Awesomeness

I always used to think that a placement must be a paradigm-shifting experience, an event which would totally change the outlook of a person. Mine is not really a placement, maybe that’s why I don’t feel radically different. But one thing is for sure: my self-belief has returned. I have started dreaming again.

The Juniper induced high continued through the weekend. I (sub)consciously dropped all my immediate study plans. A natural consequence of securing the internship, perhaps.

Time seemed to slow down. I had a tremendous positive energy within me. After a long time I wanted to do things. I felt awesome! But of course, I am a lazy guy. I knew it would be some time before I would actually do anything, so I just relaxed and lazed around, trying to retain the positivity.

I had dinner with some of my closest friends at The Baradari Palace, a heritage hotel in Patiala. It was awesome. We got quite late while returning, so the hostel’s main entrance was closed. We could either jump over a railing and enter, or walk around the hostel and use the side entrance. Of course, we chose to jump. This led to one of the funniest moments in recent memory.

Kishore: Yaar, guard aa jayega.. [The guard will spot us]
Nitin: Arey, toh kya ho gaya? Guard se darrta hai kya? [So what? Are you afraid of the guard or what?]
Nitin: [shouting at the top of his voice] GUARD! HUM TAAP RAHE HAIN! [Guard, we’re jumping over the railing]

All of us burst out laughing. It took us quite a while to stop. And no, the guard didn’t come :P.

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The week was passing in a lazy and mundane manner. I was attending as many classes as I could (without taking in a word the teachers said). I spent most of my free time trying to decide what to do, or lying on my bed.

On Monday evening, we had a pizza party in celebration of Lovneet’s placement. Placing the order with Dominos was an interesting exercise. We broke up the order into three parts to ensure that we would be eligible for the 30 minute guarantee, but alas the delivery was on time :P.

On Tuesday, a few friends and I decided that we would give the CCNA Module 3 exams two days later. Of course, we didn’t LOL. But yeah, that’s one thing on my to-do list which I’ll get to quite soon.

Finally things got exciting on Wednesday. It was Pertesh’s birthday, and he came to Patiala to give us a treat (how nice of him)! He had an eye infection, so his right eye was covered with medical cotton and he wore dark sunglasses. Everyone kept looking at him funnily. He was asked “What happened?!” at least 20 times in front of me. Despite his best efforts, he hadn’t able to find a pirate style eye-patch anywhere. LOL.

That evening everyone else was busy with something else, so it was just me and Pertesh. Conversation –

Pertesh: Lets go play Xbox.
Pulkit: [excited] What? Where?
Pertesh: What, you don’t know? There’s an arcade on the Tagore road.
Pulkit: How could I not know this?
Pertesh: Haan, nalayak [Yes, idiot]. Tujhe 3 saal ho gaye yahan, aur itna nahi pata? Humne toh first year me hi dhoond liya tha [You’ve been here for 3 years, and you don’t know about the arcade? We found it in our first year itself!].
Pulkit: [really excited now]Let’s go! Let’s go!

So, we went. At first, we weren’t able to find it. “It may have closed down,” Pertesh said. But eventually, we did find it. Three years I’d been in Patiala, and never before had I been so excited about something. How could I not know about this place?! The place was basically a small room with around 15 screens and consoles somehow crammed into it, along with a fridge full of cokes. We played FIFA Street 3 for an hour. It was AWESOME! When we left, I vowed to come back again. Gunjeet and Karan joined us for dinner, which was awesome too.

Whenever I go out with Pertesh, we take a walk through the campus and visit the Peer Baba shrine on the road behind the girls’ hostels. It was very nice doing that again after such a long time.

That night we watched ‘The School of Rock’, the first episode of ‘Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood’, and the most awesome ‘How I Met Your Mother’ of all time, ‘The Playbook’. It was almost 4 AM by the time I finally slept. Awesome day. (I noticed that I use ‘awesome’ a lot. Can’t help it, after all, I’m awesome :P)

This was the first of three nights in a row when I had something with alcohol in it, but more on that later. Ciao!