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Friday, 28 June 2013

Critical Appreciation #1 : Unsaid Goodbyes


I used to think novels were bad until I came across poems. They were verse."

Here is a recent poem that we read and thought we should do a critical appreciation of it. This would serve as a good reference to understand the deep and almost nearly inconspicuous meaning of the poem. Some comments have been given with some select lines as a vain attempt at humour and also for quick understanding of the context and beauty in the poem.

"

Somehow the train of thoughts never ends,    // "the" train? Probably previously referred to in one of the poet's poems. 
of unsaid goodbyes and lost friends. -       // Train of thoughts - Seeing that Train of thought is a plural , this is plural plural. Plural inception ! 
All the good times in your heart embossed,  
Reminding constantly what you’ve lost.      // Look at the aa bb rhyme scheme! ends-friends, embossed-lo.. wait. Lost ?

You wish there was some better way to end, 
a better way to let go of dear friends.    // Look at the aa bb rhyme scheme! end-friends. Ok. Look at the xyzw rhyme scheme from now on.
It pains to drift away, to crumble with time,
knowing very well that that you’ve committed a crime. //Mamaa.. just killed a man <Bohemian Rhapsody>

Truths get bared or masks finally fall, 
or time simply pulls apart from all.    // This is a key moment in the poem. Take time to read it nice and clear , slow and ho !
Whatever bitterness may have sprouted between two, 
admit it, you miss the other person too.  // Admit it ! Admit it, bloody %$%**$@. 

Without a word silent rifts get made, 
Let’s give it one more try” none of them said. //
And even though make new friends you will, // Facebook effect imploding our lives.
Unsaid goodbyes will forever hurt you still.
"

Summary

The poet has clearly written this in one of his passive and dull moods as evidently seen by his choice of words like 'lost', 'goodbye', 'bitterness' etc. The poet laments about the numerous friends who left him without saying a goodbye ( A hidden reason could be because of his increase in writing poetry and therefore a desperate attempt to save themselves ).

Lines 1 - 4 :
Grammatical errors apart , the poet has a flashback of people who ran away from him due to his habit of "Writing Poems!". He tries to remind his friends about how he made them emboss his poem "All the good times" in their chests. Also of the pain he felt when they lost the poem because it was a cheap tattoo.

Lines 5 - 8 :
The poet tells himself that there must be some better way to end his endeavour of writing poems, else he might have to lose all of his already few, near-and-dear friends. The poet has come to know very well that he's been doing the crime of writing such cataclysmic poem and hopes they will crumble with time.

Lines 9 - 12 :
He comes to accept that he will be greeted by a lot of criticism and mockery when his poems reach far and wide. But he also tries to force his friends to admit that they all loved him once and miss him now. The bitterness caused due to some unknown reason gets hidden between lines 11 and 12.

Lines 13 - 16 :
Everyone deserts the poet without prior warning . None of them are willing to "give one more try" to read his poems. Though the poet might meet new people, the way they keep deserting him will forever hurt him still. The vicious cycle of his continued poem-writing and the subsequent unsaid goodbyes ( Akin to Lord Tennyson's Brook ) will go on for ever . 

CBSE students should be highly benefited from such comprehension paragraphs. We'll definitely try and bring out question and answers to these stanzas after consulting our research group for the benefit of the public and the X standard students. 


Sunday, 23 June 2013

In-Tic-Tac-Toe-Ception

All of us have played tic-tac-toe. But here is a interesting twist to the game.

Enter Inception
Basically, this is a tic-tac-toe within a tic-tac-toe.

https://www.khanacademy.org/cs/in-tic-tac-toe-ception-perfect/1681243068

To win the game (the external board), you need to win the internal smaller 3x3 grids and form a horizontal, vertical or diagonal line in the external larger grid consisting of nine 3x3 grids.

If you place an 'o' in the first cell of any 3x3 grid, the opponent has to necessarily place an 'x' in the first 3x3 grid (of the bigger grid).

Rules are better explained in the line. I just hope it becomes a standard in-class entertainment during lectures.

Friday, 7 June 2013

Computers and Ammas

Disclaimer : This article has nothing to do with election campaigns. I'm not even a distant relative of any party member. I live in Besant Nagar which is far away from Poes Garden. And I drink only Red Label tea, which is not related to Sunrise coffee. (Mandatory pj)

As the other author Country would have put it : "Arasiyal oru saakada da", literally translating to "Politics is a sewer".  So, I'll happily keep myself away from it.

Amma = Mother (in Tamil) and not a canteen or mess.
Ammas = Mothers (in Tanglish)


I do not know about the rest of you, but personal observation of my subject has led me to believe that technology and fairly old aged people do not get along at all. Here is one of the many incidents which has forced me to reach the conclusion.

Me : Amma, type the password in my laptop.
Amma : What is it?
Me : 6*9=42
Amma : Ok. 'S' 'I' 'X'.. (Strictly forefingers. Keyboards are allergic to other fingers)
Me : No no. All numerals and symbols
Amma : Fine. '6' 'x' ..
Me : Uh.. no. There is a multiplication symbol in the keyboard. (hoping she'd learn)
Amma : (clearly irritated) Come, type your password yourself. Hmmmphhh..
Me: : Try!
Amma : (back to the keyboard) Hmm.. here is the star multiplication symbol. I need to hold the shift key right? (Presses the left shift key with her right forefinger and the number eight with her left forefinger. Awkward position really.. Close enough to a Gangnam Style)

Yup. Psy and Eric Shmidt (Executive Chairman of Google). Look at Eric's hands.. Amma probably taught him that! Look at Psy's hands too !! Forefinger is clearly seen.
So, she typed very well till 6*9 and then started the trouble.

Amma : Thambi.. There is no equal to sign in your keyboard!
Me : Yes. I took it out so that no one would type my password. Let's see you search for it.
Amma : Ok

Quite some time later, my computer is still not logged in. She still hasn't typed the password but she is very busy searching for something in the keyboard.

Amma : Poda.. the 'equal to' sign is missing. The closest to it is a semi-colon, but that isn't working

And so, when we reached this situation, I simply showed her where the equal to sign was in the keyboard.

Amma : Oooooh...! Nice. Stupid people. Kept the = sign there!  (And she types the = symbol.) .. But it isn't logging in.
Me : Eh.. why? What did you type.
Amma : 6*9=54

I couldn't have done anything there. She was right. Sob. <Insert hitchhiker's funda> Sob more.

Me : No. For security reasons it is 42. Please type 6*9=42.
Amma : Haha.. idiot. (Starts typing again)
...
....
.....
Amma : Thambi... the 'equal to' sign is missing again. I think you will have to install google for this soon, to search for characters.. Haha.

And she leaves the place after that really intelligent joke.
 

Thursday, 6 June 2013

My Experiments With Blogging

It was around the time I was in 10th standard that the idea of starting an own took my fancy. All the cool guys around seemed to have one and therefore I wanted one of my own. So with great gusto I started my very first blog. But the excitement didn't last too long and all I managed to write were two posts. The failure of my first blog didn't really deter me and by the time I was in 12th standard I had started around five to six blogs. Sadly none of them could do better than my first blog. I was starting to think that probably blogging was not my cup of tea and thought of giving up blogging for good. But then something unexpected happened. A blog of mine kind of took off. By took off I don't mean it was a huge success or something but it had regular posts and had a decent number of followers too. Well I guess at this point I ought to clarify that it was not really "my" blog. It was a class blog that my friends and I started together. Even though it was supposed to be a class blog it was really just 2 of us who were really active in the blog. So even that blog didn't last long which was a shame really because I honestly believed that the blog had future. Maybe if the others had shown some interest the blog might have had a longer run, though the contribution of my mediocre writing skills in bringing the blog to a premature end was no less.

Anyway, the class blog which we started was a good learning experience. For one, it taught me that others didn't really enjoy my writing as much as I did. But nothing hindered me from starting blogs most of which didn't even have a single post. One of those blogs was titled 'rhyme time' and had the tagline 'After all it is not a crime to rhyme'. The main principle of the blog was that all the posts must rhyme! Well the the blog never really took off because I didn't have the requisite skill to write articles which rhymed with one another, which was sad because I thought that it was a really novel venture. Maybe in the hands of some one more talented, the blog would have prospered and set a trend of some kind. Despite all the failures, my blogging journey continued and I kept starting new blogs, each more unsuccessful than the previous one. After the failure of what I believe was my 14th blog I was seriously pondering about my blogging future when I received an invitation from a good friend to write for his blog, and well so here I am typing yet another first post for my 15th blog....       

Sunday, 2 June 2013

Why is it almost impossible to maintain a blog?

There are quite a few problems when it comes to maintaining a blog. This blog for example, started when two people were very bored. "We had the time, we had the power, we are yet to have our finest hour..." but that's it. The enthusiasm vanishes when readers dwindle and you are left alone. At least, this blog has reached around <mumble mumble> views in total (not counting our own page views that is). The previous one I maintained had a total readership of two unique ip addresses : 1) I read the drivel I had written myself at home and 2) I read the same thing again from a different ip address. That was fun. There was no criticism whatsoever and all my readers enjoyed whatever I wrote, as the brighter few of you might have guessed.

Cacchination, fremescence, witzelsucht are big words. And I do not know their meanings, hence I won't use them

Secondly, ideas don't float around in mid air, especially during holidays, when admiring ceiling fans seems like a good enough pastime. If suppose, we had started this blog around the beginning of May, the time our semester exams started, we would have updated the blog every single hour! That's the time when I start getting questions like "Does water dissolve in salt?". I asked that question to my room mates during my first year in college and they still haven't forgiven me for the discussion (fight?) they had about that question for almost two hours that night. But, during holidays, you just don't get the time! You are always busy sitting idly or as I mentioned before admiring plain white ceiling fans (bulbs sometime do fit in perfectly, just that they don't rotate).

Thirdly, people have interns. This in turn leads them to concentrate more on writing a report on how a particular machine's task could be improved so as to give a higher overall efficiency (yawn) as compared to writing a more descriptive piece on how much more fun it would be if your laptop's password was an audio file of a song or a queer pose. So, when the person you started the blog with runs away to big companies doing interns or hides in places where you can't reach him, you really have no choice but to...

.... write articles titled "Why is it almost impossible to maintain a blog?" which brings me to my final point. When I find myself in such times of trouble and no one comes to me with words of wisdom, it is a good thought to write a short piece on why you aren't writing.