An electrifying experience

I’m sharing my first internship experience for the #MyInternTheory activity at BlogAdda in association with Intern Theory.

It has been a long time since I wrote anything of substance in this space and I have myself to blame for not updating you’ll about the progress in my law life. Even when I do write , I hardly write on the central things of my life. So I’m dedicating this post to this barely mentioned aspect of my life.

MY FIRST INTERNSHIP 

Sometimes , it is very easy for some people to get disillusioned very easily. When you are studying a weirdly structured 5 year law course , it is very very easy to forget that you are indeed ‘studying’ to become a ‘lawyer’.  

In my college , the semester in itself is a chilling carnival of laziness ( at least to ones like me) – what with only 3 hours of actual lectures a day and stuff-  Hence , it is the internship / holiday time when we make hay in sunshine. After blowing off the first semester holidays on grounds of ignorance and lethargy , I was forced to do some productive activity in the summer of 2014. Even for me, 8 weeks was too long a time to do nothing.

Ok. Since, there is a small chance that some future law aspirants might read this  I’m gonna go stepwise and elucidate briefly on the details of the wonderful journey that was my summer internship.

Where did I apply?

Citizen Consumer and Civic action Group ( CAG) , Chennai. It is a NGO working on consumer , environmental and other civic issues like electricity which impacts all the citizens.

How did I apply?

I came to know of the NGO through my mother’s acquaintance and decided to give it a shot by sending my resume to recruiting head. She is a very friendly person, who immediately gave me guidance.

How long did it last?

This great learning curve lasted for a period of 6 weeks. I compensated for the holidays I took with another week :P

Working hours – 9:30 AM to 5:30 PM

What did I exactly do in a consumer & civic action forum?

This content is very exciting and varied. So I’m gonna make this the body of my post!

I was of the notion that CAG will involve consumer cases only and I didn’t even know what that meant exactly.

Clad in Formal white linen shirt and black pants , sweating due to the normal Chennai heat and not a very normal sense of apprehension , I approached the office. My ‘boss’ saroja ma’am immediately put me at ease with her friendliness and professional approach.

My 1st day of internship.

My very first task was to read the entire Consumer protection act , which is a pretty heavy law book. I think the purpose of the activity is to get an understanding of what consumer law is and moreover learning to be or at least acting unfazed in the face of gigantic books.

My very first Consumer complaint was on medical negligence suit charged on a doctor and I had to draft the formal complaint letter requesting the opposing part to co operate with us on settling the dispute. I drafted responses for few more such cases making ma’am note that my luck favored medical negligence. All the exposure to grey’s anatomy and house did come in handy :P

According to me, the most crucial thing I learnt in my CAG internship was about electricity. Tamil Nadu being very vulnerable in this sector and eccentric in its supply and distribution has made every consumer worried and somewhat conversant with its issues.

For starters I feel every resident of Tamil Nadu must know that the Tamil Nadu Electricity Board or the TNEB like we like to call it is actually divided into the TANTRANSCO and the TANGEDCO ,former for transmission and the latter for generation and distribution. The TNERC – electricity regulatory commission is the law making body though.

When tara ma'am first found me :P

All this sounded like pig latin to me until tara ma’am walked in. She is the head of the place and visits us weekly. I was a bit sluggish after the lunch break on my first week and I was scared stiff when she actually invited me to sit in on the TNERC meeting. This was the first meeting I ever attended and I was quite happy to just observe it. However, they wanted my views on the topic and even asked me to make a draft on the regulations to be amended or something like that. I was simply awestruck at the jargon in the beginning.

It took me a week to realize that I was working on the Tamil Nadu Electricity act and that the TNERC was proposing some amendments to the existing distribution code and that every consumer and interested party could send in their reservations and comments after notice of the intention to amend and the actual draft amendments are announced.

We talk about transparency but do we really pay interest when something is being shown and is asked to be done by us? I think not.

The amendments were on the power provided to water supply or motor pumpsets for agricultural consumers and being a city bred girl who has never visited a village properly , it was quite difficult for me to envisage the impacts the amendment could actually create on the farmers.

I learnt to compare distribution codes of Karnataka and Andhra which are quite elaborate on this topic and also ones of Gujarat and Punjab.

This entirely different task assigned to me, which seemed tougher than mandarin Chinese in the beginning, made me believe that I could learn things which I thought I was most incapable to learn.

I also got the chance to edit a bit of EmpowerTN , a journal on electricity and take minutes of TEGI – the Tamil Nadu Electricity Governance Initiative , a wonderful conference discussing all aspects of electricity problems in India today by several experts and organizations.

After TEGI/ with my co intern / last day :( 

While the consumer complaints I drafted was expected and the Ecommerce research I undertook on 20 Indian e-commerce companies ( Flipkart ,amazon , snapdeal included) using 58 criterions of consumer policy was more exhaustive but easier to comprehend and relate for me ;

 Electricity really brought me to life – it involved a lot of technical looking codes , scared me to death , I even failed to put proper work on some occasions! I’ve read many quotes which say stuff like do what scare you the most and didn’t think much of it. But once you are forced to do the unexpected , step outside that comfort zone – win or lose , you gain experience. Experience which makes you bold enough to try again and not make the same mistake twice.

And that is what I thank CAG for.

 For letting me play with electricity.

Thank you

Samyuktha Semi Jayaprakash

After August 15th

We have all studied history at primary levels at least.

Oh no. You don't get to yawn and leave today. Today is the day I have decided to write - after 3 months- So , Please read me out . 
Everybody seems to hate history and me being an exception to this rule, hates the current state of affairs very much. So much, that I started questioning some haters why they hate the topic so much. One of the standard responses is that why should we care about something which happened so long back? England is not ruling us anymore and we're even beating them in cricket now :P
While I can go on an on about how past experiences are invaluable to current scenarios , how history tends to repeat itself and how the mere fact that the area I was born in or the wooden table I am using is so soaked in history that I often can't help but get intoxicated with the romanticism of it all or how there are so many different civilizations which had so much in common and difference , I am not going to.
In this post we're going to address the problem of modern history. Modern history? That word sounds very oxymoronish to be true.

One of the major problem with our education system of history in India is that there seems to be a total disconnect from what we study and what we see today.  While it is pretty cool that Mahatma Gandhi walked miles to collect salt from the British and that we stunk of socialism in the independence era , nothing seems to correlate with what we see today.
The freedom fighting politicians of the yore seem to be substituted by blatantly corrupt ones of today. While we read about socialism and Nehru everywhere , we hear more about FDI in retail and the far reaching tentacles of globalization and capitalism.
Indian history to us Indians seems to end with August 15 , 1947  when India achieved independence. The very few who elect political science for high school or college degree learn a ridiculously more amount about our country.

We're stuck in that moment

Isn't it time to acknowledge that what happened for the 68 years afterwards to be also included as history? Not an entire subject , that would be asking too much. But at least 2-3 chapters covering important topics like the Kashmir issue , language reorganization , 1991 liberalization reforms which certainly changed the history of the country.
If pundits are unwilling to label it as history then it is about time that we give importance to political science as a social science. I was literally flabbergasted when a very well learned friend of mine, who studies architecture currently, told me that she didn't know Pakistan and Bangladesh were the same country before 1970's . :O
And it gets worse. When i told others about her ignorance , I found more from unexpected quarters.
This problem rises in significance when we take the rate of change happening around us into consideration. Every decade sounds like a different era and with the rate of growth of population and science and technology being equally precariously scary , it is time we read history according to modern contexts.
India has stepped into a new era or believes it has stepped into a new era by electing Narendra Modi into power. This is the first time a non congress alliance has got such a huge mandate and we can be pretty sure that the lawmakers would want to 'rewrite' history soon enough. Citizens must be offered an unbiased version of the riots , partition and violence which has been plaguing the country.

Things to be added in a social science textbook :

1. Partition - No point acting like it never happened. While independence was a huge victory , the partition was quite the opposite. The fact that Mahatma Gandhi never celebrated the independence is conveniently ignored. Some light on this hasty yet historic blunder would remove some prejudice we carry about our Pakistani neighbors. Both sides suffered . Sick of all the pakistani hate posts. Half the people don't know why/who/how we got separated but carry the hate though :/ 
2. Kashmir - Before yelling that article 370 is unconstitutional Indians must be taught ( unbiased ly ) how  really Kashmir was created. While demanding that Kashmir be ours is truly patriotic , learning what exactly happened before harping ill informed propagandized news is truly more worthwhile and patriotic . 

   

   Too beautiful to suffer :(

3. Hindi - There surely must be a lesson on the reorganization of states according to languages , the tensions and unity it created. The language politics , the true current status of hindi - the official and not the national language of India. 

A crash course on this would really enlighten many of us on current issues . Unlike science , every person can have an opinion on social science topics and well informed chapters on current historic problems would at least brighten us enough to not sound like illiterate buffoons on social media . 

Thanking you for the patience if you did read me out

Samyuktha (Semi) Jayaprakash 

Trendistan: Ze gods!!

Lets take a moment off and acknowledge the fact that there is going to be a post. I have been mentally planning and constructing this post for soo long ( since NOVEMBER 2012! :O ) I never thought it would see the daylight. Ladies and Gents , here it is ze 'trendistan' . Semi's version of 'my fives / my lists' :P The lists are random as they get..

Soo what is it going to be this time?! Religion , god ......... INDIAN MYTHOLOGY. Well this trend has been in vogue for the past....3000 years .But in the past few years , it has been trending a lot thanks to Amish tripati's Shiva trilogy and Ashwin sanghvi's - Krishna key , chanakya's chant... ( This is what we get when we stop writing romance...BRILLIANCE) and an all new serial of 'Mahabharata' has started in sun tv on a magnum opus budget. All these egs show us that Indian mythology is definitely trending and I am going to analyse the lesser know characters of Mahabharata .
Before going into the topic , i want to dive into one more seemingly tangential issue - the ever growing zest to curb Right to freedom of expression , in favor of  religious fundamentalism and bigotism. Bal thackeray - facebook issue , my name is khan, vishwaroopam (which was nothing but a dumb action film) ,Salman Rushdie's and Taslima Nasreen's continuous saga with Calcutta and countless other instances has shown us at least one thing. There is a need to understand religion and the true meaning of secularism . Through this post I want to tell you how authors humanized godly figures - and how we seem to cling onto the belief that the opposite is true. Every god went through a hurdle to show that everybody has faults. We should always keep this in mind.
ok chup.

My fascination with Indian mythology was an early one - grandmother telling stories of ramayana during power cuts ( so obviously quite a lot :P )  , dad buying me colorful books of Mahabharata to read - I was this strange kid who loved to spend her sundays watching the tamil dubbed version of mahab on sun tv.

To all those who have been frowning quizzically at the word 'Mahabharata' - It is nothing but an enormous Indian epic about two sets of warring cousins - kauravas and Pandavas of the kuru ruling lineage , who fought for power in a HUGE war of kurukshetra for over 20 days. And duh the good guys, the pandavas won - Yudhishtra , Bheema , Arjuna , Nakula and Sahadeva ; Arjuna's uncle lord krishna xD ; their polyandric wife - Draupadi. The kauravas composed of 100 brothers of whom we get to know much , only about duryodana the eldest and dusadana. We also have Karna the generous who was duryodhana's best friend and also the secret brother of the pandavas.
And I haven't even scratched the surface yet! It is an enticing tale of love , power , greed , jealousy , vengeance and WAR. I personally prefer it over Ramayana because a) the characters are closer to human b) More divine weapons / astras  and awesome description of war and the futility of it all in the end.

Characters from Mahabharata who needed to be known/understood better.

#Respect#

1. Bhishma - Not to be confused with Bheema , he is the grand uncle of the cousins. Mahabharatha starts with him when he decides to adopt celibacy in order to get his father (shantanu) married to his step mother - Satyavati , a fishing woman. It is the descendants of this couple who give birth to Dhirithirastra and Pandu , who in turn give birth to kauravas and pandavas ( quite elaborate eh? :> ) Coming back to Bhishma , the great son of goddess Ganga - He was so upright that the gods decided to give him the choice to decide his death! So live long he did , but never once desired for the throne which he gave away to his brothers , nephews and grand nephews happily! Yet it was his shrewd mind that kept the kingdom up and running through the unstable periods of times. If everyone had been like him - there would've been no need for Mahabharata. When he decided to die during the great war - both sides paid homage to him and even adjourned  the war for him and his death anniversary is worshipped as Bhismar shanthi , where everybody has to do the funerary rights for him as he left behind no children . 
Even though bhismar was undoubtedly the greatest administrator and warrior , the epic teaches us that he couldn't control the greed of his grand nephews and couldn't side with the 'right' people in the war.

Remains anonymous

2. Yuyutsu , yes you hear me right! I am not referring to any chinese epic here but our very own Mahabharata  He is one of the least known characters of the epic - partly because he is mentioned in maybe 2 verses of the 100,000 versed anthology.   Still he stands testimony to the fact that stereotyping is always innacurate and there is always good in bad and bad in good (yin yan xP ) He is one of the 100 kauravas - yes the evil , greedy , malicious ones. He is the 100th brother or some say 101th kaurava (they didn't have calculators back then) and he was a good man. During the evil game of dice , where the pandavas were lured into gambling away all their wealth xP , freedom and were exiled to the forests , he was the only one who stood up and said what was happening was not fair. We don't know what happens to him after all that - he only has a line. A pretty poignant one if you ask me.  And he also switched sides during the war and joined the pandavas :O I readthatjustnowinWIKI. What a man link-----------> here 

credits - some awesome website-> here

3.Mahabharatha is a very male dominated story . There are few women who can be called brave in the story and among them AMBA stands tall. Hers is a fascinating story which i am going to share . Our great Bhishma was an unmatched warrior and hardly did any mistakes during his lifetime. However , when he decided to find wives for his step brother vichitravirya - he went to the swaymvar ( brides pick their husbands) of Amba . Ambika and Ambalika. Their people misperceived that he himself had come to marry them and ridiculed him - calling him old. This enraged him and he defeated every kshatriya there and abducted the princesses . Sadly Amba was attached to king Shalva and refused to be forced into marrying vichitravirya. Guts. Bhishma sent her back to Shalva , who refused to marry her as he had been publicly defeated by bhishma. Obviously honor > love. Now vichitravirya already had two wives and didn't want another one - who had someone else in her mind (irony of it) and even the old Bhishma had to refuse as he had his vow to uphold. Sick of being played volleyball with , Amba turned her hatred toward Bhishma , as she felt that he was the root cause of her suffering. As no man could beat him , she did a long penance to lord shiva who said she can defeat him in her next birth. She was born a girl in her next life - daughter of king drupada. Annoyed that she was born a girl ( girls can't fight)  , she further penanced and became a man - Shikandi and got her/his moment of glory when she defeated bhishma ( with the help of arjuna) during the war.

This is the closest we get to a courageous women story and must applaud her determination and penance.

p.s - Wow all my spellings are underlined in red o.O


Someone who missed the list by an inch - Veera Abhimanyu :') _:'(

Hope the #trend stays 

Maybe I should publish/delete this :P

(For the previous post which led to this : Too weird to live , too rare  to die B) )
Maybe I should write a post after all. 

Is a strange thing.

I really do not get all this hype about 12th standard at all. Peer pressure forces me to shriek 'I am in twelfth' occasionally .But damn it , I really haven't got that feeling yet. So what is the hype all about? I don't even know! Is it about it being the last year in school or is it about the board exam/ mark / future part of it. Maybe it is both.

Maybe it is not. 

Maybe it's an out and out fictional garb created by the PARENTS , so that they can cover their anxieties about our future with 'ours'. 

Maybe I'm too thick skinned since I am a humanities student. Yes , I am a humanities student <3 

Maybe I am using too many maybe's . 

I am gonna reveal an open secret to every young reader out there. Never trust the elders when they say it gets easier. The biggest misconception lying around the corner is that 'work hard in tenth and get your group , eleventh will be a breeze' . Eleventh can be called a breeze when Chennai is covered in snow. In fact "11th standard is the toughest class for a science student , who has to learn a whole new lot of concepts and stuff", says one lad who is trying to clear that class for the past many years. 

This is another 'secret' :P

It was a whole NEW experience for me - my eleventh grade. While others grappled science and math ( dark ,dark  waters , but at least familiar ones) , my fellow classmates and I encountered whole new disciplines to master. At least we loved it. 
For all those blissfully unaware of what I'm trying to convey , 'HUMANITIES' is a group or stream of subjects students pick in their 11th and 12th ok? It is like the  science + bio you take for becoming doctors/ bio technologists/ lawyers/ architects  and science + computer science you 'pick' to pursue engineering. Yes , you heard me right. People who aspire to  become lawyers take pure science or commerce . I cannot help mentioning here that your normal law paper consists of the following subjects - economics , political science , history and sociology. All subjects found in the humanities stream. 
So it is annoying when people say there is no scope in humanities. What can one really do if  all the aspirants who ought to take it , instead pursue science/commerce to keep their options 'open'? 
Maybe if I elucidate on the cool subjects we have , it would lure you in! 

We have Psychology ,  You just cannot not bat your eyelids when you hear of this subject. Commonly associated with 'reading people's mind' , psychology teaches a lot more than that and is sure to make you a more mature individual. Beat this - we are currently having a lesson on all the psychological disorders that happen to people. In that one lesson , I get to see the one line stories of many Indian films . Anxiety , Schizophrenia , hypochondriasis , bi polar mood disorder. You name it ; we have it! There are a lot more sane cool things too - like illusions , perceptions etc etc. 
History - Love it or hate it , you cannot ignore it! ( ok , it is an old line :P but that syncs with 'history'?' :D ) It is unbelievable that some find it boring and pointless :O Learning about completely new cultures and eras surely has its own aura. That too 11th syllabus covers exotic locations of ARABIA - the middle east :D , Mongolia , Greece and much more! Watching history films instead of drowning in the ocean called classroom is surely cooler ^_^
 And the point i would like to particularly cover in this post - The correlation between the humanities section and 12th = none. 
Proof :- 

• Classrooms are still empty
• We still go for excursions :O
• We still keep eat during periods ; and sleep MORE. 
• We are still BORED of doing nothing 
• We still thrive on gossips and drama 
• Teachers still give us FREE periods
• We still study last day
• WE still manage to have fun. 

So all this hype of  adults screaming 'study study study' for a year is unfelt by us. Imagine if we really do slog it out (quite unnecessarily ) and look back to see a final year filled with nothingness? xO Oh god that would be the worst that could happen.
I mean the next worst thing after failing in twelfth and having to pay donation for the suckiest college.
I just re - read whatever I have written and realize that I have jumped from the issue of twelfth grade pressure to humanities discrimination quite easily :P However I do not want to remove these ramblings as they do have some semblance of  content sticking to it.
Which is :

• Pressure in the twelfth year is a myth. Every grade in the Indian educational system has its own kind of pressure. What with KG children having to leave their mothers and primary ones having to carry backpacks bigger than their backs :O  ( Maybe I should write an exclusive on this topic later :P )
• Humanities rocks. Booyah! to all the illiterates who still have the nerve to ask me the subjects I study. They are : History , Psychology , Sociology , English and Economics. 
• Dumb kids pick subjects totally unrelated to their career path , to appease their parents. 
• Never forget to have fun at any point in your life. 

And this is how you write in points and gain marks lol xD 
Semi ^_^

A writer's woes...!

I am arguing with that?! 

It is a wide held perception that writers are lazy people ,ie, they do not perform any actual work.And that carrying bricks is a tougher job. Indeed , carrying bricks is a tough task - you need exceptional stamina and strength to perform it. Also, I am not going to be this negative person who discredits such tasks , but this positive being , who dis/credits her own task =)

Vaguely looking , it seems as though a writer has NO restrictions or worries. Just take a paper and produce stuff. Bang! BANG! I advice you  get powerful spectacles immediately. A writer does have a hell lot of choices to pick from (even that is a disadvantage) and there are a lot of invisible constraints too. We will come to that later ( Haha! I sound like my textbook =P )

The biggest dilemma a writer can have , in today's world is - dependency on technology. How much should a person depend upon the technology to carry him/her through? This is a tricky and a surprisingly old question.Human beings always approach changes cautiously (translated as 'negatively') and once upon a time, even Gutenberg's printing press was restricted to printing bibles only . Also , as we are humans ;) , we just cannot give up old habits and it is agreeably very sad. Example - Surely there is a sense of guilt , regret and loss , when we see the old VCR's , cassettes , CD's , floppies and gramophones. Call me the nxg , but I feel guilty when I look at paper! I do all my creative work in the blogger draft board nowadays , coz it auto saves whatever is typed second by second.Being a humanities student , there isn't much notes to write...and when I do write exams , I don't have the time to adore my handwriting or the crispiness of the paper lol. Deep inside , I know that my best works are always done on paper.Call it prejudice , I don't care. Paper is just liberating in its own way! 

There is also the question of how much of luxury a writer can enjoy. Auto spell check is mandatory but is the feature where the PC guesses words for you , while writing is acceptable? Some questions are for you to answer. At the end of the day , a 'true' writer , atleast my version , writes for self satisfaction.Yes, I AM happy when my work is applauded by others...but when I am not 100% happy about a post and it goes on to create sensations all over the world (not like it actually happened :P) - there is still that feeling of 'not done enough' in one corner of the heart. Hope you get it. I can go on and on about technology - then it would become another post.

A writer has other issues as well. Self doubts can bog you down more than the heaviest brick on your head.Currently I have twenty posts in draft form and I feel uneasy to release even ONE. 'Will it be cool enough for the teenagers? ' 'AND be matured enough for the older beings?' - you never know. Extra pressure on me because as my name suggests , I pride myself on maintaining the balance , though at times I feel like I am falling short of this goal -outrageously . Then there is the issue of the concept of blog itself - it is about an individual's views. After a point ,  do people really care about one person's views/problems/ life? After  writing that line I feel lesser inclined to post this post.

The only way is forward!

Then there is the question of niche and complacency. It is tough enough to find your own style/individuality in the universe . It is tougher to keep on updating , modifying and maturing. At one point, you feel super saturated (science =P) and don't want to welcome changes , even when you know that stagnation is always around the corner.
That's why I envy Kid in the front row , he keeps on experimenting.He doesn't mind if one post falls short , atleast he did something new! His niche is to inspire others and blog about writing and cinema as an art. Yet, he does so much more than that. One day I want to be like him =) Tough ask but I will do my best.
We are bound by restrictions , which initially appears non - existent. For example , I cannot rest in peace if I post only 2 lines on my blog as a post.The lines may sum up what I want to say and may even be PERFECT. But No , I don't care about that! A blog post in my head should have lots of words - for words are all I have to take your breath away =P Blame it on writing too many history answers...

Also , there is always this feeling that I shouldn't use 'bad' words in my posts (unlike how I talk/text) Its not just because my parents read my blog :P , but because of this voice in the head or instinct as we call it, that tells me that some may squirm in their seats if I go overboard with the language. This doesn't make me any less cooler or awesome than a few seconds back. B|
Finally, as writing is getting more professional by the day , I am obliged to 'edit' my posts and to go further than the first draft. Being an I-need-a-spark to kindle the fire or a spur of the moment writer it feels weird...I am trying to adapt - but not wholeheartedly - I admit. According to my view , the first draft must surely retain at least 80% of its content...but writing is not mathematics and figures don't always works. Every writer must choose for themselves.
OK enough. I have scared you enough already with the uncertainty of things in this world...( For I am shivering now) However , you can see that I take writing way to seriously xD So , chill! I will never feed you with consciously bad posts :P And excuse me for exceeding the general word limit by LIGHT years......!

Yours truly
Semi

Label it as 'random'

help me get it back!

I have been trying to write for a substantial amount of time now and thats my problem. I am writing a post like a history answer - not getting to a point , wasting time , paper , words and patience. Also I am using complex and useless words =| and Smileys x( So relieve me from this hell by accepting the free flowing randomness I am offering .


A lot of break between exams is seen as awesome - it is not. The gap makes us all the more vulnerable to wasting time ,  becoming less bothered and makes us lose interest. How many days can you wait for an exam to get over. May sound dumb but its true - We write exams to get it OVER WITH.
Whatever the institutions say is as close to truth as you are to a friend without facebook - nil.

got to do nothing with the brand x) 

Its shivani's b'day tomorrow. I atleast remember it today :P Being involved with exams makes you more isolated than you imagine! I haven't spoken to my 'best friend' in the last 5 weeks. Does that make us bf's? Someone even asked that. DUH. The best thing you get out of separation is the knowledge that you still love them no matter what and that memories are what that keeps you running . Thank you frontal lobe of the cerebrum of the brain xP
As I have had a chance to finally 'miss' my friends :P I have got the cool right to feel like an outsider. Not weird ,  will explain the fun.
1/2 : Shivani are you having a b'day party?
Shiv : Maybe ? (she must be expecting a surprise party I think :P )
1/2 : Am I invited?
Shiv : (After a lot of dead air) STOP acting like an outsider
1/2 : Its fun :P

that's what you get for typing 'evil' in google :P

I now have no doubts on my crazevilness and your understanding of it so I am adding on to that saying I am surely psychologically disorded in SOME way. No not because I used to cut myself for fun xD , not because I study 'psycho' or had a relationship with my history book and threatened to tear it up if I didn't do well * Blackmail!* ( any ways it did get torn....because I studied xO )
Because...(yea , enough emphasis.)
I GET DREAMS. I know I know everyone does get it , I never said everyone is normal :P However what I am informing you is

Our mind is composed of the conscious and unconsciousness. Conscious is that part we are aware of ...but unconscious is more evil . B| It is the one which contains all the masses of info and memories....It has everything we got from conception to old age. 

even this seems evil to my eye

Whats my point? Unconscious which can sift through masses of info is also the cause of our dreams . When we are asleep we still are aware of some info (like a knock on the door)  and we are technically just letting the physical systems rest....as our 'mental' ones still function and cause the dream.
Now the unconscious is an evil little thing as I said before but like heroes who are thugs in tamil cinemas ,they also care about us. Using their superior knowledge they can forecast some conditions ( no even they can't forecast the weather)  like upcoming breakdowns due to stress , fights with friends or some other disasters which are important to us. THEY ALERT US THROUGH DREAMS ABOUT THESE FORECASTS.Or that's what my books said. 

............and ya I am having such dreams. No I am not an expert but I have a rather impressive hypothetico deductive reasoning or thats what I believe.

Now all you have in your minds is 'what sort of dream' ( see ! I have skill :P )

actually not

I am consistently having dreams like I am running away from my old school ( which I already have! ) and fighting it out with my ex-principal :/ ex classmates/ still friends and even the security guy! It is bizarre because random people like my current classmates (who are very important for my immediate functioning ) family members (where did they come from?! ) and even people I normally don't even think about are featuring in 'guest roles' . So the unconscious is working overtime.

The weirdest one must be where I am in a NEW school (Again!) with my 12th standard cousin - he's doing science = yuck , the girl I held tuition for :P ie my STUDENT , and some very random bvm friends. I yell why I am here and find that a 'technical' error has caused me to change schools again! I cannot believe and becoming more insane than normal start murmuring 'CV CV' .  Getting a phone from my student ( I am weak on discipline :P )  and try to type out the number. This is what amazes me - I am intelligent even in my dreams xD I understand that I always 'saved' my friends numbers and didnot mentally remember them. DAMN (the)  technology =| I bravely understand that I am a scared of being new - again. So I start running away from the classroom and into BVM's library corridor to CV's Yoga hall to my bedroom - where I wake up sweating.

odi po! 

What my unconscious is trying to tell me - I don't understand. All I know is that CV is the best thing that ever happened to me - accidentally. I am NOT going to a new school again =P Maybe college.

What else? Its HOLIDAYS babe! B| Time to get stoned , wasted ,read books , learn to drive my scooty , shake up some blog posts , re invest on yoga , become fat ( add 'try') prepare for my CLATs and have some bledy FUN <3

Atleast that's what I think. AND yes all those phrases can come in the same sentence , I just showed you =)

                                                                                        Yours , ippadiku
                                                                                  ALL  in ALL mokka
                                                                                             Semi the dandanakka Don xD

Who are We?

Life is very precious and the fact that we are existing is  itself a very lucky one. For us the human beings who are from the family homindae , domain of Eukarya and kingdom animalia ,phylum chordata ,class of mammalia ,order primates and the genus and species Homo sapiens a lot of luck and ofcourse timing was required.

we needed one indeed

Our identity which is stamped all over the earth - at least the land part of it which is a mere 31%, was  a mere accident as our 10th standard science textbook states. There is no doubt that we and chimpanzees shared a common ancestor and share almost the same type of DNA! It is spectacular that millions of atoms which are dead individually came together  to form us and support our mundane activities and responses which we need not  worry about consciously. Its is even more amazing to think that the earth which was/is so unpredictable with the dynamic earthquakes , volcanoes , tornadoes which we can only measure and not predict  , let us survive for so long with no major catastrophe.

my holy grail xD

We should remember that if during the dinosaur  period if we had been big like now (we meaning mammals)  , almost certainly extinction would have been on the cards , so lets thank ourselves for being insignificant. lol . Wow. You guys must be wondering where I am getting all these facts from xD  - only from the bestseller The short history of nearly everything which is in fact on EVERYTHING and surely the book which changed my life. Forever. I thank Mr.Bill Bryson for that! So what I learnt from this little gem of a book (figuratively not that small :P  ) is that the universe , its component and our mother earth are very huge and breathtaking (literally) creations and the life is the best and the most awe inspiring phenomenon which can take place and that we , with the identity of human beings are goddamn lucky to be existing , let alone researching and discovering.



As I said before human beings , the most intelligent creatures ( or so we think ) in this creation are created by atoms , DNA , cells ....... and everything in science exists in the quantities of trillions , billions and millions except the scientists who are finding it. What I understood from the book is surely an edition in itself however here I am limiting myself to the human aspects of the world ( which is almost covered  in my book lol ) and in the process hope to reveal the true human IDENTITY which is hiding beneath the sheets of civilization. =|

Scientifically speaking human beings have occupied not more than an instant if we compress the earth's life into a day! What differentiates us from a  moss , bacteria is that above the basic instinct to live (which these creatures surely have more than us) is the same thing which killed Julius Caesar - ambition. The urge , feeling that one has to have a purpose in life , like the early neanderthal who made millions of tools - primitive hand axes - maybe just because he thought that it was his life's purpose ....  if you do not have a goal in life and just try to get it over with it... =P you are useless , a pain in the back and a lot else. It is this self created ambition which created boundaries , nations  and eventually the world wars!
Also some thing importantly wrong is the feeling that we are the zenith of creation , infact life is always evolving and it is infact defects in some DNA copying that  makes us feel king. Again , don't under estimate the bacteria , they have occupied the earth from the beginning , it belong to them in that view! and they survive in regions where even the most modern of human technologies cannot reach. Eg. Deep sea heat vents in Marina trench and the frozen ice in Antarctica!! So confusing characteristic advantages with superiority shows our stupidity there!

Be happy with your identity as a human , live your lives to the max but do not shy away from the unmissable fact that every species which existed before us always had an end. Disappointment  shouldn't be an option when  thinking about our inevitable end. In fact the best we can do is stop accelerating our own demise by interfering with the flow of nature . Here I obviously mean global warming , CFC's , lead and all the other nonsense which we are increasing in our atmosphere!
Hate us or love us we are the leading species now and miraculously are endowed with a 'brain' . Our identity is our 6th sense. Let us NOT lose it in the name of superiority and domination.For whatever purpose the universe , solar system  and our earth are created. As far as we know we are the only creatures that can 'appreciate ' whatever has been done,  and have the thirst to learn about the creation and must strive for that till the end.  Here we must also acknowledge that like the biggest boon we are also the biggest bane of the earth. Wherever humans have settled has seen the merciless killing of all the other species.

Are We?

'survival of the fittest ' as it is known is actually acceptable if you ask me to answer.  However for the sake of civilization at least we must avoid the indiscriminate killing of  our kith and kin.  Reading the book I was shocked to find that animals were killed unnecessarily for the 'heck' of it. Just imagine getting hunted down by dinasours for the heck of it! If we are ready to call ourseleves 'superior' we better start behaving so.
From this account which is influenced by the amazing book 'the short history of nearly everything ' I hope that the sheer luck of living as humans is understood and understanding our own greatness and weakness and our responsibilty to our home is also got into your head.  Surely now you know your identity now;'Eukarya animalia chordata mammalian homindae primate homo sapiens sapiens ' an term which should be observed with great pride by the future species after our certain extinction - if our fossils and other evidences are found! =)

DON'T FREAK OUT =P

                                                                                                                  Yours Humanly
                                                                                                                SEMI 

Numb errs!

After having depended upon this blog for all my happiness and pride and sharing an identity with it for so long that semi and semi sharings were seemed to be the same. What do I do to spoil it all??? Forget my 50th post! and remember it only after my 51th post and write about it in my 52nd post! NUMBERS!

As normal human beings may observe mathematics is a very un agreeable subject which requires high amount of HARD work , slogging and practice which might all end up in nothing as your brain will refuse to work with you for that 1 particular moment! The size of RD Sharma itself may make some Indians give up mathematics LoL

Writing is the form of representing speech in symbols supposedly - however it has 2 forms words and NUMB ERRS . Why would someone create something as awesome as words and then find numbers? O.o
NO I am not saying that numbers are useless and are infact quite the opposite! They are needed at every important transaction of our lives! =) Then teach us what will be applicable to our lives like profit and loss, compound interest more. ( Even such complications are mostly required by sellers, business men only mostly) and what the HELL do we do with Algebra ( x. y ,z are insulted xD) , Geometry ( even figures are insulted =P) and the unknown territories which scare me with their name like calculus ( prof. Calculus from Tintin? ) permutations ( perms and mutations? Oxymoron? =P)

After going through the over deal of doing math in 10 th standard and after getting A1 in it xD I decided to quit or rather escape! Doing the radical I met with incredulous responses! People couldn’t believe that a person could not study math! It is not like we will die or is it?? =O

Astonishingly/ironically my most favorite teachers have been math teachers! Right from the kutti , sweet and charming Usharani miss who was more my friend , who made my horrible performances into tolerable ones by giving me free marks =P and of course the more recent phenomenon – GEETHA miss Lol or Getha miss! She is as mischievous as us ;) and very dependable, awesome teacher!! xD  Sometimes I wish I liked Math as much as the teacher who taught them! I have a folly – I never listen in class! If it is math then bye bye! Where is my story book? =P 

If that is not enough , Shivani Naresh . my dear ‘best’ friend Loves Math! =O So much so that I found her occupying more time with it than me! =P Believe it or not I became jealous of this abstract feeling and to materially satisfy my hatred I diverted my attention on RD Sharma. ( Evil look) No! I didn’t kick it ,tear it. I studied it =O I worshipped it. Like the Don says keep your friends close , keep you enemies closer! So I did keep it CLOSE next me. Shivani further alleviated my torture by remarking on the author RD himself and wondered out loud that he would surely be ‘cute’ yeah like my -------

Mathematically speaking , I am a black sheep in my family . My mom loves Linear equations, quadratic and all that, my father loves Trig and generally MATH – supposedly a genius of his own right. My brother although still in 6^th generally is supposed to be very fast and good in math and even wants to pursue Astrophysics =O ( Don’t ask me how he got the Idea =P)

So this is  what I want to convey. Math and numbers to a majority of the human population is a sore irritation , however it IS important and basic knowledge is a MUST. However once you know ho to handle a calculator and learn some basic theorems it shouldn’t be looked upon SO awestruckedly. Every subject sux and rox in its own way. You can’t blame everything on the subject , the one who studies should also take some minimum steps to prevent the hatred from seeping in. Now I can manage to do a sum without grimacing but not without a headache =P that is sort of an improvement!  

Let the people who work with the numb ERRs continue doing it and the others criticize , I am not going there , I am just saying where I am . =) So hopefully with all this statistical info you wouldn’t forget to celebrate my 50 th post’s celebration a little belatedly! xD