In school and junior college, college festivals were known to me as something abstract and unknown activity done by some lazy fools fed up of studies wanting to show off some cool and insignificant talent for the heck of it.
After joining college, I realized that its true! :D
Two weeks down the fest, college was already buzzing with activity with seniors come down to our class every lunch break trying their best to coerce unsuspecting foolish FEs into volunteering for their event. The unsuspecting foolish FEs that we were, all bought in by the glamorous description of the 'best rated event' Virtual Stock Market, more coolly referred to as VSM we dedicated ourselves to the event. After a little explaining of the software to operate on as brokers in the game, we were all given the herculean task of preparing charts and sticking fliers all over the college at every prime advertising spot.
Day 1
Just the previous night I got an SMS to come early at 7:45 to make charts for VSM. GHANTA! was my first reaction. Nevertheless I managed to go to gym a fifteen minutes earlier than usual and come in at a respectable 8:30!
The rest of the morning for VSM volunteering was quite torturous after learning new vocab from angry customers. It also felt proud cracking a big-time scam of massive short selling of 1 crore shares! It was 'quite' an experience to have. The sounds of "Number 30. Teen sau infosys bech. Bechte reh. Koi aaye tab tak bechte reh. Main idhar hi khada hoon. Balance bol. Sab companies ke holdings bol. Abey jaldi kar. Sau Wipro short sell kar. Paanch Sau infosys khareed. Teri *** ** .... bola na bech mat khareed!! Balance bol. Sab calculate kar ke Satyam mein laga de." kept ringing through my mind that night, even in my dreams.
Having a good reason of participating in the LAN gaming elims, I gave a deadline to my organisers of me leaving at four thirty. A tiny power failure on my PCs power supply which took 20 minutes to boot ensured a cool second session.
The LAN gaming elims didnt quite happen as expected but defeating some guys of a rival branch by 22000 feet/ 50 sec. in Need For Speed Most Wanted gave me some satisfaction!
Lying flat on the amphitheater with two good buddies looking upwards into the ever expanding skies and innumerous stars was the experience of a life time. So was roaming around in an empty and 'haunted' SP with aadish and aashish on the first and second floor trying to get a good view of the dance competition after the Quad was all full. Our prize spot of two supposed ghosts a locked drawing room on the second floor was quite a story to tell too!
Day 2
Came in the morning early for NFS and CS elims.... me and my clan improved our losing margin of 10-1 in the FACE lan gaming competition to only 6-2 this time. However the NFS elims through which I breezed past with the other guys silently cribbing to their friends "Saala first round mein kaunse pro ke saath bhid gaya be ?!?" gave my mood some upliftment!
Tried Google whacking and Typing ke khiladi for the heck of it (recall the first para)... Beat our computer geeky topper dude priyank in both which is quite a record in itself . Got selected for the second round of typing where some jobless dude took the pain of shuffling all keys on the keyboard to random positions . Luckily managed a non-embarassing score despite not getting through. Actually it didnt matter because the third round was supposed to be with a shuffled keyboard plus a blank screen, which a hopeless keyboard looking index finger typer like me would have so badly failed! Whew! .
After getting the bad news of Neelam and Preeti not getting selected for their duet singing, nor Aadish and Srinath, heard and bowed down to Aadish and Srinath's amzing performances at their western and hindi singing solos.... and congo Srinath for getting second prize... though you deserve nothing less than an indian idol!
Tried Lock Stock & Trade and finished a respectable 5th despite not having much of an experience! . My throat was down after shouting ''Food at o.1! Oil at 0.05! Raw materials at 0.5! Ok at 0.4!'', which made me actually quite pity the work of street vendors.
Also sailed to the second elim round with my only opponent being good old priyank whom I've beaten an infinite times already with my left hand!
The evening events were probably the highlight of the entire fest. An unknown yet excellent rock band Ehsaas rocked the quad! BE Civil crowd at the fashion show rocked too providing more entertainment than the ramp itself! Also had a stupidly funny encounter with world famous don like figure from BE Civil... man he has some intimidating personality I tell you! . Finally went home all sleepy and enchanted but ready for the show tomorrow.
Day 3
LAN gaming finals the only thing in my mind, I reached college at 10:45 when I was supposed to do so at 11 for something that had no hope of starting before 12 noon. As expected, I had to report in for rampage at 1:30. Sensationally defeating two opponents in a best of four elimination by winning the first two, while also earning some un-pleasantries for pushing one of them into a tollbooth and hence gaining a lead during the race spurred up my appetite for more. I was all geared up for the finals. After being a dull fool for 6 months while being hooked onto the wonderful game, I realised this would be my moment of glory!
All charged up but tensed, my heart reaching RPMs of 18000+, I reached the lab, met my final opponents and studied their game from their practice runs. Unfortunately after leading a lap of the first race, one stupid error lost me the lead and hence the race. In the second race, call it pressure or desperation, my game went groundward, and with desperate maneuvers and dumb tactics, threw the game away to the well deserving winner. It was sickening. But I had to face defeat. Success was a 0.54 seconds too late. Glory was just around the chicane (thats a tight corner in racing terminology). Fame stopped 32 feet ahead. My heart bled out more painfully than the splattering of rain on my windscreen. It felt like losing something big, but I had to fall to learn sometime in life. Probably this was it. I tried to console myself that atleast I was second, and the best in SP!
Anyways after it was all done and dusted, rushed down to the algo lab for a virtual treasure hunt event, the elims for which I had made a mockery of, finishing it way too early before time, even as Priyank, my teammate looked on with awe! . Me and priyank cruised on easily to the final level, but with over confidence, lackadaisiness, and improper reading of the rules, threw it all away! It was probably a day filled with failures, or lessons, depending on how you choose to look at it.
Evening at the amphitheatre was fun learning new vocab with 'challenge'. I also learnt the art of putting 'able' after unexpected four-letter words to create some mindblowing vocabulary ... thanks to srinath! Lol! Escaped the boring Sufi Rock show and me and (aad+aash)ish proudly showed to everyone the room we discovered in the second floor. Sharing stories of ghosts and robbers who knock on the door at the amphitheathre again was fun.... and so was the wonderful fire-work display. The DJ night with Harsh finally showing his Naagin in public was a fun and spectacular end to a three-day flight away from earth... to SPACE!
And now, typing this all out mid-night, the CP journal and the Physics assignment all come back to haunt me! :-/
Saturday, February 28, 2009
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