studies, college plans, and bleach; duh

Today I received the most wonderful news imaginable: That school’s gonna be closed until the 5th, meaning the Phase Test has been rescheduled to that day, and I don’t have to go to school tomorrow. I’m not the kind of guy to be grumbling about having to wait two whole days before the torture of the Phase Test’s over: I appreciate it because I have more time to study, as would anyone who cared a shit about their scores. It’s not that I haven’t been studying or anything, since I have and pretty sincerely at that—by my standard at least. Let’s see then: Today I kind of finished off whatever problems of Newton’s Laws and Friction I hadn’t done in H.C. Verma’s book, and then proceeded to do about thirty in that Tata McGraw-Hill book that has so little mention in everyday life. It’s a good book, I’ll give it that. The paper-quality and font are good, and such things are imperative to ensure total concentration and admiration for the book on your part. I mean, if the same problems had been written in a cheap font on poor paper, I don’t think I’d have progressed beyond reading the first word of the first problem. So visual appeal is a desideratum if one aims at capturing the interest of the student. This is one thing that people in India neglect so thoughtlessly as they try to appeal to the student’s “inner genius,” which is apparently blind to things as trivial as presentation, and driven solely by an overpowering desire to “succeed,” or as our school puts it, to “experience success in a confident way!” What a load of crap, all of this, if they can’t even give us paper that’ll last three visits to the washing machine without dissolving to utter oblivion when I’m through with it.

After I was done with my routine self-study, I picked up this book my dad bought on his last visit to Seattle. It was about college essays—the ones you need to turn in along with the rest of your application at the time when you’re seeking admission. There were a select 109 essays in there (the best of the thousands that they managed to dig up from wherever it is that they went searching), most of which I read in that one sitting. Whoever said that Americans can’t write? Oh yeah, that was me when I found myself staring into the first page of one of Hemmingway’s books, and staring into it for the greater part of an hour. Anyway, most of the essays were entertaining, interesting, and well written. I’m glad I decided to go through that book, because now I have a basic idea as to what I could write: UC Berkeley, one of the universities I have my eyes on, demands a personal statement from you, and there’s nothing all that spectacular about me that would make me stand out from the rest of the crowd, or even a small part of it—in other words, I’m in a fix. The other university I have my eyes on is Stanford, not just because it has a classy name, is prestigious and known all over the world and all that, but because… Well, I can’t think of anything else. I’d better soon lest they ask me to write about why I chose it over everything else.

On an unrelated note, and in an entry where the first two paragraphs have conspicuously established themselves as big-time nerdy stuff, this is bound to stand out, I watched Episode 239 (Bleach, of course: maybe it’s time you went back and read my older entries). Hitsugaya regained what’s-it-called over his Zanpakuto, Hyorinmaru. They battled it out, and although the battle wasn’t all that impressive per se (it being accentuated by the exchanges between former master and slave that is Hyorinmaru, and the occasional flashback to make it look as epic as everyone called it), I couldn’t help noticing that Hyorinmaru referred to his own power as “too vast” for a “mere child” like Hitsugaya. I don’t know if it was to emphasize the “child” bit or to make Hyorinmaru stand out as an extraordinarily powerful Zanpakuto, but whatever the case, it hurt my pride. Now unless Senbonzakura says something similar the next time we see him, I’m going to write a fic featuring Hitsugaya and his Zanpakuto, and talk about why the former’s still too immature to be able to wield Hyorinmaru’s powers effectively to protest this injustice. I mean, come on, Hitsugaya, though gifted, and though one of my favorite characters, is obviously not that far beyond the average captain’s level. If it’s based on the popularity votes that they’re making him steadily stronger by the episode, I suggest that they drop it, since it isn’t getting them anywhere in my eyes. And I thought Byakuya was a popular character, too. So why don’t they ever make him stronger and more prominent?