Quite literally so. It turned out that I had a bad fever during btx (for people who dunno, btx is the shortened version of biotechcellence, a national level technical symposium on biotechnology with international participation, conduced by the 6th semester students of Centre for Biotechnology, Anna university) that played a bit of spoilsport. Coming to the event, here are some of the afterthoughts that flash in my memory when I think of btx-09..
To start with, the highlight of btx this year..I remember reading these lines somewhere:
“There is a pleasure in the pathless woods..
There is rapture on the lonely shore...
I love not man the less; but Nature more...”
Yes, Biotechcellence-09 went green! 10.5 lakhs, hundreds of colleges, 300 papers, a huge response just in proportion with the huge expectations, an explosion of innovative ideas… by any yardstick, it was indeed one of the best of department symposiums ever. Given the amount of planning and preparatory work that was involved, all of us in the class had been very very eagerly and anxiously waiting for Feb 19-22nd.
The preparation for btx would probably take up a longer post for me to blog about. As far as I was concerned, I was shuttling between committees, though officially I was in scientific affairs. What I did was in fact a very negligibly small portion of the work, compared to a lot of other people, who put their mind body and soul into it. I did a bit of sci affairs work (full credit to suman, though), a very little bit of sponsorship, a bit of competitions. The best was for the online quiz, for which apoorva and me prepared most of the questions. It was probably the most interesting of all the works I did for btx. I shall post the questions in this blog soon. The response was good too and that was the happiest part. Many contestants were actually kind enough to congratulate us on the work. Nothing like it!
On Wednesday, the 18th, we had a hands-on workshop for CBT iians conducted by eppendorf. The workshop was good to say the least. We did real time PCR and it was a good learning experience, as we really ‘did’ it, ‘hands-on’ unlike many other workshops. Then there was some last minute work as usual and the day ended…
The next morning was the inauguration. I was just hoping biotechnology and pharmacology actually work - in the sense that my antibiotic worked along with paracetamol to bring my fever down. It perfectly did! Not for nothing is medical biotech being touted as the next big thing! I woke up on the right side of the bed, and yeah, I remember the day for the saree more than anything else. There I was, quite guessably, in a blue saree. Saree in my view, is probably one of the most feminine and mystifyingly charming clothing the world has ever seen. Yes, it is indeed very uncomfortable and doesn’t let u to be the least tomboyish you wanna be, but it is indeed a wonder clothing. Coming back to the symposium, the chief guest was Mr. George, chief advisor to the Department of Biotechnology. The VC was present and so were the other dignitaries along with the Exnora chairman, Mr. Nirmal. We at Btx had really worked hard on the eco friendly aspect and it did pay rich dividends in the end. There were some ambitious plans being made by the policy makers – here the VC and Mr. Nirmal - about making Anna University a zero waste institution and all that. Would be great if biotechcellence provided the beginning for such good ventures. At least, it would be remembered beyond the 4 days, if all of these plans work. And then there was the ‘tribute to 14 years of btx’ that was released on the occasion
So, biotechcellence-09 started with a bang, a prelude of what was in store for the next few days. Probably the most tiring work I indulged in that day was covering up the bamboo dustbins with eco friendly sheets for easy clearance of waste. Quite funny. The food was good too, and I still feel sorry for having indulged in that ice cream that day coz it added to my sickness and I couldn’t attend the next day’s events.
The next day.. Practically the first day of btx.. And this annoying irritating fever, cold stopped my enthusiasm. The antibiotic didn’t do any good and rhinovirus got the better of my immune system. I decided to skip the day’s events and be fit for the next two days, which according to me were more important given the fact that the video conferences and the culturals were scheduled on those days. I did miss being there, of course. It was really frustrating to sit at home and do some work of putting up banners at the venue over phone. As usual, it was my friends who came to my rescue. From what I heard, though everything was really worth attending, there were two things I missed the most. The first was Dr. Yamuna Krishna’s lecture. Her research is simply mind blowing from what I had searched on the internet. Incidentally, she happened to be the first person who accepted our offer for a guest lecture at the event, that too in a very kind manner. When I saw the pics and from what I heard, I missed watching her in person, too. Apparently she was the coolest (actually the hottest, dressed up wonderfully in formal wear) among the guest lecture circuit. Somehow, women wielding power never fail to impress and inspire me, however small their reign and expanse of power might be. And here was a woman, standing tall with her achievements speaking for themselves, still, cheerful and down-to-earth like anyone else. Sure, women on top are always hot, in every sense of the word!
The second thing I missed was the project design event. There is a reason behind that. It was apoorva and me who framed the IDP problem for it, with the help of Dr. Ramalingam, our professor. It really felt great that so many people could take it so seriously, work on it day and night and come up with mind-blowing solutions to it. Really honoured and humbled.
On the 2nd day, there was the videoconference with Mr.Narasimhan Sudharsan, from Yale University who talked about riboswitches, followed by an array of interesting events.
The highlight of the day was the quiz, conducted b V.V.Ramanan of ‘the Hindu’ fame. Though the audience wasn’t as great in the finals as much as in the prelims, the quality of questions made up for it all.
Then it was time for the most awaited event of all, the Culturals. So we went to ‘Green Park’. Had a blast to say the least. Our performance of ‘desi girl’ turned out to be a disaster. It was quite good during the practice sessions, but bad luck!! The worst part was that, I was on an overdose of antibiotics just to sound good, without signs of the bad throat infection, but alas, my mic didn’t work and nobody heard me. We couldn’t hear the karaoke track on stage and ended up making a mess of the song. Thankfully, nothing sounded too obviously wrong as the mood was really upbeat and nobody really bothered about the quality of singing. It was indeed a great feeling when the ‘making of btx’ was screened. BP easily deserved an equivalent of an oscar for that athmika scene alone and hari as the cinematographer and eco-friendly ghajini was simply awesome. Though all the performances were indeed good, it was the song medley and the dance medley that all of us were waiting for, and obviously the ones that hogged the limelight. One thing worth mentioning was the stage decoration and that disco lights. It was superb.. party environs plus a dash of biotech.. just perfect!!
And yeah, the farewell for seniors was good too, with the candle lights and all. Must have been very nostalgic to them. Somehow I just hate to even think of seeing myself at the receiving end just a year from now. Okay let’s reserve that for another post. Back to the scene of action.
After the dinner, (which my fever didn’t let me enjoy to the fullest), I had a good ice-cream with strawberry sauce, (my first ice-cream in btx09), immediately followed by paracetamol and roxid-150! I didn’t want to miss the final day too. The day finally drew to a close. Time really flies when you are happy and when you don’t want it to.
I pushed myself out of bed literally the next day and I had forgotten my fever. I rushed just in time for Mr. Palani’s video conf. That was probably the best lecture of the whole of btx. He was the head of labeling dept of Invitrogen, USA. I shall find time to post more on the content of the lectures some time later. The basic technology was called ‘Click-it’. Awesome applications! It was followed by a host of events. Short films event was good. Met a couple of friends from other colleges, whom I had met in other symposiums. After the spin-a-yarn event, (Japesh had been going around with a heavy blazer all through the hot day just for the sake of that event! Poor guy! ) it was time for the valedictory function. The speech by Mr. Sundar was one of the best. Very interesting concepts and innovative ideas indeed! I actually wasn’t very much into it when I was distributing all those pamphlets with soluble films made of bio-based and bio-degradable materials. I thought of it as just another sponsor-tantrum. But Mr. Sunder was kind of the perfect marketing guy, who was quite convincing about almost everything that he talked about.
All good things come to an end, and so did Biotechcellence-09. (Completely out of context, this is probably why mega-serials are bad-coz they never end). All of us were quite happy with the way everything turned out. The faculty said it was ‘the’ best and that we left nothing more for our juniors to innovate. Probably they were generous enough, but still, nobody can deny the fact that, every single soul in 6th sem had worked for it in his/her own way, in whatever small or big magnitude possible. And that in totality contributed to the success of the event. Indeed, success is sweeter when rejoiced as a team!
To me, what made it so special were the little things - they made it all the more interesting- mud pots instead of plastic mineral water cans, the soft board with comments, the eco-friendly dustbins, Re.1 for exchange of plastic to paper bags, the disco lights during the culturals, the quirky volunteer cards, the bamboo sapling and pot painting mementos to the guests…. I can go on and on… and of course, some of the most interesting of ideas that couldn’t be implemented for some reason or the other - The energy producing eco-friendly machine, the eco-friendly mascot (arvind was the unanimous choice, obviously), using shankar-mahadevan’s NDTV green anthem as a theme (the tune composed by pritika actually suited the mood better, so we went with it), to quote a few… I wish the fun had lasted longer… In all, 4 happy and eventful days etched evergreen in memory..
Curtains fall!!!
