A Ton of Fun at the MUN

I’ve been meaning to write for a while now. I haven’t had much free time on my hands so far and I don’t have much now either. An interesting incident will have to do for now. More elaborate posts at leisure.

Now these MUNs are pretty interesting events to attend or participate in. The link is fairly descriptive. Go through it if you have no idea what it is.

It should suffice to say that a fair bit of research is involved in preparing for a MUN. You do not want to be in situations like the one I’m about to describe:

I was at a MUN at some college. A friend of mine was assigned the country Israel. Now the agendas (topics to be discussed) of most MUNs are usually predecided. In the MUNs I’ve attended so far, it has been customary for delegates to begin with speeches that state the position of the country they represent on the topic at hand. Questions or comments by other delegates often follow the speech.

The topic for this MUN was essentially the Middle-East peace crisis. My friend delivers a pretty good speech on his country’s position. The floor is open to questions. The delegate of Lebanon stands up and asks him, somewhat sternly I might add, “What is your stand on the Sheba farms dispute?”

He looks at the Lebanon guy quizzically for a moment. It’s clear that he was taken off guard. Everybody’s waiting for what he has to say.

He tries to take the safe route: “We are neutral on that issue.”

Big mistake. At this point the Lebanon guy looks like he’s about to have an aneurysm: “You’re neutral on that issue?!! Your country has occupied out land… blah… blah… blah!!!!”

Mr Israel attempts a come-back at this point: He replies, with a very straight face, [sic] “Well, it’s not ours, but it’s not yours either naa.”

Needless to say, that golden statement just made everybody’s day.

In his defense, I must say that he was assigned his country on the day of the event and had earlier been given a different country. Circumstances did not permit him enough time to prepare. All things considered, I think his comeback was pretty good actually.

How have you been lately?

I’m known to use a lot of long-winded, verbose sentences in my writing, but even I found the response I gave when a friend asked me how I had been doing (or something to that effect) rather odd:

Don’t ask! Got back from a MUN yesterday only to get an eye infection today when I’m supposed to submit a yet unprepared bio tomorrow for a bunch of interviews next week while simultaneously preparing a presentation for a TPP (Technical Paper Presentation) competition which is to be held at an undetermined time and to arrange for a quiz and another TPP competition, both of which are to be held at uncertain dates. I’m pretty sure I’m missing somethings here, but the meds I’m on don’t exactly facilitate good memory.

How have you been?

Of Exams, Monk, Birthdays and Shock and Awe

My apologies for the recent hiatus. I’ve had my mid term exams this past week.

The exams began in a rather interesting manner. Now during our mid-terms, we are given one hour long 30 mark papers with 3 questions to attempt out of a total of (usually) 4 or (less often) 5, each question being evaluated for 10 marks. On the first day, we had a paper with 10 questions for 100 marks. Very unexpected. The distribution of marks (number of marks to be alloted to each question) was not specified. So naturally, everyone starts complaining to the invigilator.

Well then the genius, assuming all this is a big mistake, takes back all the question papers. About five minutes in, the professor who teaches this subject and sets the papers, walks in and tells us to continue with the paper. We only have to attempt 8 questions she says. We get out papers back. At this point everyone is so stressed out, they barely read what’s being asked, they attempt whatever they think is simplest. Big mistake. Turns out, some of the answers are barely 4 lines long, some 4 pages. Of course, there’s no mark distribution, so no one can make proper choices.

At the end of it all, they collect our answer sheets on schedule. No extra time for all the extra questions. No extra time for the 5-10 minutes lost when they decided to take the question papers back at the beginning of the paper, only to have to return them soon after.

The professor promises to, and I quote, “take care” of the whole situation. We’ll be waiting eagerly, prof.

Needless to say, this was not a very pleasant beginning to the mid-terms. They didn’t end too well either. Diagrams for two questions were interchanged. The first two at that. After having spent a half hour trying to figure out why the values didn’t seem to fit, or why the two sides of the equation weren’t equal, I decided to move on. Very bad habit of mine. I really have to learn to give up sooner. Good grief, I can’t believe I just said that!

This professor promises restitution as well. What joy!

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More positive news, Monk’s started again. This is the fifth season.

I just love this show. From the first episode I caught, it seems they’ll be digging a bit deeper into his psyche. Intriguing. This particular episode involved Trudy’s death. Touching.

The last couple of episodes of Boston Legal have been amazing. If James Spader wasn’t my favourite actor earlier, he certainly is now. Be warned though, I probably don’t have enough of a perspective. The only role I’ve seen him play is that of Alan Shore.

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Many thanks to Kushagra for a very memorable birthday treat this Saturday. A wonderful meal at Spaghetti Corner. Perfect way to recoup from a rather imperfect exam week. Made all the more enjoyable with a tad of beginners’ luck in my first game of bowling. I should do this more often really.

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I’ll end this post with a quote I found very memorable indeed:

Mindful that abroad people tend expect shock and awe when Yankees arrive on the scene, we shall leave you with two small, but lasting words.

Denny Crane … eh?