Monday, March 16, 2009

The Drawing Room Incident

When I was young and in School, we used to have a Art and Craft class taken by Mrs. Das. Mrs. Das had a very close resemblance to Usha Uthup (I like resemblances...).

Mrs. Das was a wonderful Art and Craft teacher, who gave us nice crafts to make.

Once she announced in class, "Boys, you will have to start collecting match-boxes from now on, because you will need them in a craft after the summer vacations. So you have 3 months in hand. Tell your mummy not to throw away the match-boxes..."

"... and I'm supposed to collect them. We are going to make a craft after summer", I told mummy. "I would be needing a saree-box too. And lots of coloured velvet-paper."

After summer I took the things to school. Ma'am Das showed us how to cover the match-boxes with velvet paper and make furniture for the drawing room. She also covered the saree-box with the velvet-paper to make the floor. Her Drawing-Room looked nice and good.

We did not do any thing in the class. We were to do that as a home task and bring it to her next week.

The day before we were supposed to show it in class(I was always the last-minute type), I went with Mummy and bought the things required. Lots of different coloured velvet paper and some adhesive.

Back home mummy was busy with dinner, so I had to do it myself. I wanted to do this all along but some help from mummy would have been appreciated. So I sat down with the things...

... it was 12 midnight, and all I had was a saree-box with lots of damaged velvet because it stuck with the adhesive to my fingers, damaged match-boxes with more damaged velvet and lots of adhesive here and there.

I started crying....

Papa came and told me to go to sleep and start afresh early next morning. Then he would help me. I did not want to sleep unfinished. After trying for sometime I gave in.

I had a silly dream, I don't remember what it was!

Next morning no one woke me up before time. I woke up late, and suddenly realised I had an unfinished craft. I could not go to school with an unfinished craft. I'd bunk. Say I was sick in the absent notice....

... I didn't want to miss school. I started crying again!

Mummy brought out something from the top of the cupboard. It was beautiful!

Mummy-Papa had stayed up all night and made it. It had a black and white chequered floor (they had cut black and white squares out of marble paper). It had a sofa set done in white with black rhombus cushions with cotton inside. It had a black and white centre table with a black and white TV on it.

The best part was that it had a Dendrite man, with a white shawl, sitting on the sofa and watching TV.

I was very happy. Mrs. Das said my craft was the best in class.

My Parents have always loved me. And I love them too! :)

Sunday, March 1, 2009

AAROgance

Well I had intended to write a blog on how good Aarohan was this year how much better it was from its previous incarnations.

Turns out, as always, things never happen according to the plan...

A bit of what happened over the last 4 days.

Thursday, 26th Feb 2009: Aarohan 2k9 begins. I go to see the inauguration. The shadow show was good. I was supposed to come back to room right after the inauguration and not participate in Aarohan. But I ran into Rahul and Nisha. We sat for the Graphiti prilims, Nisha, Rahul and me. Only Nisha had registered for Aarohan.

Friday, 27th Febraury: Rahul and Abhiyan come up and say they want to participate in a event called Brand Promo. I go with them. We register for Aarohan, participate and have fun. Night we qualify for the graphiti finals. We participate. Rahul, Nisha and I. We miss the General Quiz. Abhiyan teams up with a RandomPhD guy and wins the quiz.

Saturday, 28th Febraury: Bitan comes along with a junior and Indradumna, wants to form a team with me for the Sports and Entertainment Quiz. I say yes. The junior wants out as he already has a 1st year team. Then Rahul and Abhiyan happen along and say I ditched them. I think and form a best-fit team out of us. Bitan, Abhiyan, Rahul and me. We clear the prilims and with the Quiz. I am happy. Abhiyan is on a roll.
We go on for the Biz Quiz with the same team. We don't clear the prilims.

Now a note about the quizzes for those that don't know. Exquizzit is this quizzing event in Aarohan(Our Official Annual Tech Fest), comprising of four quizzes. They have prilims and stage rounds for the General Quiz, the Sports and Entertainment quiz, the Biz Quiz. The top 6 teams from these 3 quizzes directly qualify or the Final Frontier Quiz. The General and the Sports and Entertainment Quizzes are hosted by Parnab Mukherjee. His questions are tough. The Biz Quiz and the Final Frontier are hosted by some guy name Arnab, an IIMC passout.


Sunday, 29th Febraury(oh sorry, 1st March): Final day of Aarohan 2009. We were sure to qualify for the Final Frontier Quiz. But we didn't.

The reason: They added up each teams scores for all the three quizzes and on the basis of the cumulative score, let teams up on stage. So a team who stood 5th in the Biz Quiz with a score of 77 and did not qualify for the rest of the quizzes, qualified for the Final Frontier, while my team which stood 1st in the Sports and Entertainment Quiz with a score of 70, did not qualify. It's natural that the winners of the 3 quizzes should qualify. Maybe it's not that obvious for them.

A better method could have been to give teams point on their ranks (1st -> 10, 2nd -> 8, 3rd -> 5) and then add them to see who qualifies. Maybe logic is a bit too tough for these people.

When shown the obvious flaw in their method of qualifying teams for the Final Frontier Quiz, The Convenor, Aarohan 2k9 said, "I will organise MY Fest in MY way, if you want to participate, do, else please go back to your rooms".

The reason that hurt me was: I was responsible for two events, one FREE-P-L in Mukti '09 - a National Level Technical Symphosium on GNU/Linux and Free Software, and another Formula Won in Motor Zundung - The AutoFest, both similar events which I made the software for. In both cases we had to scrap and redo the event from scratch because there was a minor error in the database of the matches.