Random update! :)

 Hey guys! This is just a random update on what’s been happening. Beginning with an almost cruel fact, that I got just a five day holiday after bravely enduring an entire year of MBA, which, by the way, is no mean deal. I’m considering applying for a Nobel Prize. Still, till the time I complete the paperwork, not to mention some gruelling mental work to get back to normal, I still have to go through what’s required. Which is an internship during the summer. For eight weeks. Only in my case it’ll be longer, at least for a week longer than usual, since they need people for the task and area I’m assigned to.

I feel like this leapfrogging fish. Just that there's
nothing "froggy" about it.

Which is where it gets interesting because deep down, somewhere really deep down in the crevices in my heart, where the blood vessels leave some space, I am excited. This is what I asked for, in a way. And I have to admit, I’m quite thankful I got in here because that’s what I told the placement coordinator: I’d be happy anywhere there are books. I mean, somewhere else might have been cool, but I know I’d be bored in a day anywhere. Except when it might be related to books, which is where I’m going. I’ll be interning with National Book Trust, somewhere related with exhibitions and yes, book fairs! :D Super awesome. Though I have no idea what exactly it’ll entail, but still. I think I can survive anything if it has to do with books and having book lovers all around and being in the midst of bookish talks and all. I suppose I’d never get bored.

Still, that doesn’t mean I would get over my freakish self easily, even if I’d be doing something as close to “wonderful” in my definition of work-related stuff, not to mention something that excites me, which isn’t much. So, the catch? It starts from tomorrow. And I’m almost certain if what I’m feeling right now isn’t a mild anxiety attack, brought on by my own mental lack of confidence, or as Lilly thinks is the case with Mia- in The Princess Diaries, of course- ‘a pathological need to invent drama in my life’, it most certainly is something that’s making me nervous. For no reason at all. Not that the prospect of actually going out to work (that doesn’t even sound good, let alone suit someone like me) isn’t nothing at all, but still.

For most normal people it is normal. But then, I’m not really as normal as them, am I? Seriously, and I mean, if you really like me and wish for me to be happy and comfortable, please give my name as a reference to anyone who’s willing to pay me to work from home. And “work” means reading books! I’m also willing to write well-thought out and planned reviews. Alright, I’m even willing to do anything bookish, just from home. The thought of going out and working in a real workplace is scary. Now, no need to feel all frustrated, alright? I haven’t been brought up to be a brat like this, or so clueless, as I’m sounding right now, because I know it’s essential for moral or whatever development to go out and work. Not to forget, to earn a living too. But still. I’m not getting paid for the anxiety attacks either, however tiny those might be.

  

That's how I should be!

Anyway, looking at the bright side, apart from the basic fact that I would be associated with something that promotes reading, especially among children, which is something I personally always, always, always vouch for, I suppose it’s going to give me a lot to write about! Example, this post. And I haven’t even started yet! :D

C’mon now. I’d appreciate your well wishes and good luck and love!

PS- The internet has been down since yesterday and I have already spent my day today finishing a great Meg Cabot novel. Now it’s sort of irritating because I don’t know how and when I’ll be posting this on the blog. Let me go look for some smart alternative. ;)  

PPS- Wifi from a cell phone works! :D

College taught me.......

First of all, let me give you an update. I'm done with my first year MBA! (No, the result isn't out yet, but isn't it obvious I'll do okay?). So a big "yay" for starters! :D I'm actually free till this Sunday, after which I'll begin with my internship (details on that later!). And I feel absolutely great and back in my own, great form, so yes, I'll be blogging away to glory. 

Yeah ;) (Pic stolen taken from Google)

I decided to wound up the pending stuff, so after going through the 19 draft posts I had, I zeroed in on this one, which was left half written on 25th December, 2011! (What was I doing on Christmas?). The catch is, this was written from the point of view of the undergrad college, and I realized some parts don't hold true for MBA. I'll mention where it doesn't. ;) Tell me then, if you think it's true or not!

1. Canteen can turn out to be a life saver, if you're out of stock of food (unless you're among the 'cool' people who think getting lunch to college is stupid. In that case, it's not the 'carrying-lunch-to-college' thing stupid, but you).

No, no. I don't
have anyone specific
in mind. ;)

2. Even though you stuff down the canteen food as if there will be a famine any second, you'll still say the samosa is cold, the coffee isn't hot enough, the dosa tastes like cardboard. (hypocrisy is something everyone learns, I tell you).

3. There will always be one teacher who looks at you as if you're an unintelligent student who didn't deserve to be in their class at all! I don't know if that is actually how they feel, but they sure look like it. But of course, you learn to ignore them! ;)

4. Whatever deadline you get the first time, be assured it will be extended. Who does the assignments on time anyway? (Nerds are of course, excluded). I have to add this isn't the case in postgrad. Deadlines are strict. :| 

5. However seemingly impossible it may seem, but it is actually possible to revise your whole syllabus an hour before exams. :P Or even in the 20 minutes you get in the Metro. Believe me, I've scored more in those assessments. All the time.

And then you feel like this. :P

6. However hard working and honest you may be, you will hardly get any real appreciation and the clever, fake and selfish people will rule. It's the same everywhere. No exceptions. 

7. You realize how hard it is to find friends. Those you think are the BFF-kind, actually aren't. You get lonely, a lot. But you also have fun, even if those friends don't last forever, they give you memories to cherish!

8. Almost everyone likes to dance. If you don't, you most probably will have anyway done your version of what remotely may resemble dance, at least once. It's still something that you won't do, but you get used to at least tapping your feet to the beats.

9. If you're like me, the I'll-not-cheat-because-it's-wrong kind of a person, you'll have loads of situations that'll test your integrity, all exams included. Of course, sometimes you'll give in just a bit, to save your sweet face. You'll be faced with unfairness, when people will be using their android phones to pass in exams, but in the end, you'll be satisfied. More than you think. ;)

Points 10 and 11 have been contributed by my friend, Prerna. :)

These are the natural
nerds. ;)

10. You thought "competition" would be till school? Wrong. The nerds almost always stay nerds, unless you're not a natural nerd, but a parents-and-teachers-made-nerd, like I was. In that case you may look at college as a freedom ground and leave your nerdy self and have fun! :D

11. There are a lot of "practical" people out there. Not everyone's there to make friends, and even if they do want to, they're still heavily motivated by their personal ambitions. Don't expect too much! Seriously. Will save a lot of heartache. (Easier said than done, though).

12. Many hobbies! I mean, once you taste freedom and look for fun stuff and end up joining ECA societies, like the photography society! Which is a lot of fun, specially as you meet such interesting and smart people. Really, I tend to love people with a taste in any form of art more than normal.

13. The difference between Hindi Bollywood songs and the Enrique and David Archuleta and Miley Cyrus songs! :P

14. How to find yourself. And I mean your real self. Even if you try to "fit in", there always comes a time when you get tired of pretending. You get back to being yourself and you find out you're much better that way. ;)

15. To be confident. If you're receptive and participate and do all that you like doing, confidence will follow. 

There's a lot more, but I'm in the mood to watch an award show right now. Also dancing to those songs side by side. Yes, singing along too. :P See? You don't like dancing but this is what you still do sometimes. That's what college does to you. ;)

Tell me, anything I missed, that you've noticed? :)

The Life Express!

Oh God. I actually never, ever had any clue my life would ever turn out to be like this. I mean, I remember last Saturday as is it was the day yesterday. I don't know how I'm living in another Saturday so soon. How did the week pass? I don't know. It just did. I only know this: I got up, assaulting the poor alarm clock, hopping from room to room trying to get ready, then seen on the road running around, trying to find a rickshaw (those days when I'm not lucky enough to have dad in the mornings), then somehow surviving a brutal (mostly mental) day in college, what with all the stupid-ness I'm surrounded with, reaching home late in the evening, gulping down food as if it's chocolate (except for the minor glitch that it's not exactly chocolate), crying and trying to finish all those dumb assignments and reading headings as a way to prepare for exams, dropping dead asleep and not knowing how and when, then again getting up and the same thing continued.

A hamster. That's what I feel like.

Another Saturday, but this one has been good. Not the college part, that's always quite pathetic, but it's nice when you reach home and find your super cute cousin waiting for you. The cousin who's 9 years old, lives in Katni, MP, sent a sweet letter to you when you bumped your leg, asking you how you were. The one who got upset with his mom yesterday when she didn't get the Chacha Chaudhary comics he asked for, the one who likes reading and who tells you he missed you all day. Then when he plays catch the ball with you just like your brother did (whom you miss because he's out of Delhi) and then quizzes you on general stuff which you realize, you're pathetic at (I knew just 2 out of the 10 questions he asked, out of his head). The one who goes into your room and counts the number of books you have, arguing that 136 books is not the same as '130 something'. I tell you, he's quite adorable. I've been laughing since I came home and feeling extremely good. 

Understand?

It's quite funny, what people can do to you. Some can turn your whole system into a depressing one, so much so that you get into that scary mode when you can cry at the drop of a hat, while some others can make you feel like you're the luckiest, happiest and prettiest, just with their smiles! I wish everyone of us in college could be the same, but it's not like that. I suppose it can't happen, because over there, your happiness or your feelings or your thoughts don't matter. If you can give them something they want, you're treated well. If you're silent, or a "boring person", or don't talk about homework/work, they don't even want to travel/talk with you, let alone think about your feelings! That could almost be a hilarious joke, if it wasn't such a pathetic thing to happen. But it's alright, it happens, right? People aren't there to make friends, they have ambitions. Ugh, what-the-hell-ever. I don't want to waste my typing on what people like them think. I believe in simply being good, doing good, helping those who deserve and giving a royal ignore to those who make you feel like crap.

The only drawback is, sometimes I can't seem to get over the feeling you get when you think how good it was and how it isn't the same anymore. It's true that everything has a life. It has to come to an end sometime. It does and hurts you like hell in the process, but you have to bear it. Even knowing all this, you can't help feeling bad anyway, because even when you're trying hard to impress upon yourself the "It's okay" philosophy, you still get glimpses of how it was, and wondering what even happened (you have no idea) so that everything came to an abrupt stop. That's just one of my glitches maybe. And it's something I hate. I mean, I have an amazing family who loves me no end and here I am, crying over people who make impressions about me based on what some pathetic person said. It's even sadder, because those are the people who matter(ed?) to me.

Anyway, enough of all that trash-talk. The good thing is, I'm not going to get sad over people who just don't care. Staying happy, whatever happens, is important. It's the right thing to do. You know what Dumbledore says? "There's a difference between what's right and what's easy". (I so love this one! I think I'll get it printed on a t-shirt and wear it everyday. Or maybe I'll alternate a day in between, just enough for it to be washed and stuff). Like Margaret Mitchell said, "Life's under no obligation to give us what we expect." So we better stop blaming life! Gosh! I used to live such a simple, pretty and happy life. I still am, but for the minor non-sense stuff that's so much capable of ruining my whole mental system. I really wouldn't mind living as the last human being on Earth. I'd just like to have thousands of books and pretty scenery all around. Non-human life forms are also acceptable. 

#Random fact: This craving to do something to make myself feel good led me to homeshop18.com. And I finally ordered a book I've been itching to read since the past few months. I know it's one of those remarkable, rock my world kind of books! The Book Thief by Marcus Zuzak. 

#Random fact 2: I have such a week ahead of me, that I think I'd even be skipping the food gulping part of the day. I was supposed to do loads of work, but you know me. I have to be here when it's too much work. And now it's near midnight so naturally I'm sleepy. Not that I'd be sleeping anyway. Of course I'll be reading a book, despite the fact that I'll be out of home till evening tomorrow as well and wouldn't be able to work. At all. But you know what? I've noticed, if you're happy, you can almost always manage everything. Even if you miss out a few things, it doesn't really matter because you know you were really happy, which is something rare, so you better let it happen whenever it does. ;) 

#Random fact 3: I just remembered that the cover story of today's Mint Lounge was something about how and why Indian kids prefer reading foreign authors (the rare kind of kids, the kind I like. Those who're like me, I mean!). I haven't read it yet and I'm going to go read that right now. 

When bloggers say you're loved ;)

This is no philosophical post. I got two blogger awards recently and I'm happily typing away to glory! I'm pretty sure if you peer into the screen too closely, you might just be able to have a glimpse of the zeal I'm currently possessed with! Thank you dear Ruya Preetika (Waking Moments) for awarding me The Liebster Award, and Srishti (My Take) for bestowing my blog with the Creative Blogger Award! (Those attempts at Fiction and poetry did make an impact, yay!).

I'm posting about The Liebster Award for today! Would make a separate post for Creative Blogger award. Liebster is a German word meaning "lovable". :D

Ruya asked 11 interesting questions.

1. Other than writing, what is the one thing/activity in life you can't live without?

Super simple! I-can-not-live-without-reading. If I weren't human and we lived in a world where you survived based on doing one thing that makes you live, I'd survive only through reading. I have always been fascinated with the written word. Always. It's just such an effective cure for everything, too!

2. If there was a complaint box where you could drop in complaints regarding your life, what would you complain about and why?

You know, I've always been a cribber. One incident a couple of years ago made me see how wrong it is to complain, all the freaking time. No, nothing happened. I just stumbled upon a conversation between two people in my extended family, something about how I'll only complain, just like I always do, about everything. That actually hurt, specially because I never thought about what I was doing, and hearing about it from someone I'm close to, that too in a way that absolutely meant how much they disliked it, was kind of shocking. Since then, I'm conscious about what I speak. Before uttering anything that's negative, I check myself and either don't say it, or say something else that's in a positive sense. I'm sort of glad I came to know and I realized how deep the problem was. I still think of something to complain about while making a conversation, but now I'm able to mentally correct myself and not repeat those things. :) It's made me think of all the good and awesome things and people I have in my life and I'm quite happy about it! :D No complaints what-so-ever!

3. Share a quote/movie/song/book that always inspires you.

The book(s) that have had the most impact on me have been the Harry Potter books. They seem to have almost all kinds of lessons in them. I actually think back to those characters and quotes (mostly by Dumbledore), sometimes in a relatable situation and sometimes just randomly! :P Undeniably, I feel inspired by quotes from the books, one of my favorites being, "It is our choices that show us who we really are, far more than our abilities". It's all about what you choose to do, it's what matters and it speaks volumes about your character. I think back to this and try making the right kind of choices.

Also, I'm heavily influenced by JKR's speech, the one she gave at Harvard University. She talked about two things: failure and imagination. The lines that I found best (and those that I've memorized quite well, along with a lot many lines from that speech :P) are: "It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well have not lived at all, in which case you fail by default."

4. What's your favorite childhood memory?

Not just one, it's all those times I did something special with my family. Anything, all those times when I felt that unique sense of amazing happiness, the kind where you can literally feel your heart lighten up and you feel giddy. Our family of five did a lot of fun stuff when I was a kid, mostly initiated by dad and I treasure each one of them! ^_^ Also, weird as it may sound, I quite like to remember the time I got lost while coming back with my tiny brother and grandmom from a park a few blocks away from home. Yes, it must have been terrifying for the 4 (or maybe 5) year old me (as I clearly remember crying while walking on the road. Poor me!) but I like to see it as an incident that proves how awesome I was.

I was (still am) quite rebellious and I didn't listen to my grandmom, calling out to her that I'll find my way on my own. Born Don! Of course I panicked when I saw a dead-end instead of the right road (and the only one I was familiar with). Not finding my grandmom anywhere, I tried to think of ways and it's a long story. I just know that while walking (and crying, of course) I finally found some familiarity and ran back home. Geez, I have always been sense-of-direction-challenged!

5. Name a fictional character you would like to switch lives with and why?

Oooh I know! At the cost of sounding too much HP, I'll still say I would swap with Hermione Granger anytime! She's all that I wish I could be. Okay, maybe not, because I just want to be me, but still. You have to admit, she's quite amazing. :D And she's a witch. Hee hee hee!

6. What brightens your mood when you're angry or dejected?

Most of the times it's just reading. It always works awesome when it's a great kind of absorbing book. I feel quite better with good surprises too! Suppose I come home after a horrible day, and find something so cool at home, or in the email, or any kind of good news! Instant mood shifters! Photography is another thing that calms me down pretty well. :)

7. Do you think compromises and adjustments are necessary for relationships to work? Why or why not?

Yes, definitely. I don't suppose there's anyone who can live with a situation where they're the only ones who're making adjustments. It has to be there and it has to be mutual. But I also believe that it should be up to a limit. You cannot expect the other person to do something for you by compromising with their comfort level. You shouldn't even want that, actually. It's mean.

8. Given a chance to relive one day of your life, which one would it be and why?

I'm so bad at answering such questions. I don't think so much about such things, I suppose. :P I'm more of a take-it-by-the-day-just-as-you-get-it kind of a person. No overwhelming wishes or regrets. Still, I might want to live just another ordinary day, back to the time when I still had my grandmom's physical presence at home. It somehow made everyday calmer, peaceful and there was always that air of love around. I miss her and a day like that would be nice, I guess. :)

9. What's your idea of fun?

I give you permission to call me a nutcase or an absolute weirdo, because that's what you will think. I hardly ever get bored. Even if I'm alone, I would get lost in my mind, thinking of just about anything. I like all those things people usually find boring, primarily because I love getting to know more about most things. Partying, shopping, dancing is not my idea of fun. I'd rather read a great book out in the aesthetically beautiful park, or have a nice long chat with a friend I haven't seen in ages, or watch a good movie at home with family (and with popcorn, no doubt about it. I love popcorn!)

10. What's the qualification for being your perfect guy?

Oh. I don't know. The first thing I would look for is an appreciation for the deeper meanings in life, the little things and gestures and nature. Then, he should like me for being me. I would love it if he'd notice the little things and take those into account, it means a lot. Hopefully in love with reading, if not as much as I love it, still must respect my love (and obsession). Finally, the most important criteria: Must love Harry Potter. ;)

11. If you were given a chance to take revenge on someone, who would they be and how would you do it?

Ah. I get upset with a lot of things. If I start thinking about it, it'd eat into my life! I'm anyway on a forgiveness-spree these days. Did anything to annoy me? Don't worry, I forgive you. :D