40 Minutes

The white logo on my black T-shirt read, ‘Trinity Sports Official’ and that was the only official appearance to me as a Trinity sports official for the soccer game on Tuesday night. I had the least official appearance of all the referees. I wasn’t even wearing my shorts, all of them were. Have you ever seen a referee officiating a game in his grey trousers? I am not surprised. But I was trying my best not to even spill a hint that it was the first game of my life that I was officiating. I was trying to act confident, but my struggle was apparent since confidence has always eluded me. One of the main reasons why I chose to be a sports official was because I wanted to gain confidence, be the in-charge and maintain authority since in real life, I have always struggled with developing a ‘bossy’ attitude.

As the clock struck 9:15, as the main referee, I called the captains to come to the center and call the sides on a tossed coin. Wasn’t I loud enough? No one even turned in my direction. I wondered how they could even ignore me, didn’t they know I was the official? My trousers could be elusive but at least I was wearing the official T-shirt. I knew what I had to be done. I blew my whistle, it made a funny noise but at least the captains walked towards me. Apparently, I realized I did not have a coin. And that is how my first referee debut began. But I knew I had to act confident like every other referee who knows what is going on so, I improvised with Eric Elliot's little trick of placing either one or two fingers behind my back and letting one of the captains call. After the captains chose sides, I realized the team of ‘Engineers’ did not have minimum number of players and the game couldn’t be started. We were to wait until the ‘Engineers’ had at least two girls on their team; it was a co-recreational soccer if you didn’t know. I wondered why these sorts of unusual, anomalous events always happen with me, it was making me nervous for sure. I had to award a goal to the other team as a penalization for not being punctual. Members of the ‘Engineers’ team arrived two minutes later and the game was about to start. But how could it start without my permission? Not a chance. I blew my whistle, as hard as I could; after all, they had to know I was the boss there.

Running on a wet ground in trousers is not fun at all when you are not wearing proper soccer shoes. My laces kept on getting untied every 5 minutes. The players stared at me every time I bent to tie my laces. I realized they were trying to imply that it is the players who tie laces during a game; a referee doing the same appears so ‘unofficial’. I was making every attempt to make right calls to hide my inexperience. I had never realized the task of a referee would demand such excellent coordination of senses and the central nervous system. Scientists claim that a human brain can do only one particular task at a time, but I would say, “Look at the referees, they are the perfect examples of human brain multitasking. From the corner of the eye, they have to distinguish between the colors of the teams and also follow the ball, make close calls, instant decisions and be able to direct attention as quickly as the ball moves without any clue what would happen next.” Really, how many things can you watch out for, with a pair of limited- view-angled eyes?

The first half of the game ended in good note. I was glad that no one had the faintest idea about my debut. I did not make any mistakes. The second half began with my whistle and this time I blew it even harder. The game was going well and there did not seem to be any significant aggression among any of the teams, if at all. I realized I had not blown my whistle even once for any foul conceded. Was it a hint of my inexperience, I thought. Or did I not have sharp enough eyes to spot fouls? I knew I had to prove my officiating ability. Bang! A girl was tackled and she fell down. Without even waiting for the signal from the assistant referee (linesman), I blew my whistle. Everyone seemed to look at me with fear and helplessness. They realized I was the big boss while I tried hard to suppress my smirk of confidence.

I have to admit, time seemed to have frozen in the first half of 20 minutes. I kept on looking at the scoreboard repeatedly out of nervousness and every second passed as if it were a minute. But as the game was approaching its end, I realized I was blowing my whistle more often since the game was beginning to heat up, but the screeches of my whistle served them right. How could they forget I was still around? The second half added legitimacy and authority to my sports official status since, I did not have to bend to tie my laces, not even once. It was my most enjoyable 40 minutes in the last couple of months. I was starting to gain more confidence and it seemed by the end of 30 minutes, I was no more the same referee I had been. It was an enriching experience that boosted my confidence to not be deterred from taking this arduous challenge in the future.

Are 'Sardars' really so stupid?

I deleted this post because I thought it was stupid.

Wordle.net

Click on it to enlarge it.

I was using this site called http://www.wordle.net/ that lets you type in something and then returns such tags. It is really cool. Give it a try.

I liked this one even more because I thought this one truly represented me. 

Am I in the wrong class?

The moment I walk in one of my classes, I know I am in the right class because that’s the room number my schedule says. But as the class begins, I start to doubt if I am in the right class. The course topic and the course description just do not match. Today in the class, I nearly reached a point where I thought I knew I was in the wrong class, wrong not in the sense of wrong classroom though. It seemed the professor had tricked me with an interesting course title and stimulating course description but instead had chosen to teach what he knew, instead of what he had promised.

If you are wondering what class I am talking about, then let me tell you it’s the Ancient Science &Technology. And yeah, the professor seems to have come right from the ancient age to impart ancient knowledge about his era and enlighten us with biblical dates and information as if that were why we were in that class for. He has an ancient appearance to him, could be deliberate to make the classes and his information seem authentic, I guess. He talks about ancient writings with corresponding dates and shows thousands of images of cuneiforms and inscribed tablets that almost everyone finds boring. I mean, it might be interesting to see the cuneiform or clay tablets for the first time but if you keep on seeing the same images over and over, it’s hard to stay awake or retain patience unless you are some academic who finds clay tablets stimulating. The first class was really boring but I convinced myself that it was just the introduction class and it would get interesting progressively. But nothing seems to change as the days pass. Even add/drop period is over. But even if I were allowed to drop it, I would not drop it because I could not find any other course that I liked and was compatible with my schedule. I had high hopes from this course and thought it would renew my interest in Aristotle, Plato and Hippopotamus’ philosophy and science. I think it was Hippocrates, Hippopotamus just sounds so unphilosophical.

Do you sometimes surprise yourself?

Well, yeah today I surprised myself.

I am taking a Mechanics course under Engineering which is considerably tough, full of maths and logic and indeed a real engineering course and the first one in true sense. (I have taken others but they were not 'truly' engineering. This one is.)

One of the junior and sophomore had confided in me that the student to excel in this course would be awarded with some sort of a little prize. I wanted to give my best try and see if I can be the one among all talented students. I'll tell you, there's a whole bunch of talented students in Engineering this year at Trinity. I have taken courses in non-sciences such as economics, politics, seminar, writing workshop, ancient science and technology (do not doubt your senses, it is in fact ancient sci tech) and what I can tell is it seems all of the talented students of class of 2012 are doing Engineering.

We had a test a week ago. There were 3 problems to be solved. Yeah, just 3. But the last one freaked us out. It just made no sense to me, at least. Just 5 minutes before the allocated time, I realized I had chosen the wrong directions for the tensions. 5 minutes is just not enough to change everything. I had not solved that question either. I was struggling. I tried my best to change everything. But I still had no idea how to solve the final equation to get the answer. I don't remember what I did but I knew I was not right. As time ended, I was asked to submit the paper. I was the last one to exit. I was still trying to figure out if it was possible to solve the problem. I did not realize I had forgotten to write my name until the professor returned the paper asking me to write it.

I did talk to some people and expressed my sadness over not being able to solve the final problem. Of course, they said what I always hate to hear: sympathetic words; they consoled me saying I would receive partial credit.

Today, he gave away our exam papers back. But before he did so, he entered those marks in ranges of points using tally marks. There was only ONE 100, some between 90-99, some between 80-89 and so on. There were a few below 69. I did not know if I wanted to see more tallies lesser than 69 so that I would have company or hope he would enter the next tally mark in 80-89 range which would mean more people have done better, hinting some leniency, which could gain mean(a chain analoy) I scored pretty well. With every tally, our patience and anxiety spiked. The average was 82. He then distributed the papers. All of the people around me were receiving scores above 90s. I just did not know what to expect. He called my name and there was the paper right before my eyes. I squinted my eyes, pretending not to look but then when I saw the score, my eyes were wide open. It was a perfect three digit. A perfect square. A perfect 100. I could not have been more shocked. He knew I was single and so decided to give a perfect 100 as my valentine gift. Thank You Dr. Leifer.

Are we invisible?

I wonder again, is anyone going to read this or comment about this? In other words, am I invisible to the world? Does it matter what I do? Does anyone even notice when I get clean and nicely shaved the other day? Well, but do I care?

I was reading a book about "dot-com business" and it talked about how you can save money while working. It talked about a guy wearing the same tie for 4 months without ever getting any comment and another guy pocketing the money for lunch and always eating the same, cheapest food available in the restaurant. It said you have to admit that you are invisible to the world. And when I thought about it, I realized there was some truth behind it. No one would even realize if I missed my meals for 5 days or even more in the current society that I live amid Trinity University students. So, I was pretty convinced that I am to some degree invisible.

But then today, I had a lunch with a professor who's currently doing hi-tech research in nanotechnology at Rice University. After the lunch, I had a short personal talk with him and he asked me where I am from. Normally, I would not expect people to know where Nepal is and I can swallow the fact that some adults even raise their eyebrows, trying to say I know you are making fun of my geography knowledge but still I am pretty sure there's no country with the name you just uttered. I explain them that there's a tiny country between India and China. Guess what? They know where Tibet is though. Tibet is not even a country and still it's more popular.

Anyway, when I said I was from Nepal, his eyes lit up, the gleam in his eyes was of excitement than confusion though. A professor doing some hi-tech research would know where Nepal is. He confided that he has a graduate student working in his team, under his supervision who's from Nepal. I mean, I was clearly shocked to see what Nepalese are doing all over the world, especially in the US. He was normally pretty quiet and in contemplative mood during lunch, reflecting a persona of true research scientist but at that time he could not restrain his tongue to say, "He's my best student. He's so intelligent. He can do anything. He knows magic. He's a true genius." Now this is something that made this meeting special. To hear such flattering comments from a nano-tech researcher about a Nepali student studying in my vicinity (after all, Houston is not so far from San Antonio), was a complete honor and matter of pride. Nepal, my country, my pride. These magicians, geniuses will make Nepal a paradise someday. I am hopeful.