Examophobia

Today is final year Math exam. The final paper of the whole 4 years. I woke up late in the morning to find out I haven't been preparing well. I depended on the first few hours of the final day to top up myself with formulas, but then, I got up stinkingly late.

I have a bus to catch in few minutes. The gap between the exams were way too much, such that I even forgot if I still used the college bus. If it was the public bus, I am in a much messier situation.

I had to get ready very quickly. Taking bath is "not" mandatory during exams. Got out of the bed, brushed in 3 secs, washed my face, finished my morning routine and was searching for some pressed cloths. None were in my cupboard. My brother was still asleep. Searched his cupboard to find a neatly pressed t-shirt. Pulled out a jean(who presses them anyways) from my cupboard and got ready.

Now I have this bus situation to solve. But I anyway called my friend who goes to college by car. He was the one almost responsible for this situation. Me and this friend of mine had a race on how many Movies we could finish watching "before" the exams are over.

When he reached, I was pretty sure he lost the movie race. But he was decently prepared for the exam. I was in a state of panic. Its a hour ride to the college. I made him tell what ever things he had prepared. Getting taught by someone is more effective than reading yourself, especially, just before writing the exam. This as well did not make much difference. He was a bad teacher and I was a very bad listener!

We reached the college. Many noticed I hadn't taken bath that day, assuming I did not waste a single minute. Only I know how badly I had prepared. No arrears, except for the final paper. Damn! Who will hire me now?! Apart from these, there were many other things running in my mind. Including the "horse head" scene from The Godfather, "Say what" scene from Pulp fiction, the office scene from Fight Club etc.

We are now sitting in the exam room. To make things worse, we had the toughest invigilator known to me, my mom!

Thats when I realized I was sleeping my ass off, in the middle of Sunday! Dreams can be lethal!

We never had a Math paper after first year. I did not travel in college bus after first year. We were never allowed to bring bikes or cars to college nor wear t-shirts. And I never used to watch that many movies during college days. Most importantly, I never use to miss my bath :) Missed my bus a plenty times though! Even though many facts weren't right, the feeling about the exams were.

Waking up after making a fool of myself in my dream, I realized I left my shoes in the terrace with the rain pouring in! I had asked my mom to wake me up if it rains, which she conveniently forgot.

It was while picking up the shoes I realized what a nightmare the exams used to be. If not for these stupid exams, I would love to go to college again!

p.s:

I was thinking about the title for this post and came up with Examophobia. When I googled about it, there really is a wiki for it :)

Blue Crossed...

I always had a high value for Blue Cross of India, till tonight. What most of our area people had watched few minutes back, was not totally un-Indian way of dealing with animals, but it was totally inhumane.

One cow had escaped from its herd and ran straight in to my neighboring apartment. About 15 boys ranging from 7 to 20yr old came hunting for the cow, equipped with stones and ropes. Why stones? you may ask. The cow was supposedly caught from some forest, possibly for slaughter and it ran away from its certain death to finally get caught. They wanted the cow dead or alive and when they took it, its was some where in-between both. That answers why the stones.

Seeing a large crowd, the cow was naturally terrified and was attacking what ever it saw, including the neighbors gate. Seeing the terrified cow, the boys got terrified and attacked the cow. My dad, to some extent controlled them from both terrifying the cow and attacking it, till they caught it of course.

After some 30 minutes of drama, they finally caught the cow. But the cow did not want to give up. It was jumping its ass off. To control the jumping cow, the boys used all the ropes they had and tied every movable part of the cow. They in-fact bundled it in such a way that they can courier it to some other place. It was no more like a living thing, it was more of a parcel.

It was now I decided to call the Blue Cross, supposedly the only Animal lovers of our Country. I knew it was already late, but I also knew they had to wait for some transport to take back their hunt, which kind of bought me some time.

Blue Cross had two numbers in their site, which I tried repeatedly for few minutes. Finally one person answered the call. I explained him the situation. After hearing the whole story, he said, I will have to call the police station. I was really shocked. I then asked him what for you guys are there. For which he said, they only help animals that are hurt(and that too if the owner is around). What the hell do they call the animal which is tied up like a bundled heap of leather? I finally yelled at him and replaced the receiver.

Meanwhile their transport arrived to pick up their hunt and they left as a happy bunch. Humans cannot curb their love for meat, but there are many civilized way of feeding their desire. Are we civilized? asks Blue Cross. Are you worth your salt, asks me back to them.

p.s: Lesson learnt is, if something like this ever happens again, call the nearest Police station(never got through 100 though) and register a complaint. But I can be sure of one thing. The cops will arrive just in time to question you, not to save the animal from its fate. That's how fast they can act.

On a typical rainy day in Chennai...

Like any other day, I woke up around 5.30 in the morning. There was a light drizzle. Again like any other day, I got myself ready to hit the gym. The light drizzle transformed itself to a mild rain. And, the rain to heavy rain by around 7 a.m. Cursing myself for not owning a car(I always told myself, owning a car in Chennai is like owning a Ship in Rajastan...no point!), I waited for the rain to stop, at least till I reach the gym. Ten minutes is all I need to reach the gym.

Loosing all my hope, called up my partner and told I wont be making it on time and asked him to carry on. Suddenly the rain almost came to a screeching halt. There was still a mild drizzle. But I can still make it to gym with my Jerkin on. It was still drizzling and I was rushing my way down to gym. I was almost half way through, the wrath of rain was upon me again. It was like rain missed to see me for five odd minutes or...or rain laid a perfect "trap" for me and I fell hard on it with my face first!

I was now totally drenched in rain. Jerkin on me was not of much help. I had no option to head back home. Rain won the first round! I told myself, I should not let rain win the second round. Which is, on my way to Office. There are two ways to prevent this. One is the easy way. Take the day off. Other is wait for the rain to stop and head to office.

I was already considering the easy way out. I still had few pages left on the book I was reading. A rainy day is perfect for the thrilling climax. And, there are quite a few movies, waiting for me to watch! Now came the reality, banging my head like a bolt! I have this call today. Not today of all days. I really have to be in Office. Then I said to myself, "cancel the damn call"....then again I can't, its yesterdays call!! I then realized, any day, its a bad idea to postpone a call!

Before I made up my mind, it stopped raining. It was not even drizzling. Sun was peaking out. There is now the second option, the only option. Escaping the rain is the ulterior motto! So had a quick bath and a quicker breakfast and left for office.

It was long since I have started to office by 9 am. I assumed the roads will be jam packed. To my surprise, it wasn't that bad....till I reached Guindy! I could see the densely packed vehicles before even reaching the Kathipara junction. My bad, I should have taken the Saidapet route. Again, always the other side is greener. It took 20 odd minutes to reach the other end of the bridge.

By now, it was like its going to start all over again! Clouds gathered. It got cold again. It became evident its going to start pouring any minute now. I thought, its always a loosing game with rain! I almost reached office, when it started to drizzle again. This time, I knew I could make it to office without getting too wet. It drizzled for few minutes and it stopped. This time for good. But the time I reached office, it as sunny all over again.

After reaching my desk, I realized, So much for the rain that shows up once in a blue moon! I felt really bad for trying to escape the rain. I wish it rains more here in Chennai. Any day, pouring rain is always better than scorching sun!

Railway Gate

Few days back, I happened to pass through Pallavaram Railway level crossing. While returning back, the gate was closed, obviously because few trains were suppose to pass through. I agree its kind of a lengthy wait(like around 15 minutes). But to my surprise, only two of us in two wheelers(along with many four wheelers) were waiting for the gate to open. Others just used the gap between the gate to pass through.

If the gap between the gate was sufficient enough for cars to pass through, I guess there wouldn't be any cars waiting for the signal either. And if we notice the ones passing through the Railway crossing, most were well educated(probably software engineers), family guys picking up their kids from school, college students and women with small kids in their hands. Many others were crossing while talking in their mobile or head set in their ears. Some even braved the trains seconds before the train sped its way through the tracks.

One thing that beats me is, whats the big hurry? What are we gaining by saving that 15 minutes of our lives through actually risking it? Nothing! But we Indians still do it.

One of my friend met with an accident trying to cross a Railway level crossing few months back. He got knocked down by the train and left with multiple fractures in his shoulder and arms. Hes almost recovered now after three months of rest(which includes one month of total bed rest). He probably tried to save 15 minutes and lost 3 months of his life(leave alone the monetary loss) .

Many unfortunate(or should I say fortunate?) people end up loosing their life, like one of my relatives. He got ran over by the train and he was just in his twenties when this happened!

Even though the number of accidents in the Railway crossing is way too less compared to the accidents happening on roads, its probably one of the stupidest ways to die!

One day, the driver of the cab I had taken told, "this is India and it will never change", when we saw few reckless drivings and signal jumping. Probably, India with people having such a mentality will never ever change. We just will have to live through it.

Auto Replay for YouTube: Firefox Addon

YouTube definitely is an awesome site with good usability and stuff. One thing that i really miss(ed) was a simple "auto replay button". I for once got really needy of such a feature and even tweeted about it. One of my friend in twitter asked me to try writing an add-on for the same and here it is.


Why is such a feature even needed?

Some like me, when stumbled upon an awesome song(like Handlebars by Flobots or Viva la Vida by Coldplay), would really want to hear it more than once. And in YouTube without an Auto replay button, its really a pain.

I had bookmarked the YouTube Chromeless JavaScript API reference long time back that came real handy today. I was able to finish the add-on in no time with these simple APIs.

Install your copy from here. As always, report any bugs/issues here. Feature requests are always welcome!

ps: You don't need a mozilla account anymore to install the experimental add-ons. You just need to check the "Let me install this experimental add-on" checkbox and carry on with your installation.

Update 0.0.4: Added options to choose the portion of the video to be auto replayed. [Recommended install]