The end of an era (The R-day Chronicle)

I have been trying to post for a long time now. So this post is just to break the silence, and hopefully paves way for better posts in the future. I will, in this post present a hyperbole version of the registration process at my college which is a fascinating test of one's patience.

 Yesterday 2-3 days ago the registration for my last semester at college was complete.Our college has a registration process, which increases in its complexity and an obvious increase in waiting time every year. There is also an increase in paperwork, which in this computer era, one would expect to decrease. However we are not done with just paperwork, the little on line part in the registration process, presents a problem in form of overloaded college servers which were carefully designed a long time ago with no consideration on the possibility of an increased intake in the future.There are also some 3-4 queues one has to wait/break in order to get all the formalities done.  

On the R-day (which marks an individual's victory over the well designed administrative procedure at college), I got up early, to conquer the queues and thus saving myself from the unlawful wastage of time, though it is something that I do in front of my computer where it seems strangely justified. This time there was a different problem though, I had to change my elective course because the guy who takes down all the notes had changed his. 7 semesters of almost no note-taking means it is easier to switch  an elective course and go through a longer registration procedure rather than  listening every class, where yd great lengths of time could be spent dozing off. Strangely I find that in courses where I sleep a lot I perform better than the ones which I listen too. Probably my subconscious mind has better attention capacity than the conscious mind, where I am generally too lazy to think of a solution. On the R-day, there were 2 long queues to go before the last registration finally gets done.(I had completed the others much ahead of time saving me from the last time rush) The first one was for getting a token number issued for the second queue (supposedly purposely as the whole point of a token issue is to avoid a  queue) which kind of determines how long you would have to wait. However the wait wasn't as antagonising as expected because the second queue wasn't monitored all that well, well they never checked the tokens numbers issued, so it meant a free entry whenever someone didn't show up. I got in about 100 numbers early, and thus on 12pm, December 27th the last administrative formality at my college was complete. There are still tales left to narrate on the copious amount of time spent just to get a signature on the identity card. Looking back the registration procedure  is probably a small challenge one has to go through in order to counter the bigger ones during the semester. I guess I should stop writing here, it is 3 am, nothing good happens when you blog after 2 am...

The fun time gala ends here (the Ragam Diaries 2010)

March 24-27th marked the annual cultural festival of our college, Ragam 2010.This year's Ragam included shows from KK, Naresh Iyer and a UK based Iron Maiden tribute band Higher on Maiden.

                 This is the third edition of Ragam, I'm attending and the penultimate one before I leave this place.  While the external participation was remarkably lower this time around, and the pro-shows (shows from professional performers) this year not be as glamorous as last year's line up (which included Benny Dayal, Shankar Mahadevan and a Pink Floyd tribute band Breathe the Floyd). Maybe comparison with the previous edition was one of the reasons why this edition of our college's cultural festival was bit relatively duller than expected. However with every Ragam comes memories that are reminiscent of college life, moments that are sure to make you nostalgic once you take a trip down the memory lane.

KK rocked the floor on day1 ending the night on a high with his personal best " Koi Kahe". Naresh Iyer's performance had something in it for everybody. He nearly covered all south Indian languages besides performing the usual bollywood hits. However stage acoustics were bit of a bother on day2 and the sound engineer and the routine sound checks took away a major chunk of time. Day 2 also featured choreo nite which set the dance floor for those who knew to rock the stage.

Day 3 was a head banger's paradise with the UK based higher on maiden taking the stage. This day also featured the fashion show, Couture Boulevard (which strangely, no one knew how to pronounce) Since our cultural festival essentially followed the same pattern over the years, the crowd attending the rock show can be widely classified into three

Head-bangers type-I: True metal heads, in this case true maiden fans, they know which song is being played, which album it comes from and all related stuff.

Head-bangers type-II: Pseudo metal heads, not true rock fans but they do want to appear cool in front of everybody, thus the head banging.

Non headbangers: People who watched from a distance away from the scene of action. A major section also included people who came for fashion show instead, just waiting for the rock band's gig  to get over.

Almost every night ended with the artists saying the unavoidable cliché that this was the best crowd ever. Of course we don't know if they actually meant it, but it has become a routine in stage shows of late.

The third day of Ragam ended with the fashion show. The number of  teams were relatively lesser this time, probably the timing was not right considering that most colleges had their university exams this time around.  With the college director doing the final honours, this edition of Ragam came to a close, adding more colourful memories of college life with it. I knew for a fact now that how much ever I criticise my college, one day I will end up missing it.