Back with a Bang

Right, so I've been ranting about my poor showing at pretty much everything this year, and how I had to go fix that, before I got passed off for a useless bum.
Basically, I pretty much did.

I went for The Mothers International School Extempore Speaking competition todays, along with Aditi Misra, a non-deranged-eleventhie. It was quite a wonderful event, 17 schools, a good number, and more to note, 17 noteworthy schools, none of the riff raff. The event was the conclusion to their Birth Centenary of their Founder's(I forget the poor chaps name) celebration, so it might get, to borrow a term, more footage in the papers sometime.

Anyhow, like Karan has mentioned, MIS is quite a wonderful school. They're organised, the events are on time, and there is no bakwas speechofying, that is the bane of most events. In addition, they get major bonus points for not yelling "DPS Sucks", as is common custom in most of Delhi's schools. This is probably because they know they're a damn good school too, and don't have such an inferiority complex, that most other schools hand over to their students. Eaps was there, and so were a couple of very good speakers from Springdales, though one of them, Ashish, kinda got way way too dramatic. He sure had the audience with him, but in retrospect, I don't think singing "Kya Aap Close Up Kartein Hain" in an extemp is the best way to go about things. There was also weird, emotionally disturbed woman from Sanskriti, who kept yelling at the top of her lungs about how all men were bastards, and had done bad things to Women. I don't think anyone in their right minds would dare do bad things to her, they might end up suffering from loss of hearing, as a result.

Anyhow, to the event. Half an hour for preparation, after topics were given, which was basically 20 minutes, but good enough. Topics were decided by a draw of lots, and there were plenty of topics to go around, so no two speakers got the same topic, as has happened in previous extemp events I've been for.
My topic was, "Peer Pressure: To Do, or not to Do". Initially a little flummoxed(yeah, I know I've spelled it wrong, so jaast) with the grammar of the topic, I just wrote what came to my mind. Ten minutes later, I had something resembling a draft, which I then extended, put in a few fancy shmancy quotes, like "Burn your own Demons", and concluded. It was a nice, well written thing, and I got down to practicing it for time. Good thing I did that, because when speaking, I knew exactly how long I was going to take.
Fine, I'll get to the point at long last. I spoke damn well today, modulation was right, no stuttering, and it was well written(which is always the least of my worries). As a result, and boy I've taken a long time in getting to this, I Won! Woo Hoo! Best speaker: Me, and Best Team, DPS, R.K.Puram. I picked up a Midlands Gift Voucher for Rs. 400, which means Damini is getting a nice birthday present after all, and very nice looking trophy cup too, all big and shiny, and laters, I found out, it's returned to DPS after a sabbatical of a year. Apparently, my...ahem, predecessor wasn't able to pick it up last year.

So I'm back, and I've earned back my tie again(long story), and all is well under the wide good sun. I might even end up enjoying a dinner at my house tonight, well, I'd always enjoy the dinner, the company, rather.
Ah, its good to be back in the winning ways. Lets hope it carries on to tomorrows, at the Fragnels Quiz.

EDIT:

Well, today's just been getting better and better. After school, I went for my tuition class, which passed by quite puickly, for a change. I step outside, and its nice and drizzly, the perfect kind of rain for taking a long walk in, as nothing gets exceptionally wet. Plus, the sun was out a bit, so there was the wonderful contrast.
So, from class, I walked to Sonali's, picked her up(not literally, this time), and dragged her along to midlands with me, where I shopped for budday present for Madam, and picked up a nice short story collection of Ray Bradbury for myself. Only, this is midlands, so I got two books, one of them giftwrapped, gave a voucher for 400, and still got 25 bucks back.
You know, talking and meeting friends after a long time is a really great mood upper. First Eaps, and then Sonali, its been a perfect day.
So, then I drop her back home, and proceed to GPM for my haircut. After which, I decide to treat myself with remaining 25 bucks to Gol Gappas at evergreen, and a AAA battery.(My rechargables had run out of juice)

You know how they say "In short measures life may perfect be"? Well, I've just had a whole day, that was pretty close to perfect. So up his, whoever the poet was, he doesn't know what the ruddy hell he was talking about.