The MENTOS moment of my life !

            You might have laughed whenever you watched that Mentos Ad where that young college guy is thrown out of the class by his professor for coming late. But Ye he AAM Zindagi. And then he pops a mentos and walks back into the class, in a reverse manner, and the moment the professor sees him coming in, he pretends to be walking out of the class, and is asked to take his seat in the class! He gets the attention of the prized female of the class.. Ye he Mentos zindagi !


            I too had a similar experience, where, following the protocol would have screwed my grades. I did just the opposite and no one was any wiser about it ! I'l narrate it to you....


10th of December, 2007


           It was the lab exam for System Software, wherein we are tested to demonstrate our skills in the LEX and YACC programs dealing with lexical analysis of strings and the corresponding action concerning them. There were 6 programs in LEX and 7 in YACC and we had to pick 2 chits, one for each. This lab was supposed to be a simple one, because the programs we had to learn were very short. But among them, there was one particularly irritating program. It came under YACC and dealt with IF-ELSE looping constructs...


           I was thorough with all programs except that one. Even on the day before the exam when I called up my friends, I couldn't find a solution for it. You might ask me what I was doing during the regular lab classes when we practised the programs; I would say that we hardly bothered abt it ! Once inside the wonderful lab with new SOLARIS machines and a high speed 10Mbps internet connection, adorned by lazy, nondescript, careless lab attenders who hardly bothered about what we did there, we had loads of fun there !


            I had to take a decision.
Even in previous semesters, I had gone to the lab exams reading all the programs minus one or two, and had managed to comeout well. I had luck on my side. Talking in terms of Probability, the odds of me getting that very program were very small. Nothing could go wrong. Been there, done that I thought. But I had a vision or something of a disaster and I thought of a PLAN B, in case of a worst case scenario. I decided I would do what I thought I would, in case the worse came to worst.


            The D-day dawned and I entered the lab. Mine was 1st day 1st show. It has its pros and cons. Pros being that the equipment is fine tuned and is not tampered by the previous batch of students and you can be sure about your output. And the external examiner would be new to the lab and he wont know everyone there and incase he is a tyrant of some kind, he Cannot exercise his complete powers. The cons are that the ppl coming in the next batch will already know the viva-voce questions [ which we had no sources of knowing ] and are likely to answer better, in case they know the right answers !
The external examiner was a placid old man, pretty happy sitting there and letting our profs do all the work.


            I picked up two chits. I invoked Ajji-Punya [ i'm not going to reveal the secret details.... it always works ! ] and sent a silent prayer heavenwards. The lex program was a simple one. I was saved I thought. Then I picked the Yacc chit. I was shocked. It was that program. I was doomed.
I had second-thoughts about returning the chit, picking another one , and losing 10 marks out of 50 just like that. But then, with steely resolve I decided to do what I thought I would, in the worst case scenario. I never thought I would have to do it, but the time had come. The MENTOS moment of my life. It was either AAR ya PAAR. Do or Die.

And I did it.



here's what i did- -


            When you pick the chit, the examiner writes down the program no. on your answer booklet. So there is no way one can change the number of the program one has got. But I had observed that once they write the program no. on our booklet, and we submit our written programs for their scrutiny, they never verify if the program on the booklet was same as that asked in the question. They just sign whatever we write provided its right and send us to execute it on the PC.

I decided to exploit this loop-hole.


            I coolly went over to my desk, and wrote down the lex program and after that, wrote a yacc program which  I knew  instead of that damned program. Even as I was doing so, I saw some of my friends get that damned program, and lose 10 marks after getting it changed. It was too late to backout. I handed my booklet to the examiner. The old man religiously looked out for mistakes in it.
There were none.

He scanned the paper once. But nothing happened. As I said, no one ever knew about it ! It was a calculated risk.


I won.

What I say about life is that, the possibilty of making your wildest dreams and thoughts come true makes life interesting and worth the time spent... !






WARNING: DO NOT try this at your College !! 
[ rather , dont get busted doing this :-) ]