Taraspassing

It had been a long time since I bunked college for attending a symposium.So today I decided to take a decision in that direction after experiencing much of fickle-mindedness last night over thoughts of what the HOD would do to me if another two dozen bunked today.So after much of clouded thoughts, I found my mind leading me to take the decision as to attend the symposium at S.R.M. Valliammai College of Enginnering named Taras '05.Thanks to Spang and Beta for helping me find my way out of commotion.

So today morning, I went pretty enthusiastically to the bus stop at Blue Star ( Which is a major landmark in Anna Nagar ) to board the bus to S.R.M. Valliammai College of Enginnering, only that the bus would turn up merely an hour later at around 7:35 A.M. So I boarded the bus and sat and had a nice short nap that lasted for about 1 hour or 1 hour and 10 minutes, which is when I opened my eyes to find the bus entering the campus.It was mere coincedence and no jerking activity of the bus or someone waking me up.So I got down all bleary eyed, and was in a daze for some 10 to 15 minutes.I would have entered the chemistry lab of the college along with the first years, if it wasn't for the quick recovery of reason for my presence there by my brain.So thank you sweet brain.I found the way to the canteen.On the way to the canteen I found my zip totally unzipped, so I un-unzipped( zipped ) it and entered the canteen to have a dry and uninteresting pongal.I say the pongal was uninteresting because, it had some kind of a face that seemed to be bored and unexcited and of course uninteresting.Or atleast it seemed to me to be so.So I started eating the uninteresting pongal and by the time I finished 3/4th of it, it seemed to plead me to relieve it from being eaten.So I decide in favour of the pongal and let the rest of it be.Then as I was drinking my tea, the guys - Ajay, Beta, Ganesh, Madhan, Mahadevan, Mukund, Srivats, Sushant(bespectacled guy) and Spang arrived.Just when I tasted the tea I knew that it wasn't my cup of tea.I should have known the signs then itself.But I didn't.By then our Beta had somehow managed to make a "missing" report to my mom.She as usual got tensed and had asked him to call her up once the "missing" me was found.So once Beta found me in the canteen, I threatened Beta that he wouldn't be found if he didn't make a phone call to my mom immediately and telling her that "missing" me was found.Actually I tried making an overstatement in the last statement.It is in fact possible even to threaten Osama Bin Laden, but Beta is way beyond that mark.You'll know why if you meet him.Anyways, so Beta dutifully called up mom and did the good boy work telling her that I was found and all, and my mom came up with a sentimental olden Tamil movie type dialogue - Thanks paa, yein vayathulla paala vaathai paa.

Since I didn't know where exactly was the symposium going on though I was inside the college, I had to wait for Beta to complete his breakfast so that I could go and register for the day's events.We then went and registered me in a mju p programming contest, quiz ( the sole purpose for which I went ) and Adzap.So the first event was that of mju p programming , wherein Beta and I squeezed our brains to answer every single question in that paper.I was happy that I remembered atleast some thing in mju p.Now for all those of my readers who are ignorant about mju p, I would first of all congratulate you, and then expand it for you.Mju ( to be pronounced as 'myu'....so you're thinking why I can't write it right away as 'myu'....well, thats the way things are in this world buddy so please ) stands for micro as in microscope or micro-organism or microskirts.Some say it also refers to 10^-6.I don't know all that.But what is micro is micro and cannot be mega or mini for certain.P stands for processor in the micrprocessor world.Besides it also stands for Phosphorous, pico, peta, penny/pence etc.So after squeezing our brains, we needed to open them a bit for the Adzap event.We found it tough to open our squeezed brains, and hence ended up drawing some crap.Yeah we had to draw for the prelims.Our given product was Invisible Inkjet Printer.Our group had various ideas but I managed convincing them that mine was to be used and we also had to come up with a slogan.So we came up with - Redefining transparency which I know sucked, but we couldn't think of anything else that was funny or that which had more punch in it.Besides it seemed great to us at that time.So after the fiasco, I still didn't realize that the best was yet to come.

We went to another room to attend the quiz prelims.Myself and Beta teamed up and did well enough to qualify.Srivats and Sushant(b) were obviously qualified.So two teams made SSN proud by qualifying for quiz finals of the first ever national level technical symposium of S.R.M. Valliammai College of Enginnering.All of us then attended the Adzap Finals, which really was breath-taking-ly horrible, except for the team from Sri Sairam Engineering College who were way too good.Then started the quiz finals.We did fine in the opening three rounds, Beta and myself.Then I became totally impossible with my answers.I missed things that I knew very well and muffed it up all in all.I was resposnible for a staggering 10% of the correct answers, while Beta managed a measly 90% of them.The percentages turned tables in the wrong answers department.We were close to winning it at the beginning of the 5th and final rapid fire round.Beta managed to get three correct answers getting us 30 points, where I managed to say pass to the others or give brow-raising answers, but either way I couldn't get points for my team.I must say that it really saddens me to let someone down.My principle is such that if I am working in a team, it doesn't matter even if I don't contribute by being a silent partner, but it really bugs me if I don't contribute inspite of putting in efforts, or inspite of knowing something well.I feel so unfit and undeserving of that certificate I got for being a part of the team that ended up third.I must say here that Beta was simply great with his answers, as almost 9/10 of them turned out to be right and earned us most of our points.I still really feel bad for letting him down.So after telling you that we ended up third, I need to tell you who came first and second.The first place went to well deserved team of Srivats and Sushant(b) and second to some team from Sriram Engineering College.Then after receiving our certificates and all we went and had an omlette each, courtesy Srivats.After that we had tea and ice creams and then boarded the S.R.M. buses to our respective places.Thus the day ended.

For once today, I could empathize with Venki on his viewpoint of taking part in quizes. But one very interesting thing about quizzing is that even though you lose, you gain a lot of knowledge and information.Thats why quizzing rocks.Thats what keeps me keen on watching lots of them and also taking part.I'll leave you with a quote of Pierre de Coubertin, who is best known as the founder of modern olympic games.He says something like -

The true spirit of olympics is not in winning, but in fighting well.