At the end of the academic year, there is something you have to do which you'd detest to the core of your heart and yet you oblige to with an innocent smile. It forces you to dig deep and distill out your creativity until you are mentally drained. To push things for the worse, you have to do this not once, but again - and again - and again and again! Neither am I talking about examinations, nor am I talking about writing the eternal love letter to your (in)significant someone. I'm talking about filling in the slam books!

One question that often stumped me was about what my most embarrassing moment was! I would be petrified at this question - not because I could not recall any particular incident; I just do not know how to prioritize and place the worst moments of my life in order. They are so many and I need to attach supplemental sheets along with the slam book!

For the cartoonic life that I lead, I don't necessarily get embarrassed by what I do. To top it all, I have a room mate who complements me in every single way. Yet, I have put myself into certain awkward situations wherein I have realized, anything I say would make the situation much much worse!

Maybe I should write about the crazy elevator ride. Being in a country where at a given time, millions of people are on elevators all over America ... I find the elevator journey the most boring of all especially when I travel alone. Especially in Western Psych, I had to go all the way to the 14th floor - the journey would get so tiring that I'd have jet lag at the end of it. It was believed that the 14th floor fell under a different time zone but it was debatable. I had to entertain myself with a few somersaults, scratching my nails against the sides of the walls, and breathing out air into the CCD camera which was as dead as a dodo. Or so I wished. The camera was in perfect condition and the receptionist would have a great time everyday watching her personal cartoon network channel. She had 6 television screens and I was on her most favorite one every morning and every evening. I was even considering doing a ballroom dance with my laptop when the receptionist lady finally told me how amusing I was to her. That was the end of my dancing days - then on I stood so still that she must have mistook me for a cardboard cutout.

Maybe I should write about my great adventures on my palace on wheels. One thing I was sure about - no soul would care to bother me in a cancer lab late nights. There was this football match that day - Americans would be kicking away towards obesity and vocal cord damage. My samples were running across the gel and I had time to kill. One premium advantage of working in an American research lab is - their chairs have wheels. One could conveniently lie flat on his/her stomach over the chair and glide away across the room at 15 miles per hour. And glide away I did ... nothing was more exciting than that. Its true when they say that research is interesting - the incubation times are when most breakthroughs happen. Wasn't that when I figured out that I could garner more speed if I took a run up before falling flat on the chair and roll away to the end of the lab? I did it. Speed, I did garner. And also some shocked expressions from an advisor who had just walked in to grab some of his sheets. It worries me to put myself in his shoes - a respectable advisor who believes in doing Science for altruistic purposes sees a graduate student, tummy pressed to the seat, rolling away knocking against expensive instruments along his wonderful journey.

Maybe I should write about my fine observation skills that made quite a lot of heads turn. It so happened that I was way too early in the Atlanta airport and was passing away my time by rating girls as they passed (i'm generally lenient - the lowest I gave that day was 7 and only because she had too much hair on her eyebrows). The exasperated lady next to me decided to let go of some body fluids and requested me to look after her luggage. Being the two goody shoes (and secretly hoping she's a queen who'll give me half her kingdom and her daughter's hand for marriage for my good deeds), I gladly agreed. Not even two minutes had passed, there came a woman trying to tug her luggage off to a different place. Would I let her? I made it my responsibility to save the luggage from unscrupulous hands. If this stranger crazy lady wanted to steal away the luggage, she'd have to do it over my dead body. I tried to convince her that this luggage belongs to someone else and she tried hard to convince me that she herself is that someone else. I remembered her black overcoat. This lady does not have a black overcoat. I still held on to her luggage in one hand, a little confused myself. Heads were turning, people were looking up from their newspapers, there was a bit of awkward expressions on our faces. She won the staring competition. Unabashedly, she pulled away her luggage from me, wore the black overcoat given to her by her little daughter who came dancing like a daisy from the nether world and walked away and sat a good distance away from me. I wouldn't have been surprised if people moved their personal bags closer to themselves after seeing this weird me who denies people what rightly belongs to them.

What's my most embarrassing moment? When I slid on the bus on my bottom, or when my friends caught me for the possession of compact powder and a fairness cream? When i bowled my first leather ball which took 13 pitches before it reached the batsman, or when I strongly argued that the sacred cow was masculine with my coach? When i wore a semi-transparent dhoti in front of about 250 relatives, or when I lost in a running race (a relay actually) only because I ran in the opposite direction? It is said that the rate at which a person can mature is directly proportional to the embarrassment he can tolerate. I think I'm not doing that bad in this arena...