College To Do List

I have been in my college for nearly three years and believe me not, if you want it to be, college is fun. I never realized how fast the past three years have gone by. There are some things you have to, I repeat HAVE TO experience in college. Those few things are listed below:

1) Make best friends for life: I met my bff’s in college and I am sure we will go much beyond college. If I can call the last three years any good it is just because of them.

2) Go on a Goa trip: You can go to any part of the world, but a trip to Goa with your college pals will always be the most cherished one. Trust me, it is a crazy place, where you can be at your craziest best because what happens in Goa stays in Goa. Do not miss to plan it in your college.

3) Miss classes: Miss them to watch movies, to go for road-trips or just to sit in the college cafeteria because you don’t feel like studying.

4) Study a night before an exam: That’s the best time to study, the time when you can push yourself to stay awake and complete thirty chapters of the hardest subject while sipping coffee.

5) Live in a coffee-shop: My friends and I have literally spent our entire days in coffee shops talking, laughing and doing absolutely nothing. I remember a time when we even had memorized the entire playlist of a particular place and knew that each song played there six times in a day (yeah, we are that lame and idle).

6) Pull a prank on your friend: I guess, everyone has done it, pranks are always fun but make sure it is nothing serious.

7) Slap your friend for being serious for a guy/girl: When your friend is truly, madly, deeply in ‘lowe’ with someone and cries and whines all day because of this and that someone is not good enough then you have every right to knock some sense into your friend.

8) Get drunk: Get drunk a million times and every time that happens pledge not to drink again.

9) Think of life after college: Everyone does that, have fun but not at the expense of your future. Make sure nothing goes wrong there.

10) Party till the break of dawn: Be loud, dance the night away and just party hard.

11) Ace a subject and fail another: Nothing feels good like being perfect in a particular subject and you can’t be good with everything so can fail in one of the subjects.

12) Realize: Realize a lot of things, like how your grades could have been better, how much you have changed in college, what you have to do after college, all of it needs to be thought of.

13) Go broke: Spend all your allowances on something exotic in the beginning of the month and end up having no money for the rest of it. I believe that’s how we learn how to manage our money, making sure next time we are not out of it.

14) Own a car that breaks down fifteen times a month: You will hate it, curse it but a jalopy like that is a guarantee of you having a great time for it takes you everywhere, no matter how many times it breaks down.

15) Spur-of-the-moment-trip: College is the first time in your life you have the freedom to do almost whatever you want. When it’s a cold, depressing Friday in February and you don’t feel like going to the same places you’ve been to every weekend for the past five months, take an unplanned trip somewhere.

Snappy- Our new Innovation

No, Snappy is no second nephew of Scooby Doo. Its the new innovation of the Motley Crew our team for the Yahoo-Accenture Innovation jockey. Its was AV’s and Uncle V’s super cool idea to have this flying camera that clicks all your special moments and never lets you forget anything.

Check out the entire innovation presentation of Snappy here. Like it, share the link and make us popluar.

If you are too lazy to see the entire presentation I will brief it up for you. Its basically a camera that captures your beautiful everlasting moments, when you are busy living your life, all you have to do is click and forget about it while it does the work for you.

 We can bring this idea alive by constructing a small sized hemispherical case which has four pre-programmed and synchronized built in cameras. For the purpose of flying, we require a lightweight airframe, preferably plastic. Five light weight synchronized foldable wings are attached to the hemispherical case on which we need to mount the rotor system. One of which is a co-axial rotor system, perpendicular to the base, the other four are attached to the base and fold into the same. The outer end of the wing is where rotors and subsequently a pair of rotor blades are attached (for the main wing one rotor is used for co-axial rotor blades) which comes down to a total of 5 rotor systems. Communication with the whole system occurs with the help of wireless communication.

Resources we require to build this up:
1) 4 Compact Cameras using liquid lens of 10 megapixels
2) Image sensors
3) Bluetooth Chip
4) 5 rotors
4.1)motor controller
4.2)processor
4.3)accelerometers , sensors
4.4) radio with frequency 2.4 GHz
5) Memory chips of the capacity of 8 gigabyte
6) Lithium Battery
7)Capital and technical support for integration of the resources.

Here are the reasons for coming up with this innovation:

1) One of our friends was eve-teased, and we had to complain but we had no evidence against the guy and he was let off despite this being a crime. If we had a device like this camera, we could have had some evidence and then that guy would have been punished.

2) Once we decided to go for a Columbus ride and one of our friends who pretends to be a brave heart got real freaked out and panicked during the ride and was screaming on top of her voice. We so regret not having any proof of it because later, she denied it
happening.

To sum it up social networking has not only given a way to people to communicate but has also become a major photo sharing platform. Every second we spend anywhere, we want to upload it on facebook and share. This compact, easy to carry camera captures everything without much efforts from your end.

Secondly, it also is very useful in situations such as accidents, eve teasing, robbery or even murder. Its like a personal CCTV camera,
which here in this case, clicks pictures in a sequence.

This is the visual representation of Snappy.

Cheers to Motley Crew. Let us know if you like it.

The Road Not taken

I am not a very avid poem reader ,mainly because most of the poems are so deep and its generally hard to decipher what the poet means . I am always  left wondering what message (s)he wanted to convey . But Robert Frost’s Road Not Taken is one poem I absolutely love. It is a very relevant and succinct poem , everything is so clear .

I remember reading it for the first time five years back in ninth grade , it was in our English literature curriculum. We were having a discussion on it in the class , when our teacher said ” those who will prefer the road not taken , raise your arms.” I raised my arm and when I looked around , I had no company , it was me alone so in five seconds even I put it down , feeling confused. And when she asked who would prefer road that is taken often , the entire class had their arms raised .

” Amazing ” said the teacher. She further continued why risk taking the unknown road , who knows what you might end up in , its always a safer bet to do the tested and tried things . This baffled me even more .Why was a teacher encouraging her students to do something that has already been done? Why not try something new ? Why not create the difference , be the difference? But  being the only one who differed in a room of nearly fifty people  I never asked her why , but was left abashed and astonished .  Maybe it was weird I assumed back then.

But when I think of it now I wonder why even take the road which has already been used and you have no chance of discovering anything new . Won’t it  be much more adventurous and thrilling to take the road where nobody has  gone ,  travel on the grassy path rather than  the down trodden one ,  exploring the unexplored , trying the untried , discovering the undiscovered?  So what if its risky? You will end up coming out of it gloriously , having learnt a lot of new things about yourself and the world. Learning much more and after making the difference and being the difference and until that doesn’t happen the road still hasn’t ended for you. You might doubt yourself in the middle for not choosing what could have been an easier task , but don’t give up because until you get what you needed from the road , it hasn’t ended and you have a long way to go.

So I know if I am at cross-ends and have to choose one road , I will tread on the road not taken . What will be your choice ? The road not taken or the tried and tested one , let me know if I am still the only one who thinks this way. And now I leave you with the amazing poem , the last lines being my favorite:

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim
Because it was grassy and wanted wear,
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

-Robert Frost-

Phone-li-ness

I recently gave up my phone, it has been  almost a week or maybe a little more than that, I have been phone-less. I did it for a multiple reasons. The first being I detested the phone I was using. It was such a bad decision to buy it, in just six months it had issues with the display which went bad two days after every two days. The trackball stopped functioning and a few keys would sometimes stop working, forcing me to wreck my brains to look for an alternate word while texting. The second reason was I was kind of addicted to the phone. I suffered from the pseudo vibration syndrome.

I could feel the vibration even when it never vibrated. And would jump like a monkey and blankly look at the screen for the text that was never received or the call that I never got. That was it once the phone was out I would start playing some random game or check my mail or login to facebook to poke back people , forgetting the world around me.

Now it is such a relief that I don’t have to answer people on missing their call or sometimes replying to messages, although I always made a point to reply messages I don’t get disturbed when I am in the middle of something. I don’t wake up in the middle of night to see if I have missed some call or received a text that needs to be replied. I want to see for how long I can do without the phone.  Hopefully long enough, life is much easier without it.

I anyways have my landline to call people or get calls from them. So no issues there.

Guess have to buy it before my car breaks down again. That’s the only time when it helps , when I can call for some help.

Signing off

The phone-less Phoenix

Summer 2011 – The Jalopy and The Trips to nowhere.

Summer 2011 – My first summer in college and the first in which I had no hoildays , I cribbed and sulked . How could we have one whole month of training immediately after our first year finals? Life could not get worse. But now that it is almost over I can this was my best summer ever. Apart from the training , which was not bad at all , I had the time of my life.Will write about the training bit in the next post.

I  got my driving  license two months back. It was a glorious moment after closely missing it the first time because I could not drive up a slope anyways  I have  it now. The feeling was great .And with my driving license I also got this jalopy , which broke down twice in a month and once the tyre burst.But still I fell in love with it , it took me places.Without it my life would have been incomplete.

My love

 And here are some facts about this beauty:

• It only plays a Bryan Adams Cassete , yeah I have cassete player in my car ,cool isnt it?
• And when you try tuning in the radio , it gets silent and when you have given up all all hopes and start hitting all the buttons on the player or probably forget about it , its suddenly starts playing the Bryan Adam tracks.
• Its a 2000 model 
• There are times when the gear gets stuck and refuses to change gears.
• It gets wobbly if you drive at the speed of 70
• It has an A/C which does not cool , so better roll down the windows. 
• It makes all sorts of embarassing noises sometimes like a tractor.

Two months driving this and I never want to part with it .Everyone curses it and the the some probably curse the driver too but still they love it.By they I mean my friends , we have been on countless drives , drives people wont exactly call sane.

Whenever someone is in a bad mood this little thing comes as a ray of hope , lifting up the mood , Uncle V and Swat , my partners for these litlle geris(drives in panjabi) ,will agree with me the most.Although I bet AYG and CA swear that they wont go anywhere when I am driving that car.

Initially it was just the quieter side of sukhna  lake we ventured to , but later on the car pushed us further , to the ouskirts and smaller places , places away from the city. Every single of these little trips has something crazy about it , never intentional. Just happens , it’s like we get high without drinking, high on life.

Last time when Swat and I went , still dont know where , the car tyre burst and that was one scary thing. We dont know how to replace it and for good 15 minutes I refused to halt the car thinking it wont start again (err I did not know it was just a flat tyre , thought its much more than that) Awesome aint I? Nobody could be more dumb than that.But when I finally stopped , I was relieved that it was just a flat tyre and nothing else. Fortunately this dude helped us .

Two months with this car and a year with these eccentric people I know my next three years in college are going to be more than  awesome.Few glimpses of trips to nowhere:

EP!C-A New Era

This post has been long due and I should have written it ten days back.I actually did write it a week back in one of my Maths classes but because of sheer laziness , the cricket world cup and exams never really got to typing it. Before beginning have a look at  The EP!C Magazine

This is one story I am never getting sick of telling , it might get long and begin to bore you but some people wanted me to put it here so it’s dedicated to those few people.

It all began on a lazy afternoon in the college when I and Uncle V were just sitting doing nothing at all(or maybe we were working , don’t remember) .I have no clue where that came from but I was telling Uncle V how cool it would be to be the editor of Vogue.I keep having these random thoughts of doing things and then expressing them aloud without realizing.

V  on hearing that started laughing , her mocking laugh and gave me the “what-are-you-saying-it-is-happening-in-your-dreams” look. She always does that when I think of something new . We have together plotted a million ventures but most get rejected the very next moment generally because of the fact that we have no finances.

After a few minutes of silence Uncle V says ” Or maybe you can be , I have an idea.” That made me think my inner ghost of suggesting crazy things had engulfed the otherwise “realistic” Uncle V . I just nodded and she went on ” Lets have an e-mag , an online magazine “

Now I stopped her saying ” Yeah right and do what ,write all the 15-16 articles ourselves, think of something that is not so far-fetched and come back to mother earth” Ha! I finally got the opportunity of saying that to her. With that the another idea was discarded.And we went back to doing nothing in our mutually accepted silence( I hope it is,  never talked about it). 

Days passed by , nothing happened and Uncle V again suggested the online magazine thing. The second time she suggested it I thought of working on it. And that day in our computer lab we were thinking of  what name should we have , we decided that it would be a youth magazine and the name would be youth oriented.

It was finalized that it was not going to be just a youth magazine , it was going to be the people’s magazine, for anyone and everyone. We still did not have a name , out of the blue Uncle V suggested – EPIC , which became the acronym for Ensemble of Plainly Idiosyncratic Citizens .I was going to be the editor (yaaay) and Uncle V the director but ultimately we are a team.

Our about section is something like this:

EP!C – Ensemble of Plainly Idiosyncratic Citizens , it’s just not a magazine , it’s the corral  of

a)  ideas that should reach everyone

b) of people who want themselves to be heard and

c) most essentially of the readers , the strength , the ones who will keep us going.

It is the idea of two undergraduates , itching to fly out of the cage and wanting to do the world some good.We were doing this for fun, but somehow it turned into a passion, which was undiluted and unwavering. The EP!C magazine aims to make people write and read.It is for you to voice your idiosyncratic idea. 

Then came the most difficult task of getting the writers , some of our friends write and  they were called and asked to write for some random magazine.But that was not enough , that is when a friend Terror#1, one of my favorite bloggers came to the rescue and readily agreed to  give his most thrilling stories , he even asked his other blogger friends Basically Blah and Smriti to write. Another favorite blogger Pepper agreed to do an article for the first issue. I was ecstatic to have them write ,  all of them are just awesome.

Every single write-up on the site has a story, The Solitary Wanderer was done by a friend in the middle of his boards when I was reluctant to approach him but since then he  has been the enthusiastic contributor , giving great ideas . I fell and fell badly….In love was done by another friend , it  was twisted by me but the friend did not appreciate the bollywood stuff I added and then all of us ( that includes three-four friends , Uncle V and me) sat together and gave our inputs, mine were brutally  edited.

 

Working on the first issue was the greatest thing I have ever done in my entire life.There were moments of panic when someone did not submit their article on time and did now reply to our mails or when the site was not coming out to be as we wanted . We decided to launch it on 17th March, 2011, Uncle V’s birthday . Planning the follow-up party with S.W.A.T was another fun bit.

She and I wanted to give a surprise to Uncle V and moved around in a village market ( disadvantage of a college in the outskirts of the city) at 9am to find party props.To our dismay we could not find them anywhere. We walked miles straight ahead ( did not want to take a turn and risk losing our way).

Shopping in an alien land with one of the craziest person alive on the earth is the most exciting thing. S.W.A.T is a person who has the tendency of cracking lamest jokes and can leave you gaping at her , wondering how she managed to come up with such a thing.

When we had lost hope of finding anything in that haunted market and I wanted to give it a last shot at this shop where we ultimately  got our party poppers , sprays and everything else.Phew!! another bizarre shopping experience.

The party was again one of its kind , in the college near a class room , and we created a complete ruckus out there. And did not leave until one of the professors came. 

After all the editing , designing the site , apprehensions  on how things will turn out to be , panic attacks , some last minute alterations , the magazine was finally released on the right time.The EP!C team hopes to get bigger and better with the follow up issues.Seeing the feedback, we want to take it even more seriously now and have things that impact the world in the right manner.There was not much work of this kind in the first issue but we plan it in the next.

This is the Editor , EP!C magazine signing off from a long post.Thank You if you made it to the end.

PS: If you visited the site you probably know my name and will think what’s the point writing anonymously now. But  phoenix is an essence of this blog  so I continue as the phoenix.

Another escapade from the college

After a gap of three long  months and the first trip , the backpacker club got into action again , this time to a place more known and closer by – The Jainti Dam and it was on our own vehicles , no gruesome and abominable buses with  fat lying tobacco chewing  conductors.

It was just the four of us , our activas  and backpacks. The plan brewed with the idea of driving to the morni hills( that’s probably  our next destination) fifteen days back in a drab chemistry class. And yesterday when a few backpackers chickened out of driving in the hilly areas ( morni ) , I thought of going to the dam, the entire plan was chalked out .

Planning such things after an exam is great fun and perhaps a custom now. We do it all the time and the plans turn into reality only a 50% of times.The plotting was elaborate , guess more than what was required. Since six (earlier ) of us were going, we were teamed into three departments , one for food , second beverages and I can’t recall what the third was. Yeah that’s how engineers work , diligent and efficient. We are definitely going to do the big MNC world some good.

When everything was decided , two of the people chose to go out on dates over going out with friends, can anything be more lame and boring?? This infuriated uncle V( the self proclaimed team leader) and then me ( the self proclaimed inventor of all the cool ideas, this was my idea , and they seemed to be ruining it).But then we decided to leave them behind and  have the real fun while they bored themselves to death with the guys.

In the morning after making sure that all the departments were taken care of we left . The backpackers were out again. We got on to the highway in ten minutes. Again the same old thing happened , he had no clue where to go and  where to turn from. That is when google came to our rescue , thankfully it had the directions of the dam. Seriously if you can’t find something , just google it.We got on the right path.

  The roads kept on getting narrower and the ride bumpier. We bypassed countless villages , farms ( nice ones with yellow flowers) and tiny huts and villagers who eagerly gave us the directions( google did not have the complete details and airtel did not have good  network there).

That’s one of the  broad roads among all the narrow roads. Don’t we look like scary monsters?

After a half hour’s drive we were at the dam.The most calm and peaceful place. It seemed so beautiful , being there, away from the usual hustle bustle was nice.Then we thought of going down the slope and sitting by the water body.Going down the slope was the most hilarious thing. S would tumble after every second and scream for help.

Finally when we made our way down and were admiring the beauty , the irritating caretaker started yelling at us and telling us that going so near the water was prohibited and blah , blah. Jerk had seen us “trekking” ( S calls going down a 10 meter slope trekking) and had not stopped us then.Anyways after much complaining and swearing we climbed ( trekked) up. 

We then found a spot to sit and cursed whoever that man was till we were satisfied. All the driving and “trekking” had turned us into hungry gluttons and the the food packets , breezer bottles were opened and we got high on life. Uncle V wanted us to talk, not the usual useless chatter wanted the three of us to reveal things( I am not mentioning the things here). She is good at making people do that.It’s strange I am with these people all day long and even then there was so much I did not know.

The three of em’

And me

At around two o’clock we decide to leave and on the way stopped to click some pictures of the fields with the yellow flowers.That’s were we had the stole ( that makes us look like monsters)tying drama around my face. I could not do it but had to coz otherwise the hair go frizzy and entangle badly.Gosh those three made me feel like a clown.

When S decided to shoot me .

Somehow I managed to wrap around that wretched stole  to save the hair but still they did go bad . The drive back was quite uneventful except for S saying out loud to a hot guy with an anorexic girlfriend, that he needed to improve his choice. Unfortunately we did not stop see his reaction.

A few more pictures :

This one’s my favorite

A trip to the road not taken.

What do you do when you lose your way in a completely alien land? And you have no idea where you are heading not even the exact name of the place. I mean it’s like you know where you are going but are clueless of the about what path to follow. I won’t complicate this further.

The story is something like this : eight nearly broke girls, correction eight backpacker girls decide not to attend the college and instead visit the famous RDB fort (where Rang De Basanti was shot) situated in the interiors of Punjab. The fort was an hour’s drive from the college and because we did not have vehicles of our own it would be an extra half hour. So in the classroom in five minutes the entire plan was made in this manner, 9 am departure ; 11 am arrival at the fort and again at 2 pm departure from the fort to be back by 4 pm and go back home in the college bus.

We got out of the college and then began our adventures. We caught a three-wheeler to the nearest town where we thought we’d get a bus to the fort. The tiny little town welcomed us with a two dozen buses each to a different place. After a inquiring from various bus conductors we found “our” bus. We quickly grabbed our seats (I think finding a good seat in these buses is a rarity) with a contended, electrifying smile on our faces. The birds had flown from the cage.  We sat with complete strangers, none of us had ever travelled in a bus before ( leaving apart the college and school buses ).It was altogether a new adventure.

A vendor at one the bus stops.

We had just settled when the conductor came to us with the tickets. But wait a sec! Tickets to where , the RDB fort where the Aamir Khan movie was shot . Hell no! no such place existed according to the conductor and after informing  this he went to give tickets to the other passengers , who by now were curiously looking at the eight girls who were new to the alien world of which they were a part. It was panic time, we were on a bus to Ludhiana and on our way to a place nobody had heard about. That is when the tube light (our friend Su) lit up and told us her cousin had been there. The cousin was called, he told us we were on the right way and the fort was actually situated in Doraha near a gurudwara.

Finally the conductor gave us the tickets and we were in our elated mode once again. Now aunty 1 gets on the bus , a senior citizen and because there is no other  seat I offer her mine . She is pleased and enquirers where we are going , we tell her. To our utter shock she enlightens us that “our” bus  is never going to take us to Doraha and we need to take another bus.

The bus stops in some town , we got down after thanking our aunty no. 1 and cursing the creepy  conductor for cheating and misguiding us. Fortunately we immediately got a bus to Doraha.  To satisfy ourselves we first ask the conductor, then a passenger, then the driver  and then the conductor again .

The second bus

So we were all set to go in our second bus. The smiles were back . All was well until Su got in a conversation with a helpful aunty no. 2 . She too is curious about where we are going  and Su explains  . Then to our  horror ( once agian)  she told us that the RDB fort was on a different road. We were supposed to go by the GT road.Although there was similar fort in Doraha but not AAmeer Khaaan walla .Everyone started panicking yet again then V told everyone that we were on our way to discover a new place ,nobody had been there before . We were on the road not taken.

After being relaxed by V’s wise words we all resumed our usual talks.Tuned into my Ipod I was happily looking out from the window , the bus was now on roads that was barely 30 inches wide  . It seemed like we were going through the fields itself. Suddenly instead of Chris Martin I hear this:

                                          Tu mainu Chad de Ya Daaru Chad de

                                                          Rabba teri khair ne 

OMG! It was the music blaring out from the bus woofers , I had  noticed those on entering and laughed mentally ( the mental  evil laugh) and doubted their working .It was playing the very music I detested and giving competition to my Ipod   apparently  my Ipod failed them. All my friends exchanged the what are we doing here looks. GAWD ! I had never heard such baritones ever.To top it all Teju started singing those songs.
 

URGHHH!!! god alone knew what part of world we were in the rickety bus , going at speed of 70 km/hr on the 20 inch wide road ( the width had reduced like we wish our waists would do at the same pace  ) . Suddenly we were on the GT road and the bus halted . The conductor told us we have to cross the road and we’ll reach a gurudwara and just beyond that is the fort. He even told that the same bus will take us to college at 2 so we should be back at 2pm same place and he’ll pick us up.After quickly thanking him we entered the township. After a small break at the gurudwara we where on our way to the Fort.We finally made it.
Enough of Babbling from my side now the pictures will do the talking:

HIP HIP HORRAY

The road  from Gurudwara to the fort

The entrance . Magnificent !!

This is supposed to be the Mosque

At the fort

Me

 After having a hearty lunch we went back to the highway. On the way back while we were walking some horrendous  buffaloes tried to chase us away , that was  scary , we ran for our lives. We reached college in time to boast about our day’s adventures to the classmates who had stayed back and studied in the ever boring classrooms.
Cheers to the Backpacker girls Club. 

PS: Sorry this post is too long but couldn’t help it . My friend V ( who religiously reads my every post ) wanted minute to minute description.This one goes to those 7 people who made my day.

MESSS!!!

What a whirlwind of a week this has been !! Life was never such a roller coaster . It all started with my friend, lets call her Su , asking me to take her camera’s memory card and get her pictures. At the time she handed me the memory card she had no idea that she’d be seeing it for the last time for I have no idea how long( I’ll be coming to that). I promised her nothing would go wrong and her memories ( this is what she calls her MMC or SD card or Micro SD  card or XD card whatever in the world  that was.) were in the safest hands ( seems really ironic now)

When I reached home very enthusiastically in the hope of  seeing our latest fresher’s pictures I inserted the the MMC or SD card or Micro SD card or XD card ( even google does’nt know what that was ) into my memory card reader and BINGO! the trouble started . My “wonderful” laptop was neither reading the data and nor ejecting the card . After fifteen minutes of frantic solitary efforts  I went to “dear ” brother’s room , who  very “politely ” asked me the get out of his room , without listeneing to a word.

Somehow I managed to relate my tale woes to him , and he gave the I-wish-you-could-use-your-rusting-brains look . He asked me to get the laptop and explain him  what all I did and the kind of memory card it was. Twelve  hours back I had no idea that memory card could be various types I just knew about the SD cards( I know its a shame ) But now I can tell about every single memory card ( except the one Su gave me)available in the market and also differntiate among all . So I under the able guidance of bro started the mission “Reteiving the memory card” , he was instructing and cursing me for acting ‘ smart ‘  I hate it when he acts all big brotherly , dude you gotta realise I’m the older one ( this one calls for a different post altogether)

I unsuccessfully tried everything I could. Mom suggested I take it to the HP guys and get the laptop opened up  to  get the memory card ,inspite of all the risk involved  I was completely up for that idea and the next day when I went the HP guys they said they were not sure if they’d be able to configure the laptop in the same way . So therefore this idea was dropped , now I had look for a plan B . I was really apprehensive about telling all this to Su ,  she had every right to punch me in the face , I had acted really irresponsibly , but fortunately she was quite sporty about the whole thing . I was elated , she had no problem with her memories stuck in my laptop until they were intact and I return the memory card whenever the laptop had some hardware problem. The ocean of problems did not end here.

Before telling Su I had bought her a memory card (this one is a micro SD card complete with an adapter which can be used to make it SD card) similar to the one used in my camera , both are Nikkon coolpix ,so I guessed they’d be the same but apparently I was wrong yet again.Su was more than happy to get the new one until we realised the Micro SD card with the adapter was twice the size of the slot in her camera .

” No problem ” I said . I can  get the Micro SD card excahnged easily and now that I have seen the size of the slot I’d be able get the right one I assured Su . She was fine with it.

Now this the conversation I had with the shopkeeper when I went to excahnge it :

Me : “I took this SD card yesterday can you please change it .”

Shopkeeper(sk) : Ya , which one do you want .

me : The one smaller than this one .

sk: We have various smaller one , which one do you want?

me: the one used in Nikkon coolpix L14 ( sure of the thing he’d be knowing which memory card is used in that model)

sk : What do you think I’ll be knowing the kind of memory card used in evey camera ( imagine this in panjabi)  Give  me the camera  I’ll give you the memory card .

me: I dont have it right now , you just show me the all the memory cards and I’ll be able to diffrentitate .

sk: Ok , there you go.

And then he gave me the Mini SD , SD , XD , MMC , pro SD   all looking exactly the same and all  for the use in camera , I had no idea which would be compatible with Su’s camera so I again asked him:

me : Can you please tell me which will be used for the Nikkon L14

sk: I don’t know what model you are talking about I have not heard of it.

me:  hmmmm, so can you please refund the money , I’ll return the Micro SD and come back again with the camera tommorrow and you give me the apt one.( Thinking of going to another shopkeeper and getting the card )

sk: NO!!!!! YOU CAN NOT RETURN.

me: But yesterday you said I could do that.

sk: It must not have been me , I’ll excahnge it ( obvsly he’d do that because all the other cards costed thrice the Micro SD)

me: Ok then give me the SD for the same price ( I had no money)

sk: Do I look crazy enough to do that? ( again imagine the panjabi version )Go get it from somewhere else .

Not wanting to get into further arguement ( I can’t stand arguements especailly such pointless ones ) I told him I ‘d be back tommorrow with the camera and he’d better exchange it ( I was quite polite) . He agreed and  hopefully I’ll get the memory card similar to the one in my laptop.

Thanks to Su for not killing me for being so irresponsible . Until my laptop stops working her memory card (  SD , Micro SD , XD , SD pro whatever it was )peacefully  rests in it without any further disturbance For now  I have been banned from using the laptop for a month by my baby brother , told ya , hate it when he acts like the BB  (Big Brother) . Hope he cuts down the punishment cause using the desktop is a real pain.

Must do’s before you die

There is a lot of stuff you should do before you are dead. I figured out a must do list of my own, things I’d like to do or I have done and recommend (most of it is the fun part). Here it is:

1) Go bungee jumping: You should definitely try it. It’s the most thrilling and enthralling experience. Nothing is cooler than being tossed 500 ft high, suspended by a single cord. The feeling is just AWESOME.

2) Go on a vacation all by yourself: This might sound boring to many of you who think vacation is family and friends time. But when you need a break from literally everything , go to a new place unaccompanied .It’s refreshing and adventrous. Here’s what you can do – hiking, trekking , randomly going to a places you can’t go when you are with family.I still gotta do this one.

3) Drive your car at top speed with music blaring in the middle of the night: The chandigarh police is going to hate me for this one but trust me with a couple of friends this is going to be fun. Also I recommend a drive on a two wheeler on a cold winter evening or when it rains.

4) Learn salsa: This style of dancing has always appealed me.Though I’m a bad dancer but I’d love to learn .You should try it with the guy you are seriously dating, it sounds tooo sec c (get that) .

5) Play soccer in slush on a rainy day: This is more of a guy thing but girls should do it too. What’s better than playing soccer ( no matter how bad you are at it) and getting dirty on a rainy day??

6) White water rafting: If you love water sports you should try this. Doing it in ganges ( Rishikesh ) is nice but Brahmaputra is way better.

7) Do something for you mother: You might disagree with her on everything, argue with her on trivial issues , but she is the one who loves you the most .So go ahead and make her happy. Do something for her that she will never forget.

8) Put your name down to be a passenger on the first tourist shuttle to the moon: Do I need to elaborate on this one.

9) Climb an active volcano : WHOKAY! I read this one somewhere and could not help putting it here .
Try this one on your risk.

10) Stand on top and bottom of the world: Standing right on south and north pole sounds like a great thing one should definetly do this

11)) Travel the world in 80 days

12) Eat junk food continously for a week: Have food you like all meals included everyday of a week without having any guilt pangs.