Additions to my room.

My room has undergone some changes. There is now a Shakespeare International Conference poster stuck to a wall.

The conference’s official name was Staged Encounters : History, Society, Identity and Shakespeare. I have a poster of it because I volunteered to help with the Conference and then whacked a poster. It looks quite nice. The Conference was also a lot of fun. Sukantada’s paper was brilliant. Supriyadi’s paper was also brilliant. There were other very nice papers. Swapanda’s paper was also brilliant I’m told. I missed it however.

The University Guest House makes awful Chinese (or is it chinis) food. They should be shot for preparing such atrocious Chinese food.

Milonda’s Seminar Brew a.k.a. Chaffee was better than usual. Chaffee is this strange concoction that Milonda provides. It does not matter whether you asked him to provide tea or coffee. He will provide chaffee. It is a strange mix of Milonda’s cha ( Itself a hideous, foul excrement) , very bad Coffee and bits of whatever Milonda was serving before he started making your supply of Seminar Brew. We got cha, coffee and chicken kebab.

The University Guest House provides Coffee or Tea. Their coffee(or tea) is however sometimes contaminated with soup. We once got Tomato soup flavoured coffee and Onion flavoured tea. Their Coffee( and Tea) is worse than Milonda’s.

The only place that serves good tea on Campus is the Hostel Canteen( a.k.a. Sujitda’s). The canteen is damn cheap, and fairly good. It’s not great but it’s not bad.

You cannot get good coffee on campus.

Moving on…

An electricity meter now graces my wall. Yes, you read right, An electricity meter. You know, those things that are kept by the electricity company inside your house so that they know how much to charge you.

I did not have to break open the meter box or commit some illegal act to obtain this meter. DPL replaced all the analog meters in everybody’s house with brand new digital meters. I presume their logic is that Digital meters are more difficult to tamper with. Anyway, the old meter was left lying around, so I whacked it and hung it from a nail. It looks damn cool, I must say.

My room is looking strangely nice.

The Studying starts now.

It has suddenly dawned upon me that the end-sems start in ~10 more days. Gah. Hence I will start studying.

Now since I can’t possibly hope to study everything in the syllabus– I wouldn’t remember even if I did–and I don’t think they expect us to do so, I have decided to study only that which I like and leave out the rest. They can go take a hike.

Hence from “English Literature 1760-1830″ I will be studying

• Samuel Taylor Coleridge
• Percy Bysshe Shelley
• George Gordon Byron
• Emma by Jane Austen
• Rights of man by Thomas Paine

From “English Literature 1830-1900″ I will be studying

• Alfred Lord Tennyson
• Matthew Arnold
• Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
• “The Hero as Prophet” from “On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History” by Thomas Carlyle

It has to start somewhere
It has to start sometime
What better place than here
What better time than now

::Rage Against The Machine

Beware of the K.M.R.

Okay, this will be quite a substantial post. Why? Because I went and submitted my End-Sem exam forms to the K.M.R. a.k.a The place that drives you mad (ref. The Twelve Tasks of Asterix) a.k.a Bureaucratic Hell. But let’s start at the beginning shall we?

On Monday, 8th Oct, A notice comes up on the Dep notice board that Tuesday, 9th Oct was the last date to submit End-Sem exam forms without fine and Thursday, 11th Oct was the last date to submit forms with a Rs.5 fine. They would accept only fines picked up from the K.M.R. and forms DLoaded from the Uni website. So I got a form printed and photocopied it. Went to K.M.R. at 10:00 A.M. on Tuesday to submit forms. Went and stood in the shorted line along with two other friends. Some other friends had gone and stood in the longer line( coz they didn’t know the shorter line existed…until we told them, by which time it was too late to switch lines) Stood there for FIVE frikkin hours and then those @#$%#$ wouldn’t accept my form coz it was a photocopy. The little @$$#o|35. Then went on Friday, Stood in line for three hours and submitted a fresh form. Bloody freaks. Stuck in the administrative processes of 1943. And there were these geniuses in line who were paying their sem fees at the same time. And some Einstiens who filled their forms incorrectly. Stupid buggers.

Helped Sandy pick up and organize the JUDE dept T-Shirts. Poor Sandy has gone quite bald with this task. Also the T-Shirt guy has made some quite entertaining mistakes. He’s put “L” tags on size “Small” T-Shirts. Some people are going to get a shock when they pick up their Tees. Also he’s messed up some orders. But on the whole he’s done stuff properly. So that’s cool.

Met Karma Mingyur Yonzone a.k.a Kong a.k.a The Beast from the North-East. This man has to be seen to be believed.

Went out to eat quite a bit.

Exams from Nov 26th.

See quite a big post.

Chill.

The week that was…

Let’s See…. Was in Kolkata from 18th night to 28th afternoon. So what happened in that time?

We had our freshers on 21st. We got free food and free rock music. So that was good.

Went to Princeton and Someplace Else.

I am short of blogging material.

Back again.

I need better titles. Newayz, been some time since I’ve blogged. Muchos Apologies. So What’s Up?

I’ve got my JU ID card. This means I should get a new mobile number soon.

I have been reading a lot. Poems, essays, novels….you get the drift. I’m planning to join a couple of libraries.

I’ve had to be extremely careful when spending. It’s quite a new feeling having to look in the wallet and wonder where all that money went.

I have good filter coffee once a week. There are a couple of places where for Rs.10 you get a nice bit of filter coffee.

The food at my mess S.U.C.K.S Big time. There’s only potatoes, veggies are a rarity. Fish/Egg and sometimes chicken.

Kolkata’s water tastes awful.

The traffic is murderous. You never know who’s gonna go berserk, climb the footpath(when there’s such a thing) and run over you. The State buses, minibuses,share autos(a peculiar phenomenon in which one auto contains six people) race to get the most passengers. If in the process they run over a few people, well…they don’t really care.

That’s all for now.

Terragen Time.(and other news)

Home for the weekend( Bless you SBSTC). So let me review my fortnight(Yes I didn’t come home last weekend).

Let’s see…….

JUDE is showing Neo-Noir films every wednesday(They’re going to show 6 films, I believe). Saw Miller’s Crossing and Coffee and Cigarettes. They’s gonna show “In The Soup” this wednesday.

I’ve given my name for the JUDE football team for the FOA Inter departmental Footbal Tournament. been practising regularly.

I’ve taken up Latin Classes. Quite interesting. We’re currently learning Latin grammar.

And now The Honours and Extra-Departmental courses. Quite nice and interesting. And sometimes quite fun.

Been doing some experiments with Terragen after a long time.

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Oh and I got a haircut(after four months )

Cheers for now.

JU is Uber

Back for the weekend. The first sem has just 2 Core courses and 2 Extra Departmental courses, and two tutes per week. The professors are excellent, the libraries are ” ” and the canteens are delicious. Serious work starts from monday. JU’s Department of English is like ” ” Enjoying myself.

PS:: The libraries have comps.