FRIENDS or enemies

It's exam season in IIT. Wherever you look, one can see the smoke from the overheated heads of the young minds. Some interesting changes happen during exam times. Night tea is available for free after 10 pm. Earlier the internet used to get disconnected after 12 am, now it is extended till 4 am so that students can "study" online. Selected stationary shops and photostat shops will be kept open till 1 am. Fewer people are seen on the roads. All in all everyone and everything contributing to building a big scary environment.

But there was one guy who, even 2 days before the exams were to begin, was yet to show any signs of being "affected" by these changes. Yup, that's me. Yeah he did welcome the night tea change - he got tea free now....he welcomed the internet change - he could download more movies now. He didn't even bother about other changes. Why would he want to bother with photostats when he doesn't even know what to photocopy.

One month before the exams were to begin, I had downloaded the first 2 seasons of the famous FRIENDS comedy series. I had seen random episodes of this series at home when it was telecast on TV . Since then I had always wanted to see the entire series in the right order. So thus started my journey into the deep unknown unexplored mysterious adrenaline packed (c'mon no harm in a "little" exaggeration, right?) world of FRIENDS. After watching the first 2 seasons there was no stopping me. I immediately downloaded the next 3 seasons. The fact that exams were just a week away had least impact. In fact I noticed a worrisome trend as the exams were nearing. Somehow my watching rate was becoming inversely proportional to the number of days remaining for the exams.

2 days left for exam.
Exam to study for : Digital Image processing.(DIP)
Priority : Very high
Reason : Had one of the biggest screw up in the history of IIT during the mid semester exam of the
same course
Priority actually given by me : Very low
Reason : 5 more episodes of season 4 pending :(

So a "crisis" has definitely risen. Friends or DIP.
Things favouring Friends :
1) There are 2 days still left to study :D
2) Mentally prepared to getting screwed up again. Somehow what the prof teaches mostly goes over my head.

Things favouring DIP:
1) Only 2 days left to study :(
2) Accept the challenge to mentally prepare myself to not to mentally prepare myself to get screwed (if that makes any sense)

Since the factors favouring DIP were unprecedentedly high, I had no option other than to start preparing for DIP. I opened the book and started with the chapter image compression.

"Image compression is blah blah blah.....compression techniques are used in variety of applications and and and....will Ross and Rachel break up...na they can't break up right, they are so great together....and hoho, that chandler is funny"
"Whoaaaa dudeee what the ****, concentrateeeeeee."
I was like" hey who's this".
Then I realized it was coming from inside my head itself.
"C'mon dude we need to see the next episode and see whether they are really breaking up"
"Hey hey now who is this"
Again I realized it was coming from inside my head itself.
Oho 2 contradicting voices from the same head. Only 1 explanation for this. It's the white angel (WA) versus the Red Devil (RD) contest once again. (Do I watch too many tom and jerry shows???)
WA : Image processing is tough
RD : But FRIENDS is funny
WA : You need to get a good grade
RD : Na, u can always make it up in others
WA : RD sucks
RD : I rock.

Me : Aaahh stop itttt you two....I will watch FRIENDS for 10 minutes and then study...what harm will come in not studying 10 minutes.
Next "10" minutes went in watching a whole 25 minutes FRIENDS episode.
Fine at least now get down to study...it was already noon and have done nothing yet
Back to image processing...

"There are different types of compression techniques : LZW compression, the JPEG compression, GIF compression,Rachel compression, Ross compression...Aaaahhh not againnnnn"

Now I had some serious trouble. I just can't concentrate on my studies as long as I have the FRIENDS series pending (and I had 5 more seasons to go, that means 24 episodes in each season and each episode around 20 minutes). O crap I need to do something about it.
I packed my bags and went to the lab (each mtech guy gets a personnel PC here).
Things started getting better after that, though concentrating was still tough. But since I didn't have FRIENDS in my lab PC, I had no other choice than to continue studying.

This was my routine for the next 2 days. Go to lab, sit there till night and then come back to the room. Soon the exam day arrived. I went confidently to the exam hall. 5 minutes later the question paper was distributed. One look at the question paper and I knew it....It's screw up time once again. The 2 days time that I had sacrificed for the sake of preparing for this paper could well have been "well utilised" at finding out whether Monica would really get a boyfriend or whether Joey would pass his audition. Suddenly from inside my head came the reply
" I told ya so".
Yeah I know. RD is always right. Fine whatever, I need to go back to the room and make up for the lost time and find out the answers to the above questions before my next exam.See ya.