Travel blog

I finally got down to starting my travel blog
http://www.riaanrove.blogspot.in/
It isnt complete - just 6 posts so far..hope you enjoy it...

The day after yesterday !

So apparently there is a 2012 woody impersonator on the loose...

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/05/22/us-apocalypse-prediction-idUSTRE74I3KS20110522

...and with Britney Spears’ “Till the world ends” making the charts across the world, one wonders what got this into the 89 year old’s head...or was it the other way around?!

But honestly, this isn’t the first proclamation of the ‘end of the world’ or the apocalypse! And while each time the world shudders at the thought of vanishing into the thin air or perhaps crumbling into dust, Ramlal can’t help but wonder how the close to 7 billion people of the world would be judged....I mean wouldn’t that take an eternity in itself !!

So thus, on this, “The day after yesterday”, Ramlal wonders what it would really be like...

.....drifting into imagination...

All the souls are escorted to the judgement arena and handed out forms, forms to be filled in detail, then evaluated and then judgement is made ! As you will see it could be well...worse than hell itself..

---break to scene---

Ramlal has justed waited for 42 days in line waiting for his turn to hand in the form...he finally gets to the counter...

Angel at counter (AAC): forms please...

(Ramlal hands over the forms...)

AAC: where is your proof of religion?

Ramlal: errrm I am a Roman Catholic....

AAC: yeah...yeah....and I am the Son of God...where is your document? If we don’t know your religion, how do we know which rules to judge you by?

Ramlal: But where do I get this...?

AAC: Well, if you say you are a Catholic then you need a letter from one of the Popes/ !

Ramlal: And how would the Popes know my religion?

AAC: Get a letter from your parish priest....take that to the Archbishop..he will issue another letter...take that to a cardinal...he will issue the letter you need for the pope ! And remember, the Pope’s letter must have the Vatican seal ..

Ramlal: But..but...

AAC: And complete your sins screening form (hands back form)...you haven’t answered question 8 – Have you committed adultery? !

Ramlal: This is gonna take forever !!

AAC: You can stay in purgatory till then..

Ramlal: Isnt there a faster way?

AAC: Yeah....confession...why do you think the confessional has such a long line!

Ramlal: Confess? ...but Im on trial !!

----end of scene---

A new beginning

Well, 7rrml has graduated with 2 names and there shall be no more of WIMWI for Ramlal.Yes, Ramlal is done with WIMWI. Convocation over on the 28th and he leaves for Bombay in about 2 hours. Its easily been the best 2 years of his life, but alas all good things must come to an end. He is gonna miss being on the job, living in Unnees and every other aspect of life here.

But Ramlal does begin a new life with Nestle in about 2 weeks. Whether or not he will still be able to remain in touch with friends and 'family' at WIMWI, he does not know but he knows that he shall come back at every given opportunity to relive all those cherished moments out here.

Ramlal is signing out from IIMA.

All the Names

Let me begin by telling you my real name. Its Riaan Mark Rodrigues. Mark is my middle name and is the name of one of the evangelists( 4 gospel writers). Rodrigues is a Portuguese surname which literally means "Son of Rodrigo" (Patronymic). Riaan is my first name. As for its meaning, well I was told as a boy by my mother that it is named after a Persian King(yes my parents decided to give me a Persian name as my mother also has one....actually my parents had come down to "Riaan" and "Rhys" but my uncle Robin felt that people would keep calling me "Greece" !!), which was really not a satisfactory answer ! So before my IIM interviews I remember trying to find out if there was a meaning. So I scrapped all the active "Riaan"s on orkut to find out if they knew the meaning. Unfortunately just one sort of did. Apparently "Riaan" is also a derivative of "Aryan". Anyway so that's all about MY name !!

Needless to say, Riaan Mark Rodrigues as a combo is very intriguing to most people. A lot of people have a problem pronouncing my name. My first name for instance has been turned into a "Ryan", "Rian", "Rehan" etc and well, lets not get into pronunciations...I had a south Indian professor once who would call me "raiyan" !!A lot of people prefer to call me "Rodrigues"...given the apparent complex pronunciation of my first name....but then there are those that have trouble with all the names....I remember this one occasion during my school days when I had to go to some public school to take an Olympiad exam or something. When the time came for the supervisor to take attendance, he called everyone's names....but at mine he stopped..." Rai...Ree....errrmmm rodree...rod...rodddd no 23 are you there ?"...yup i was number 23 that day !!

So I spent my life being called all sorts of names...yes without actually being insulted !! as for the derivatives plenty but most came later...in school it was just "Rod Dick" !! yeah....and to make things worse ...my first hotmail id was riaanrod7@hotmail.com, the implications of which didnt hit me at that time till one day someone came up to me and said.."Riaanrod7 huh..really?? 7?"...so the names and their derivatives kept coming till i came to WIMWI. That's when things just exploded !

Now on registration day in the first year, I was asked to fill up my name as it appeared on my certificates. In Bombay university, our names appeared in this format surname-name-middle-father-mother. Why they needed all these names I don't know, but they did, and to make things worse, the PGP office registered me with all 5 names rather than trying to make sense of it. My name tag had all 5 names, so did the attendance sheet and so everytime the prof decided to take the roll call, it was a riot at my turn...some called me by my first name, others by my surname some wanted to read out all 5. I had to shout present really loudly before they reached the second name !!, still do infact ! Furthermore, the computer centre also refused to figure things out and I was too lazy to sort it out. At wimwi ur email and dbab(internal chat) ids are year-name-Initial of Surname. So I should have been 7riaanr but Noooooo !! I became 7rrml !!yes 7rrml !! they missed out my mother's name ! So 7rrml became the joke of wimwi...and quite frankly I like the name 7rrml (I mean its different and yes I like to be called 7rrml and not rrml)...but it was a big problem for the previous placecom. The dbab id is in some way a primary key and is used often to sort of people's names. So in my case they had to sort out a Rodrigues Riaan Mark Leonard Rayna with a 7rrml !! definitely was a big pain !! oh and I almost forgot, the office also mispelt my name as Rian !!....so from 7rrml came rrml and sometimes I would even have the PGP office calling me mlrr. The batch even made it mltr (which is incidentally also one of my fav bands). The PGP continues to blunder on this front..sometimes the attendance sheet has the other 4 names with my name Riaan reduced to an initial !, at times there isn't enough space and Rodrigues is made rodrig ! For those of you who read my blog, you would know I have yet another name ...Chuchcha Singh !! yes my dorm name (explained in an earlier post)..and from Chuchcha Singh came another derivative...Chooch !...well that's it for now...those are all my names !!

If some of you haven't noticed, the number 7 keeps repeating ....well, when I decided upon my email ids (hotmail and current yahoo )...it was chosen because as a football fan the number 7 holds a special place. A lot of my fav players wear that number and so I used it in riaanrod7@hotmail.com and futebol_riaan7@yahoo.co.in. As for the IIMA id, the number 7 denotes the year that I joined...uncanny isn't it (I am also born in July)....so I figured that Seven should be the name of one of my kids...yeah seven. For those of you who watch Seinfeld, you would know that George also thinks really highly of this name ! As for a middle name ...was thinking something exotic and cricket related(the whole Indian connection)..so I came up with "White Lightning" !! yes one of my fav fast bowlers and a native American (Indian) name !! So there it is ...my Kids name will be Seven "White Lightning" Rodrigues !! The tradition shall live on !

The renaming of Riaan Rodrigues !!

Wheeew...its been such a long time since ive blogged....good lord !!!!.....well its now almost 4 weeks into lectures at WIMWI....and its been one hell of an experience so far.....I am btw, in Dorm 'unnees'...well most dorms are known out here as D1 or D6...etc....mine is spsd to be a desi dorm so it is called just 'unnees'.....and yes i'm on the new campus...which means bigger rooms...less insects(ie few mosquitoes.... :D)....and being closer to the classrooms......got a nice bunch of tuchchas in my dorm....pretty helpful chaps......Now I must introduce you to another WIMWI tradition.....the dorm name.....well guys this is really serious stuff....out here at WIMWI, we are not known by our real names.....well very few of us are....we get something called dorm names....its the resposnibility of our tuchchas to give us our names....just to explain to u how serious this thing is...well....if u guys have ever read articles abt former HLL chief MS Banga in the papers...u would notice that they normally print it as MS 'vindi' banga.....well vindi is his dorm name....and he is still known as vindi in corporate circles!!!......now like i told some of u guys before i left....every dorm has its own culture(like my desi dorm)...and with it come traditions....its a tradition of unnees to name the fachchas..."xyz " Singh...yeah my dorm is the only one that dishes out a surname( it is and always will be 'singh') as well....and the name will be one that serves no other purpose than embarassment !!!....infact the entire campus eagerly awaits the naming ceremony of the unnees fachchas every year!!!.....so lets cut to the chase......my dorm name is ...brace urselves.....ready......."Chuchcha Singh" !!!....yeah yeah laugh ur guts out.....but its certainly better than what some of my fellow dormmates got.....sussu singh, potty singh, khada singh, nirodh singh, orgy singh, semen singh, tevadia singh ( shainu u shud get this one),....etc :D....


neway guys i guess ill wrap up here...below are some photos...keep visiting this space for more stuff....





A shot from my dorm.......rgt opposite is dorm 22....the row of buildings on the right are the classrooms/seminar rooms....each building has one classroom on the frst flr and a seminar room on the grnd flr....



.... of Unnees !!

...and from my balcony......you can see the entrance to the undergrnd tunnel in the left bottom ....we gotta take it to get to the new campus.....its goes under the road u see in the pic.....the tower in the rgt top part of the pic is on the old campus....u can also the wall of the new campus.....