A colleague of mine bullied us into sharing five embarrassing experiences for a New Year event. I thought I might as well share them publicly – so here they are:
1. When I first tasted a martini (at the kitchen counter of my aunt’s house in San Francisco), I loved it. I told my aunt, “This is so amazing! I did not know alcohol tasted so good.”
She looked at me and said, “You fool, that is the syrup for the martini.”
2. The first time I had Sushi, I ate wasabi thinking it was coriander chutney. And I nearly died.
3. When going to IIT Kanpur from Allahabad, after three hours on the train, I asked a guy sitting near me, “When will the train reach Kanpur?”
He said, “Kanpur? No, this is going to Jhansi.”
4. During my thermodynamics course at IITK, I had to buy a steam table. The proper one in SI units cost 10 rupees. But they had a cheaper one in Foot, Pound, Second (FPS) system, that cost 3.5 rupees.
To save Rs 6.50, I bought the cheaper one thinking, “What’s the difference? I will use the calculator to convert the FPS values into SI.”
Needless to say, I nearly failed that course.
5. In my very first quiz at IIT, in my favorite subject, I got a zero. Thank you, Prof Amitabha Ghosh! That was the Universe telling me to leave but I did not listen.
And for the next 4 years, the same high-performance continued.
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So what is the lesson from all this? There is no lesson 🙂
Sorry, I wasted your time. Won’t do it again – I promise.
– Rajan
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