Another shitty day

• Getting up at 5am
  
• Catching the 6 am train to college
• Running from door to door, department to department in the sweltering sun
• Taking the evening train back home
  

Why you ask ? Well if you are pretty sure that you've done well in a certain subject and you expect a good enough grade, then its quite a shock when the grades come out and you realize that every other guy who can hold a damn pen has got a better grade than you have. So off I go to Kgp in the hope that the man who taught me will be good enough to let me see my endsemester marks. I figure that since I'd got 32 in my midsemesters and ended up with a grade B while guys who got 15, 17, 20 etc ended up two grades better than me, then the only way they could have done so was by getting atleast 25-30 marks more than me, which means they got atleast 50-60 marks more in the endsemesters. Assuming they got 100, I must have got atmot 40 for this travesty to take place, right? But I was expecting 80+ !! 

So there I am, on the train to Kgp... confident that my plight will be heard, and after a consolatory pat on the back, I'd be shown my endsem marks after which hopefully, all will be fine. Everything is fine with the world when I reach the damn place...and to give a better wrap of what took place, here's an excerpt of the conversation that took place between me and the guy entrusted with teaching us basic electronics (yes I got a B in Basic Ec...) ::

me :: Sir can I please see my endsem marks ?

Man :: NO.

me :: But why ?

Man :: Because there are 300 of you students in this course and I won't search for each and every person's paper.

Me :: Not everyone, sir, only mine...Sir I'll search myself.

Man :: NO.

Me :: But Sir its important. I got 32 in my midsem !!

Man :: SO ?

Me :: Sir people who got 15, 17 have got EX, how could I have...

Man :: JUST ACCEPT YOUR GRADE AND GET LOST.

Me :: But...

Man :: What do you want to say?

Me :: Sir...

Man :: NO. You just see your grade and go.

Me :: ...

Man :: GET OUT.

So what I realize is that I'm not going to get to see my marks either because

1. The idiot doesn't want to search for my paper.. (That doesn't sound right, does it? Not the sort of thing you would expect from a teacher, esp one at a premier institution like IIT)
2. Or there is some other reason that he won't tell me about. (Which again sounds too wierd)

Anyway,  so there I am, standing without a clue as to what to do next, and I think to myself," as long as I'm here, why don't I check out my marks in Materials Processing. afterall that grade will be good, I got 47/60 in my midems !!" Off I prance to my department to know my grade, which shall, I hope, give me a lift.... the Prof checks an excel sheet, and he announces my grade..its a ..wait for it...a C !!!! Awesome... just awesome.... went with the flow of the day. Apparently I did so badly in my endsems that I got a C. Now, I'm stuck with a cg just below 8.. and I feel like I've been robbed. 

As a friend of mine said, "abey iit mein aake kya hua hai abhi tak achcha ?? hamesha luck kharab hi hua hai...exam hum achcha dete ahin, grade koi aur le aata hai.. " Now I realize what he meant.. poor guy.

Anyway, well thats the way things are... and heres to the great institution that is IIT and its even greater teachers... CHEERS !!!

Either about grahic novels or about sitcoms or another totally arbitrary post

When almost all of your friends have taken up blogging and are now quite regular at it whereas you, the person who started before them all, have for most part almost abandoned it all, there seems an innate desire to go out there and post something or the other... just for the heck of it... just to show the world that you are still there... Well that's just what brought me to this post.
I look around and think what can I write about ? One guy's already written about girls.. one's written about life in kgp... one's written about all his crushes/flings... one guy has also written about graphic novels !! I ask you, what does that leave me to write about ?
Ok, so am I the only person who get's this psuedo writer's block with more regularity than air strikes in Afghanistan ?? I say pseudo because... well we all know that if I qualify to be called a writer then India qualifies as a football superpower... but then keeping that aside, I mean, whats with me and these totally random topics ?? Why the hell can't I get atleast one, just one decent topic to write about...??
Anyway have you ever wondered how many TV series are just different spin offs from F.R.I.E.N.D.S. ..? Presently watching Scrubs, I can't seem to overlook the similarity between JD and Elliot 's on again off again relationship and Ross and Rachael. And I admit that JD and Turk make a great pair.. so did Jeff and Steve in Coupling... ditto for Ted Barney Marshall from How I Met Your Mother.... but none of them, and I repeat, none of them are even a scratch on Joey and Chandler. I mean these two had AMAZING chemistry.. and even though Jeff and Barney make their shows much better than the rest.. Chandler with his ready sarcasm and Joey with his endearing stupidity are a notch and some more above the rest.
But I digress. Where was I ? Oh thats right.. I was searching for a good topic. Coming to the graphic novels, I must admit that it was the hype surrounding the realease of the movie Watchmen that led me to read the graphic novel.. and let me tell you I never expected it to be half as good as it was. Maybe because I thought it was a comic and didn't expect much but it BLEW ME AWAY. Then I read another, then another and before you know it I was deep into the world of graphic novels and let me tell you, if you think that graphic novels are just mere comics and for kids only, then you cannot be more wrong. I personally found most of the graphic novels that I read to be deep, and many layered... unlike the tripe in paperbacks nowadays served as bestsellers. No disrespect to Messrs Tom Clancy, Jackie Collins and other bestsellers and total disrespect to absolute rubbish like Mills and Boon... I would read graphic novels anyday given the opinion that I formed by reading a select few. It is with a new found respect that I now consider Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman to be amongst my favourite authors right up alongside the likes of PG Wodehouse, Douglas Adams, JRR Tolkien, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie etc. Yes that's the amount of respect I have and I bet you will too if you read the graphic novels that I have read (and really liked) and present below ::

1. V for Vendetta (possibly my favourite, way way way better than the movie)
2. Watchmen (people claim its overhyped.. NO ITS NOT. The movie ending is more plausible than the one in the graphic novel though)
3. Sandman (Some episodes are better than the others but overall awesome)
4. Sin City
   
5. From Hell
6. Batman : The Dark Knight (Sooo dark and Sooo awesome)
7. The Dark Knight Returns (once you've read the dark knight)
8. Persepolis (just beacuse I saw the film first and maybe that's why I liked it more)

League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Iron Man, 300 are a few others which inspired movies, but the 8 listed above are my choices for anyone... and I guarantee that anyone who reads the 8 listed above will see graphic novels in a whole new light.. unless ofcourse that person has never read anything beyond Tinkle, in which case, this probably wasn't for you... :D.