Sometimes Laughter is the only medicine :D

OK....just like this twitter tweet here , everywhere I go , I keep hearing those two dreaded words : SWINE FLU . In the hostel , the campus , in the city outside , the papers , the WWW etc. So much has been said and done about the symptoms of it and how to tackle the same . I personally feel that the media has blown things way out of proportion causing the outbreak of not just the Swine Flu Epidemic but also a concomitant Swine Flu Mass Hysteria . Believe it or not , the latter seems to rule the roost in terms of it's impact on the public . Nevertheless , I do not intend to make this post a superfluous extension of what is already been dished out in the media.

In such an inexorable condition , we can find some respite in Laughter , which sometimes is the only medicine to an illness . So lighten yourself up peeps !
And have a nice and safe day :) .

( from some arbit site ....> )

Some Ways to Catch Swine Flu:

1. Stuff bacon in your surgical mask.
2. Sit next to pig on an airplane.
3. Lick a pig.
4. Convince boss to hire a pig. Share a cubicle.
5. Sniff a pig.
6. Shake hands with pig and don't wash.
7. Take pig on romantic date. Kiss goodnight.
8. Use curly pig tail as dental floss.
9. Order a milkshake. Share straw with pig.
10. Compliment a co-dependant pig until it follows you everywhere.
11. Fill oxygen tank with pig breath. Inhale deeply.
12. Leave pig in your car on a hot day. Take a road trip.
13. Share a lollipop with pig.

:D

The Blackmetaller’s Guide to the GRE :)

Blogging after a long time . Courtesy GRE . Thankfully , I am done with it . An OK score of 1460 ( Quant: 800 , Verbal:660 :( ) .

Although the title of the post gives the idea that the post is a didactical treatise on how to study for the GRE , it actually isn’t . I have just listed the material I used for the same and added my views here and there . Nothing more , nothing less . It is upto thy intelligent self to winnow the useful stuff from the one which isn’t ....

For Verbal :
1. Mugged Barrons ....No ifs and buts here sadly !!

2. Solved all the Big Book Tests . U’ll find a host of new words here too....especially in the analogy questions . Do them !! And chances are you’ll never run out of them during your prep. duration .

3. Read the ‘Kaplan’s Verbal ‘ Ebook.....has certain fundae on how to approach various sections of the Verbal exam . Browse through. The word lists too deserve a glimpse for they are pretty well-organised and grouped .

4. “ 63 RC’s “ . Ignore this one if you are already able to crack the Big Book RC’s effortlessly . Personally , I used to always make a few mistakes in RC’s ...hence I used this ebook. It has an amazing collection of GMAT/GRE level passages . Again , there are so many that you’ll never run out of them !!

5. Prof. M.Krupa Shanker’s Audio Lists ( Only the ‘ Analogies ‘ and ‘ Special Words’ . These are 2 audio files ( 10-15 mins duration ..i think ) . Here are some words you can note down for analogies .....for e.g collective nouns , words related to a particular subject etc. The alternative for this Audio thingie is exploring a Thesaurus , but again , I didn’t have enough time to do the latter .

6 . Lastly , all your efforts in building a strong Vocabulary will remain incomplete if you don’t supplement it with section-wise tests on a regular basis . In the initial period of your prep , do Big Book , Princeton Review CD ( Really Easy !! ) , Kaplan ( A lil scary initially..sum tough words ) and Cambridge . And yeah ..the Powerprep section-wise practice exercises too .

For Quant :
Prepared very little for this section ....

I read through the Fundae in Barron’s . Solved a few examples here and there .
Did the same with an ebook “ Nova GRE “ . And the ‘ ETS GRE Math Review ‘ . That’s it .

Do some tests ( from the CD’s mentioned for Verbal ) and u shud be fine . Mind you , the actual GRE quants are slightly tougher ( cuz they take more time and require a tiny bit more of thinking ) . Avoid making silly mistakes and you should be through with a perfect score here !!

For AWA :
I wrote just ONE essay each for the Issue and Argument types two days before the exam . Was too lazy to practise more . Do read through the sample essays in ‘ ARCO’s Essay Book ‘ . Its an amazing book with samples based on the ETS list of issues and arguments . Get a basic feel on how to approach the section otherwise from the ETS AWA tutorial . That should be more than enough to land you a decent score .

Other useful material and links :
www.number2.com
www.greguide.com
Dr.Raju’s GRE ( check out the Orkut version of this page otherwise for most recent Quant and Verbal Questions faced by others for an idea !!
500 questions on Antonyms , Sentence Completion , Quantitative Comparison etc.etc. ( all separate ebooks  ).

That is about it ...i guess . It resulted in a decent score for me ....and hopefully atleast some of this might help you get a decent or probably a better score !!

Cheers ,
Count Grishnackh ( The Blackest ov the Black )

p.s. In case the readers of this post give the GRE in the future and come out with flying colours , they MUST treat the author or atleast drop a comment here :) .

Snake Reverie / Benzene ??

Place : 10 July 2009 , 11.00 AM , Nerul , Navi Mumbai

"I turned my chair towards my window and dozed. Again the words were gamboling before my eyes. ... My mental eye... could not distinguish larger words , of manifold conformation; long ones , sometimes more closely related together; all twining and twisting in snakelike motion. But look! What was that? One of the snakes had seized hold of its own tail, and the WORD whirled mockingly before my eyes. As if by a flash of lighting I awoke...and wrote this post " - Nikhil Balachander

Folks , this could be an after-effect of continously mugging vocab for GRE !!

On second thought however it could also be an inane adaptation of the famous reptilian dream Fredrich August von Kekule (a German chemist)claimed he had and resulted in the discovery of the ring-shaped chemical structure of benzene in 1865. Although some scholars now believe that Kekule's dream was a hoax to avoid sharing credit for the discovery of the hexagonal shape of benzene, it still makes a wonderful story. :P :P

Cheers!