Exam III

"Readings in Sanskrit Systematic Thought" - now there's an enticing name for a course, don't you think? My oh my what a disaster. I started at the back and did the essay question first. You had to choose two questions from 5 possibilities and write a very brief essay in response. That actually went alright. I'm sure mine weren't the best essays ever written on the subject (not, of course, by a long, long way) but, y'know, I muddled through.

Oh and then came the three passages to translate. What a mess. I was very tired and not at all interested. Spent more time daydreaming. In between the daydreaming I muddled together some haphazard mess for question 1. Instead of actually writing out a proper translation, I showed my working, noting down everything I knew about each word in turn - since I didn't know enough to manage a good translation. At the end of each sentence I tried to cobble it together into some sort of translation, using what I'd managed to tease out of my brain (I couldn't have done this without writing it all out on the paper and having a proper think) and some vague memories of essays and lectures.

I asked myself whether I couldn't have just sat and thought really hard and maybe I could have just produced a translation and moved on to the next question, but I really needed my notes and frankly I needed all the marks I could get, it was damage limitation, I was trying to pick them up anywhere and everywhere. A bare translation wouldn't have been worth much, because there were a lot of words I don't know and far too much guesswork. So I tried a different angle - demonstrate some knowledge at least, get some stuff down, show what you do know and sod trying to make sense of the stuff. I took a lot of punts, but that was okay, because I'd at least shown what I was getting at, rather than just producing a totally wrong, off the wall translation.

And then I essentially ran out of steam and time. I jotted down a few of the words in the next question and what they were - you know, grammatical form, that sort of thing. There were also a couple of sub-questions specifically on grammatical stuff that I had a crack at. And that was all I could manage - essentially 50% of the exam, which sounds disastrous but I worked out I probably needed to score 20% to get the passing grade I need, so you know what - there's an outside chance that I might just about, somehow, scrape an honours degree out of this whole thing.

One thing you should know about me is that I like to have a little bit of fun in exams where I can - if you're gonna go down, you might as well go down in style - chuck in a few turns, y'know, maybe a pike. The last two years I've worked hard, wanting to do well, and I was just fed up in Hindi this year. But I used to be magnificent - I once got disqualified from an RE AS for "inappropriate content" and I was a master at competitions of trying to get unusual words into the exam or - my personal favourite - as many mentions of "x" as possible. A nice one I once did was 10 mentions of Jesus in an RE examination on the Old Testament :P (Easier than you'd think). So today - as a bit of a tribute to the glory days - I simply wrote under question 3:

"You're asking a bit much aren't you old son?"

 So anyway, enough of that: the journey.

It was a tired, lethargic, unenthusiastic start to the day, but I eventually dragged myself to ROV, where I caught a WER through train. Nothing much happened until BEG on the west, where we pulled up about 2 cars short. Even as we were stopping - before we'd even come to a halt - our T/Op, good with his announcements, was on the PA:

"Ladies and gentlemen, please stand away from the doors when the train is moving. Don't lean on the doors as this will cause a safety device to operate and the train will stop. Once again, this train is ready to depart stand away from the doors."

So basically an interlock loss had caused a brake application, which the T/Op had obviously noticed. He admonished the errant passengers while we were slowing down, then warned them not to lean on the doors before bringing us the rest of the way in.

Before we moved off from the station he gave a similar message, warning us that leaning on the doors will cause a safety device to operate and the train will become stalled in the tunnel or when entering  stations.

That was all, although I noticed it was a very squeaky, ride, our train was squealing very noticeably - much more so than usual - and it wasn't the only one. I wondered if there were some low adhesion areas, maybe the rails were a little greasy? This persisted for most of the journey, as well as in the tunnels. Well, whatever it was, it wasn't a big deal, I just noticed it was more pronounced than usual.

I changed at LIS for an all stations Watford and took that to Euston Sq., passing an H&C S7 in Moorgate bay platform 4.

The journey home was pretty straightforward. I decided to go to Foyles on Charing Cross Road to buy a couple of books. On my way a passed a sticker attached to a lamppost proclaiming "luxury communism," in my head:

"Redistribution of wealth. Common ownership of the means of production. Rigid enforcement and an iron fist rule. This is not just communism. This is M & S communism."

Marx and Sparks! :P (I am sorry. Let's move on.)

As a result I boarded a very toasty EPP train at TCR and took that to LES where I changed for the WOO via HAI. I noticed that the tunnel lights were still on between LIS and BEG on the eastbound, which is very uncomfortable. The lights must be on around the crossover, but there's a long section from not far outside LIS to all the way to BEG where the lights have been left on unusually and it's very unrestful on the eyes!

The considerable warmth in the pipe was easily made up for by gorgeous views on the HAI loop. Passing HAI depot I noticed a train shunting, ready to enter service and I also noticed some work being done, or inspection being carried out, on the points motor (I think that's what it's called - the thing that moves the points :P) of one of the sets of points in the depot.

And that was that. Would probably have been a very nice journey if I hadn't been so wrecked, but it was enjoyable all the same :)