Google's cache is just amazing man!
I found a poem, written by moi, which was published in The Hindu during the whole NIE(Newspaper in Education) phase and which I thought had gone astray forever, for I lost the only hard copy that I had(misplaced would be misnomer). Years down the line, I type in my name into the coveted search box(just a regular ego search) and voila! Guess what I find?
A poem written by me when I was in class VIII(always had a little bit of a fascination with roman numerals).

Though the cache can have its repurcussions later on. Imagine blasting someone(boss maybe?) on a personal blog, you know just a regular vent of fury and then later realizing that it was all a big mistake once the head has been cooled. But those words will be etched for the world to see and you cant take them off( Techies, can they?). So think hard before you hit that publish button!

First and foremost let me apologize for the small picture, this is the maximum it would stretch, so for those who dont have a 6/6 or something close, its going to be a struggle.

Right, coming to the point!

INDIA-TODAY has done it again! Time and time it manages to piss people off with its surveys which has the opinions of 400 teachers(atleast it was the last time I checked). Their tiff with BITS hasnt yet been resolved and well their rankings without a doubt are pretty fucked up.

What is surprising is the inclusion of VIT at the number 14th spot, thus making it(as they claim on their website), the best private engineering college in India. Being a Bitsian, I would love to give the VIT publicity dept. a piece of my mind, if the authorities decided to step up to me.

What is also surprising is by how much the Outlook and India Today Survey differ, every year. I remember last year Thapar College(TIET), Patiala crept through every ranking onto a coveted 8-9th position and this year its name hasnt even been mentioned in the top 25. Can a college really fare that badly in just one year? And can VIT which was at 35 something last year become the best Private college of this nation of a billion?

IIIT-A ahead of IIIT-H? Seriously? IT-BHU at 18? And since when was IIIT-A's reputation better than that of DCE or NIT-W and other biggies?

Are the chaps at India Today(and AC Nielson) really putting in effort while coming up with the rankings? Year after year, we see the rankings where the top 5-6 spots are taken by the IITs arranged in a random order, and the other spots keep shuffling like a deck of cards. Its been 5 years and seriously they cannot take the public for granted anymore. Many people tend to swear by the ratings because they feel that since INDIA TODAY is a credible magazine, the rankings will also adhere to those standards. I havnt seen this years Nasscom Survey which appears in the OUTLOOK magazine yet, so I guess the cussing regarding that should take some time.

P.S: If you notice all the categorial ranks you'll see that they form a nice pattern, at least in the case of IIT's and also NIT-T etc.

I have just finshed a mini trip down south.

Actually it wasnt that mini. I made the following observations

Road trips can be a bitch when they span for over a week and your legs start behaving in a funny manner.

Ooty is one dirty town, it should be nicknamed the 'Cradle of Filth', and the place has got a mind of its own. The clouds are supposed to come into our rooms early morning, instead they choose to chill out a few hundred feet above and decide to piss over us, just for the fun of it.

There seems to be a Hutch monopoly in Ooty, trying to find an airtel top-up is about as difficult as finding a Bose product within your budget.

The more greek words in the name of a hotel, the worse it is.

Just because you're late and its been hot all along, you cannot go to a hill station with no warm clothes and say to yourself that 'Aah, its gonna be cool'. You know why? Coz its not gonna be cool, its gonna be COLD. And theres a difference.

Its quite amusing to see foreign tourists stare at a sign board that says : Indians 5 rupees, Others 500 rupees(We accept only cash!).

The trip started from Hyderabad via Vellore and then to Blore. From there we headed towards Mysore and finally to Ooty. We came back from Coonoor via Coimbatore, Salem, Hosur and finally back to Blore City which greeted us with arms wide open, awful downpour and a traffic jam that I'd never forget.

One complete year has come to an end.Well, almost.

My first year away from home. Living on my own. With people I had never met before(umm ok I knew some of them). My first year in BITS has been nothing short of overwhelming. There were times when I was on a high(literally), then there were times of extreme melancholy. But all in all there was no monotony, no boredom. My seniors say its the enthusiasm of the freshies that dies down by the third year because in this little place, there is only so much that you can see. I beg to differ, its about seeing the same thing in different light everyday.
I made some really close friends. I mean the guys who see you in your underwear trotting in the hallway will stick on with you till the every end won't they?
I am in love with the campus. I wont go to the extent of calling it plush, but well its somewhere there. Walking on crisp leaves, finding n+1 gates that lead us outside the campus(some of which were created from mere orifices), giving refuge to dogs(I never would've imagined oing that any where, I'm mongrel phobic), living on fluids and so much more. I've learnt more from the people here than I have from the books. Does that sound like a convenient excuse? Probably.
I have been termed as the "notorious chappal thief" for the obvious reasons. Its a tag I have to live with for the rest of my bitsian life. I have seriously never worn so many different kinds of footwear. One of every hue, one on each leg, each one so different from the other.
I have learnt that breakfast is the best thing BITS can offer in terms of meals from the mess, for thats the ultimate high and nothing can get better than that(I hope you're getting it).
But above all, its the freedom. Freedom is what you make of it. You can either get wasted, or not do something constructive, its all cool. This place lets you be.