Symposium – Battleground for Nerds

On 26^th and 27^th of April 2013, Manipal College of Dental Sciences (my college ) had its very first intra-college Symposium. For those of you who do not know what that means, I am referring to a Scientific Paper Presentation Competition. And boy, it was amazing!

As I told you all in my last post, I submitted my name for this event and was part of its Pre-clinical section, which was for the first and second year undergrads. In all there were 27 submissions in this section, which was more than double the total number of participants in the Clinical section.

Anyway, since there were so many of us, the coordinators divided the Preclinicals into three sessions – an afternoon session on the 26^th and the morning and afternoon sessions on 27^th.

I won’t bore you with the details but the program ran smoothly and we had some pretty incredible judges. And since the Clinical and Preclinical prizes were separate there was tremendous competition.

And here are the results:-

No, I did not win the Best Paper prize (there were three of them – one for each session in the Preclinicals), but guess who won a Consolation prize? Me.

The Return of the Stage Fright

I have officially returned to the business of giving myself heart attacks. What business might that be, you may ask. Well, it is none other than the business of public speaking… or in my case now, scientific presentations.

Yup, I am all geared up for my college’s first ever Symposium – A Scientific Paper Presentation Competition. And boy am I dying of tachycardia!

Before I tell you more about the presentation (which is on this Saturday, btw) let me tell you that I have been off the stage for the last five years. And getting back there after such a long time is indeed daunting and hard on your heart.

But the catalyst wasn’t some self-realization crap that made me go forward and put my name in the Symposium. Nope. It was the heart-warming appreciation I received after a small routine class presentation just a month back. And well, like they say, a little goes a long way…

So yes, I am doing this. I am putting myself out there for the first time in five years. And I am doing this because I want to do it and not because it was a compulsory class assignment or something my teacher forced me to do. 

The only problem with this entire premise is… will I be able to cram my ten minutes presentation into 8 mins? After all, stage fright will lengthen the “er” gaps.

Nevertheless I have my fingers crossed. 

-Ria

P.S. If my writing style feels a little off, please pardon me. Stringing words into a sentence is rather hard when your heart is trying to explode out of your chest. 

Secret to Happiness – To Each Their Own

Happiness is what the soul craves for. Happiness and the sense of fulfillment. And it is a rare human among us who actually feels happy every moment of every day.

Alas, I am not so spiritually advanced and still have a lot of goals to accomplish before I can be truly happy… if ever. But we all do have some things in our lives that delight us.

So today I have decided to talk about three things that always makes me shine like the sun:-

1. Reading Books

india calcutta bookstore (Photo credit: FriskoDude)

Reading is my life. I love it when I enter a bookstore and run my fingers along the colorful spines of the books in the shelves. I love it when I buy a new book and hear it whisper merrily when I turn its crisp pages. I love it when I raise it up to my nose and sniff at the delicate smell of bound paper and ink. I love it when I let the smooth words on the pages imprint themselves on my mind’s eye and play their wonderful symphony. I love it when

Fictional Pears: Hercule Poirot

Reblogged from Angry Pear:

Click here for more fictional pears!

To keep up with my one-post-a-day schedule, today I decided to scourge the internet and reblog for the first time ever. As expected, I dug up something truly hilarious.... or should I say pearlarious.

The Name Dilemma

Another post after another long wait… well, I keep surprising the readers, don’t I? Anyway, let me dive straight into the point — naming characters is hard. I am sure those of you who are parents would know what I am talking about.

The name has to be just right because if it isn’t the tides can turn on you and your character will be stuck with a crap name forever. And we all know what happens to people with crap names. They get bullied. Period.

Thankfully, after too many trips down Google’s Baby name’s pages and irritating my roommate as I bounced names off her every two seconds, I have named all my characters and they fit perfectly.

But that is not the hard part.