CATography - Part 2 (November 2006 - November 2006) (And yea .. I know the title is majorly corny... so sue me!!! )

Ok .. so where was I?
Yea ... last few days before CAT. November 17th. 2 days to go.After my final prayers were done and got my ticket ready and if I remember correctly, the train was all set to leave at 8:00 pm. So there we were ... a couple of hundred hyperactive college dudes and dudettes all ready to take over the train. And let me tell you this ... the "Cat Train" was one hell of a ride! It's tons of fun. People should write CAT atleast for the entire experience of the train journey. So there was a group of my friends in the same compartment .. namely Ajay,Jaikrishna, Abhijith, Manu, Abhay and I. And at the other end of the train was another group of my classmates .. again namely.. Nidhin, Athul, Aravind, Jojo (Dont remember if there was anyone else). So our entire train ride comprised of walking from one end of the train to the other looking for friends and pretty girls :D. For a while I entertained myself sitting on the topmost sleeper thingy and whackin my friends on the back of their heads as they passed by. And so we spent the night talking and joking and insulting each other.While on the other extreme, there were people sitting and studyin late into the night. A couple of friends of ours were in the IMS compartment as well. So we said a Hi to them and continued talking and generally being a pain in the @$$!!

And then we slept ... and we reached there early in the mornin .. around 7 or so. Then started our hunt for our hotel. Ajay had booked a hotel roomfor the 6 of us and we were out walking trying to find it. So after around half an hour or so, we finally struck gold! It was a nice little room. So we dumped our stuff there, and went hunting for a restaurant to have breakfast. And we found the place that was to be our source of nearly every meal for the next 2 days..." Paragon!! "
. After having a wonderful breakfast,we started roaming the streets of Kozhikode. Our first agenda was to locate our examination centers. Which we did by asking a pedestrian and he told us which bus to get into and stuff. Abhay and I learnt that ours was very close to our hotel room .. walking distance infact. And after that we went to the famous "Mittai therivu" or "Sweets alley" by my translation. And by then we were dead tired and it was 1:00. So then it was time for lunch.

And with that started our search for the "amazingly awesome super tasty the best in the whole wide world" Kozhikodan Biryani. Let me tell you .. we searched in vain. We had heard tales about the great "Hotel Sagara (Or Sagar)". The best Biryani in the world they said! And im sure everyone who was there with us will agree.... IT SUCKED!! Maybe it was just our bad luck or they were having a rough day. But it still sucked!!!!

And so dissapointed with our lunch, we decided to watch Casino Royale!!! Which we did ... It was ok-ok. And the theater was supposedly better than any over theater in Trivandrum. Well that was a lie too. The theater wasn't too great either. Anyways... after the movie, we walked back to our room. (The location of our hotel was amazing. Walking distance from all the major parts of the city!!).That night again we went for the rest of our tour of the city! We walked to the beach and I saw my exam center (St Joseph's Boys school). Then we had ice cream from Baskin Robbins. And finally dinner once again from "Paragon!" (Paratha and Butter Chicken... after fighting with Manu over our legal share of the curry!).Yum Yum!!
Here are some pics we took at Baskin Robbins...




For some reason, certain roommates of mine (AHEM AHEM!!! YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE!!) started asking doubts about the quant formulae the night before CAT when the rest of us were trying to "chill out" ! hehe ... we ended up insulting him into submission :D. And so the night went peacefully.

We woke up at around 6 and took turns using the bathroom. We changed and Ajay had breakfast early and left because his exam center was a bit far off. But just before we left, we decided to take a pic of all of us giving our biggest smiles and holding up our admit cards.This is what it looked like.

The rest of us went to Paragon yet again and had a veggy breakfast because we din't want to run the risk of having an upset stomach during the exam. Then we parted ways, wishin each other the best of luck and Abhay and I jumped into the first auto rickshaw we could find and headed to "St Joseph's Boys Higher Secondary School"!

When we reached there, we saw that the entire place was crowded with people who had come from across the state to write this mother of all entrance examinations. We saw people in the crowd whom we knew. Everyone was tense. And come 9:45, we were let into our respective examination halls. We sat there and began filling out the OMR sheet with our details at 10. That was done by around 10:15. Then came the dreaded wait. We were given the question papers a little later with strict orders not to open them until we were told to. The front page gave us three new pieces of information.
1) There were going to be 5 options instead of the previous number of 4.
2) There was going to be a negative marking of 1 mark and a score of 4 for each correct answer.
3) There were only 75 questions .. 25 from each section.

And then it was time. The moment had arrived...blah blah blah ...
I started as was my routine with the quantitative section .. my weakest. It was surprisingly pretty good. And after my regular 40 minutes in that section, i turned over to the amazingly terrifying english usage section of CAT06. I spent the allocated 40 minutes and then another 10 to try and answer as many as I could confidently. And I could manage 6! So then with nothing left to do, I moved on to the DI/LR section (My favourite) and did only 3 sets because I was short of time. (Because I was stupid enough to not look at my watch while tryin to crack the EU section! ). And then there was the buffer half hour which i spent for ... no points for guessin... the EU section. I started answering based on instinct and answered 17.And then I added my own personal finishing touches. I had around 5 minutes left. And that was when the rush hit me. Cram in as many quant questions as I can do !! And so I did. I did four more. And then in the end. They were all wrong :D. In fact, I answered the last one while the invigilator was collecting the answed sheets :D. And so with no idea what just hit me, I walked out bewildered and dazed. And as usual started discussing the paper with friends. One friend claimed he was going to get 174 marks! And as I analysed the paper further as Abhay and I walked back to our hotel rooms, I realised the mistakes I had made with the last few questions that I had attempted. And so we returned to the room and waited for the others. Slowly the other arrived and we all sat there discussing our papers for a while before we decided to go out for lunch. And so we continued our quest for the amazing biryani and fellow treasure seekers directed us to a restaurant called "Top House" and guess what!!! The biryani there sucked as well!! So then we finally decided to call it quits. After that some of us went to buy Halwa and that was the end of our trip around Kozhkode.We retired to our room where we talked while packing.And we took photos on our way back to the hotel as well!! And here they are ...

Once the packing was done, we had to make our way back to the railway station. And that too wasnt incident free. There was some protest or something going on and most of the auto drivers were refusing to go to the station. And we were already late on top of that. Luckily Ajay, Abhay and I, I think got an auto. Unfortunately the others had to walk/jog/run till the station but they managed to reach on time. We boarded the train and then started the second stage of all the fun. Sure, everyone was talking about expected cut offs and how many questions each one had attempted, but we had fun amongst all that as well. For example, in the set of seats right next to where we were sitting was a group of friends (both guys and girls) and as I passed by their seats I happened to notice that they had a cake in their hands. So I went and announced to all my friends that someone in the next cabin had their birthday today. And so we promptly gave them our rendition of "Happy Birthday To You" and then the Malayalam version "Sandosha Jenmadhinam Kuttikyu", only to learn later on that it was the wedding anniversary of the parents of one of the girls in there :D. And the best part was yet to come, around 10, there were actually 17!! Yes you read it right! 17 of us in one cabin. Where actually only 8 are supposed to sit. We were singing our hearts out until the railway police dude told us to go back to our seats :D. And then we went to sleep and in the morning we were back to our normal everyday routine lives. And the 7th semester university exams were pretty close as well.

I know I had promised much more in part 2, but this has gotten longer than expected, so I'm winding up this chapter here.
In the next part, I'll talk about the mental trauma I went through for the next one and a half month period, before the results finally came out. And I promise to include my SNAP and XAT exams in that episode. So until then ... this is Rohin, signing out ...goodbye and good night, or good morning or good afternoon depending on what time you are reading this. See ya ...
PS. If any one notices any grammatical or spelling mistakes, please do inform me. Thanks.