Born with a silver spoon in the mouth

Over the years I have cultivated the habit of accomplishing important tasks at the eleventh hour. This has worked in most cases. But now I am faced with a new Herculean task of improving my vocabulary for which I am ready to leave no stone unturned. In a nutshell, there is no point for you to read any further as I will harp on some random jargon in this post. To hit the nail on the head, this post is not meant for amusing my dearest readers; it’s meant to aid me in memorizing some idioms and phrases.

I have always obtained and hope to obtain in future too the Yeoman Service of my highly intellectual pals; significant one among them is a friend who has the gift of the gab combined with an oily tongue as evident from the lip-service he gives to the faculty to get his work done. By hook or crook, by fair means or foul he always strives to get as many marks as possible in all the exams. He never has second thoughts when he decides to open a book. His room is always helter skelter with books, but he doesn’t care about it.

Last three years which I spent with this man of letters has led me to believe that by the sweat of his brow he can bear in mind anything that he wishes. It is not possible for anyone to push him to the wall when it comes to mugging up stuff. Over the years he has also learnt to plough a lonely furrow when the situation demands. But whenever he finds a hard nut to crack, he puts his head together with his hostel room neighbour. He never sails close to the wind by not solving any problem in the textbook beforehand and yet keeps his fingers crossed when we ask him how many marks he expects after the exam.

It is quite easy to pull the legs of this non-social creature, which rarely leads to quarrels and even in such cases it is easy to pour oil in troubled waters. Once he was caught red handed reading a book, which he till date denies touching. Looking at the picture if you can smell a rat, you are right. I could keep the pot boiling if I wanted but let me put my cards on the table. I gave him an applied thermodynamics book to read and led him up the garden path and threw dust in his eyes by editing the picture. But this guy always lets the bygones be bygones and never tries to pay off old scores. This guy always keeps his nose clean; however, he will almost always fight tooth and nail if his faith in his Lord is questioned.

Coming back to the point where I started off, I have derived immense inspiration from this man of spirit and have decided to pull my socks up to improve my own vocabulary. So when we got an unexpected vacation of two weeks due to jaundice outbreak in campus, while others painted the town red, I decided to make hay while the sun shines. Or would it be more appropriate to say that I am fishing in troubled waters? For the past few days I have been successfully burning the candle at both ends to ensure that I make the most of these days. Also I turned over a new leaf and started reading some books and newspapers. There is no hard and fast rule, but this generally helps to improve your vocabulary.

A walk to remember

Two months since my last post, and my readers seemed furious with me for having kept them waiting so long. I had to blog tonight, even though it meant staying awake as late as 3:00am. Well that's the earliest I sleep actually ;) Thanks to my totally messed up schedule. Anyway back to the post.

It was a walk to remember, a stroll along the beach with Amey, Girish, Anand and Pratik. Early morning (9am is early according to my time zone) we met and after a light breakfast at Hotel Kamat started off to Benaulim. Rain God was kind with us; light drizzle was fun to get wet in while we played with a ball and a frisbee. We let our bags and belongings have the shelter under the tent built from my umbrella, lest Pratik would have to buy his 4th cellphone in 3 years!

Then we walked and I kept my Digicam busy. The shells, the starfish, the dead snake and the supposedly poisonous jelly fish (if you touch them you would get boils on your hand) were the main attraction.

Well, the last one is a jelly fish. We decided to poke it with a stick to see what's inside :P

That reminded Pratik and me of a butterfly, it reminded pintoo of something else!!

We continued our walk and Pratik suddenly dreamt of a Jeannie. Watch the video below.

The walk helped us build a good appetite by the time we had crossed Sernabatim and reached Colva and so we decided to have lunch at a nearby shack. It was the right time to try out new dishes, each of which rocked; fish was really tasty.


After a splendid lunch we took a bus to KTC and walked to Natural World, had a tasty scoop each and then returned home, tired but happy!

Last Fortnight in Mumbai

All good things come to an end and so did my Mumbai stay. If I am asked to weigh what I gained during the internship against what I lost (a few kg weight thanks to travelling) I would definitely say I have gained more in terms of knowledge, experience and confidence.

Surviving for two months in a city like Mumbai, in the traffic, in the rains, in the waterlogged streets, and without having had to pay fine/bribe though I had risked not purchasing bus tickets on two occasions, deserves an applaud. (Clap, Clap, Clap!) A few memorable instances besides the scrumptious KFC ‘Zinger’ 100% Chicken burger that I ate are cited below:

Time: 14^th July 2009, 14:09:42

I have to complete editing the video of my project work and realise that I don’t have sufficient time for it, as today is the last day of my internship. I hadn’t got accommodation in the campus; I worked till 7pm and then left for my uncle’s place in Vile Parle where I stayed. So I took a hasty decision to stay overnight in the lab with my project engineer, Mr Kaviresh Bhandari. It turned out to be a good idea because it was raining heavily and it would have been really difficult to reach home that evening thanks to the water-logged streets.

Time: 14^th July 2009, 21:29:17

After having my dinner in Tansa Mess, fully sponsored by my project engineer, I returned to the lab to start working on remainder part of the video. I needed a high configuration desktop with Windows-XP to run the software. I had done all other work on my Vista laptop and for the first time I was using the lab desktop. I had installed the software on the previous day and started my work. I estimated that I would need 3-4 more hours to finish my work and after that I would watch TV series or movies for the remainder of the night. Suddenly I receive a shock as my project file refuses to open, a few minutes later I realise that the desktop is virus affected. I try to shift my work on the next desktop but I realise all the comps are affected by the network virus. The realisation that this would mean a waste of all my previous efforts chokes my throat.

Time: 14^th July 2009, 23:25:13

I don’t realise whom to curse for all that had happened and finally decide that a better solution would be to start making the video all over again, which also meant I had to scrap all my plans of watching BBT and Prison Break.

Time: 15^th July 2009, 05:46:07

After slogging for six hours, I am finally done with my video. I pack all my project stuff into a box, label its contents and keep the box in a corner in the lab, wondering when next it would be opened. I also burn a copy on a DVD of all data regarding the project for the lab records. I show the video to my project engineer who is happy.

Time: 15^th July 2009, 07:35:50

The rains have stopped and the morning is smiling at me. After bidding adieu to my project engineer, I take a bus back home. It turned out to be the third time I had kept a night out for making a video, a memorable one in IITB.

As this is my last post on summer internship in Mumbai, here are a few guidelines if you are new and plan to spend a few days in the city. If you have to travel by local train, don’t take the shortcut and jump across the tracks to go from one platform to another, use the fly-over or you might land up in jail for a fortnight; cops wait there to catch and fine you if they see you leaping over the tracks. (READ MORE)

TCs also wait on the flyover to catch you if you are travelling without a ticket. They are specially trained to smell fear hormones emitted by those who don’t have tickets. It is best to purchase a monthly pass for train, which is quite cheap and you don’t have to stand in the queue daily to buy tickets. In case you see a TC and you don’t have a ticket, just walk boldly past him with a gentle smile without trying to avoid eye contact with him, probability is higher that you will not be caught than when you try to slip past a corner by avoiding his sight.

For bus travel, it is best to purchase Rs 20/- daily ticket with which you can travel unlimited for the full day in any BEST bus up to Bandra. Buses have two doors, one at the back and one in the front, only the back door is used to climb in and the front door to get down. And you have to stand in a queue at the bus stand if you want to get a seat. In the rains, it is better to purchase a small polythene bag worth 5 bucks for your mobile lest it gets wet in the rain and you lose a thousand bucks. There is no need to go to gym, if you are traveling by bus, just make it a point that you travel standing [:P] And yes unlike Goa, there are special buses and trains for ladies only; in the first week I had almost jumped into one before realising this fact.

It Finally Happened

After a long time, it finally happened. Before I tell you what ‘it’ is I have to tell you the background. So read on!

This weekend we planned to go to Elephanta Caves and also roam around a bit at Churchgate. Frankly, I am not much interested in history, so as expected I didn’t love the caves much. A few pics here and there, especially of monkeys, a snake and shops there, meditated a while there; but what really rocked our moods was the boat trip while going to and coming back from the caves, which are located on an island. This was the first time I had adventured into the sea; luckily for us, it was not raining that day; but the currents were still strong and they almost threw me off my feet a few times while I tried to stand on the deck and take a few pics. We decided to go on the top deck by just paying Rs10/- extra which were worth the amount of fun we had there. The driver even allowed me to manoeuvre the boat for a while, (when it was docked of course :P). The view was amazing, awesome, breath-taking, overwhelming, (even MSWord Thesaurus won’t provide me enough words, so let the pics say the rest. For higher resolution pics see my orkut album).

And yes, the boat trip begins and ends at Gateway of India and Hotel Taj. Earlier that day we took a few pics there.

After returning from the boat trip my friend did a bit of shopping at the Fashion street, we had ganne ka juice and went and sat at Marine drive for a while. Just then there was a drizzle, light enough for us to enjoy getting wet in it and strong enough to cause the rainbow behind us. My friend and I (both mechanical engineers) had a good discussion on how tetrahedral shaped concrete slabs, piled on top of each other, would help to disperse the stresses caused by splashing sea water tides and prevent the wall from falling. For nature lovers like me, apart from bird watching :P there were variety of crabs, (no pun intended here if it exists) and in all sizes. And finally I think I have told enough things to tell you what ‘it’ is. Unfortunately, ‘it’ happened. My DIGCAM battery got discharged, I had not charged it for a long time! I cursed myself over a hundred times for letting ‘it’ happen. So I could not take any pics at Marine Drive.

When the sun was almost about to set, we decided to retreat. I had a hamburger at Wincy and took a packed local back home. It was neither BCC, FCC, nor hexagonal packing; but worst kind of packing I have ever encountered, the density was highest I assure even without any calculations.

On Sunday we went to Juhu Chaupati, which was not much different from Colva beach, only it was more polluted as the tides brought with them polythene bags in addition to sea water. However, some things that you won’t get to see at Goan beaches are the Bombay Pav Bhaji and other chat stalls, the kalakhatta, chana masala, fruit decoraters, flute-sellers and the state-of-the-art fortune tellers, not humans but robots! (See the pic). We transformed our jeans into shorts and enjoyed the splash of waves for a while and then fed our hungry bellies at the Chat stalls.