Happy New year ! ? !

It is end of another year and here I am, like a clockwork mouse to publish my ‘end of the year post’. Only that, there won’t be a retrospective ‘2014’ post this time. My life is not so nicely structured anymore – college does that to you and seeing the year through my eyes will be too jumbled to be comprehensible for you.

But it IS the end of the year and old habits die hard. So I am going to write about ‘happy new year’ albeit a different one from what you’re thinking about. At least the one I think you’re thinking about :P ( and yes! I finally used albeit , maybe used it wrongly but love that word too much *nerd face* )

We are going to talk about HAPPY NEW YEAR , the Bollywood movie starring Sharukh Khan , Deepika Padukone and Abhishek Bachchan among many others. We are not going to do a detailed analysis of the plot , script etcetera because let’s face it – there isn't any. It is just a mishmash of English and Hindi gangster heist films which happens to be enacted by the most popular stars in India right now.

My problem with the film was that … it was so much fun! Does it really matter if a film is funny -intentionally or unintentionally? The fact is that, it is very hard to make a movie and make people laugh. The fact that it was ready to laugh at itself and offer entertainment is enough for most people out there. How else would you explain the 300 crore phenomena happening after every big star’s movie?

Silk knows best ,"ENTERTAINMENT,ENTERTAINMENT ENTERTAINMENT"

There are 2 types of films out there today – films that expect to boggle your brain and films which expect you to leave your brain at home. Most star backed films in India belong to the latter category. Why should I put effort to confuse the audience , when doing the same movie with slightly different dialogues and costumes earns me 300+ crores ?(100 crores is so 2011),ask the great Khans of today. Aamir Khan is the only one trying to challenge himself but after Dhoom 3, I’m not so sure anymore.

The problem with 

Only hope?

'star movies’ nowadays (not to be confused with the channel of the same name xP) is that there is only glitter and stardust . Matter doesn't matter! Packaging has become more important than the content. It is like most chip packets nowadays – selling 60% air should NOT be a trend or a thing. We as consumers should have a say, we should demand more.

I’m not asking for Nolan like movies. I know if we ask for that, an unofficial vernacular remake will be made , leaving the moviegoers and original creators in tears. Just put in some more effort – try to make the scripts more believable , stunts must be awe inspiring but believable to make your hair go up. The climax scene in HNY where they fill in water instead of oxygen into the locker to help them escape is laughably bad.

Still SOO Stylish. Legend __/\__ just look at him :') 

 Even a Rajinikanth movie needs to be believable – I heard the climax of his recent Lingaa and cried in horror- The modern need for mindless extravagance has not spared the great man too.

I know this movie rant is not going to change anything. We’ll still have regressive romantic scenes , cardboard characters , men kicking bombs of hot air balloons and playing out badly written scenes and I know that I’ll be cheering and whistling in the theater because I love my Indian cinema no matter what.

I know it is crap but if it is enjoyable crap nobody is complaining - too much.

But if it is something like this

Or

This

God Save Us!

Geography tests

I haven’t written in over a month and I sincerely apologize for that. To make up for this often committed mistake of not writing in SSS , I am going to confess to some of the (small) crimes I have committed in the past.

< Disclaimer: Personal Post coming up >

I know I should be writing about the increasing terrorist activity or the omnipresent rape fear, but I choose to overlook these topics (mostly because better writers have written awesome articles about them already) and am going to choose GEOGRAPHY TESTS instead.

Very Random Right? Well, expecting a sane topic from an insane person is well … insane.

Everyone has an Achilles heel , a special subject that they hate so much that they would rather burn in hell than study it for the test next day. Most people hate math , I also hate(d) math . But coming to think of it, I hated GEOGRAPHY the most. History was awesome;, math dumbfounding ; Biology insanely difficult ; BUT nothing was so irrationally hateable like innocuous looking geography.

I mean who wants to study about the rocks, climate , pressure, river delta estuaries or even longitude latitudes? I learnt so much, but hated every bit. I used to read the most amount of story books during geography. The teachers were actually pretty good but boy! I hated that subject.

(Don’t) worry. I am (not) going to ramble about my hatred and be done with it. Nahi saar, I am going to give two awe some/ful anecdotes about 2 amazing geography exams I wrote in school time.

THIS IS THE STORY OF WHY I DON’T CARRY WATER TO EXAMINATION HALLS ANYMORE.

1.    1   Water on the desk

Sounds innocent enough. But nothing is ever innocent  in semiland, my children J . I was in 8^th standard I think, the class representative – apostIneverdeservedbutdidnoworkanywayssochill- and had this geography test. Our teacher was Nirmala miss, an old but smart teacher who would sit at the back of the class so that copying was out of the picture entirely.

The fundamental duty of the class rep is to develop class rapport and I found that working towards an underlying common cause would incite us towards that direction. Henceforth, I decided to help my classmates copy. Out of 34 people , at least 30 hadn’t studied , I had studied enough to fill the pages but many were planning unsafe methods to copy.

Our class 8A , we were a pack. We made teachers cry in packs , we chewed gum in packs and we decided to commit this crime as a pack. Cheating in tests is a crime which I have later come to despise but as a 13 year old class student who hated geography , I had no qualms about what I was just about to do.

So how can the entire class copy without getting caught? We can’t all whisper – 30 whispers cause a scream , we can’t all keep the notebook underneath , even if we had a plan – we can’t all ever agree in unison .

I tried dividing the class into 4 zones – the quiet zone , nerd zone and the last 2 were the mad cheater’s zone. Whatever elaborate plan I made up , it all boiled down to the problem that the teacher sat in the back bench and could see the papers we kept below in the desk. Creating bits was logistically impossible and if everyone wasn’t satisfied , somebody would rat us out.

So , I poured water on the backbench and added a dirty paper and banana peel to it.

That was the most popular thing I did as a class rep and it had to go undocumented L :P

1. 2.       Water on the paper
2. 
   

This was when I was around the same age: 12-13 . Although , I showed criminal tendencies as mentioned above , I was pretty dumb. To prove the case in point , I am going to bring back to memory this painful incident which ruined my entire exams - almost.

We have established my particular dislike for geography already , so it isn’t entirely unsurprising that I didn’t have much knowledge of it on the exam day. However , I forgot to mention this – I am a nerd. On the exam days at the least :P

I hate leaving blank spaces in my answer, probably because I know I’ll never come back to fill it , as I never have the time for it. The exact same thing happened . For the first question on the first page of the first fricking examination! Even though, I answered other answers properly , it irked me that the first page was half blank and first impression matters.

So , I poured water on my first page.

I still haven’t figured out why I DID THAT. A blonde moment , you could call it -_- My thought process was this : If I pour a small amount of water on the page , it would be a legit reason to have omitted that space.

I forgot that

• 1)      I was a MESSY KLUTZ ,
• 2)      That water has absorbing qualities
• 3)      My bottle had a very big mouth
• 4)      I used gel pen.

So the water leaked on to all the pages I wrote afterwards and my mainsheet was a wet nightmare. I had to rewrite the entire paper in 20 minutes and the invigilator wasn’t ready to give me even 2 extra minutes.

So ladies and gentlemen, please don’t pour water on your paper . Maybe it was the karma of pouring water on my desk which led me into that disaster of a decision.

And that is why I don’t carry water to an examination.

yours thirstily ,

Semi