Unusual weekend

Thursday through Sunday were marked by a series of blunders by me. I make blunders all the time of course, yet these were rather uncharacteristic of me. I wonder if I am acquiring a whole new range of incompetent behaviours, to complement my already many core incompetencies!

I did not feel like studying at all the evening before the FORM (Derivatives) exam. Still, I had to atleast go through the textbook once to have any chance of passing. Somehow, in between listening to songs and watching Naruto, I managed to flip through almost all the required pages by 5:30 am for the 9 o'clock paper. Thought that I would wake up at 7:30 and do a topic that was certain to come in the paper. Next thing I know, I am picking up the receiver and Khakee asks me, "FiFo, are you not well?" The alarm clock next to the phone says it's 9:20. I ran to the classroom, where the supervisor tartly greeted me, "Good morning." I replied with an artificial cheeriness, "Good morning, Sir!" BTW the topic that was supposed to prepare for was represented by a 20 mark question in a 55 mark paper - and I had to leave the entire thing, of course.

Next day, I was in Bombay, in the German Consulate applying for a visa. I had made two copies of every conceivable document they could have wanted - bank deposits, marksheets, admission letters, everything. Except my passport. Not even the original! I searched every nook and corner of my bag for 15 minutes. Naada. Called my mom, asking if I had left it home. She searched for many minutes and chided me a bit, but no luck. How wonderful, I thought - after all the hassles I went through to get a seat in the exchange programme, forget romping through Europe, even leaving India would be a problem. The watchman there asked me to search again. Knew it would be futile, but had nothing else to do. And of course, the passport turned up in the same pile of papers I had combed through less than 30 minutes before! All that was left was for the watchman to say, "Tum passport ka to dhyaan nahin rakh sakte, Germany kaise jaoonge?" Well, my visa was issued today - guess kaise to manage kar hi lunga Germany mein!

Yesterday night, I was sitting in my drawing room with my family with little over an hour before the departure of my train. My dad asked to check my compartment and berth numbers. I began looking through the ticket - S3#56 blah blah blah...when my sight drifted to the date. 15/7/2006. "That's strange," I thought, "I had asked Didi the date in the morning and she said it was the 16th." Looked at my watch - and sure enough, it was the 16th! Cursing myself, and knowing that my mom was going to have a field day nagging me about my irresponsibility for the next six months, I told my parents. My dad had to shell out a small fortune (given that my sleeper class ticket normally costs under 250 bucks) so that I could fly to WIMWI.

Still the trip was not all a series of goof-ups though. On Friday, I walked from my office near Princess Street to Oxford Bookstore near the Oval, covering a huge stretch of Marine Drive on the way - oh, what a beautiful view it is! Went to a restaurant called Firangi Dhaba that night - it is an offbeat place with autorickshaw tables, posters of movies, and similar paraphernalia. The next day, I met my friends from my German course after over a year. Was finally able to get a much delayed birthday gift for a very dear friend, with the help of my sister ("help" means she rubbished all my choices and 'persuaded' me to get something that she fancied). On Sunday, Didi bought me new shoes. I also met my regular gang of friends from DJ that day...had a great time. And on the flight back to WIMWI, I had the company of Khakee, so it was not so bad!