Impure Lumps of Carbon and Water

~I have good news, and I have bad news. Either can be interpreted as the other. I'll tell you what I think is the good news first. Well, the good news is, I'm (w)hole again, which means I can get back to monopolizing the computer for long hours at a stretch, much to the irritation of all at home. This also means that I can get back to doing some (hopefully) meaningful posts, full of profound insights that alter your outlook on life even as you read them. There, I did say that it can be taken either way.

If you paid close attention to the above paragraph (if you hadn't, please do, or you'll miss the profound insights), you would have noticed that I said at home. Yup, I'm back in Bangalore, and I'm lovin' it. Trichy was hotter than ever this summer, and it wasn't pleasant, having to mug definitions that only got more incomprehensible with every exam. The guy who said that engineering was all about using your imagination to solve cutting edge technological problems obviously hadn't done a course on Quality, Reliability and Maintenance. After this semester, all I've learnt is to use my imagination to adapt one definiton for a minimum of eight different terms. And, to top it all off, I had to deal with the trauma of having gone under the knife. Yes, I suffered.

Now for the bad news: there is no scar. I feel cheated.

~Well, anyway(s). What is it with this new funda of saying anyways instead of the good old anyway? Everywhere I go, I hear people say anyways (with the requisite American roll, of course). I mean, this is taking things a little too far. Chill, dudes and dudettes, no need to freak. I have no pangas with slang. Yeah, slang is like, totally cool, man. You had slang back when our parents were living the wild life in college, and you have slang now. But, I ask you, anyways? It's plain wrong English. I can totally empathise with Lynne Truss when she says she feels like inflicting physical damage on people who mess up the language and, to add insult to injury, think they're being cool when they do it. It's murder, I say, what they're doing to my beloved English language.

Nd don strt me off on SMS/IM lingo. Wht's da bldy dictnry 4, I ask u?

I need to chill, man, maybe take a time-out, y'know?

~Right. I'm all chilled out now. Onward ho, then.

Yup, that's what we all are, impure lumps of carbon and water, with an affinity for green paper. ;)

~Another semester's come and gone. We're final years now, the Lord Gods of the campus. First years tremble when they cross our paths, the second years still address us as aap and the third years, in spite of all the abuse they heap on us, still listen to us when we give fundas.

On a totally unrelated note: Listen well, all you disillusioned second years out there, for 'tis the Monk who speaks now, and no common preacher. Do not worry, for enlightenment generally dawns in the third year, when you get single rooms. Use the solitude well.

Three years have passed so bloody quickly. And it's been an amazing three years. I have grown and learnt more in these three years than in any another period so far. If today, I am more or less happy with the kind of person I have become (oh, there are many more miles to go, but the journey is well begun, I think), I owe it in no small measure to this college, to this culture. Sometimes I wonder what I'll do when I get back to civilization.

Author's Note: To all you disillusioned second years: I am, of course, making broad, sweeping generalizations without any logical basis. Still, do not disregard my words, for 'tis the Monk who speaks here, and no common preacher. ;)