineers’: Don’t mention your blood type. Even if you mention, they will assume you’re lying, and still prick your finger and drain the blood from it. It still hurts when I type and play guitar.
  • And another thing: I went for the blood test and told the lady there my blood group; she gave me a sceptical look and continued with the blood test. She pricked the middle finger of my left hand. And nothing happened. The callouses which I got from playing guitar saved me from the unforgiving needle!
  • She was undaunted by it, and drove the needle with greater force, and broke through my rough fingertips, then squeezed the finger like as though she was extracting the juice from a lemon.
  • After this, I finally finished my arduous yet rewarding counselling session, rewarding myself with six or so vadas (now don’t look at me like that, it was around 12 noon and I still hadn’t eaten breakfast). And then, I actually got lost in the campus while trying to get the exit, and found it after ten minutes. Finally, I navigated my way out of the campus, ready to continue my life again, with one major decision out of the way. 
Posting was extremely tough, as I had been super busy these two weeks, but I decided to post about my counselling session while it was still ripe in my head. I’ve been busy with the BreakFree Tour, an initiative of LiveJam, an organisation which tells school students of freedom in and through Jesus to make the right choices. I really want to post about it now itself, but I have a better idea: Post everything that happened in one laaarge post! And it’s gonna have pictures and all, taken with my Symbian smartphone. ;)
So pray for me, new step in my life, and pray that this BreakFree Tour will impact the lives of children to live lives of freedom. And thank you readers for still checking my blog to see if something’s updated, I promise to stick to my intended target of a post a week
And another thing: CJ says that the Display Hall in the campus is of no use. There are 6 screens and all of them show the vacancies of different colleges at the same time. You’d be way better off using a Symbian smartphone or those unsophisticated Android or Apple "regular-phones" to figure out whether your required colleges have vacant seats, than run the length of the hall (around 200 metres) just to see if your desired college comes on any one of the six screens.

"Symbian smartphone", it seems...

Monday 9 July 2012

How Video Games can improve your life


Personally speaking, I’m not as highly motivated to write as before.  And not because there aren’t many readers to read my “chef d’oeuvre” (yeah, I’m just another person who betrayed his country by learning a foreign language in my 11th and 12th. And no, I don’t care if French is spoken in Pondicherry, it’s still a foreign language! (And by the way, “chef d’oeuvre” means “masterpiece” (I think it means so. Help me out here, Manish!))).
Maybe I overdid those brackets? But Spell Check asked no questions (thankfully)! Anyway, I love writing, but I’m “distracted” from blogging by computer games these days. They are very fun to play, and the quality of video games has noticeably gone up in the recent past. Big bucks are spent into making bigger video games which have eye-catching graphics, compelling storylines, and really unique and fun gameplay. And then I asked myself “Video games are still kinda pointless. How do I convince people that I’m actually gaining something good by playing computer games?” And these were the answers I got. Now some of them are very tongue in cheek, and so, I beg you, don’t take this seriously, get addicted to playing games, and then have your parents lash at me when you quote from my blog post about their usefulness (as if you’d actually quote it. I know my readers wouldn’t dare to quote me!).
  • Just before I started to type this, I was playing a game. I got stuck at a really tough part, and I managed to succeed only after failing 30 times! Now, is that a way to develop your determination, or not?!
  • Video games improve your focus. Focus on the head, kill the guy with a headshot, and save a lotta bullets, instead of pumping 30-60 bullets on his leg! And when a one-hit kill is the incentive, who wouldn’t try to improve their focus?
  • Real life incident here. Manish and I decided to play Counter-Strike 1.6 at an internet centre near his place, and there were some kids not older than 12 who were already playing. We decided to join them, assuming we would have some fun with these kids by dominating them. The kids however were so good that they ended up killing us even when we had a “tactical”edge (not to mention finishing us before we could even see them. It was then that I realised the term “child soldier”). Video games teach you to be humble, because one day, you could take down your elite friend, only to be pwned by your baby sister! (By the way, click the word “pwned” for its meaning. Then thank me later.)
  • And the other thing I learnt from this incident. A “tactical edge” is an advantage that sounds great on paper, but fails on you and becomes your demise (literally). For example, you decide to take out a person from far away with a powerful sniper rifle, but you’re so busy scanning the horizons for your target, you realise he’s right behind you only after he finishes you. So, don’t revel in “tactical edges” in life, but be prepared for everything.
  • Never give up. Even when ten enemies surround you in a room, there’s always a way out. Well, that’s what grenades are for. Though you might have to do a suicide bombing… (Fun Fact: In Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, this is actually a perk in multiplayer mode! It’s the ability to automatically pull the pin on a grenade when you die and kill your killer. It’s called “Makoto”.)
  • Video games are the only artistic medium in which YOU (yeah, you!) are the hero who saves the world! No matter what you do (be it collecting coins, shooting baddies, putting magic spells on evil dragons etc.) you somehow end up saving the world (since that is the ultimate goal of every game)! And that’s a good thing, right? I mean, I want to do more than just reduce my carbon footprint to save the world, so video games shall I play!
  • Narcissism: Even when you are a nerdy, puny little rat of a man, if you can finish that extremely tough game at extreme difficulty (yeah, video games even let you decide whether saving the world should be an ‘easy’, ‘medium’, ‘hard’ or ‘hardcore’ task) in one night, you have more bragging rights than that muscular, hunky sportsman who just came back with three Olympic medals!
  • It’s extreme fun, and lets you hate your friends so bad, you love them so much after it’s over. Didn’t get me? Neither did I, but let’s keep this between you and me *gives a wink that looks like a log just hit his eye*. However, what I meant to say was that, when you play together with a good friend (and by good, I mean, he just introduced you to an awesome game), both of you are just trying to murder each other in-game; when he blocks that awesome attack you tried on him, you curse his grandfather…when he unleashes a powerful attack that drains half your health, you dissect his dead body in your mind’s eye…when you lose, you throw the controller at the TV but it lands a foot before it due to terrible aim (adding insult to injury, the TV was only two feet away from you!), and what not. In the end, you and him smile at each other and recount the happy experience of playing together with words like “epic”, “pwned”, “epic pwned”, “awesome” and somehow, the conversation always ends with “Duuude, let’s do it again!” Ah, good times, good times…
  • Living your life’s most unreal dreams aren’t just possible with video games, but in reality, they seem to exist for the sole purpose of letting you be larger than life lets you. For example, tell me something cool you want to be and I’ll tell you what game to play! A violent terrorist? Then play Grand Theft Auto. A street racer with some tricked out cars? Need For Speed for you! A trained killer in the 15th century? Assassin’s Creed! A war hero who undertakes thrilling missions? Call of Duty! It all goes to say that video games are food for that part of your soul which still holds that wish you once had to be someone a lot cooler than you really are.
  • Games like RollerCoaster Tycoon and Age of Empires can teach you: How to manage an amusement park financially, and how to develop a civilisation that will manage itself with the required resources for thousands of years and continue to progress in spite of wars, scarcity, economic depression and many other terms that you can find only in commerce textbooks.
  • Problem-Solving and Research: Let’s face it. Video games aren’t simplistic mindless killing of hordes of bad guys for experience points. Sometimes, they feature puzzle solving elements as well. Like, if there is a certain enemy you can’t destroy without losing all your bullets. You will “solve the problem” by “researching” a cheat code for more ammo. If the game you play does not work, you can easily “solve the problem” by cracking the application using techniques you have “researched”.
  • It teaches you very important aspects of biology and the human anatomy. Falling down from a great height: Removes 60 health. Taking a painkiller: Gives 90 health. Bullet to the head: Instant Death. When you are nearing death: The screen turns red. When a dragon breathes fire on you: 15 health gets drained every second. Even modern medicine hasn’t calculated that exact an amount…
  • The more civilians you run over on the street in your fancy car, the larger the number of policemen chasing you. Yeah, you really need to know that…
  • How do you check if your internet works? You type google.com in your browser and see if it loads. How do you check if your computer hardware is powerful enough to last you a few more years? You try the latest game on it and see if it runs at maximum graphics. From this, I learnt that I should change my graphics card, but only after three or so years, since it still has a lot of power.
  • Let’s face it. You’d rather play video games than study or work. And that’s all you need to know.


A lot of you may not be into video games (you poor sad people!) and so, you turn to “better” forms of entertainment like TV and movies. Well, I don’t mind that, and hope you don’t mind me blogging about this. If this inspires you to go get a Nintendo Wii©, I’d say “Cool! But get a Sony Playstation© or an Xbox 360© instead.” If this inspires you to brand me a “lazy freak without a social life who’d marry his computer”, I’d say “It’s a he! What made you think my computer was female?” *awkward pause*
Anyway, video games have turned from mindless entertainment into an art form, and maybe they won’t improve your life, but they sure do provide a lot of fun. And that’s that. (Hmm, that sentence sounds nice…maybe I should put it as a “sign off statement” from now on?)
And if you want to connect with me, or have your mother talk to me after she reads my blog, (yes, Booyaka 619! I’m looking at you!) I’d prefer you connect with me on Facebook because giving my contact details on a public space (be it a blog or a website or even your own Facebook profile) is a dumb idea, and renders the term “internet security” absolutely useless. And no, Booyaka 619, I’m not trying to “find your identity”, and spoil whatever secret mission you are on. I’m very concerned for the safety of my real identity, if you wish to know.

Monday 2 July 2012

The Dirty Deed


Soon enough, my time spent on surfing the endless torrent of Facebook updates got over, and I was forced to give up, get up and get it over with.
I stared at him, forcing all the anger into my tiny little eyes so that he could see it in my steely gaze. He pretended not to notice, and gave a passive stare, then beckoned me to come forward.
To him, this was business as usual. To me, this was two or so months of hard work, all falling to the floor (literally), and he would not care how people saw me afterward. Why? Because this was how he earned a living.
He did not understand English, I think. This was because he always overdid whatever I said. The past encounters with that buffoon did not go well, and I was ridiculed by family and friends for weeks afterward, because of his “handiwork”.
Just twenty minutes earlier, I had an argument with my mother. And no amount of my coaxing, cajoling or countering could calm her down. She wanted it. I was to have it. She cited reasons which did not make sense to me. She even said, “You look horrible!” And I said, “That’s what looks good these days!” And even though she could not counter that point, I was mercilessly declared the loser of this round, and had to take my due “penalty”.
It’s normal, they say. You have to do it sometime sooner or later. I always picked later. Well, my mom figured that I was misusing that option. And so, she decided to replace the options with just one word – “Now”.
Well, as I went and sat on the chair, I realised that now I was metaphorically about to be burnt at the stake. And then, I mumbled my last wish to that half-witted destroyer of my dignity – “Trim it, please.”
That was supposed to be my bail, my trump card, my proof that I did not deserve this. This punishment could have been mitigated this way, like a dam which could redirect the destructive flood-waters. Well, it wasn’t a last WISH for no reason, because I could only WISH he actually obeys me…
Then, as he began to cut my hair (hopefully you could read between the lines and figure out I was talking about a haircut. If you didn’t, just read again from the start and laugh at my over-exaggerations), I literally saw my “empire” crumble before my very eyes (and some of it fall on my very eyes), and then visions of lions with their bushy manes taunted me. Two or so months of waiting for that hair to grow well went to waste with one barber’s pair of scissors.
As the tresses fell, I rued the barber’s “barberhood” (even though Spell Check underlined it, for want of a better word, I will keep it), and wished that at least the barbers of the future would have a form of higher education (most possibly a college named Indian Institute of Barberology(and Spell Check underlines “Barberology” as well! What is it with Microsoft Word and barbers…)) and decided that even if the Institute never lets him hold a pair of scissors to hone his skills, it should at least teach him that “trimming hair” does not mean “chopping hair off in an ungodly fashion”.
“And that was the most unkindest cut of all.” – Mark Antony
I knew EXACTLY what Markie meant.
And when the dirty deed was done, as I sadly trampled on the hair I had fondly tried to grow, I looked at myself in the mirror. Now, mirrors have a way of letting you look at yourself, and mostly promise that what you see isn’t pretty. And I stared at myself.
When I looked in the mirror before, I had seen a face with a bunch of hair that looked like the end of a mop. Now, I saw a dweeb in the mirror, and then envisioned my mom saying with a poker face “You look nice, dear”, and then turning away and laughing at my transformation from a deadly dude to a dorky dummy. But to my utter surprise, my mom didn’t do that!
She laughed as soon as I entered the house.
And a while later, my younger brother can home from school, and gave this expression:

CJ currently is in a period of mourning. He is now meditating upon the eagle, which sheds its majestic feathers and retreats to a solitary place. But soon, its feathers grow back, and the eagle is twice renewed, stronger than before and finally shows its face back in public, mocking those who had mocked it when it was “bald”. CJ can’t really retreat to solitude, but is very subdued, and assumes that whenever random strangers are laughing together, his hair is the subject.