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Well, most of it at least!
And I do have some idea of the problem.

DISCLAIMER

I have NO IDEA why the article below is behaving so erratically. In case you do, please help me out......

My article for Insti Film Fest Award-winning newsletter

A Fresh Breeze

Lack of enthusiasm among junta evident

An overview

The opening ceremony of Umang ’08 was held on January 19, in the Auditorium. The much- awaited film festival, was a welcome break in the hot and tedious academic schedule.

As the compere pointed out at the opening ceremony, Umang is no longer just about films. It helps integrate print and visual media into the culture of IITK. This is also emphasized by the renaming of the Students Film Society to Films and Media Council. In this aspect, this year’s Umang has been more successful than ever before. This was, of course, evident in the number and range of new competitions added to the festival.

Major Attractions

This time round, apart from normal events like film-making (and ad-making) and Movie-based Treasure Hunt, Umang had competitions based on other media elements as well.

An extremely novel set of events was organized this year for the first time ever, by Vox Populi. Prominent among these was Expose, an investigative journalism contest.

An animation competition Animaz had three events to offer which involved the utilisation of software like Flash, Photoshop and 3ds Max.

Umang had a Photography competition as well. Under the banner of Prathibimb, three novel Photography contests were held. In Ek Hi Rastha, teams were supposed to follow a certain pre-defined path on campus and take photos on the way and finally, submit ten of them. The best compilation wins. In Chitrakatha, participants had to depict a whole story using a maximum of fifteen photographs with captions. Judging criteria was based on composition of the photographs and overall impact of the collection. In Capture the Caption, ten unique captions were given, and participants had to take suitable snaps fitting each of the captions. There were interesting captions like Taare Zameen Par, Made for each other, Pursuit of Happiness, etc.

Other novelties introduced this time were simultaneous screening of movies in three separate locations namely the Main Auditorium, Outreach and Open Air Theatre in Audi grounds. Before the festival, an online polling was held with a long list of movies, seeking opinion from the junta regarding screening, this resulted in a lot of popular movies being screened.

Given these, it is extremely sad that the participation in Umang (except the audience for the movies) was extremely limited, with only one single entry being received in most events.

Opening Ceremony

Another result of the same was that the so-called opening ceremony of Umang ’08, held on January 19, in the Auditorium, and supposed to kick-start Umang with a bang, (though many didn’t understand why an occasion half-way into the event is called the Opening ceremony) , was quite low-key. However, some surprised members of the junta mentioned, when asked to comment on the same, that no one attends an film festival’s opening ceremony if you have to wait for an hour with nothing to do just to see someone light a lamp and see ‘a new concept under development’.

The chief guests at the event were Dr. Chandraprakash Dwivedi, writer, director and actor of Chanakya (TV series 1990) ( acclaimed to be the best ever Indian TV series by the critics) and director of the monumental film Pinjar and Mr. Atul Tiwari, writer of Mission Kashmir, Bose - The Forgotten Hero, apart from the other guests in campus for the other events of Umang (namely Ms. Jabeen Merchant, famous film editor, Sunil Shanbagh, eminent Documentary Maker, and Mr. Avinash Deshpande, renowned freelance filmmaker) and the DOSA. The Deputy Director was unable to attend the event due to time constraints, and its late start.

The compere seemed pretty confused. One of the most interesting moments of the evening was when he showed the deficit of info passed on to him by requesting ‘Mr. Jabeen Merchant’ to come up onto the stage. Ms. Jabeen, however, just laughed and shrugged it off. However, later in the evening, he was complimented by Mr. Tiwari on his voice.

All in all, Umang was a fresh breeze, bringing with it the joy of creation, and also pure and simple fun.

A workshop experience

TA Lab ki kahaaniyaan Part I


I'm back home (some would call that a hostel room; 153/3, IIT Kanpur, to be precise) after another tiring afternoon at the MME lab. Well, of course, enough rest has gone in between to give me the energy to write this, but essentially I'm still not in full form.

Well, this section of the TA201 course (in case you're wondering, that's Technical Arts) is essentially tiring. In the ME Lab at least, the most tiring thing you do is just stand around pulling levers and turning wheels for three hours. By contrast, in MME lab, there are far fewer machines. Here, work rules.

Today, we were supposed to do forging (for the uninitiated, thats when you beat the hell out of a really hot piece of metal to get it into a shape you like). Well, we were paired off, and then work began. It was fun all right, but Boy, Oh Boy!, was it tiring, or what? We were supposed to make a chisel. Guess we all did sort of get it right! But I doubt that chisel would ever cut anything!

One guy was supposed to hold the metal with tongs, while the other did the hammering. I did the hammering most of the time, but I found that neither job was easy. The one holding the metal would get a jolt each time the metal made contact. A really bone-wracking, nerve- jangling jolt. And as for the hammering, well, suffice it to say that I fear there would be a few (ahem) not so (physically) well-endowed fellows who probably won't be able to even lift the ten-pound weight and swing it properly. Of course, the hammer rebounding was an ever-present danger. It nearly banged my head (and my partner's too) quite a few times....

Well, so we shaped it, cut off the edge to make it a straight edge, and then used the grinding wheel to sharpen the tip. Oh well, my improper lunch (if you are a college student, and probably even otherwise, you know what mess food is like) only complicated matters.

Well, so whats over is over. I now look forward with dread to the day it will be our lab turn to do arc welding. May the force be with me then.... Right now, I am just looking forward to a good night's sleep.

P.S.

Thought I would leave that old post as it is! Noble ideals are good to be remembered; even dead aims, u know!
Well then, bye for now!
Be back with more soon!

Your friendly e-neighborhood sophomore.

Back in action!

Whew!

That was some layoff! Pretty eventful as well! Got into a lot of trouble, mainly in acads.....

Well, gotta make up for all that..... Hope regular blogging will help make me better at managing time..... Or is this fated to go down the drain as well?

Let's see.

So here's to a sem even more eventful than the last two, one I gotta do well in.
Cheerio!

Intro

I began my blogging life long, long ago............................
In fact, a very long time ago......................................
Hold on! It wasn't as far back as that!
It definitely was after I was born!
Well, I guess its been a couple of years. Maybe more.
But that's a dark past, filled with many an hour wasted uselessly..........
Hence, no crumb of that remains.........
I begin with a clean slate.............

So, here goes:
I'm Mrithyunjayan, and I am a student of IIT, Kanpur. I am a physics buff, and hence life finds me here, doing the first year of my integrated M.Sc. course. I am a true bookworm, and don't care much about the space-time around me, so long as I've got a good book. I also have a fancy for writing (If you'd like to, check out my blog for some poem that i might upload). I am also a net freak, and spend hours surfing the net. I am also fond of gaming, especially strategy games. I am also an avid quizzer, and attend all quizzes that I can. I am interested in Elocution, Debating, etc.

So, think you like me? Just drop by my Orkut account and say hi!. Try searching for Mrithyunjayan Nilayangode. Or just leave a comment, and I'll get back to you.......

Well, so hope to see you here often....... Cya!