06/06/06

The number of the beast. So says the Bible. It turns out the Bible finally got one right.

Mr. Arneja, I am guessing, would be smiling if he ever read this, though I doubt he ever will. The reasons for this shall not be mentioned here.

What shall be mentioned here, on the other hand, is why I believe the aforementioned date is, in fact, the number of the beast. The beast, probably, is the University that shall hand me my degree at the end of my graduation. The story follows.

Note – The number of the beast also happens to be one of Iron Maiden’s finest albums, I believe, to date. That’s a hard rock band, in case you did not know.

Anyways … continuing …

Nincompoops inhabit P.T.U

This, I believe is a fact that has been established beyond all measure of doubt and now should be painted across the walls of every PTU affiliated college.

The sanity of the concerned authorities is also under question by me.

I find myself unable to resist the temptation to question the importance of actually studying the syllabus for any PTU paper.(since rarely do they ask questions from it).

Anyways, here’s what happened today.

The clock screamed 9:30 which indicated the start of our RTS (Real Time Systems) examination.

Now, as is becoming habitual with me, I glimpsed at Mr. Jha (since he receives the paper before I do) and waited, patiently, for a reaction. It was the same Kuch nahin aata look on his face which I am now beginning to get accustomed to.
The alarm bells started ringing when I noticed Ms. Pal, seated two seats behind him, smiling with her right hand on her face looking the question paper. I then turned to Ms. Verma for hope and I found the same effective reaction. All the above 75% ers were perplexed.
That should be indication enough of the state of the paper. You see these toppers( and quite a few more) are people who rarely emote during an examination and to see things change in this exam was horrendous and gratifying at the same time.
Horrendous because of the implications the question paper would have on people like me and gratifying because now, maybe, they know what we go through in most papers !

Anyways, the examination began with murmurs arising out of the entire class. The external invigilator offered us condolence saying the problem would be solved soon. Off course he never showed up again after saying that.

Now, in such a paper, most people are out to salvage the most they can from it. This, in turn, requires more than just a fair bit of concentration. This is when Mrs. Aman (Our Ex- DAA teacher) steps in the classroom announcing that some students still haven’t paid up for the Seniors’ Farewell. Wow . Perfect timing.

This was followed by our RTS lecturer Mrs. Arunima telling us to attempt each question. The only problem here was that the below 75% ers had no clue what to write about.

How do we know what Fault Tolerant Architectures are?

TMR should probably stand for Totally Meaningless Redundancy .

I’m assuming you get what I am trying to tell you here.

Off course the above 75 % ers would’ve had no problems writing SOMETHING that would thereby enable them to get grace marks.

A single song resonated in my mind for the entire duration of the exam Rape Me – Nirvana
I think it is apt and ironic how the song seemed to fit, perfectly, the situation I found myself in.

Calls to Mr. Gupta for some points to elucidate upon proved to be futile. (Except in the last 2 minutes, by which time it was already too little too late.)

I spent the three hours writing about things I had no clue about, finalizing my plans for the 6 months training, imagining what it would be like if I were to stand up and run away with my answer sheet amongst other things that are best left unmentioned.

I still do not know what hit me during those three hours but it sure was unpleasant.

For Mr. Sahore, though, it was just another exam.

Goodnight.

A.G