Looking back
Looking back, 2007 been one hell of an eventful year.

This was the year during which my four year holiday called 'engineering' ended. It was hard to bid adieu to the fun that was life in college. I'll forever miss some of the great friends I had there.

And this was the year in which I started my job and got my first salary. The training[that am currently undergoing] in infosys more than made up for the sadness I had in missing college life. The last 2 months here been really rocking with many of my old college friends and new ones that I met here.

The time I spent with my band 'Stoneage' was also great with some memorable onstage performances and some good original music. Again it was hard to say goodbye to the rocking life that I was having with this band. It was another lesson of life that U cannot have all the good things in life together. You have to sacrifice something to win something else. Still I hope to rejoin the band and have some more shows with them in the future.

This was the year in which I spent a mammoth amount of time on one of pet hobbies-movie watching. The 4 month vacation I had between the end of my exams and the starting of the job training was spent mostly in watching movies,sometimes even 3 per day. I discovered some great classics and bowed my head in tribute to masters like Satyajit ray,Ingmar bergman,Akira Kurasowa. It was a virtual download cum movie watching fest at home considering the sheer volume of dvd rips I downloaded and watched with sheer pleasure. This might not make the people who are obsessed with policies and values happy, but I can't help it. Its fitting that my movie watching this year was topped with one of the best works I've seen from India in recent times, 'Taare Zameen Par'. Its one film which made me think, made me laugh, made me cry and most of all, inspired me. It was the same kind of feeling that I had after watching 'Pursuit of happyness'. I miss the daily movies after coming here but I hope to restart it after I get my laptop. And then hopefully I'll reach my goal of owning and watching all the movies in the IMDB top 250 movies of alltime list. Now my number stands at 79 out of 250.

But besides all this, there are somethings that remained the same as before. And the number one in that list is 'punctuality'. I've never been known for my punctuality. I been a perennial late comer in school and a regular bunker in college. My attendance percentage of 15 in the final semesters speaks volumes for that. Its only because of my kind faculty head that I was able to appear for the exams. I thought I'll become punctual once I start working. No,It didn't happen. I scored a hat-trick of latecomings in Infosys training and was greeted with the training faculty's "please come in the afternoon" dialogue many times. Then there are these old habits of never listening in the class, writing poems in the class and studying just the day before the exam. One more thing will remain the same-I'll continue my evergreen resolution of not taking any resolutions this new year also. And there are somethings that I haven't mentioned in this, somethings that has made me sad. But I don't want others to read the sad stories of my life. Radiate happiness and be a black hole to the sorrows, thats my principle.

So its time to wind up for the year.
Wish you all a prosperous and happy[thats the important point] 2008...

PS-2007 ended with a bang today afternoon with a mail from the HR to meet her. It was regarding me and my friend's late coming to the campus last week. The 9:30pm time limit was set considering the safety of employees. But punishing the same employees for a slight lapse is a little too hard on them. Inspite of having a solid reason, we were fined 500rs and a warning that we'll be expelled from the campus if we repeat the same. These are the times which make me think we are considered just as some numbers in the employee roll call, not humans. Anyway, a nice way to end a great year. As usual, I don't have any regrets about what I did or what I did not do. Am happy as ever about my existence. Am thankful to God as I live to savour another year full of glorious uncertainities.

your crusader praveen

MASHIN FALT

'Flexibility' is a word we associate mostly with the english language. There are so many brands of english around the world. Sometimes, even the British guys do have a hard time understanding some of these exotic brands. In the name of flexibility, the language has been subjected to gangrape,gruesome murder and sometimes re-birth.

But even this knowledge of the language's flexibility didn't prepare me to handle the shock of reading one simple sentence some days back. We have this habit of drinking Capuccino every night at 12 30 from the coffee day at FC3. But this special day, we were greeted by a big banner that read

"Hot bewerage not available. MASHIN FALT".
Hope all of u understood what they meant.

your crusader praveen