In Praise of Our PM

"No power on earth can stop an idea whose time has come"-Victor Hugo


Chanced upon a certain piece of news recently,

'observing that AIDS could have serious consequences for the country's economy and future, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh today said people should do away with traditional inhibitions on discussing matters related to safe sex rpt safe sex and all sections of the society should be made aware of the disease.' Full story here

It's not something truly land breaking, yet another politician speaking about the importance of sex education in India.

In this speech of his, delivered to the Youth Parliament, he continues to say:
'our youth leaders must lead by example and lead from the front. You must be the agent of change that you seek in others.'

Again not something that hasn't happened before, a PM talking about 'youth power'.
But, something about Manmohan Singh tells me that when he asks students to lead from the front, he means it, and it is not just a political gimmick. Political gimmicks don't go with the image of this guy, if he at all depended on gimmickry he woudn't have lost all his elections as of date and yet be respected and admired by all (democracy sucks or what!).

It's quite sad that the comments of actresses and petite sports stars get front page news with photos et al but when a guy (and not just any guy!) actually talks some sense and asks for action most just don't hear his call.

I'm grateful to Dr. Manmohan Singh for being one of the reasons I'm proud of India.

Do go through his full speech on HIV/AIDS at http://pmindia.nic.in/lspeech.asp?id=233 , it's quite a read.

As an afterword, the little quote at the beginning of this post, it was made by Manmohan Singh during his maiden speech as Finance Minister.

Parents

Parents, those people who do everything for us, but somehow we are always able to find a way to be ungrateful to them. What's worse, they completely take it in their stride, as if you acted in a completely natural way.

This little piece is dedicated to my Dad. Never could find the perfect words to go upto him and tell him how much he means to me and how I regret the unkindness I've shown so many innumerable times. I know I lack the tact to bring him to this page too, I just hope by some chance browsing he does come here.

I recollect one incident in particular.

It was sometime when I was in Class 6th, in Delhi. I had one of those groups which just needed an excuse to crucify someone for not being 'cool'. This time watching Disney's Alladin was number one in the list of must-have-done-s. And as fate would have it I had not. I realised this just in time and rushed to my Dad, "I want to see this movie, and I want to see it now." (Boy I must have been one irritating kid!)
Well it obviously didn't matter to me that it was raining cats and dogs outside and that we didn't have a car.
I remember us going in the auto rickshaw to Priya(now PVR) in Vasant Vihar, I remember Dad leaving me near a shop while he stood in the queue in the rain getting a couple of tickets. Then both of us, totally drenched, walked into this theatre and sat in the absolutely front row (we were late and these were the only ones available). I wonder if he felt embarrased walking in drenched into a movie theatre. I was strangely not bothered.

Now whenever I see the movie, or any reference to Disney, I squirm, Guilt poking me with everything she has.

The lesson I learnt? If I have a really trying kid someday and he's really testing my patience, I'll just look back to the moment when dad got the tickets, turned back, totally drenched and flashed a smile and waved the tickets.

Thanks Papa.

Exam Realization #186

It's good to procrastinate in a way that is totally unproductive, else you look at what you did while wasting your time and go,

"...in the past 4 hours instead of studying I did THIS???"

Thank Sunny!

Well thanks to Sunny this blog of mine willl be terse and not pop-pseudo-philosophy (i hope!)

Seven Things I Want To Do Before I Die

1) bungee
2) drive an open top BMW Roadster (gotta learn driving first)
3) learn a sport, any sport
4) read a book that changes my life
5) be on TV
6) go on a really long trip all alone
7) meet all the wonderful people I met in kgp atleast once after I pass out

Seven Things I Can Do
1) crack the kind of jokes nobody laughs at
2) live without food for atleast 3 days
3) live without sleep for atleast 3 days
4) always find an excuse to procastinate
5) read non stop (not counting nature's calls) for atleast 30 hours
6) wiggle my ears

Seven Things I Say The Most
hmm....i draw a blank at this ...can anyone help me with this one

Seven Things I Can't Do
1) Keep my room clean
2) Have a set of clean clothes when I need them most
3) Fold a shirt properly
4) Keep a track on my finances
5) Stick to a schedule
6) Abstain from obsessions and addictions ...any form ... if its addictive...I'm hooked on to it
7) remember people's birthdays ( orkut helps my social life quite a lot in this regard)

Seven Things That Attract Me To The Opposite Sex

1) Sensibility
2) Sense of humour
3) The eyes
4) The smile
5) indian-ness
6) intelligence
7) ...and that certain something thats felt at first sight

Seven Celebrity Crushes

1) Meg Ryan
2) Steffi Graf
3) Deepti Naval
4) Liv Tyler
5) Priety Zinta
6) Manisha Koirala ( not now...but ek zamana tha ....)
7) Waheeda Rehman( especially in Guide)

Seven People I Want to Tag

1) Suvro
2) Arnav
3) Deepak
4) Chhaavi
5) Guta Singh ( that'll atleast get his blog going)

Generalizations don't exist !

Have you ever had the feeling that all the generalizations you made about situations, people, things etc are all wrong?

Every concept you had, on basis of which you made your decisions, suddenly add upto naught.
And from the very next moment, you might just have unlearn the world and then learn it all over again.

I guess I'm going through such a phase, I have always hated generalizations but nevertheless end up falling prey to them (as evident from the title of this post). And now, I'm thinking of swiping my generalization-dictionary clean and start over from scratch, lets see how this new one turns out.
(quite a coincidence that It's my birthday today)

So, if I know you, bear with me, I'm getting to know you all over again.

Crystal Ring

The night sky is absolutely breathtaking tonight over Kharagpur. There are a few low clouds moving swiftly across the sky, creating an image not very unlike the one in The Highwayman, yet the stars steal out in between, sparkling away merrily.
There is a cool breeze, probably its raining somewhere close by.
But tonight's striking feature is the halo around the moon, visible when the cloud cover clears intermittently.


I don't have a pic of this night's moon. But here's one from the net that's close enough.

I'll pique your curosity by telling you that the ring would always be of the same size no matter when or where it forms

The reason is as beautiful as the phenomena. Read it here.

The above site mentions that this could be the sign of bad weather. I'm keeping a close watch on my weather sticker.

Beyond...

As a result of a bit of encouragement, I looked around my comp to see if I had any of my poetry still around. I was pleasantly surprised to see a vaguely familiar doc file in a vaguely familiar folder...
I had written this one back in my second year, with the hope of getting it published in Alankar,
which to this day remains an unfulfilled desire.

(read aloud for best effect... and pardon if it sounds a bit cheesy...2nd year tha yaar!)


BEYOND


“Beyond the hill lies riches untold,
Diamonds, rubies, emerald and gold,
Beyond the hill lies beauty unbound,
Roses and tulips run every mound.”,

“Beyond the hill lies a great desert,
Look for gold and you’ll find dirt,
Beyond the hill lives Death alone,
Miles can be heard Decay’s drone”,

“What you feel is fear of unknown,
Wisdom isn’t found staying at home,
If you daren’t look beyond the hill,
You shall be Ignorance’s kill.”,

“What you feel is Temptation wild,
She is nothing but Devil’s child,
Mirages are far and never near,
Do not name my prudence, fear”,

“I cannot argue with those in a well,
Who stay fallen once fell,
Who look at the sky and dream sweet,
But daren’t ever to move their feet,
True I tempt me with riches yet unseen,
Truer yet, I may face troubles mean,
But I shall run and I shall climb,
And look and search till end of time
No words of yours can change my mind,
My reward lies in my struggle to find.”

Life Kicks In

A little apology to people who expect a bit of originality from me but this thing i read somehow is connected to my previous post so I put it in.

A U.S. Open finalist in 1998, Philippoussis, because of a series of injuries and poor play, has dropped to No. 209 in the rankings.

At age 28, he claims he is working hard but has no confidence during matches.

The only time he showed a spark during his media conference was when he recalled his sensational 6-4, 7-6, 7-6 win over Pete Sampras at the 1996 Australian Open.

"I've been watching that match the last few months," he said. "I definitely remember thinking I didn't have too many worries at that stage. You're 19, you're so free, you're so pumped. Everything's great."

Smiling, he added, "Then life kicks in, I guess."
Full Article

Boy I'm Old!

Again a trip home, again lots of time to contemplate about everything. Although this time my reverie was broken intermittently by Three Men in a Boat and Nature in her full glory after the monsoons.
I could go on rambling about the serenity of cranes wading through emerald green paddy fields, the sharpness of the features of an absolutely perfect blue-green kingfisher on a telegraph pole. But then again these things are better expressed by a poet or a photographer.
Ah! The book. I think hype killed the book for me. Hype and the British sense of humour which somehow escapes me completely. Otherwise it is quite a decent read(people might feel that I have grossly underrated the book, but the again, to each his own)
Ya the point of this blog is not to give an account of the trip from Bhubaneswar to Kgp on Dhauli express(I'll write about it when its time to say goodbye to Kgp and I make my final Dhauli Express trip). The point is detailed in the following paragraphs.

Just as I had settled down with my book, a teenage guy(first of all it surprises me that I'm not one of them anymore!) opened a Elements of Co-ordinate Geometry by S.L.Loney and started underlining certain sections of it. It wasn't difficult for me to understand his motivation for doing so, so I smiled to myself and buried my face in the book(something tells me the build up I've made up might well end up disappointing the reader so please drop any expectations of a particularly fitting ending). Soon light conversation followed, initiated by him, and soon inevitably. much to my resistance. it came out that I was indeed an IITian. To which he asked "which batch" and lowering my voice a wee bit I said "I appeared JEE in 2001". The guy rolled up his eyes and said "that's five years ago!". On which I did a slight mental calculation, when I came to Kgp, this guy would have been in class 7. Class 7!!! Can you imagine that. Class 7 for God's sake. I don't have words to express how I felt. Except that I never felt older in my whole life. Thats it, don't say I dissapointed you , you had been warned.

Lots of yada yada...

Isn't it sad in a way that we all might end our life doing nothing more than a little bit for our own personal self, not affecting one more person truly.
Is then society just the sum total of selfish acts coming together? Isn't economics the study of selfish acts. Is that the final aim of all attempts at knowledge?
But then how do you go about defining virtue. Is there one standard one can adhere to. Or is it the all pervasive Christian values of love, compassion, courage, honesty, work and perseverance so deeply ingrained in our minds, that our subconscious gives us that nice feeling when you carry out any of these acts. Is our conscience nothing better than Pavlov's dog, salivating at the right stimulus just because its been trained to do so.
Or are we indeed connected, by our conscience, to something divine, connected to that fixed point about which everything rotates. Is there such a point. Or are we without a reference at all, moving about in a random manner, lacking any fixed concepts, values or knowledge.
We'll never know.

Have you ever...

...got that feeling where you are utterly low but don't know why? Me including a few around me suddenly seem to be overcome by this certain emotional disorder.
The only thing that I feel will give me satisfaction is to hear the world tear apart into two. Or to take you hands and bang it very hard on something very delicate and expensive.
Prozac anyone?

Nostalgia

One called us "13 itne sahi log", others said we spread 'ism', even more said we acted 'exclusive'.
But it was one long happy journey filled with highs and not too infrequently lows as well, but DFE somehow weathered it all and stood as one unit until the end.

This blog is inspired by Suvro's account of his last few days in Kgp. The strings of nostalgia had been plucked for quite a few days, but reading his blog really brought back memories rushing.

What really moved me was ETMS(Eastern Tech. Music Society)'s Foundation Day production. I was sitting in a corner and as I looked at the other end of the Netaji Auditorium, there was a group of about ten or twelve, dancing away no matter what the song. Be it "Ae hasina zulfo waali" or even " Abhi na jao chod kar", it didn't matter, what mattered was throwing your arms wildly about and making strange expressions. That was so what me and my wingies would have been doing. Let me mention that we are all horrible dancers, all we do is strange gyrations that would perhaps be more suitable somewhere a bit more private. This obviously much to the embarrassment of those around, but then again we never cared about what others thought.

If I think really hard, I seem to recollect that there were a few people I hadn't interacted with much, even in my second year, say Arnav or Jha or Dhingra, these people being from the D block. But my brain refuses to accept that we were anything less intimate than what we are now. How can we forget the times the whole wing stood by each other, then again how can we forget the times we had our spats and arguments.
And what about the fact that for some strange reason we would acquire a new addiction just before the mid sem and end sem exams, NFS, ZUMA, 29, the first two lasting a sem each while the latter,much to my disgust, continued its stronghold for one full year (and more, it continued into convo night as well!!).
Another thing that I'll always miss, whenever I would come back into the hall, as I would walk past C block and come within view of my wing, you could make out the whole wing outside sitting on the bed and railing, everyone talking at the same time, it was like an incessant cacophony that made sense only if you contributed to it. You could make out the people( you couldn't see them because the wing tubelights were always needing replacement), Jha the tallest silhouette, Suvro next to him, with a mop of hair, giggling away at something, Puneet fidgeting wildly, obviously not agreeing to anything that's being said, Buddha jumping wildly in a corner, yes, that meant a girl's name had just been mentioned. Harsh communicating with his now famous hand gestures, and Tripathi's pate reflecting back whatever little light there would be. And the moment they would see me(or anyone who's returning), there would be a grand outflow of expletives, the uninitiated might take offence, but that was the way we showed love and to hell with the uninitiated.
These people have now left DFE and in all probability they'll never be here together again. Never would a sequence of events take place that was possible only when these 13 people got together.
I don't regret the passage of time, I am just admiring all that happened and musing about all that could have happened. This is a lesson for those who believe that all good things don't end. They do. And all you can do is look back, smile and move on.

Kahani Poori philmi hai

Positions vacant for mining engineers capable of doing that in under 3 months with a team strength of 10 members.

Skills required: Must be good at disguises and have the combined strength to carry 3 tonnes of banknotes.

Place of posting: Brazil

Remunerations: ₤38 million.

details

Kehdo ki yeh jhooth hai....

One in 25 dads 'not the real father'
Reuters
August 11, 2005

ONE in 25 fathers could unknowingly be raising another man's child, British scientists have said.

Researchers at Liverpool's John Moores University examined the findings of dozens of studies, published over the past 54 years, on cases of paternal discrepancy - where a man is proved not to be the biological father of his child.

More

Somehow I get the feeling that the above figures for India, while not being that high , would still would surprise us all. What say you?
Or would you go ..."Oh no! such things in apna Bharat, never, never."

Need help

Hi guys
If anyone's reading my blog (why the hell can't I assume that people read my blod eh?)
read this first
LONDON - There's a wag in the works at Microsoft: The company is christening the next version of its flagship operating system "Vista"--which is ostensibly punning on the Windows brand name.

More


Can anyone tell me what pun is being referred to, I couldn't catch any :(
Will be definately grateful

Where are we headed

Had gone home for sometime, so no interaction with the net for a long long time.

I was just pondering, I usually get time to ponder a lot when I'm on my way home as more often than not i travel alone.
Don't you think we've over complicated our lives. Look at the cave-man, all he did was eat sleep and procreate, we are doing the same but like someone said we are just pretending we are doing more.
We are going round in circles. Alvin Toffler said that all our efforts in technology are aimed towards making more of our time free, therefore, he continued, that by the 21st century we'll have so much free time we wouldn't know what to do with it. So? Where does the present 21st century population ever more dying of hypertension and stress fit into that picture. So while half of the people are hell busy powering the great technology machinery of mankind, another major chunk doesn't have the means to enjoy the fruits of their results. Someone somewhere has got the scheming of the world horribly wrong.
Sorry for the morbid look at life ...

I Love this world

Business of Poaching Outsourced (BPO)
Police and wildlife NGOs admit that Chand is not a poacher himself. He allegedly outsources the job.
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Casino Advertising takes a "head start"
Karolyne Smith, 30, turned her head into a permanent billboard after a large online casino offered her $10,000 to indelibly emblazon its name on her face.
More

Politicians can't bear to see things get divided
The U.S. case against Microsoft led Judge Jackson to rule in 2000 that Microsoft should be broken into two companies as punishment for its monopolistic practices. But a year later, with the Clinton-era Justice Department having given way to the Bush administration, the government decided not to seek the breakup. The case was settled in 2002.
More

Googling Gautam Goswami Gets*

Even poor google hasn't quite decided on the state of affairs...

Gautam Goswami can go back to his glorious past only if he's "feeling lucky".





*An alliterating title, clever artifice by author to amuse readers.

How To: Translate Arumbaya

Chief Avakuki: Enefda Arumbayas ket chimdai lavis gutsfa gahtah’z. Nomess in’h!

Translating Arumbaya is a cross between solving a cryptic crossword and translating the rhyming cockney slang

O.K Lets begin...

STEP:1
Lets segment the sentences a little differently as in a cryptic
/En/ef/da/Arumbayas/ketch/im/dail/av/is/guts/fa/gahtah'z/No/messin'h

STEP: 2
Replacing by the closest sounding rhyming word, as in the cockney slang
and you get...

And after Arumbayas catch him they'll have his guts for garters, no messing!

for all such enquiries
http://www.tintinologist.org/articles/

..And it begins

Really thrilled about seeing 'Batman Begins', reminds me of all those Sunday mornings when I would wait for 'Batman: The Animated Series'. The low growl of Kevin Konroy's voice as he would say, "I am your worst nightmare", before landing one square left to the jaw of some crazed psychotic villain. The thing with this Batman movie is that for once it's keeping with the tone of TAS, a deep, dark, gloomy Batman driven by vengeance.
But that's not how Batman's always been, look at the George Clooney version, a silly, bumbling, self deriding version.
The history of Batman (as with most other comic book heroes of DC, Marvel, etc. ) is truly a long and complicated one, with each author having his own vision of the man. As the newspapers have been pointing out, this version of the movie as well as TAS derives from the seminal piece of work by Frank Miller "The Dark Knight Returns", which prefers to call itself a 'graphic novel' rather than a comic book.
The George Clooney version made the mistake of going back to the 60s version of the television series, the one with live actors and the animated KAPOWs, the humor in that version derived from laughing at itself, with each little prop in that having a prefix 'Bat' attached to it and lots of other corny jokes. Not that it wasn't funny, but the people of our generation have an image of Frank Miller's Batman/TAS Batman, The very fact that Batman doesn't like humor and only very rarely cracks the driest of jokes sets him apart.
As a little afterthought, I really liked the guy who did the Hindi dubbing for Batman:TAS, it was pretty close to Kevin Konroy's deep baritone, the only problem with the hindi dubbing was the fact that the puns of Joker, Harely Quin, Riddler et al never came through.

Where there's smoke there's ...

Ah, if only I had brought a cigar with me! This would have established my identity. - Charles Dickens

Well the Indian film industry undoubtedly loosing a bit of it's fire by the latest ban on smoking scenes.
What next, ban on smoking characters in books?
Imagine Ajay Devgun's role in Company without a cigarette, imagine all those period movies without showing a bubbling hookah, imagine a villager without a bidi.
You can't make a story without characters from real world having real habits. You can be sure now that certain films about certain characters will never be made on Indian cinema, people for whom smoking defines them, and they better not make it if the ban stays in place, I'd hate to see a Sherlock Holmes shying away from a pipe.
What's worse, this is specially for F1 fans, as long as you are in India you will never be able to see a full recording of a race, why? Because you will be "influenced" by cars sporting the Marlboro logo, so if you are fan enough, stay up late. No recordings. Big boost to the newly growing fan base of F1 in India.
Artistic freedom? What the hell is that?

Wear Sunscreen

I was going to write about something else today, I forget what, but I came across this interesting piece in today's Economic Times. It was a commencement address at MIT credited to a guy named Kurt Vonnegut. You might remember the song.
Well when I read the article it did ring a bell so i googled "Kurt Vonnegut wear sunscreen" and well the results did make me raise my eyebrows. This speech was infact not made by Kurt Vonnegut, it just spread in the internet that way. The actual credit goes to a lady called Mary Schmich.
And ET just fell prey to one of internet's oldest hoaxes.
Nonetheless the piece definately deserves a read, there's is a monologue at the beggining which was a part of the original piece written by Ms. Schmich in the Chicago Tribune on June 1 1997. Which would explain why it cannot be a true commencement address.

Inside every adult lurks a graduation speaker dying to get out, some world-weary pundit eager to pontificate on life to young people who'd rather be Rollerblading. Most of us, alas, will never be invited to sow our words of wisdom among an audience of caps and gowns, but there's no reason we can't entertain ourselves by composing a Guide to Life for Graduates.

I encourage anyone over 26 to try this and thank you for indulging my attempt.

Ladies and gentlemen of the class of '97:

Wear sunscreen.

If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be it. The long-term benefits of sunscreen have been proved by scientists, whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my own meandering experience. I will dispense this advice now.

Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth. Oh, never mind. You will not understand the power and beauty of your youth until they've faded. But trust me, in 20 years, you'll look back at photos of yourself and recall in a way you can't grasp now how much possibility lay before you and how fabulous you really looked. You are not as fat as you imagine.

Don't worry about the future. Or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubble gum. The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind, the kind that blindside you at 4 p.m. on some idle Tuesday.

Do one thing every day that scares you.

Sing.

Don't be reckless with other people's hearts. Don't put up with people who are reckless with yours.

Floss.

Don't waste your time on jealousy. Sometimes you're ahead, sometimes you're behind. The race is long and, in the end, it's only with yourself.

Remember compliments you receive. Forget the insults. If you succeed in doing this, tell me how.

Keep your old love letters. Throw away your old bank statements.

Stretch.

Don't feel guilty if you don't know what you want to do with your life. The most interesting people I know didn't know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives. Some of the most interesting 40-year-olds I know still don't.

Get plenty of calcium. Be kind to your knees. You'll miss them when they're gone.

Maybe you'll marry, maybe you won't. Maybe you'll have children, maybe you won't. Maybe you'll divorce at 40, maybe you'll dance the funky chicken on your 75th wedding anniversary. Whatever you do, don't congratulate yourself too much, or berate yourself either. Your choices are half chance. So are everybody else's.

Enjoy your body. Use it every way you can. Don't be afraid of it or of what other people think of it. It's the greatest instrument you'll ever own.

Dance, even if you have nowhere to do it but your living room.

Read the directions, even if you don't follow them.

Do not read beauty magazines. They will only make you feel ugly.

Get to know your parents. You never know when they'll be gone for good. Be nice to your siblings. They're your best link to your past and the people most likely to stick with you in the future.

Understand that friends come and go, but with a precious few you should hold on. Work hard to bridge the gaps in geography and lifestyle, because the older you get, the more you need the people who knew you when you were young.

Live in New York City once, but leave before it makes you hard. Live in Northern California once, but leave before it makes you soft. Travel.

Accept certain inalienable truths: Prices will rise. Politicians will philander. You, too, will get old. And when you do, you'll fantasize that when you were young, prices were reasonable, politicians were noble and children respected their elders.

Respect your elders.

Don't expect anyone else to support you. Maybe you have a trust fund. Maybe you'll have a wealthy spouse. But you never know when either one might run out.

Don't mess too much with your hair or by the time you're 40 it will look 85.

Be careful whose advice you buy, but be patient with those who supply it. Advice is a form of nostalgia. Dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling it for more than it's worth.

But trust me on the sunscreen.


Mary Schmich
Published June 1, 1997

Calcutta Sunset 

I AM A D100

I thought I was a leetle bit wacky but this quiz says i'm orbitting around planet Wierdo and I did answer honestly !


THE CONCLUSION

Take the quiz at dicepool.com

THE ANALYSIS

There's two ways to end up with this result. Either you picked the silliest possible answer to each question, or you answered honestly, and happen to be hyperactive, manic, loon. Assuming you answered honestly, your profile is as follows: You are the 100-sided dice, also known as the legendary Zocchihedron. You are the bit of data that registers so far off the chart that the average person doesn't even know you exist. You are desperate for attention and will get it any way you can. Your jokes have the lowest laugh ratio, but you go for quantity, not quality. Once you get started on a pointless tangent, it takes a group effort to bring you back to reality and make you shut up. You are a distraction who is permanently distracted. You consider yourself silly and entertaining, but everyone else complains about how lame and annoying you are. The one secret they aren't telling you, is how they sometimes actually miss the noise when you're gone.

KGP summers

Today's Calvin Quote(TCQ henceforth)..."Weekends aren't worthwhile unless you have spent it doing something absolutely worthless"

So after spending some 30 days in doing absolutely nothing i am exploring the last reaches into my list of useless things to do. And blogging hits the right note on a lazy Sunday afternoon when it's literal "agnivarsha" outside.

Well I was in a self appraisal mode today tabulating my achievements over the past 30 days.

1.) Some 15-20 odd movies including a lot of Hitchcock classics including Rebecca, The Rope( i recommend this especially for James Stewart), Vertigo, The Man Who Knew Too Much, The Lady Vanishes and of course Dial M for Murder. A few others from other genres were "Sky Captain and the world of Tommorow", this one is realy kwel, reminds you off all those saturday morning DuckTales and Tales Spin except that the principal charachters are Jude Law, Gwyenth Paltrow(hope the spelling's correct) and the very sexy Angelina Jolie, then there was "Dog Day Afternoon" a brilliant performance by Al Pacino.
So that comes to approximately 60hrs of time well wasted.

2.) The Jumble game on DC++, well for non kgpians and kgpians pre circa 2004 its a jumble and trivia game on the local network, i have managed a score of 22196 which makes it a ranking of 23/725 each word is on an average of 10 points hmmm...that makes it mm...2220 words approx and on an average i get a word a minute...that makes it hmm... 2220/60 making it 37 hours of wasted time.

3.) Apart from this a lot of time is invested in food, in the absence of a hostel mess, each meal is an adventure requiring hours of planning and deliberations with each person having his own efficeint solution of cost vs. taste.

Well the above makes a nice enough report card for the summer, a few more days to go so the list is pretty much final.