"You know the quality of your surveying. Now just make it beautiful."
Off the mark was my team, with my partner erasing everything and re-drawing the map most beautifully. Of course, it was no longer a map in the truest sense of the term, but then, who cares? Ah, the beautiful colours that appeared as the rivers and canals turned blue, the mountains turned green (and brown, in some cases)... there came a table of legends, there a linear scale. And last, but not the least - the control point coordinates, obtained by whichever means (mostly GPS)!
Of course, there was the slight problem that our GPS data hadn't been processed. But once we realised that you-know-who wasn't even planning on visiting us today, it didn't matter at all. We were free birds waiting to finish our grains and fly away. A few photocopies and some reproduced matter and viola! GPS coordinates at your service!
However, we faced a problem in that the ink took quite a bit of time to dry. So, I had to skip lunch in order to continue with my work. The best part was contouring. I quote: "Contours are not approximate. Contours are arbitrary!" We were even given two sample maps to look at and both of them were so arbitrary that we were truly inspired. After all, when a wasteland can look like a plush lawn, what's the harm in putting a road over a hill (without a tunnel)?
By 4:30 PM, I was finally done. Ah, the joy of seeing a work of art worth its weight in gold (how much does paper weigh, I wonder?)! The joy of seeing a file full of botched-up readings! Oh God, why did we need a ten-day survey camp when we could have done this in ten minutes using Google Earth? Our final map was so beautiful and so worthless that it is truly deserving of an IITian!
Map ripped off the table. File submitted. Signed next to my name. And there ends our Survey Camp. And then came the facebook pictures!
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