Etc Etc.

Not that I'd love the ones that I do,any less on any other day.
But V-Day seems  to have officially earmarked all the cliches of affection.
Pink,Pink,Pink.....wait a sec....Pink :-)
Coffee Shop Managers,Street Side Florists and the Shiv Sena
are gonna have a better day than most of the Love Birds out there.

Alas, that's not the case with the us students of the MCA dept.
Our exams begin tomorrow and even the most affectionate Valentine's Greeting,
would feel like a cruel joke.

It's been been a pretty hectic fortnight and it hasn't gotten any better.
My project's gotten fast tracked and while it's pretty glamorous to work with the world's most popular networking site....one has to remember that it's still work and it has to be done.
Like I've posted before,I always get more work piled up when my hands are already full,
and it's happened yet again.

Our college hosted it's BasketBall tournament last week and had 16 teams in the pool.
Our PD has been at me for two years to join the basketball team but I managed to dodge it everytime.
Not that I'm lazy or can't perform for the team....but I've got to focus on a lot of stuff in life and sports in our college doesn't get the perks it deserves.
In spite of that, I've nothing but respect for our PD for putting his heart and soul into building a sports platform for our college.
So he tells me that he want's me manning the Score table during the tournament.
Since I've been avoiding the team for two years,I figured it's the least I could do.
It wasn't until two days before the tournament that that I was told that the table had to be manned by a third party official and that I had to shift my duties to coach the B Team.


The B team was made up mostly of first years who had barely learnt to shoot and dribble.
They had never played a tournament in their life.
Bad news.....they had just two days to practice.
...worse news....they now had me as their coach...
Practice at what ?....I had no clue...
The best I could do was build up an offensive strategy and show them a few defensive formations.
Apart from that I told to play the game at their own pace while trusting each other and they would be fine.

I knew there wasn't much that the team could do with such little practice and not having played a tournament before....But I also knew they would give it their best shot and would learn something.
We lost all the matches we played but against veteran teams that had some of the best players in the university.
The last match we played was against Bhavan's that had African imports on the team.I was pretty amazed and happy to see our team take lead till half time,we lost be a large margin but showed consistent form throughtout out the game.
By the time our team was eliminated there was no sense of loss or disappointment but rather a sense of confidence and joy that the performed pretty well for their first tournament.With each match I could see their confidence grow and their game evolve.
I got appreciated by PD and the team for whatever little I could do salvage their efforts.Considering that many from this team will be in next year's A team makes me feel happy that I will always have the privilege of being their first coach (he he !) no matter how short a period of time.

Coming back to V-Day, I have always been aware that it's a day for celebrating love and not just lovers.
Friends and family and the special someones...all deserve to be under the pink umbrella.
Thinking about love and and what it means to me....
I've realized that I can love the ones that I do no matter what.
I would go out on a limb to look out for the ones that I care about without expecting something in return.

Hey Sneha...Hope you doing good :-)
It's been quite a while since I got to hear bout you or read anything you've written.
Nonetheless it doesn't change the way I feel bout you.
If I'm lucky...maybe someday you will know how much you mean to me.
And If I'm luckier....it will mean something to you.
Have fun.

Got to get back to my books for now.
I hope my exams go well, fingers crossed.

:-)