Normad

Oh well, for the first time in a long time I have broken the 'week' rule i.e. one blog post every week. It wasn't that I couldn't blog - I could have. As a matter of fact, I did write a rather long-winding nostalgic type post. However, after having written 1000 words, I realized that I had barely started - there was way too much stuff popping up in my head. Needless to say, organizing it into a semi-coherent train of thought was a nightmare. So, that post still lies in my draft archive. Maybe one day when I get around to re-editing it, it will see the light of day. Lets see. What has been happening for the last 2 weeks?

- There was 'unofficial' St. Patricks Day on March 3rd. The 'official' St. Patricks day is on March 17th, which is the last day of college before spring break. So, the basic idea is to keep drinking from 6 in the morning till late in the night. Everyone on the main college street was soo drunk that the entire place was smelling of beer. There is a long list of 'quotable' events, but shall pass. Also, I heard that 3 people died of alchohol poisoning. I don't know who they are, but I can guess how it had happened.

1. Get smashed
2. Throw up
3. Forget that you threw up and get smashed again
4. Throw up even harder
5. Forget that you threw up 2 times and get smashed again
6. Oops..dead

- I am doing this interesting psychology type course. It is quite fun to do a course which for once doesn't have

1. An equation
2. A programming assignment
3. A highly skewed student distribution (Ok, I am not going to explain what that means. You need to think.)
4. People talking some un-intelligible techie garbage. *Digression* One of the most painful experiences as a CS graduate student is this jargonization to death. It essentially happens when you are caught in the clutches of some random acquaintance who mistakenly assumes that you might be interested in his research project/ latest gadget acquistion. The death part comes in when you strangle him. *End Digression*. Technology is a necessary evil. You need it, but it's best not to talk about it unless you really really have to. Its like that other thing.

So, for a change, in the class of 25 there are exactly 3 engineering/science/math type people. Timor, Mike and me. Timor is this guy from Belarus with an outrageous Eastern-European accent. Mike is this cocky guy of possibly Irish descent. The rest of the class is from Psychology , History, English etc. Also, most of the students are undergraduates, which gives the class a very different feeling. Firstly, it doesn't feel as sober and serious as a graduate class. Secondly, it isn't as sober and serious as a graduate class.

So, as the only 3 engineers in the class, very often, it falls upon us to explain all things 'technical'. Also, for once we are looked at with awe. See, being an engineer isn't so bad, if you can escape the confines of your environment and show-off to non-engineers. Ok, so, there was this once when the word 'lever' was used in this vague touchy feely sense that only MBA/psychology types are capable of doing. So, our instructor to get the class involved, asks one of us to explain what is a lever. So, Mike goes something like this -

' In physics, a lever is a rigid object that is used with an appropriate fulcrum or pivot point to multiply mechanical force. It is based on the principle of moments.'

He actually made it sound even more complicated. The whole class was staring at him with its jaw dropped.

Anyway, there was this other section where we were to pair up to have a discussion. So, I paired up with Timor, and everyone paired up with someone else - except this girl sitting to my left. I think she goes to the tanning saloon a lot, because she looks errm...cooked. Seriously. Anyway, she got left out, and since she was the only unpaired person, she had to be put into a group of three. I don't think she really liked that because, in all seriousness she goes, " I really don't like threesomes, I would prefer to just do it with one person.". Then the instructor says, "Is there someone who you would really prefer to do it with?" Actually, I made the last part up, the instructor didn't - the whole class just burst out laughing!!

So, as part of the discussion Timor and I had to practice our co-operational skills by discussing whether a hypthetical child of ours should be sent to private or public school. Private schools are better but expensive. Public schools are free but can be bad at times. We had a limited amount of money. The idea was for us to throw around a number of ideas and reach a consensus. One of the key requirements to solve a problem correctly is to be able to clearly identify what are your exact expectations from the situation. So, when we realized we had a limited amount of money, it struck us that we did have some money after all! We could go on that cruise we had been thinking of for such a long time!! Thats what is called thinking out of the box!

There are still more fun anecdotes. However, people, I am going to sleep now.