Sunday, February 14, 2010

Chocolate Festival at Trinity

You've watched Johnny Depp's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory but didn't know if it existed for real. All you had to do was come to Trinity on Friday, 12th Feb at 2pm to find out for real. Students and staffs were treated to different kinds of chocolate flavors (dark, white, milk and what not) during the Chocolate Festival.

Photo by: Digital Subway
Chocolate Festival, one of the biggest and most popular events organized by Tiger Council drew a flock of chocolate fans. Several clubs and organizations had their own stalls giving out free chocolates. Even Association of Student Representatives (ASR) and Campus & Community Involvement had stalls. Tiger Council had publicly stated, 
Chocolate is a great natural antidepressant. It contains tryptophan which helps you create serotonin, your body’s own antidepressant.
No doubt, everyone appeared happy and childlike, thanks to high secretions of serotonin. Even ladies ultra-conscious about their body image devoured chocolates unsparingly. Supply of chocolate started running low as soon as the event kicked off. I arrived at around 2:30 pm and was penalized for my tardiness by getting only left-overs (See Picture below). All good stuff was gone sooner than anyone had imagined.

Photo by: Digital Subway

Thursday, February 4, 2010

How Jared Diamond Chose to Collapse My Dreams

The privilege of being a Trinity student is that you get to hear lectures by global leaders in person, free of cost at Trinity's own Laurie Auditorium, that has a capacity to accommodate about 2500 people. Former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, former US President Bill Clinton, former Pakistani strongman and President Pervez Musharraf, French PM Dominique de Villepin and Nobel Laureates like Joseph Stiglitz have all paid a visit to Trinity University and enriched experience and understanding of Trinity students.

I had the honor of attending a lecture by Jared Diamond as part of DeCoursey Lecture Series. His book, Guns, Germs and Steel, has won the Pulitzer prize. His most recent book, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed has won rave reviews. He is a man who commands knowledge of multi-disciplines, a modern Aristotle, so to speak. I had listened to one of his lectures on Ted.com where he gave examples of societies on the verge of collapse. He mentioned Nepal as one of examples which shocked me and came as an alarm since I am from Nepal and take considerable interest in development of my nation.

I had made up my mind that I would ask, "why he thought Nepal was on the verge of collapse", when he came to speak at Trinity ever since I listened to that lecture (few months ago). I was anxiously waiting for this day. After Jared Diamond's lecture in Laurie Auditorium on February 1, I stepped down to Q/A session to ask this question. I was mentally rehearsing,  rephrasing this question and coming up with the best way to put it. 

Since there were many other eager people to ask questions, I stood in a line. Just as my turn came nearer, he said he could only take a few more questions. Don't cut on me, please, I prayed. Sadly, the person right before me turned out to the last person to ask question. I thought of insisting, he could take one more question and I really needed to ask him since the question had been bugging me and depriving me of mental peace. But I decided against it since I thought such insistence might appear disrespectful. 

The Q/A session ended and I exited Laurie with a heavy heart, confident that Jared Diamond had chosen to collapse my dreams, just as he had chosen to quote Nepal as a society on the verge of collapse.