The drudgeries of life

Ever experienced this kinda situation... you get the feeling that you've got so much to do yet all you end up doing is loll around and being a fit-for-nothing lazy slob?! Well I have! For instance, I have got such a lot of things to do like washing my stinking boots which have been that way since about 60 days *yuck* (a better option which came to my mind was chucking them out of the window and good riddance! But the damn things are almost brand new!), prepare my CV (a job I've been procrastinating since the beginning of the year), get serious about CAT and begin preparing with gusto, write testimonials for a bunch of friends on Orkut, work on my research internship, and O yeah! Keep posting on blogger etc. etc. etc. And I end up spending the whole night playing cards, followed by a marathon 12 hour sleep session if not a longer one, putting off all the work for a tommorow that I know will never come! On Sunday, it was time to come face to face with reality and appear for the first all India mock CAT test that was organised by the institute that I joined, T.I.M.E. (golly! Just the name is enough to give you goosepimples)! Not that I wasn't aware of my pathetic preparation, but still I didn't seem to give a damn! So Saturday turned out to be the day when I was involved in each and every activity except, yes you've guessed it right, last minute preparation! I spent the whole day sleeping; spent the entire evening playing TT and badminton (been ages since I had played badminton and what a day I chose to start again!). There were days when even mock tests seemed to make life miserable and I had to spend hours at a time studying before appearing for them! But naah! These days things are different! While studying for the actual exams is a clumsy activity and persued with half-hearted effort, studying for mocks is out of the question!

Come Sunday, after being woken up after just 4 hours of beauty sleep by a pal of mine, I sat on my bed for a while staring groggily at the floor contemplating whether or not to take the test! Finally I did decide to appear for the test! So, after a quick shower, and an even quicker breakfast, I joined my batchmates in a jeep that would drop us off at the center. What's most irritating at times like these is to find people around you discussing topic which you have no inkling about or to find folks immersed in their notes mugging up formulae ad infinitum! Not that I'm never involved in the mentioned activities, but it particularly gets me cheesed off when someone else is at it and I'm nowhere in the picture!

The center where the exam was supposed to take place wasn't a bad place, more so because I managed to find myself a decent seat right under the fan (It was damn hot and without a fan above my head, I could've guaranteed to have perspired enough to get a new river flowing!)! All settled in my seat, I just went out for a sip of water and got back in a jiffy only to find this ugly, bitchy female relishing the cool air the fan was throwing on my seat! The compass and card that I had left at my seat as a proof of it being occupied were lying around like pathetic bastards! i could've killed that skimpy, pimply girl right then and there, but did otherwise! So, here I ended up sitting in a corner suffocating my guts away, and as promised, perspiring like hell! How's that for starters?!

The test begins... I manage my time pretty well between the sections but the questions were pretty tough! Even in English, which was probably my strong area, I found it difficult to answer the questions with confidence! And thanks to my literally sweating it out there, things got real messy! The number of questions I attempted out of 150 were about 60 and as I later calculated my score, I found that I got as many questions wrong as I got right! Just when I being to think that the four letter words "fuck" and "rape" cannot possibly represent a worse situation, I'm proven to be wrong! There seems always a different place to get fucked and each time in a brand new way!

When I thought nothing else could go wrong after the test, I should've known better! I somehow managed to get my hands on the very famous book by J.D. Salinger, "The catcher in the rye", and I sure wanted to find out why the goddamn book is so very popular and all! But believe me, the books sucks... that too big time! It's about this guy who flunks all his subjects and is kicked out of college, probably for the nth time, and throughout the book you can find him swearing for Chrissake! This guys goes on and on about all the depressing things that can be found under the sun and the habits of people which either kill him or which make him puke! And for your kind information, the books is about nothing in particular! And when I was done reading the load of bullshit that the book can boast of containing, i was left so very depressed! And I was dying to know as to why such a book is considered as one of the top books! Anyone got an answer???

And it was due time that I realized that I was broke! Except for the 10 odd bucks in loose change, all I had in my seemingly bulky purse were ATM recipts and bus tickets of all the trips to ahmedabad that I had made in the last month (They're still right there! Talk about laziness)! Thus, I was faced by the inevitable task of going around begging my friends to shell out some money for me! But odd as it may seem, people seem to go broke just when you go broke and you end up feeling quite sheepish for being a beggar who's begging from other beggars:D!

I finally ended the dreadful day by starting off with Douglas Adam's The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. It sort of cheered me up! Comic sci-fi the way Adams has written it is sheer fun! And I dozed off right about the time when Ford and Arthur are being chucked out of a Vogon space ship on which they had hitchhiked a ride after the Earth had been destoyed to make way for a universal bypass!!

Phew! Quite a mentally-enervating day Sunday turned out to be! But can't be helped... some days are meant to be like that! Let's hope next time round I post something better rather than about a dull Sunday! Probably Salinger's style of writing has gotten to me! No hard feelings, folks! My intentions were not of depressing you!

Just the other day, after two long semesters, Amod, Bobli, Sarat and myself got together to play scrabble! Scrabble, for the ignorant ones, is a word-building game, and when we four assemble to play it, it usually means a wonderful, fun-filled evening with lots of laughter, jokes and loads of leg-pulling! And yesterday was just like that! We played for 4 hours straight and boy! Was it fun!! A great relief from the card games that we play daily! From my getting all the 5 vowels of the English alphabet in my share of seven tiles, Sarat's continuous attempts at trying to imitate the drum beats of the jungle folks, Bobli's pondering on which word to make for ages while we kept suggesting some words and Bobli refusing to make a word other than the one he would think of until he finally succumbed to making the word we suggested, to Amod's sneaky move in the first game which he unfairly won (probably the lowest point of the entire evening:P!)
All in all, felt great to have a go at scrabble again!

Here's a peek at my share of the tiles! Never pray for vowels when you're short of them... or you'll end up like this


And the bad luck continues into day 2 too! Never never again will I pray for vowels


But no matter! It was being with my best buddies after such a long time and having a great time that counted rather than the pathetic letters I possessed! Looking forward to more scrabble games....

Life is much like going to the gym. The most painful part is deciding to go. Once you get past that, it's easy. There have been many days I have dreaded going to the gym, but once I am there and in motion, it is a pleasure. After the workout is over, I am always glad I talked myself into going.
-Robert T. Kiyosaki in Rich Dad Poor Dad

How very true!!