Monday, August 25, 2008

Fauja Singh : 89 :: Dhruv Chandras : ?

Too many vows made... only a few of them kept.

I will run a half marathon in two years and a marathon three years from now. I state so publicly so that I may be held accountable.

Sunday, August 24, 2008

BT Acumen 2008

The north-zone round of BT Acumen 08 got over today. IIFT put up a decent show. We won the debate and came third in the quiz.

Praveen and I were representing IIFT in the quiz. We fell short of the first place by a margin of 10 points (at 55, we were just one correct question away). We got off to a slow start and tho' we caught up later on, the initial gap made a difference in the end. I thought all teams were good, and as such, it was a well fought quiz. IIML and FMS were tied at 65, and finally IIML went thru because FMS hit the buzzer and missed.

Sad, considering that we had done quite well for ourselves in the prelims. Sadder still, coz had we won we would have made a clean sweep, and also had the chance to accompany Anchal and Rahul to Bombay for the National Finals. (Anchal had already reached the national finals last year with Arka, who was the winner the year before that. Let's hope he keeps the tradition alive.)

After we lost, my same-name loomie scrapped me this today...

ecclesiastes 9:11
"I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favor to men of skill; but time and chance happens to them all."

Sunday, August 17, 2008

Incidentally



Popular School Legends

I suppose every school has some teacher who makes absent minded mistakes leading to funny sentences. These funny sentences are quoted around and soon other funny sentences are also attributed to the concerned teacher. This is how school legends are made, and we get a huge list of extremely funny sentences apparently originating from this famous leader, when in fact, only one or two might actually be his/hers.

We had a teacher in school who used to teach us drawing, and sometimes Hindi as well. This is how the legend went.

Once while she was taking attendence, she ordered, "Absent boys raise your hands !". Another time, while teaching geometric shapes, she shouted, "Now draw a straight circle !" On a particularly stuffy day, when we students had forgotten to open the windows, she announced, "Boys, you should not be sitting in such conditions. Open the air and let the windows come in !". Then while telling us about her family, "I have two daughters, and both are girls !". I know for fact that she had only one child, and that too a son. (I had once met them at the railway station, a couple of years after I passed out from school, and we had chatted for some time.)

A little while ago I mentioned a few of these witticisms to my room-mate, and he claimed that his school too had a teacher to whom some of the very same quotes were attributed. He had one priceless gem to the above list. "Children, the scooter is under standing the tree !".

I will end this post with the only quote of this teacher which I have heard first hand. She was a pretty lenient teacher, but she used to loath squabbling children, and used to make such students go and stand outside the class. At least once in every class she used utter her trademark utterance, namely, "If any complaint and both will get punishment !".