Blissful Life

When you apply skepticism and care in equal amounts, you get bliss.

Author: akshay

  • Perfectly messy prefect: Day 3

    Unlike yesterday, eventhough I was slightly aware at 5 o'clock, I woke up only when the alarm rang at 6.
    Remembered that I had left the workers' attendance book in Fadnis room last night and woke him up early in the morning.
    In the mess, milk and curd were just arriving.

    Everything was bought from bandipalaya yesterday.
    The cook comes in.
    "Everything is here, I'll have no trouble today"
    "saaaaaar, kodambari soup [or something that sounds like it] illa sir"

    Thus uday had to go market.
    But from today everything for tomorrow will be made ready today itself.

    And me and manja bought some 40 coconuts from day market.

    And since it was Saturday suhas managed the rest of the day by himself.

    I went sbi, opened an account, ran to college, went blue lagoon, and came back and slept at 6.30.

    When I opened my eyes it was 9.
    And apparently the banana distribution was slow in mine and uday's absence.

    Tea was done while I was watching Chelsea Madrid last minute draw.

    And then my phone got ported from Docomo to Aircel.
    So, this post might be a bit late.

  • Perfectly messy prefect: Day 2

    Since I want to make it a habit to wake up early (one of the reasons I wanted to be prefect early on in the year) I will do the breakfast duty today. And as always I've woken up 40 minutes before when I should have. Thus this paragraph.

    Ha, it's 10 in the night of what's been a long day.
    Got cashed out in the morning. Bought all immediate things.

    I don't remember 90% of the things that happened today, yet I have about 100 things to tell.

    Suhas and manja went to cash the cheque. Stood in queue at sbi for half an hour then got to know it doesn't accept sbm cheques. Went sbm main branch since college extension was closed. Stood in queue. Understood that more than 20,000 can't be taken off another branch.
    Finally they went sbm stood in queue and got the cash.
    Booked the domestic gas cylinder straight away, to avoid gas trouble. And it got delivered in the evening. Somanna, me and manja were playing football with empty cylinders.
    Then, vegetables for immediate relief. And the workers needed Sabina. We kept them waiting waiting waiting while the vegetables and chicken came. Finally they washed plates with wheat flour.
    Afterwards, suhas, uday, naveen and manju went bandipalaya – the one stop solution for all kitchen worries while I watched the cooking of the chicken in the kitchen.
    In between the poojari came to give his list of offerings to God which had to be ready by 6. And luckily the sweet swathi came to the rescue by offering her kind help in bringing them :*
    Even though manjunath returned for the same by that time. The pooja was done without any problem.
    Then, since workers were reluctant to come early morning tomorrows idli has no sambar.
    And I'm very sleepy gotta wake up tomorrow too.

  • Perfectly messy prefect: Day 1

    Despite the inclination towards staying out of hostel every moment possible, I took up mess prefect-ship this November of 2012, partly due to my mother tongue, partly because I desperately want to be organized.

    Ever since Nilam hit the east coast yesterday it's raining like malarial fever. Yet I woke up without any alarm at 5 am.

    Since it's the first day, all of us – suhas, uday, manjunath and me were at the adigemane by 6.30

    And the grinder stone is stuck because the rope tying it has fastened its hold. Cut it out like a surgeon does to the intestine, and fix it again.

    Thakkali bath.
    And then we understood why items like bisi bele bath, even though despised by everyone to the same utmost extent, continue to be in the menu. The main cook has taken a leave for 3 days and among all others left, nobody knows how to cook anything better than tomato bath.

    And breakfast was ready 20 minutes late.

    Preparation of lunch started immediately. As decided, till the cheque is sanctioned, vegetables whatever is in stock will have to squeeze through till tomorrow.

    Luckily or not, today happens to be a holiday owing to the anniversary of the creation of the state. "National" holiday like some of them say. But the infamous gas trouble has no holiday. Gas as in cooking gas. While the whole nation is curbing the number of cylinders one can have, our consumption keeps on increasing. So does the amount we have to pay for each cylinder. And our personal ATM accounts went plummeting down.

    Sandwich sweet from Bombay tiffins and thus the lunch.

    Dinner payasa was cancelled because there were worms in the raw material.

    And some eggs had to be thrown out because of bad quality. So we were giving out them very miserly. But guess what happened, in the end there were a lot of excess and nobody wanted to eat at all.

    Then, after witnessing previous prefects fighting with a worker about whether or not she was given one installment of her salary, I proceeded to making my favourite night tea. The old security who used to make it taught the new security how to make it and I watched over the process reassuring that if something goes wrong there are people around to help – the reassurance that makes a team of two better than two individuals.

  • OT & OPD

    I wanted to be a pilot once, because I thought it was the busiest multitasking job. Should thank my partial color blindness for distracting me from it because inside the Medical Officer inside the Out-Patient Department holds that record.

    He was attending phone calls, sending commands, instructing PGs, attesting certificates, examining patients and in between all that teaching us third term students – how pain in abdomen is the most common case sent to surgery OPD, how Upper Urinary Tract Infection appears as radiating pain from loin to groin, how carcinoma breast is immediately admitted, how difficulty in defecation is mostly due to fistula in ano (and we saw per rectal examination on the first day), how his guess of Helicobacter pylori infection was right about a PA, how inguinal lymph nodes swell in lower UTI…

    I texted my sister right after the class "excited like non-anesthetized nerves from a freshly cut limb"

    And then Operation theatre on Wednesday after Gandhi Jayanthi.
    Saw appendicectomy and hernioplasty. Skipped pharmacology class at 11 to see the latter through.
    How sutures are made, how to cut with the tip of the scissors (like my dad always used to say "surgeon’s tip"), how to support the scissors with the other hand so that the cut can be precise, the ovary, the spermatic cord, the iliac artery that was spared from being pierced, the mesh used to contain hernia within, the sac of hernia, the appendix, the windows in the mesogastrium (or whatever that’s called), everything, spinal anesthesia, normal anesthesia, fistulectomy, and a complicated surgery on the other table.

  • Faults that are Nobody’s

    More often than not in life things go wrong because of nobody’s fault.

    But the trouble is when we try to find someone to be blamed.

    With the realization that some shit happens because of cumulative errors that cannot be stashed upon a single person, comes the inner peace of not having to argue over split milk.

  • Are You Cool if You Perform Bad in Your Duties?

    It is not cool that you don’t touch your textbooks.

    Seriously.

    I’ve hundreds (literally) of friends who when asked how studies are say "Who cares?" maybe because they actually don’t care, or maybe just to appear cool.
    But it’s just painful. To think that not studying properly, having fun all the time, makes one cool in a degree college, is like thinking not practicing in the nets will make Sachin a cool cricketer. It’s just wrong. You’re cool when you do it all.

    You are cool when you play carroms till midnight and then learn till you sleep. You are cool when you text your girlfriend "I love you" and then read your books with the same amount of passion. You are cool when 5 or 10 years later you still remember what you study this year in your college. You are cool when you are the most awesome professional in your field inside a 10 mile radius. You are cool when you can stand up in an international crowd of colleagues and speak for 10 minutes without losing attention. You are cool when you just don’t give up your integrity and sincerity for the sake of running with the crowd.

    It might be something about our classrooms too. Maybe we do not have classrooms where active, interactive, and amazingly creative learning is promoted or encouraged. Maybe we do not have students who are willing to learn what they are not required to. Maybe we do not have down to earth professors.

    But that doesn’t prevent us from changing it all.

    We can direct our classroom story in any manner we find fitting.
    We can choose to have lively, enthusiastic, energetic, amazing, persevering, smart, creative characters in our story.

    Talk to the professor in the classroom, search all over the world for the derivation of that formula on the board, learn the nuances of your craft, embrace success, be willing to be a master in your art.

    And then they’ll tell you, you’re cool! Only that this time it’ll be honest.

  • What Ails Our Higher Education? Let’s Stop Blaming The System

    This post is intended to supplement the post of the same title in SVYM founder’s blog.

    "Simple living and high thinking" was Gandhiji’s motto.
    But most of the Indians have failed to imbibe that.
    And that’s indirectly led to all problems we are facing today.

    Education, from the elementary level, is failing to make children think high. That’s because the faculties, the teachers aren’t themselves thinking high. And that’s because the whole system is only very slowly changing.

    And where does that change come from? From people who think different, who go down untrodden paths, who communicate and exchange ideas with foreign cultures, who read books other than prescribed textbooks, who embrace the idea of change, and self improvement.

    It’s a positive cycle. We stop blaming the system, and improve ourselves. Slowly, the system begins to improve.

    And as a student who boastfully regards himself as having broken free from the rat race, I give you a few tips on where to begin.
    There’s actually just one tip.
    Use the internet. The world wide web.
    Read blogs, articles, newspapers, journals, magazines of different geographical regions.
    Learn about the culture, ideas, notions, and the system at other places.
    Find out interesting leads.
    Be willing to change.

    And to begin go to google.com (No, I am not paid by google for leading you to them)

    Go find out "how to win a nobel prize", "life at MIT", "buddhist philosophy", "barefoot running", "minimalism"

    You will soon run out of things to search for. But things keep popping up too.

    And while reading you’ll find out new books, blogs, websites, ideas, philosophies, games!, activities, organizations, mailing lists…
    Do not skip any. Follow them. Subscribe to blogs, add yourself to mailing lists, play games, do further searches on things.
    And you get more pages.
    More to read.
    More ideas.

    And that’s all you have to do.
    Slowly, your mind will begin to expand, to see alternate views, to discover solutions that never seemed to exist, to think in new patterns, to imagine, to create, to evolve.
    And then you can never go back.

  • Second year!

    Finally, college reopened on Monday.

    This year, there are four subjects to write exams in

    1. Pharmacology
    The introduction class of which I’m in, right now. All those tablets, starting with Paracetamol 😛
    Note: meghna’s mom is our ma’am in this department.

    2. Pathology
    No introduction class yet, dunno what it is about 😛

    3. Microbiology
    Bacteria, virus, a lot of identifications. This is gonna be like biochemistry.

    4. Forensic medicine
    The only subject whose textbook I’ve read already. Mostly legal. Rape, murder, accident, crime.

    Apart from these, we start learning other subjects too.

    Medicine
    Clinical medicine, going into wards,taking history from patients, getting to know diseases up close.

    Surgery
    To assure ourselves that we actually can go into the bodies of our live friends and relieve them.

    Preventive and social medicine
    Community medicine
    Epidemiology
    Call it whatever, this is supposed to be the sexiest department of ug. Going on field trips, interacting with communities.

    And I reached 5 days earlier than anybody else. :p

    “talked” to some juniors. (their classes started on August 6)
    Couldn’t find anyone of my type yet.

    Some other minor works.

    And then, it was Monday! Everyone was back. And bad news on day one. Madhura is getting transferred to Bangalore medical college (if that’s what she wishes). Also, some 7 new people are joining us.

    And first 65 of us started out with intensive coaching in medicine.
    The rest with surgery. The first week, as far as now, has been relaxing. No practical, no classes that needa be listened to, pretty much “honeymoon”.

    And I’m learning to speak Kannada, like I can use just Kannada among my friends, and they’ll understand me.

    Regarding textbooks, there is nothing to worry about for the time being. I’m not planning to buy any, as long as my laptop hard disk holds on.

    And waiting for that day when these boring blank blackboards will be sent to museums.

  • First Year Result

    Finally the day arrived.

    And I scraped the website using iMacros for firefox and data import into openoffice calc.

    Click here for the result.

    Sowmya S Aithal tops with 770

  • Best Case of Wrong Time Distribution

    Here’s a vacation that’s just crossed a month.

    It’s not absolutely boring. But it’s relatively boring to be at home.

    It’s right I get to do things that I love and don’t normally get to do, but even if you love sugar you’d not take in a bowl of sugar with water.

    Here is how a typical day is:
    Get up at 4 or 5. Switch on the computer, run the torrent client. Sleep.
    Get up at 7 or 8. Text everyone good morning, eat breakfast. Sleep.
    Get up at 10 or 11. Throw mud at the tv, randomly click links, clear the gmail inbox, facebook notifications, try to write for Learn Learnin’, give up and sleep.
    Get up at 1 or 2. Have lunch. Start reading a book. Sleep.
    Get up at 3 or 4. Have tea, start seriously thinking of how to change the world. Get inspired. Finish two more chapters of the book, take some push-ups and crunches and squats, publish a page on the learning site, read something thought provoking, think about it for half an hour, write a blog post, watch some Olympics (thank God, it’s over), talk to dad about the same God’s ill-definition, have dinner, try to continue the same productivity, but fail and hit the sack, but still chatting to all the people, whatsapp and nimbuzz and gtalk and the good old sms and even email, and at around 11 to 12, sleep without knowing where the phone was dropped.

    But at least there’s something to look forward to. When is the result being announced?!