Need Is The Father Of Invention

Its as if some ad-film maker has read my blog. Remember my post about insurance ads? Well, I was watching TV that day and I saw an ad which reflected almost exactly how I felt about these ads. YouTube Link : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4az0SydydJE

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Another glorious first day in college, this being the first day of the sixth semester. Highlight of this semester is that we have one elective subject, which means we get to choose one subject from a list, which is not a very long one. We had two choices, one was Numerical Methods. Since it had the word 'Numerical' in it, I automatically chose the other option, which was Unconventional Machining Processes.

Though the title sounds a little sophisticated, the text book is only around 100 pages and that's something rare for an engineering student. The first unit was already covered in the first week, which means 20% of the subject was covered in 5 days. That's record time in college standards.

And the lecturer isn't a bad guy...if you can ignore his English. It was easy to determine his level when he said, "Need is the father of invention". For those who can't figure out what's wrong with what he said, the saying goes like "necessity is the mother of invention".

Everyone except my Heat and Mass Transfer professor claimed that their subject was very easy. If you'd paid attention while watching Vaaranam Aayiram, you might remember that even Surya had an arrear in Heat and Mass Transfer.

We didn't do much in most of the periods. Taking notes is strictly for problematic subjects and optional for the other subjects. Lectures for theory subjects were spent reading Chetan Bhagat novels (2 States is awesome) and partaking in recreational activities like Hangman and Bingo.

This semester also includes a Design and Fabrication Project for which we can spend 4 hours every week roaming around labs pretending that we're doing something important. There's also a Communications Skills Lab which includes watching movies like Battle Of Britain and The Pursuit Of Happyness. But the best time I spent in that lab was when I was told to pick a story at random from a list and read it. I got The Gift Of The Magi by O. Henry. It's one of my favourites because its about two people in love and to what extent they go to make each other happy (I'm not talking about boning). This story is a must read for hopeless romantics like me and for +2 students because its in their syllabus. Link to the story: http://www.manythings.org/voa/stories/The_Gift_of_the_Magi_-_By_O_Henry.html It also has audio.

On the overall, I think this was the best week of college so far, not because I did something cool, but I was happy without doing anything cool.

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Observant people might have noticed a new link in the sidebar called Date A Gadget. It's a new gadget review site which is maintained by one of my friends from high school who shares my fascination for Prince Of Persia, Gadgets and hot women. Since there is not much to blog about the Prince and since there are already too many blogs about hot women, he reviews gadgets. And he's not one of those fakers who take reviews from other website but he gets the actual gadgets and breaks down specs for mortals like us to understand. Check it out, the link is on the sidebar.

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This brings us to the announcement of the winner of the first contest ever held on The Open Book: one invite to Google Wave for the best comment! Now before I announce the winner, I would like to make one thing clear to you - my decision is final. And you can't question it. Actually you can, but I decide whether to answer it or not.

The criteria on which chose the best comment is...I'm not sure. The winner of last week is Mano, who was the only person of all the people who commented to have watched one movie that was on the list. Congratulations Mano...check your email in-box for your invite.

I've got plenty more invites and Google has charged me with the mission of inviting more people to Wave. I've got no contest this week but next week I'll have one and I'm planning to give away 5 invites. So leave a good contest idea in the comments and you might just get an invite.

Ciao.

Apparently it turns out that I had mistaken the Mano who comments with another Mano I know. So he got the invite while the winner Mano didn't. That problem is being sorted out.