Of some 36 Railway Stations …

The weird thought occurred to me of capturing the various places I went to in Railway Stations. Anyhow over the past 2 months or so I have traversed a large part of Western Europe by train, so this is my tribute to the journeys, the fun, the boredom, and most often the adventures with crazy friends and crazier timetables … This one is not in pictures but in station names and anecdotal captions to try and captre the “Moments” that occured in that place … I hope those of you who are reading this and were with me at those stations and were part of those moments are reminded of those fun/crazy/adventurous times

1. Schiphol (Netherlands) – The one with the Entry !

2. Den Haag Hollands Spoor (Netherlands)  - The one with the chilly midday changeover …

3. Delft (Netherlands) – The One with the TU Delft and all the new friends I’ve made

4. Delft Zuid (Netherlands) – The One that is closest to the room but has no trains going through it … like EVER

5. Den Haag Centraal (Netherlands) – The One with the Aliens Police and Madurodam

6. Leiden Centraal (Netherlands) – The One with Keukenhof

7. Utrecht Centraal (Netherlands) – The One with the bloody Domtoren

8. Den Haag Centraal (Netherlands) – The One with Scheveningen

9. Amsterdam Centraal (Netherlands) – The ONE !!

10. Antwerpen Centraal (Belgium) – The one with the missed train to Lille

11. Bruxelles Midi/Zuid (Belgium) – The One with all the Late Night Drama

12. Bruxelles Noord (Belgium) – The One with the Free Bus Ride to Paris

13. Paris Gare de Lyon (France) – The One with a Midnights Excursion all round Paris

14. Paris Gare du Nord (France) – The One with the TGV

15. Lille Europe (France) – The Other with the TGV

16. Tournai (Belgium) – The One with the Journey through the Belgian Countryside

17. Zürich Hauptbahnhof (Switzerland) – The One with THE 12 Franc Shower

18. Winterthur (Switzerland) – The One whose name sounded funny when the metallic Swiss announcer on the trains said it

19. Wil (Switzerland) – The One where we assessed the people going to Sonisphere … “Yeh apne tarah hai lag raha hai … thoda unpeirced “

20. Schwarzenbach SG (Switzerland) – The One with Metallica

21. Luzern (Switzerland) – The One with the Free Lake Ride which everyone else was dying to take

22. Engelberg (Switzerland) – The One below Titlis

23. Hergiswil (Switzerland) – The One to go to Rivendell

24. Interlaken Ost (Switzerland) – The One with My New Swiss Knife

25. Lauterbrunnen (Switzerland) – The One that Inspired Rivendell

26. Bern (Switzerland) – The One where I got down from an ICE and onto a Inter Regio

27. Schloss Laufen am Rheinfall (Switzerland) – The One with the RhineFalls

28. Schafhausen (Switzerland) – The One in the Opposite Direction (in the hope of finding faster trains going through there)

29. Basel SBB (Switzerland) – The One with Three Drunk SriLankans and One Sober Nepali

30. Köln Hauptbahnhof (Germany) – The One with the Cathedral, 1 Euro Burgers and 4 Euro TShirts

31. Bonn (Germany) – The One with Nothing !

32. Nijmegen (Netherlands) – The One with One Half of a WC Quarterfinal (And yeah the BIG Brown Building)

33. Rotterdam Centraal (Netherlands) – The One with the Tour de France and some alone time in an Awesome City

34. Bruxelles Midi/Zuid (Belgium) – The One with the Waffles, the Atomium, The Mini-Disaster(read Europe in place of Disaster)

35. Brugge (Belgium) – The One with Belgian Chocolates and a quaint city with cobblestone streets and magnificent Gothic Cathedrals

36. Amsterdam Centraal (Netherlands) – The One with the World Cup Final … 100,000 people at the Museumplein … one AWESOME experience … although the Oranje lost … Well Viva Espana

(One Weekend Left lets see if anything gets added)

Endsems…

It happens. The nights get chilly. The days get shorter. In a far corner of India people begin to realise their worst fears. Teeth begin to chatter and it has nothing to do with the cold lithe wind blowing in through open doors. People begin to get closeted in their rooms that again having nothing to do with the chilly outdoors. The sports fields lie vacant. The doors of rooms refuse to open even for a minute of Bakar. There spawns an unholy chill inside people. It starts off as an emptiness in the bottom of the stomach, a hollow feeling of nothingness. It is then augmented by a flurry of gut wrenching quiz results. The hollowness rises into the head and the knowledge little as it may leaks out. The frightening piles of notes gathered over 4 months of lectures (taken down by someone else obviously) seem even larger (as if that was possible!!!). Illness seems to strike me just then (How convenient!!!). Desktops of some (read 327) have on a paused movie or soap which is promptly played as soon as someone knocks. ” Yaar movie dekh raha hoon !! “. Some others (read 324) keep the doors of their room open while sleeping just to show the world ” I’m sleeping …. so now dont say I am the biggest Ghissu!!! “. Why not just say yes sometime ?? Because after all everyone knows the chill that sooner or later creeps up into the head and makes you wonder ” Why didn’t I start this earlier!!! “. But then its generally too late to recover. But so what!!! Then comes the happy realisation of it being the last week of semester. You realise that 5-6 days more of saying ” C**d gayi yaar aaj toh!!! ” and you’ll be ready to self destruct all over again next semester!!! It’s a new experience for me every semester. The 1st sem was more of the try-to-dip-your-hands into-every-bowl-IITG-offers kind be it Techniche Manthan Alcher Inters blah blah only to realise you missed the one the professors had held forth. The second was more of a recovery mission involving a spirited start to sem only to find out that working in Alcher was much more fun. Once Alcher got over it was soaps all the way till the sem self-destructed. The self-destruction of the third semester was mostly niteouts and then sleep out the days. So as I realised I am not responsible for my semesters its the timing of these things that conspires against you. It just doesn’t let you get a good sem in. Live with it!!! Its much more fun this way.

C**d gayi yaar aaj ke paper me !!!!

The Ruin of IIT’s (The Story in Numbers)

There are 1.2 billion Indians

Approximately half of them are supposed to be in the 0-25 age group

that gives us 600 million young Indians

these 600 million are fairly evenly distributed among the 0-25 age group

so about 3/26th of them in the 17-19 age group

that gives us around 69 million indians on the cusp of turning adults

of these only 35% are educated upto the 12th standard level

that leaves 24.25 million Educated indians on the cusp of turning adults

only 40% of these are in the science stream at max

so that leaves 9.7 million Educated indians on the cusp of adulthood who study science

only half of them actually think of engineering as a career

that will give 4.85 million Educated Indian Soon-to-be Engineers on the cusp of adulthood

Only about 30% know their selected branch of engineering really well.

that will leave 1,455,000 Young Indian Engineering Graduates of real calibre

only about 15% go in for higher studies beyond their bachelors degree

that will give 218,250 Young Indian Engineering Graduates Who go in for post graduation

of them half pursue an MBA

that will leave 109,125 Young Indian Engineering Post-Graduates

At the Maximum 5% of them complete a Doctorate

That will give about 5,450 Doctorates in The aforementioned long long classification of Young Indian Engineering Graduates of Some Calibre who pursue and succesfully complete their post-graduation upto the Ph.D level

Of these only 10% will go into the academic field

That gives 545 teachers who are Indian Engineering Graduates of Some Calibre Who have succesfully obtained a Doctorate

But wait i haven’t finished

of these only 20% actually teach in India

The Brain Drain is real dudes ……….

so that leaves only 109 blah blah blah ……..Doctorates teaching in India

of these lets say 40% teach in IIT’s (the “Brand” That’s on its last legs thanks to a certain Mr.Arjun Singh)

so that gives us 43 IIT professors every year

Great!!

Problem is that there are going to be 15 IIT’s plus ofcourse the All – Womens IIT

So 16 IIT’s

That gives every IIT less than 3 new Professors every year

And of course my dear Mr. Arjun Singh do profs ever retire ???

Can an Institution of the level of an IIT (what level people will ask 5 years down the line)
survive on getting just 3 professors of high quality every year ?????

Whew that was tiring

Hope i made my point!!

00:48

This wouldn’t have been a familiar waking hour for me about exactly one year ago. I was then the ideal (what did i just type???) …….. oh lemme cut the crap. Its just that i never used to stay up so late. Boy did this one year change me, now 00:48 may see me one movie into a 3 movie one night stand. Very rarely it might find me studying, cramming for a quiz at 8 the next morning. well whats captured my attention tonight ( apart from an Orkut profile of well….. lets make it a certain “someone” (winky-winky)) is that Germany lead 2 goals to none against the Portuguese ………
aawell make that 2-1 to germany with nuno gomes firing in one from close range.

Well what i found crazy was that for one team who scraped in to lead by two goals over another that played some great footer is………. well………. footer

well me for one was shocked twice over (thrice??? refer to previous parantheses (not so shocked there)) tonight when germany pulled 2 on portugal in the space of 4 mintues.

Now this blog post is gettin drab and boring which it was anyway going to do in the first place
“Cut”

Well certain multi-personae rolled into one (three personae at last count ain’t tht right Arayan?)have been visiting this blog . They asked me if I wrote in prose. Fair question considering the vast amounts of gibberish I come out with from time to time. Maybe its just the fear in their minds that if I write in prose they’ll have to just go through gargantuan amounts of complete crap. So to you i dedicate this pile of smelly pong called The Cranial Outbox v2.0

The Great Kaddu Effect

’twas the day before yesterday The Kaddu came forth and spoke,
He warned everyone,
You won’t get nothing guys…try now to lift yerself,
Keep lifting urself up, go up up and even higher,
He kept raising the bar 7.5 7.75……who knows,
Maybe today he’ll say you need 9.5 to do anything,
Job…………haan 8 ke neeche bilkul nahi lete!!!
MS…….woh toh bhool jao 9 ke neeche!!
MBA karni hai kya??? Lao 8.5 khush ho jao……
Terror in the eyes of poor friends,
Apna kya hoga………….
Slowly but surely he removed any hope of a future,
Placements wud luk hillarious under the Kaddu effect,
2008 2.5% placed
2009 2.7% placed (excluding s___m boys n gals)
2010 1.5% placed
2011 2% placed (Including s___m boys )
Nd then we’ll hav Super mess workers,
Super lab assistants,
Super Munims,
Wid cpi’s of 8, 7.5 blah blah…………
Lif in IIT-G will be super…….
Everyone in the staff will be IIT’ians
Munim, “jogonna” of chem lab………
Everyone!!

Presenting “the Kaddu Effect”!!

A Call to Young India

’twas 57 long years ago they say,
I wasn’t there to see it but…well…they say,
A nation staggered to its feet then,
It became a Republic…The Indian Republic,

What is a republic? They knew that aeons ago…
Since time immemorial efforts are on…
Many nations tried and now lie tattered and torn…
Our nation hasn’t yet gone on that path,

Neither has it become what is a Republic,
Torn by many evils but yet hangin’ in there,
India is a resolute spirit but how long will it hold…
India Shining, !ncredible India…they do it for votes,

Not one is dedicated to India, our motherland,
What she needs is the fire in the belly,
It’s up to us, Young India, rise and make her big,
Rekindle the fire within you, it’s glory time,

Far behind us in the pages of history,
We see an India which was glorius,
Let’s relive that India, Glorious India,
The powers that be don’t see this dream,

Don’t become the powers that be,
Become the power that does,
The power of a dream, India Glorious,
Let it occupy you, drive you, the scintillating flame…Young India…

-The-not-so-confused-this-time Cranium