Meet the Star

Look who got a cool 500 words to write about herself in the paper. 

Education Times Bangalore, The Times of India, 2 Nov, 09.

Note that I also got not one, but two pictures. Neither of them embarrassing. (Have a friend who picked one for me and Photoshop that did the rest, to thank for that.)

Also note the quote that makes the headline.

 I'll admit - it's not just Mum that thinks I'm a natural at this stuff. I'm a Me fan too.

*Bows*

(The link to the page, pdf format.)

Bloody Fire Alarms! Burn! Burn!

00:35

It's been a long day. So shoot me for wanting a bit of peace and quiet before I put on my jammies and crash for the night.

I said shoot me. Not blow my head to bits with the incessant shrieking of six minute fire alarms every five minutes.

(Make it stop, plEAse!!!)

Where's the fire I ask you?

Nobody uses the kitchens to cook anyway - at least not since they were turned into refugee camps thanks to renovations that have lasted long enough for the new table tops to have fossilised food. (Oh and the smell. The smell of paint and turpentine. Moan-groan-grumble-sob.)

Let them alarms cry wolf just once more tonight and I'll give them a fire.

Only blogging etiquette has held me back from POSTING THIS IN ALL CAPS but make no mistake, I am screaming and whining and swearing and making rude hand gestures.

What's a girl got to do to lead a fire-alarm free existence in student housing? - I ask in great consternation.

.....

Oh yea - Move Out.

Some wisecrack about going to the dogs

So there was this proposed visit to Wimbledon stadium to watch greyhound racing. More school assignments.

I knew nothing of this alleged sport I was going to watch. Except that there would be dogs running around a track.

As an introduction, our tutor gave us the book he wrote about his short and unfortunate stint as a race dog owner. All I knew at the end of it was that I still couldn't understand betting odds.

Ignoring the ethical ambiguity of what I was indirectly supporting, I trekked to the tracks at Wimbledon.

The place didn't smell of dog, but it smelled of beer and burgers. And high spirits.

Old men in tweed, elderly couples, some spiffy suits and loosened ties, and even a bunch of German school children were at the races, clutching race sheets and counting their bills. The screens continually brought up the odds.

The really serious punters, the ones who said they'd been coming here every week for over 40 years, were those that skipped the screens and instead peered at bookies through binoculars, while making illegible notes on their race sheets.

Soon, the first set of dogs are paraded.

Nunhead Jack stops to sniff a post.

(One should expect no less from a dog. "Come on boy!")

With two minutes to go for the race, the last bets are placed.

The gates open and they're off.

In less than two minutes, fortunes were made and lost. Me, I won the princly sum of 25p.

But at the end of the night, I quit both gambling and dog-racing. Quit when I was winning.


The story I wrote for University is up on our website mindZgap.

At a store near you...

I thought updating your blog three times a day and punching in a new status message on Facebook before the ink even dries on the old one, had there been ink to dry, was the ultimate egotistical exercise. Who’d want to hear about your lame life when I’ve got my own to gripe about?

But taking narcissism to a whole new level of grandiosity is the phenomenon of The Book, where every academic worth his half-a-dozen degrees thinks he’s doing a great literary service by compiling a lifetime’s worth of lectures, during which time actually stopped, into a book. His mother has bought a few copies to display on the table by his graduation photos and to hand out as Christmas gifts, and his colleague has picked up a couple to burn; the rest are stocked in dusty corners of university libraries until someone decides it’s time it went on the essential reading list for his hapless students.

It’s another example of an education system gone mad. When I write my book, a whole chapter shall be devoted to just exactly what I think of this.