Thanks to my college schedule and early lectures, I haven’t been able to follow the news off late. The only resource from where I get news nowadays is an RSS Feed supplied by the BBC that I read in the train. (FYI, TOI Feed sucks)

A few days back I happened to have the time to read a newspaper and I came across a tiny article in Mumbai Mirror where they mentioned that a particular college would be fining a student Rs. 1000 /- if he was caught eating in the classroom. Then they asked several professors and other random people about their thoughts and each and every one of them was only against the high fine amount.

If this rule existed in college, I’d be fined a lot more than the annual fees of the college.
Doesn’t anyone realize that the problem is about the fine itself, not the amount.

What inconvenience does a student cause anyway when he/she eats in class? It’s such a trivial matter that simply asking the student to stop eating will solve the problem. Why is there a need to fine students?

A study conducted by a university years ago concurred with the fact that humans can imbibe more information after they’ve had their meals and when they’re having their meals.

Now you might state that if students can learn more after meals, why can’t they eat during the lunch break? Have you seen our effed up schedule? We have lectures starting from 7.30 am which means that most students don’t have a proper breakfast and we have our lunch break at 12 or 1pm. It’s easy to bear with attend the lectures before 10/11, but then it gets really uneasy and everyone tends to (or in most cases, they really do) sleep.

I feel the same way too and I have the option of either playing by the rules, understand nothing in class and having a nice sleep OR have a nice snack, understand something in class and stay awake for the entire duration of the lecture. I like to go home everyday learning something new, so my choice was fairly easy. The rest of the class on the other hand, looks at me in envy; wishing they could eat in class too but they don’t and learn nothing in the process.

I found this quote in a Quotation compilation in a book-store which said

"You gotta eat something if you wanna learn something! Eat nothing and you Learn Nothing." – Dr. Spix de Truth, Dept. of Nutrition (1967)

You can’t really argue with that. How can you just put a student in class for an hour letting him starve his ass off and still expect him to learn and score?

Kudos to the ’educationalist’ who came up with this brilliant idea of having an additional source of income for the college.

Luckily for us, this ’rule’ hasn’t interested the college authorities. (yet)

P.S: If you know which college started imposing the fines, please post a comment as I’d love to know. I’d also like to read your views on the subject.

Well today started out as usual, with the prof not turning up for the first lecture and all…and as we were standing outside chatting, Sanchit comes up to me and shows me a pic of the new Xaviers signboard put up outside the college and there is absolutely no way of toning down my outburst to ‘Javiers Abinalayatray’ written boldly across it…IN MARATHI!!! I was like, “What the bloody **** is going on???”

Alright, lets calm down and look at what’s happening here.I’ll try to refrain from discussing the arse right now who is responsible for the backward ‘progress’ that Mumbai is making.

But look at it rationally…marathi signboards are meant for people who cant read english right? Now anyone who is supposed to set foot in this building should know enough of it to read the name of the college written in english.In other words, for anyone who is english illiterate, the existense of the college is irrelevent to them! Makes sense?
Then what on earth may I ask is the purpose of that signboard? Why is the college bending to the whim and fancy of a petty, intellectually deprived, irrational, narcissistic, malevolant, racist, apatriotic, violence loving, bullying, control freak? I’m sorry, but I can hardly contain myself now…
What bothers me is not the imposition of a regional language. What makes my jaw drop is that in a democracy like India, this maniac can hold the city at ransom and demand anything his semi-retarded brain cooks up and the we have no choice but to abide by these rules or risk inviting the wrath of his followers.
I mean seriously, havent we had enough of it already? Are we gonna sit back and watch this guy run the city like this? How much of his bullshit are we gonna take before we’ve decided that he’s crossed the line? If u ask me, he had crossed it a long time ago.

P.S. Unfortunately, since I’m blogging from my cellphone, I cant upload pics. But I’m sure Sanchit will be glad to oblige…

The College needs you to donate generously towards something it urgently needs, a lawn mower.

Does it sound stupid or make you say "duh!!!" everytime you read that?

Well, let’s start with why XIE needs lawn mowers.

Currently, XIE employs a few people to manually cut the grass using grass pruners (read: scissors). You can imagine how much time it would take to cut all the grass of our ground by hand. In fact the situation is so bad that by the time the workers cut one patch and move to the next, the previously cut patch grows back.

Don’t believe it?

(Click each Image for a larger view)

You can imagine how frustrating it must be for these guys who slog their asses off cutting the grass only to realize that their efforts were fruitless. And in the end, they’ll get chewed out by their boss, lose their jobs and then XIE will hire new pruners and the cycle continues.

Why can’t XIE invest in two lawn mowers? How much do they cost anyway? Even if it does burn a hole in the pocket, with the amount of donations XIE takes from most of its students, we can safely assume that the XIE administration has pants made from asbestos.

A lawn mower would cut the grass much faster, require a lot less effort from the person using it, makes the grass a lot easier to maintain and we can finally have levelled grass throughout the ground.

With the pros royally outnumbering the cons, I really don’t see why XIE is apprehensive of making this investment.

Whatever be the reason, XIE needs help. Please donate generously by addressing a cheque to "The Lawn Mower Fund, Xavier Institute of Mahim, Mumbai" and submit it to the College office as soon as possible.

(Click to open the Image)

It’s kinda hard to concentrate on the board when there’s a tubelight that’s just waiting to fall on the professor. As you can notice, almost everybody is looking at the tubelight instead of the board.

Let’s hope they fix the tubelight in the tutorial room before it’s too late