Friday, February 23, 2007

Memoirs of ISC 2007 – Chemistry Practicals

Chem is tree. Ha Ha. Funny joke huh? Well ‘Chem Pracs’ was a joke, an annoying, half-funny joke.


There was nothing exciting about our car journey to school except that I forgot that it was a Friday and that there would be no buses back home. Shit. But Ali’s parents came to our rescue quite brilliantly, and transport wasn’t a problem. Also Shayaan cracked a very harmless joke about “not-asking-Romit-but-Shrivats-your-doubts” which brought out Ali’s protective colours. He snapped back at the tall 'pianist', and basically, Romit, that’s a sign that you are loved, despite everything. =)


Once we entered school, the same old same old remained the same old same old. Wise-cracks and nerve-releasing laughter rang all around. Ritesh’s “ten dirhams” was a constant amidst all this. Nobody was really revising, though everyone had “sheets” in their hands. The same old teacher-brief followed when Dr Khan enlightened us with his wisdom. We made our entry into our laboratories after a short and sweet Mr Bloud prayer.


I began my escapade with titration. Soon I, and well we, switched into the same old panic gear. The titration required our solutions, which were in the conical flask to be heated, and there where no flames in the physics lab. Screwed. We did have water baths though, but they weren’t really working with the flasks. We did try, and Basheer did almost burn his hand, but all we got for our efforts were broken flasks, exploding stoppers, toppling solutions and a big scare. We were definitely not ready for this. So the whole jing-bang of "authoritative figures" came into the room trying to rectify this problem, with each one trying to outsmart the other. Special cooking-stove-like structures were then brought in. The water baths were satisfyingly manipulated, and 25 minutes later, the titration experiment actually started making sense. But it didn’t need to make sense, because “pssst, 20.1” – go figure.


Organic was easy. We all know why – as Omar (yes Ali, your brother) said, Basheer Zindabad! But even besides him and his great services, it was indeed easy. As we prepared to dive into our mixture analysis, another “psssst…pass it on” occured. So, anyway, mixture analysis was a breeze. We did show all our confirmatory tests to the examiner, now didn’t we? Everyone came out of their respective labs happy, showering wedding congratulations to our man Basheer, and greeting their fellow compatriots with toothy victorious smiles. Everyone got everything. Yay!


Shrivats broke all records today. He asked for an extra booklet to supplement his 16 pages. But my sources say that he wanted to “re-write” the entire paper in thirty minutes because he has scratched something out somewhere. Now something like that confuses me - Should I increase his odds or decrease them? Govind, Bharath and Unmukt seemed un-distressed, so umm, their odds kinda remain the same, though I have reason to believe that Unmukt has more drive, but as I discussed with you Unmukt, there is a fine line between confidence and overconfidence. Ali is getting full as usual and he might actually get additional marks thanks to his seduction skills, Ritesh is doing “brilliantly”, Tejas actually got everything this time, so I think I need to cut him some slack and get rid of one of his zeros. Romit, Yuvraj, Ashiq and everyone else I can think of did well. The girls also seemed happy and the “external examiners” were just awesome. Dr Khan was so tensed, until the end, obviously.


One of the external invigilators, who happened to be some football coach of some school came to me in the middle my grade 12 board examination and whispered in my ear, “So you finally get the cup, hai?”


Anish and Ali couldn’t stop laughing during the car-ride home.


P.S. Odds for “Who Will Top?” as they currently stand:
Bharath 3:1
Shrivats: 3:1
Govind: 3.001:1
Unmukt: 3.5:1
Tejas: 780800:1

Current Investments: 0 – you cheap bastards.

17 comments:

Anonymous said...

im telling you man...romits going to top. hes been studying his ass off.
youll tie with him.
aaron will come second, and kill himself because hes been studying so much.
:P:P

ug said...

though rite now i think im at the very thick line between confident and extremely scared and depressed....so yea

oh and btw, if i'm not wrong, the odds in favour of should be the other way round (ie 1:3 and 1:4 etc) coz 3:1 means 75%, while 4:1 means 80%,unless u mean to say tejas has a probability of topping the boards of 780800/780801...in which case im soooooo screwed :P

ug said...

oh and whats the reason for this 'more drive' :S.....enlighten me please :P

anish said...

the odds thing - well i followed gulf news there..they gave india the odds of winning the world cup as 8:1...and not 1:8.... =S!

and enlightenment later..

Anonymous said...

listen,

All I said was for the doubt about the compound - "ask Shrivats, not Romit". it really has really been bloated it outta proportion...

BTW - good luck to all Comp students

Anonymous said...

heloooooooo

wad a practical:S:S!...conical flasks toppinling onto each other....stoppers whizzzing around the room.... and i initally got a titre value of 0.1!!!!!!

yeah anish so did u:P:P...nd we finally resorted to vigourous shaking to get rid of it!

tht was the football coach of our own al warqua u jackass....when we entered he was like ehaa all the footballers r entering together:S
i assume he meant to be funny

ALI YOU FINISHED CHEMISTRY (THEROY) PORTION 4 times!!!1...whts wrong widd uuuuu....asss....romit ..dont u think alis topping this time?

oh i shall invest 100 dhs on ALI!!..but since the odds are 1:1 then it makes no sense:P!!!

- gomezzzzz

ps - teajas u left ur test tube in my pocket....if u still want it..it will be in the big garbage bin in the sand parking area outside my building:D

Anonymous said...

im sure ali seduced the teacher in the phy6 lab...they seem to hav a lot in common (sizewise)...:D....(no dissrespect...shes a good examiner)

or was it anju again?

ha!

Ritesh said...

Chemistry Practicals was brilliant!!
A nice way to end all chemical locha(practically speaking) for life.
I came home and burnt all the experiment sheets and my answr scripts of the past!!! It was fun!!!!
Ok and now i come to the point--EVERYONE HAS TO PAY ME DHS 10 FOR THE FAREWELL GIFT WE GAVE TO MHS. ALI YOU BETTER PAY...OR I'LL ******* YOU. AND ANISH YOU TOO PAY AND NOT IN CHILLARS..PLS...

ALL WILL PAY SOON!! THAT'S AN ORDER!!

HEAD BOY
MATLANI

Unknown said...

My honour's besmirched. It was fine, the exam that is, I just had a few white ink issues which mean that I went one page over 16.

Govind said...

My only question .... if the board exam was always gonna be like this WHY THE HECK DID THEY MAKE US SUFFER FOR THE LAST SIX EXAMS?

Anyway, those who did salt analysis first, you should have seen Bharath ... he SMELT the salt and identified an ion or two ... by the time I had written my preliminary analysis, the geek was smiling with thick yellow and dirty white precipitates!!

Thanks Shayaan ... I/we need it - comp practs = SCREEEEED!!
(SERIOUSLY)

Anonymous said...

anish man..all i can say is that...i love you..

ug said...

yea i guess ur right about the odds...theyre following the same thing for the oscars....

ink said...

You are writing great stuff school boy, sometime later (may be some years) you will come back and be amused by what you wrote. These are incidental details one writes for memory's sake...and fun too!
Cheers

anish said...

Thanks ink! And yeah, the purpose of these intricate details is largely for sustaining a memory, thus the title, "Memoirs of the ISC" =)

Anonymous said...

Odd's work like this:

8:1 means you get 8 times your original investment. So Invest 100 bucks on India at the WC,you get 800 and your original deposit back. It does NOT mean we have a 8/9 chance of winning it:)

anish said...

Thanks anon! =)

Will make appropriate changes.

Anonymous said...

t's such a great site. fanciful, extraordinarily intriguing!!!

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