NIT LIFE

The art of mind control

2009-04-05T03:55:00.009+05:30

Yesterday I had attended a class on "The Art of mind Control". Attending such a class in aryabhatta by a final year is thought to be taboo. This kind of classes are meant for first years who are crazy about anything! My friends rejected the idea of attending a class w/o attendance and that too on a fine saturday afternoon. Anyway I just want to check it out. So I went there. Inspirational quotes by eminent personalities flashed in the screen till the class started. Some people started taking down to get motivated later.The class was conducted by an experienced guy who takes classes for corporate guys. It is his first time with engineering students. The guy started talking about the need of mind control and taught us some basic pranayama techniques and methods to increase the spiritual quotient. The class was very nice but the way in which the nitc guys approched the class was quite interesting. Some doubts which I liked are those which followed the pranayama techniques.

* He taught us that in pranayama we should inhale till he count 2 and then hold for 8 counts and then exhale for another 4 counts. When u inhale take maximum breath and ur tummy should be of maximum size. While exhaling completely exhale and ur tummy should shrink inside. After practising 4-5 rounds came doubts from the ever curious nitc-ians :

Q:Sir is it absolutely necessary to hold for 8 counts...?
A:No.. If u inhale for 1 count hold for 4 and then exhale for 2 counts.
(The engineers figured it out inhale=x, hold=4x and exhale=2x)
Q: Sir, my tummy is moving the other way around. (shrinking on inhaling and vice versa)
A: Check with some doctor!
Q:Sir we are inhaling for x time and we exhaling for 2x time. So where is the extra air coming ?
( questioning the very existence of all theorems " energy can't be created or destroyed")
A: We are inhaling faster and exhaling slowly.
Q: Sir, any how which is more in amount ? Inhaling or exhaling air?
A: Exhaling contains impurities too. There fore may contain more amount.
Q: Sir, but the number of molecules inhaled is same as exhaled rite...?
Then the guy and some chemists started figuring out C4 + O2 -> CO2
then balanced C4 +4O2-> 4CO2. So inhaled amount is Same as exhaled.
Pranayama class thus ended up a chemistry class coz of engineers .

The guy succesfully took the class to the later sessions before avogadro's number and molecular masses would dominated the discussion.

Lots of such interesting discussion came up and I couldn't remember all. But I am sure he would be more careful in dealing with engineers in future.

APRIL FOOL (How many times can you fool the same guy?)

2009-04-01T17:06:00.005+05:30

As I dream and as it may sound it is not me who fooled someone. It was HASH who fooled me.
I was thinking of some ways to fool my friends. Then I got a mail from HASH "101 ways to fool people" which came handy for me. But on opening the mail it said "this is one way.. Will send the rest later"! . No one saw that. I buried it!
I had been alert since then. I had graph theory class at 10.15 . As usual I was a bit late and when I reached the class it was closed and so I called Hash. He din take the call and msgd me telling "class has shifted to seminar hall". Ever since I registered for the subject it was taught in db. And why should it be shifted on APRIL 1 ?? My brain analyzed and found out a clear case of fooling. Who is he gonna fool ? ME!!! I went back to room and slept. But it turned out that class was actually shifted which means my bunkometer moved towards the border in the subject.
After all other classes I went back to room and I almost forgot the APRIL fool thing and then 'hash' sent me a link to the blog of an M.Tech guy whom we know and he claimed to have got "Google Internship" . I was happy for him and so I commented congratulating him. Then hash told me he was fooling !
Thus I got fooled thrice!

Ragam 09 :The Best Ragam ever!!

2009-03-29T03:07:00.010+05:30

Ragam 09 has just happened! as we say every year "the best ragam ever", it was indeed the best one. Even though it includes a lot of events the major ones were the events in OAT. PRo shows by Benny Dayal and Shankar Mahadevan indeed rocked the thousands. Breath the floyd, fashion show and group dance events in OAT were superb! Benny Dayal performed with Swetha . I have never seen OAT so much crowded. As usual my aim was to enjoy and touch the stars !! (yeah I love it !!). So I had been near the stage with my friends. I Could give a hand to Swetha but Couldn't touch Benny! Most of the songs performed were familiar. So really rocked! After the show there was group dance competition. It was really nice.

Next day it was Shankar Mahadevan's show. It was the best one. The hit numbers really rocked. He even invited some gals to perform on stage for one song. He performed with two other artists. I had to wait near the special gate infront of his car to finally touch him. When he said bye I grabbed his hand! Last day it was Breathefloyd : "Breathe - The Delicate Sound of Floyd" (a Pink Floyd tribute band). Their Dharma tour India commenced with Ragam 09. I am not a great fan of pink floyd, but I love some of their songs. So kinda enjoyed. Fashion show was the last event. I found a nice spot to settle near the stage. As I don't know the rules and formalities of fashion show I was just shortlisting the best gals on stage at any moment based on 'some critirea' and concentrated on them! Any way it was nice too.

Overall the Ragam 09 was amazing... Both informal stages had been crowded on all days of Ragam. Even though it was burning hot in aryabhatta, it was houseful for most of the events. Even in terms of participation from outside collages it would be the best ever. Thousands of people from varous collages came for the event.

Hmmm.. yeah Another Ragam is over. Leaving behind a lot of memories....

(pics courtesy: Bharath)

COLLEGE RANKING FOR M.TECH

2009-03-18T17:08:00.016+05:30

Today I met the HOD of computer science with two of my friends to discuss the prosepectus of higher studies in computer science. While discussing he gave us his personal ranking of institutes for doing masters in computer science. We discussed only IITs and IISc.

(This is his personal ranking for Computer Science)
(Top IIT / IISC Ranking)

1. IIT KANPUR

2. IIT BOMBAY

3. IISC

4. IIT DELHI

Unexpectedly IISc is ranked only 3rd in his opinion. IIT Kanpur is said to be the best in India for theoretical computer science with well known professor Manindra Agrawal ( might have heard AKS algorithm) heading the department. IISc is ranked third as he said many former students complained thay you may not get the guide you want. If you are not able to work on your area of interest it is better not to choose any institute on the basis of reputation.

The following ranking is given by my senior Rose doing M.tech in IITB

Theoretical:
1) IIT Kanpur
2) IISc
3) IIT Bombay

Systems:
1) IIT Bombay
2) IIT Kanpur

Neverthless the toppers in Gate normally go for ME in IISc. One of my senior-
Sreedal has got into Bell Labs while he was doing ME in IISC. But those who are interested in theoretical computer science can better choose IITK.
Those who are interested in theoretical computer science and is interested in doing a Ph.D after B.tech can opt for IMSc or CMI. Those are top class research institutes and have separate tests and interview for selection. Some of my seniors are in IMSc. One of them, Aiswarya Cyriac is doing Ph.D in computer science (IMSc). She is one of the prestigious 'Google India Women in Engineering Award 2009' winner and is doing research in theoretical computer science and is an excellent example of a brilliant student who pursue her dreams rather than going after a general trend. According to her IMSc is the best research institute in India for Computer Science. Those guys from CMI and IMSc get opportunity to work in the best research labs after their studies. Those who are interested in teaching can go for that too. Any way choosing the institute and the course should be purely based on one's interest rather than going with the trend. In the long run it would pay off.

GATE 2009

2009-03-15T20:54:00.012+05:30

Gate results are out last week and I got All India Rank 187 (99.55 percentile) .
The first time I thought about writing GATE was when I discussed it with my friend Justin. He has no plans to go for Masters but he wrote GATE in 3rd year and was planning to attempt it again in final year. I asked him why. He told me that he got a good feeling and satisfaction when he wrote GATE last time(!!) and so he is planning to write it again and he asked me to write it for fun! I though I too would try and figure out the satisfaction in writing the GATE. But instead, when I wrote I got a guilt feeling (that I should have prepared). This is not just what I felt but most of the final yearites felt so. For GATE, as usual many topics from 2nd year and 3rd year syllabus came which were not even in sub conscious mind of most of us.

GATE was totally different from CAT and XAT (which I have written), in terms of the time you get to answer a question. Splendid time...thats what I could say. GATE won't test your speed and accuracy or even your thinking process as many other tests do. It tests your knowledge. I made some mistakes in OMR sheet and had to fill it again in a new OMR sheet and still I had a lot of time to sit idle at the end. Coz in GATE, if you know the concept you can answer the question else you can leave it unlike in CAT/XAT where you can solve every single question if you have time and so they stress you by limiting the time.

Even though I wrote GATE for the sake of it , it turned out to be a good back up in times of global recession! (it indeed started affecting us). Now I am thinking of applying for some good colleges as a back up plan.

For those who are seriously preparing for GATE

*I felt like GATE won't test the depth of your knowledge. Having knowledge in all areas (even though not so deep) of your course would be helpful.

* Topics taught in class ie, from B.Tech syllabus are mostly asked. If you have the standard text books refer it rather than going for guides. ( this is a tip given by my senior Sreedal Menon who got AIR 7 in GATE 2006)

* Referring to previous year qn papers would be helpful to understand the pattern as the GATE paper won't throw much surprise.

( disclaimer:These are not techniques tested and verified by me!!)

XLRI Interview Experience (XLRI BM PI)

2009-03-06T21:12:00.009+05:30

My XLRI interview was on 26th February (2009) in Chennai. The interview was at 12 o' Clock.
I reached there by 11.15. 4 guys were sitting there. Had chat with them. 2 of them had finished their graduation last year and had chosen not to work. Another guy has been with IBM for 3 years and the last one is a fresher like me. He was from NIT Thrichy.
Usual best of lucks for every guy going for interview and whispers about questions with guys exiting. And finally it was 12 and my turn!

My profile
10th :96%
12th :94.5%
college NIT CALICUT: 8.2 CGPA
XAT :99.79 (sectional 98.25,98.98,97.22)

I had an idea bout the interviewers from XL brochure and previous interviewers. There was a senior faculty (Abhijit Gangopadhyay)-S, Rajeev Sharma,File guy (one who checks our file) -F and Guy with our resume and answers to personal qns filled online ( Supriya Kumar De) R.

I expected a stress interview as my friends had earlier but they din stress much.

I: May I come in sir?
S:Yes come in
I:Good Morning sirs
S:Morning
(They din offer me seat)
I:Sir, Can I have my seat
S:Thats your seat, if you don't sit who else is gonna sit?
(I smiled)
S:Give your certificates
(I gave it to S and he handed it over to F who started going through it)
S:Sign it
(I signed)
S:So you are from Calicut. Why is Kozhikode and Calicut, 2 names?
I:It was actually Kozhikode, when British people came they made it to Calicut for pronouncing.
S: Acha, thats how Kozhikode ( he pronounced it as Kojikode) became Calicut
I: It is actually Kozhikode not Kojikode.
S: Then why it is written like that ?
I:The 'zha' sound in Malayalam has no Equivalent in English.
S: Acha.. So you had your schooling in Calicut?
I: No I am actually from Kannur. Did my high school there and attended 12th in Thrissur in Central Kerala and got into NITC which is in Calicut, ie, North Kerala.
S: Thrichur and Thrissur it too has got two names right?
I: Yes, like many cities having two names... Kolkata, Calcutta..
S: yes yes..
S: Where are you placed?
I: hp
S: Hindustan Petroleum?
I: No it is Hewlett Packard. I am placed in hp procurve, It is a Networking R&D wing of HP India.
S: acha, whats the pay
( I told the pay)
S:That's a good amount. Then why do you want to leave that?
I: I'm interested in financial field and is my 1st choice to work on
S: Name a Non-Banking financial firm
I: Muthoot Finance
S: What is it?
I: It is a non banking financial firm from Kerala and they issue loan on guarantee of gold.
S: Can you tell any other national level firm?
I: Insurance sector
S: Give an example
I: Bajaj Allianz
S: What is Allianz?
I: It is a European Insurance major
S: What are they doing with Bajaj?
I: It is a joint venture between Bajaj and Allianz
S: Joint Venture? why? why can't they invest alone?
I: In some sectors Indian government doesn't allow full FDI and so they have to make joint ventures
S: So what is the advantage?
I: If complete FDI is allowed in some sectors big firms would come and dominate, like in retail if we allow full FDI our domestic firms can't compete players like Walmart... and in Joint Venture Domestic firms can use international players' expertize and it will help them
(they din ask anything about retail sector which I know and I was trying to drive)
S turns to F and asked him to proceed. F had finished going through the file and had kept it in front of me.

( S got up and started walking behind me. I donno why)
F: What is the difference between computer science and computer engineering?
I: hmmmmm.... Computer science is actually the underlying theory of computation and engineering is more of the appication side(!).blah..blah...hmmm..my college offers the course Computer Science and Engineering
F:What is a differential equation?
I: hmm.... d/dx... differential...
F:What is Fibonacci sequence ?
I: sequence whose nth term is the sum of (n-1)th term and (n-2)th term like 1 1 2 3..
F:What could be the complexity of an algo to find nth term
I: hmmm.. can I use the paper?
F: yes
( i wrote sthg and )
I: O(n^2)
F: Why?
I: tn = t(n-1) + t(n-2)..so..hmm ..

F totally screwed me as I couldn't answer anything properly
F turns to R

( S came back and sat and started reading news paper)

R: Tell me about the Indian IT sector
I: Indian IT sector contributes to 25-30% of GDP..
R(interrupting): are the figures correct?
I: I'm not sure but IT and services together contributes to 50% of GDP.
R: What is GDP?
I: Gross Democratic Product ( major blunder.. it just came off!)
( R looked suspicious)
I: It is the sum total of the goods and services produced in the country
F(interrupted) What does GDP stand for?
( I thought he din hear.. so again blunder)
I:Gross Democratic Product
R: What else about IT sector?
I: Major firms are Infosys, Wipro , TCS etc.. and IT field provides job for thousands , like Infosys alone provides job for more than 50k people ( shouldn't have said another figure!)
R: Is the figure exact?
I: No the exact figure is actually much higher
( I should have used this opportunity to drive the interview to Satyam and related issues)
R: Is there anything you would like us to know about you
I: I did my internship in Texas Instruments...
R(interrupting) : Yes I read about that in your answer (which we had to submit online). You worked really hard. You are a hard working guy!
I: Thank you sir
R: OK then
I: Thank you sirs
( I took the certificate file and left)

(Interview was less than 15 minutes)
Came out. Whispered the questions with others wished best of luck and left.

(I din convert the call)

vacation@nitc

2009-03-06T01:03:00.000+05:30

For those who have never stayed in campus during vacation period...

For me staying in campus in vacation has always been a great experience.. We can enjoy the beauty of nit to the most..In between a semester when the shedules are tight and could not sleep properly I used to wish about a college life without time tables.. with out deadlines... with out lectures @ 8...thats what I realize when I stay in campus during vacations.. Even though I won't stay here the entire vacation period I do spend some time when ever possible. In vacation we could wake up around 12... stay late night..watch movies listen to music as always.. read a lot.. explores the library for non-academic sections even though non academic collection in nit library is not that good...play badminton... roam around a lot too.. we don need to worry about the time and day.. do what ever you feel like at the moment and dont care about anything... time.. day... can eat when ever we like without bothering health issues too..
We have two type of vacations. Winter and Summer.
Summer vacations are longer - 3 months almost and so can have multiple plans.. stay in nit for 1 or 2 months. still we have enough time.
Winter vacations are short .. around 2-3 weeks..In summer there would be a lot of ppl in campus.. those having back papers can take courses in summer... In winter comparatively less people are there... In winter vacation I do miss the mangoes we get in summer vaccation(there are a lot of mango trees in nit). During vacation there won't be mc so need to go out for food.

Memoirs from previous vacations:

1st year : Stayed for a short time and ppl around me were doing Robotics. Every nook and corner was Robotix. I spend time collecting movies and softwares from friends and went home.

2nd year: Stayed with Hanoosh and worked a bit on a microsoft sponsered project which died immature. Ate a lot of mangoes ( sweet memories :) ) and played a hell lot of badminton

3rd year: Spent very short time in campus (as I was doing Internship in Texas Instruments, Blore ) and started playing table tennis.

The star unknown

2009-01-31T12:12:00.016+05:30

Ofcourse Galeleo, Newton and Einstein had thought beyond common sense. But it seems they aren't the last ones who did so... Joining the endless stream of the brightest out of box thinkers is a young guy from nit calicut - P R Ananthan. He believes his ideas are ignored because common man's intelligence is yet to develop to his level of thinking... no big deal... great men are always ignored @ home!
Major accomplishments till date...
1) Probably he's the only guy in the world who has 'backspace' in his password. ( like.. his password may be " 'a' 'p' 'p' 'e' 'backspace' 'l' 'e' " which is actually 'apple' but for him it is a 7 character secure password!)
2) He opens an mp3 file in notepad to see the lyrics and on seeing the gibberish he figures out that the codec is not installed!
3) He's the one who copies three files one after the other and pastes three times and wonder why it doesn't work. This task alone has earned him the name 'copy copy paste paste'
4)He admitted being failed to write two cd's together by inserting both in a single drive.
(Nero and Sony are thinking along these lines...)
5) Opening a video file in a firefox web browser made us lose our patience and asked him " are you stupid?" He said nothing and left the room... The poster on wall said " I did not fail a thousand times.. Each time I learned what doesn't work - Thomas Alva Edison"

*Steve Jobs (APPLE CEO) is thinking these ideas should be incorporated soon.
*Lately it is heard that Page and Brin are flying to Calicut to snatch the 'out of box' guy for Google. ( still some sceptics are of the opinion that the sum total of intelligence in google is gonna cancel out :) )

a day @ icell (icell memoir)

2008-12-07T03:16:00.008+05:30

(Read this only if you are related to 'i-cell calicut'. Others may not be able to appreciate it and may feel boring)
I had joined icell in my 2nd year vacation in NITC for Business English but ended up in call centre class... but it was really a gr8 experience...
This is an article written by me 2 years back for publishing in magazine of icell..
disclaimer ( all characters and incidents mentioned in this article are purely fictitious and any relation to anybody living or dead would be mere coincidence)*

The most brutal practice I can think of is depriving a guy of his sleep. But unfortunately that's what my parents had been doing for the past 1 month and the innocent victim is none other than me. At sharp 6 in the morning my parents would start their attempt to pull me out of my bed against my deliberate attempt to pursue my sweet dream. From experience I can say that their attempt has a success rate of 50% or a probability same as to get a heads in a coin toss. The problem isn't mine... it's of my parents'. Instead of waking me up they would ask 'do you wish to go to class today?" and my subconscious mind is inclined to say 'no'.
On a successful day I woke up at 6 and the next 45 minutes would be a series of efforts to throw myself out of my home to catch the bus. I usually reaches the railway station 5 minutes before Parasuram express. As usual I would be deprived of any seat and would settle on the door step. I enjoy watching trees, rivers, houses and all which would never change but keeps on moving backwards. But I am not Galileo or Newton or Einstein to think why trees near me move faster than those far away. The broken houses, huts and all aren't enough for me to think about India's economic problems, for I am not Kalam. India is said to be developing decades back and still it is developing and hopefully it would continue to do so for ever.. I donno why.. may be the benchmark for being developed is also growing always. Thinking such stupid things and watching the scenery's I reach calicut before 9.
Soon I would be in i-cell. Usually the reception table would be empty. Rekha comes after 9 only. Oh Rekha- she is our customer service officer (as she calls herself). She had been trained to say " Sir you have come to the right place" and would create a fictitious course depending on the need of the customer and would eventually trap the guy whose only sin in lifetime would be a dream to learn English. I came here enquiring for a course in Business English.... I got trapped and is now attending a class for customer care... Rekhs is the culprit! She dreams to be in gen-pact and is expecting a phone in interview from genpact and is always prepared...
Before my arrival, Prajeesh ( a guy who is total stranger with truth!) would have started his blah blah blah.. intermediate class. I joined them to see the "progress" ( a word which should never be used with Prajeesh!) he's making. He was providing facts like he's already married and has two kids... he told them he is an expert in martial arts and would practise it daily before sunrise. Before I could tell his students that Prajeesh never tells truth, he introduced myself as been in America for past 5 years - which sounded nice. So I kept quiet.
My classmates Shabbir and Vandana would come before 10. Hashir would always be late. These three ppl had been my class mates through out my life there... Shabbir is a polymer chemistry graduate and is a very genuine person with a pleasing character. He is planning to do a post graduation in chemistry and wants to go abroad. Vandana is a B.Com graduate and is so passionate about Australia. She plans to take an MBA and wants to settle in Australia.
Hashir -'the ever green late commer' is a Mathematics Graduate. Being lazy he just wants to settle somehow in India!
Our class starts at 10. Mainly the classes are taken by Mr. Ali, Mr. Raj and Mr. sorry... simply Kamil (he's too young)
"How are you brother?" Oh it's Ali. He starts the class with that same prerecorded text. He asks each and everyone. The answer would invariably be "I'm fine", as if we were always fine. If we ask "How are you, sir?" he would say "I'm fine" and starts laughing. Turning to Vandana the qn is different "What bout you beautiful young lady? You look beautiful today.. isn't it brothers? ". Then he starts the class.
Ali was born in Bengal and had been in Britain for more than a decade. He looks a like a Chinese and claims to hold an EU passport. He loves to travel a lot and he's here as part of his travel. For Indian;s he looks like Chinese... For Chinese he's a Japanese and for them he's a burman. But he claims to be accepted everywhere. Sitting in his class is like hiring for an international tour. He talks about Sweden, Italy, France, Japan.... their culture, rituals, food habits and all.... More than that it's nice to watch a Chinese talking.
Ali is a fashion loving person and is careful about his hairstyle, shoes, dress-colour and everything and has been in constant search for a girl to marry and for the past 10 years he hasn't found a suitable one. Among all the countries he visited he thinks Japan is the best, coz he likes Japanese girls and is planning to go to Japan a year later to marry a Japanese girl.
Raj claims to be boxer but always carry a scale for his defence. His jeans pockets are always stuffed with a couple of mobile phones, a scale, papers, pens.... and atill counting. He carry a bottle of water always. His class starts with question :What did you do yesterday?" and claims to be more interested in what we do outside the class than what we do inside which makes him dangerous! He had been in US for more than a decade and so is passionate about basketball and baseball and talks about it. He's much interested in Mohanlal films. He finds it diffult to adjust back to the tropical climate indicated by his drinking of water while taking the class. He claims to own above 140 caps and is proud of it but never seen him wearing one. May be a cap collector. Hashir makes fun of the way he pronounce words like bad ( baa....d).
Even after class we can find him energetically going around sticking stickers like 'no smoking', 'switch of mobiles' etc...
Kamil is an immature faculty.. just a couple of years older than us i guess and is in his never ending efforts to find a girl friend. The new bulgan ( french beard) is the latest addition towards this goal. He's passionate about orkutting and chatting.
He is a talented trainer with good moral and ethical values. (Purely based on his definition of ethics, morality, and talent).He has clipped his teeth for a better future! (But we know there is nothing like that.. but we shouldn't say that). His spare time is utilized effectively to tease Rekha. He comes to class with a pool of preloaded jokes and would create situations to say those pj's making situation worse. Still we simple laugh. Once he attended a class on psychology paying a huge fee and made plans to conduct class by himself to make a good sum. But at that time Tsunami hit & govt. banned classes and he lost all money invested in booking hotels and all.. So the moral is -nature itself conspires against Kamil.
Another trainer is Shamna. She never trained us. She studied with Hashir and Shabbir and is a good friend of us.She comes to our class for friendly chat. We all have our lunch together and talk a lot about silly things.
Firoz Khan is the owner of i-cell calicut. He usually peep into class rooms to make sure everything goes fine. Ali told him great stories about Japan and so he has plans to go to Japan with Ali.
The day @ icell ends and I go back home in the evening train with a lot of memories and half a probability to be back the following day.

"Hi friends from i-cell. You may not be familiar with the names over here. But they are all characters supposed to have been in i-cell years back. Look around- you can find a Rekha, an Ali, Hashir,Shabbir, Vandana, Shamna, Kamil, Raj....."

How we ended up finding a place to stay in bangalore (internship)

2008-12-07T01:39:00.008+05:30

( what happened last summer vacation....)

As any typical guy I had dreams and plans for vacation. This time I wanna study violin/keyboard. I had serious meetings with guys near my home about what should we study. We all started believing that music is suffocating inside us! We need to learn the art of transferring the inner music into a form which is accessible by common man! As the would be musicians started meetings in my home I got a call from bangalore. it's not for a music show, but for a summer internship. 4 guyz from my college got selected. All of them had plans and dreams for vacation. We had to cut short our great dreams for internship. Still I had been contemplating on whether should go for internship or pursue music which should be my life as of now! My confusion got over when I got the call letter next day promising 20k/month for summer internship. I had no choice now than a lot of pocket money. The A R Rehman in me died out for 20k. I realized why great musicians don't pop up normally!!
The other three interns where jojo (tronix puli) ,hash(linux geek) and bandu(late comer every where). Bandu is from Andhra and so he will be coming alone.
The other 3 of us reached Bangalore on a cold saturday morning. This is the 4th time I am in bangalore in 2 months. Still the city is as new as every chapter I studied. We took an auto and the guy bargained for us in a hotel room for 'fare prices' and had his commission. After the routines we had break fast and then the ultimate searching for room started. Bandu called us to tell we would be joining us on monday only. Jojo wants to meet the hr in company. So we went to ti in bagmane tech park near the beautiful bagmane lake. This is my second visit to the company as I had been here for my mini project works. In reception we saw a person in coat giving orders.When he saw us he came to us.He called me 'sir' and I turned to my friends in pride! Even though the guy turned out to be senior receptionist I owe him a lot for calling me "sir" ! He connected phone to HR's home where a sleepy HR (Rashmi -later turned out to be a nut loose and a head ache during our internship!) was mumbling sthg on phone being called on saturday morning. We shouldn't have called her. We regained momentum. We searched a lot of places on walk in the nearby. No stay was found till the eve. Water bottles and cool drinks got finished as we went on searching.
We took some expert advice from 'some one' and started searching room in a place 30 minutes away from bagmane park.Finally we ended up in getting a room in the 4th floor of a building, too congested and recently painted. I would rather die than live there. We met a funny guy running a new hotel near by and he asssured us that it is a nice place and said they offer a variety of dishes including kerala food and so we should not worry about our food and all. We decided to have food from there and it turned out that there is nothing other than biriyani. When asked about the variety of dishes he replied that he had arranged a cook from Trivandrum who was supposed to be there the day before and he's waiting for him. He even enquired us whether we have contacts of any cooks from Kerala! After lunch we registered in a site to get paying guest details and so we got a couple of calls which din turn out successful. After unsuccessful searches in Shivaji Nagar we went near forum mall (koromangala) and searched and found out a nice room (spacious) at same rate as that of the previous 'congested place'. This is much better a place than the other. Shopping centers are nearby, colleges nearby, cinemas ..everything! If we live in bangalore we should live in such a place.
I had great plans still. This is not a temporary place. We are going to stay here for '6 weeks' which is a considerable period and so we should stay in a place like this where we could enjoy. But jojo and hash won't agree. Jojo want the other place as it is nearby to ti office and so he could sleep more.. I too love waking up late.. but the idea of staying near forum tempted like anything. Hash said he is neutral in this fight but I knew he wanted the congested, newly painted suffocating room for unkown reasons and 'neutrality' was just to make the his arguments more weighted!!
Finally before we wound up the search around 11pm every one agreed for a toss.. Hash tossed the coin and I called a tail.. Oh...jojo lost.. too much disappointment in their face (including Mr.neutral's face).
But we din end up there as we found out a place just outside the ti compound next day morning before we paid advance. It wasn't congested and the walking distance from ti proved no choice at all and so we ended up starting our 6 week long life in bangalore near the beautiful bagmane lake...

A lab Admin

2008-09-15T23:46:00.001+05:30

We have a lab admin, the worst one can get! the linux geek of our class!!
He does all unpleasant things like
1)He used to switch off most of the AC's when it's sweating.
2)He disabled the scp -r command in lab ( this is one of the best commands from the linux community which helps us to transfer the submission materials and files during lab submissions and most importantly during lab exam)
3)He has plans to disable orkut and facebook during lab hours when it is most needed...
4)He deleted my favourite Suse linux from all sytems in lab to popularise his favourite Fedora
5)Torrent downloading systems are switched off when closing the lab

When I asked about this he replied

1)No.of ACs switched on should not be more than number of people.
2)Suse consumes a lot of memory and takes a lot of time to start up.Fedora repositories can be managed easily.
3)why do u require scp at lab time ??
4)orkut , facebook .. at lab time ??
5)it's illegal

1)When I used to switch on ac's most of the guys flee from the lab making the no. of people lower than no. of ac's....
2)Why Suse repositories are difficult to manage?The Suse community should anwer this answer... (by the way what is a repository ? )
3)You need scp when you work in a team!.. how else are you planning to make a majority of us pass..?
4)what else should we do at lab time...? ( assignments are above the threshold of a normal NITian and the very thought of doing it will make the head pain)
5)What else should the entire NIT community do without movies?

2008-09-01T21:48:00.001+05:30

Today a group of alumni visited the campus. They turned out to be 2002 passouts.
As every visiting alumni, they too where roaming around and taking pictures and making expressions as if the world has changed so much. They pointed at certain places and tell each other what they did there years back and kept laughing... They shook hands with the steward and asked if he remembers. Even though he claims to remember some faces I am damn sure he wont remember even the current final years properly. The alumni even entered the rooms in which they lived as if to check whether any old memories still remained....They may not have found much memories there... They all left in an hour leaving the kingdom with the final years...

1st series

2008-09-01T02:57:00.003+05:30

The First series exam of final year is over. It was special in a final year way.

*All exams were in the evening 4 or 5. So no need to worry bout waking up early.

*As usual we all had group study as no one knows anything and the group study comprises of discussion bout sports, gals and everything non-academic.

*For books and materials every one is desperate to call girls and once the material is available no one would be there to study.

*Doubt clearance session includes voice chat with gals and the most of the kozhis got trapped in hidden cameras(videos still circulating).

*Till last year "study@exam time " used to be like 2 hours study followed by 1 hour break. Now it is like 1 hour study followed by 2-3 hours break and so proportionately we couldn't write much in the answer sheet.

*1 hour exam is like a sprint. Every one wants to be usain bolt ( finish the exam ahead of time),as sitting in the exam hall for a whole hour turned out to be damn waste of time as much more important works remain outside.

*More over we found out that if you don''t pass, 30 marks and 3 marks are much the same.

Final Year

2008-08-09T20:51:00.003+05:30

Final Year is the most enjoying part of any college life. We feel like the entire college is our personal asset and the entire collection of juniors are tresspassers. We don't like them enjoying much! Enjoyment is a privilege of final years. Attending classes is no more a choice and the teachers are co-operative too. Placement cell is doing their level best to place each and every one of us into some good companies. Most of the time is spent on thinking of innovative ideas of enjoyment which is an eternal search.

Nother day

2008-06-17T10:35:00.002+05:30

Another lazy morning. The first thing I could remember today is Hanoosh saying bye to go to ti some where early in the morning while I and Jojo are still in bed. The second thing I could remember is Jojo pulling my bed sheet. I'm awake , still we two are late. We dressed and got ready to go. On the way brought a blade to cut my lock , the key of which I have lost as ususal. We are back in ti. I called Bandu whose still enjoying in Wonderla and cleared the doubts I had in his work which I am responsible now. My mentor called me to check the status of my never ending work... So i am back to work....

@ texas instruments

2008-06-17T01:16:00.001+05:30

When I started blogging I thought of filling it with articles which meant ultimate drag and almost no posts! So wish to post sthg atleast. Thats why i am scribbling something @ 2 AM tuesday morning. I'm now in Bangalore , doing summer internship in Texas Instruments. It means nothing more than getting paid for browsing and learning some stuffs! We four of us (Joseph,Hanoosh,Prasanth Bandaru and me) are staying together. Bandaru has left for a trip to Ooty and so our mentor has given me his work too. We all are here still in office with an intention of preparing for placements which they two are doing while I am going through blogs and enjoying some music, Joseph claims he has finished a chapter and so its time for us to go. Hanoosh is also tired of programming a lot. They voted me out 2 to 1 and so I am not allowed to do "some stupid blogging". Why can't I stay here while they go ? It has nothing to do with the cemetery on the way back to room. If I write a bit more, they threaten to go leaving me alone in TI!! no no...........cemetery.......... bye.................

End sem

2007-11-16T22:37:00.000+05:30

After Tathva and Diwali celebrations NIT is plunging into yet another end semester examinations....
Photostat centre's are highly active and ppl started discussing bout attendance shortages and topics taught in the class. The campus is moving into a silent zone slowly. Together with the cold climate of november.... it's chilling.... My room mates made an oath which they name 'NASA'( Not Another Series Again) being too much addicted to kyle xy and prison break. Many c-strike addicts now considers talking bout c-strike n clans extremely offensive.

stock market in Tathva

2007-09-21T21:48:00.002+05:30

NIT is going to host the largest technical fest in kerala...

This time it is going to be a techno-management fest!

Virtual stock market has started trading yesterday as part of the fest.We call it ' bulls and bears '. I started playing it with a lot of other addictors too... All computer centers are full of bulls and bears...and all suddenly started talking bout stocks and market. Even though i din play that great I liked it .... At times I feel like smashing the monitor infront of me which shows a deep red to the shares in which I have invested.... also as the number of ppl increases we loose connection and takes time to load the page and before I cud buy a share its value wud hav gone up..

Any way its really addictive!!

Lots of third yearites had been working for more than a month to make the whole program a success....

this time anyway Tathva is gonna b gr8 ( as we all believe)

NEW MC

2007-09-05T15:32:00.000+05:30

THE NIT-C COFFEE SHOP

Finally, ending the speculations in the market Mc.Donald’s opened.

I’m not talking bout the financial market. It’s about the NIT campus and the Mc.Donald’s is our "can’t live without" ‘m c’-mini canteen, now re branded as ‘nitc coffee shop’ supposedly keeping the standard of an institution like NIT.

Re branding always involves investments and here it is the implementation of new benches, chairs and lot more space in the new complex. But the electronic billing is now a big problem due to the inexperienced man handling the thing and it ultimately causes long queues of brilliant future engineers.

The positioning of coffee shop is excellent. It is in the centre of almost all hostels and exactly in front of our C-hostel and this puts an irresistible temptation on C-men and we started believing in purchasing power of money as Kishore Biyani says.

As the quantity of food/buck decreased the venture is supposed to put forth “Quality matters….” Kinda business model! ( which is yet to verify).

The cokes, appy, lays and chocolates found better place to get itself exposed and started moving faster. We do matter brand even if we say it’s cost incurring and stuffs…. We are happy to pay 7 bucks for the 50 paise worth cola and would be suspicious if the same thing comes in a new label and would start whispering whether it is safe for our health ! That’s what we are…

During sessionals NITians suddenly turn workaholics and had been infront of books the nights of the previous week and coffee shop had been highly active.

ra ra ra ra RAGAM

2007-03-17T03:27:00.000+05:30

Well .......it is festive season in the campus. Students from different colleges are pouring galore and each and every inch of the campus is filled with enthusiastic students.. With Nokia as the main sponser and sponsorships from Jet, Idea,Taj, media partners like SS music, Kairali, Manorama and The Hindu, Ragam is a great event.The brand name is growing beyond expetations. Many interesting competition items like anthakshari and a dozen others are going on in Aryabhatta and Bhaskara (our theatre halls(now!)-used to be lecture halls where dreams are developed, nurtured and maintained). The main Rajpath is decorated and signboards are everywhere. The different stalls around give an impression of a small township. Someone is entertaining the audience at the informals stage with his masterpieces. Couples (latest campus trend) are roaming in the crowd. Food stalls are busy with visitors. Pepsi counters are making the dil mang more..... Some are running here and there with badges indicating they are part of the organising committee. Nokia stall is filled with teenagers curious bout the new trendy sets on the market. Ticket stall too is busy selling tonight's pro show tickets. Shaan's ticket is selling at a rate of 4 to 1 to that of Evergreen's. After sunset the campus looks very pretty with the decorations and lighting effects.
The night sky is clear and the campus is set to recieve 'the shaan ' the branded all india famous singer. It would only have been in our dreams 2-3 years before to bring such an artist in our campus. But now things have changed and we are affording 'a Shaan '. Crowd is slowly moving towards the open air theatre (OAT). After a 30-minutes delay... finally shaan is there. OAT was saturated by then without an inch of spare space. Shaan practically rocked the audience. The redbull was really working as Shaan sang continuously for about 100 minutes. As expected there was some technical problem in between even in Shaan's program. Everything went fine. As the student secretery wished us,we forgot the academics and fell into a dreamland and enjoyed the best. Shaan left, Audience left and the organisers left.... The campus fell into silence....

A SECOND YEAR'S DAY

2007-03-10T17:35:00.001+05:30

This is an article about a normal second year's nit life...........

Sleeping is an integral part of life. But in NIT it is more than that… it is an art and a kind of culture. We have sleepless nights and snoozing lectures…
……
As it should be, the dirtiest sound available in the campus is that of the morning alarm. Most rooms have switched to alarms with singing tones which could aid sleeping. Still we are having the old ones which would really kill us. After 7 in the morning one of the three alarms in our sweet B309 started screaming. Simultaneously three hands from three blankets started crushing their alarms till the one screamed shut up. With much satisfaction and an increased pleasure all returned to catch their sweet dreams. My roommates Chris and Aswin are artistic sleepers and are much better than me in the art. They are from tronix …. (myself in compsci) Then came mobile alarms which gave way to snoozing. After 2-3 snoozes I hardly jumped out of my blanket to find that it was quarter to 8 and my attendance in maths is not in a good condition even though it is only a mid semester morning. I was even more shocked when I leaned before the tronix timetable …fuck! Their first hour is off! Before I went out for brushing I din forget to put both tube lights on and both fans off! I got hardly 5mts for breakfast which I usually miss ….but breakfast made me 10 mts late. When I ran to the class I saw teacher scolding somebody at the door. I reached there and made an expression which could melt the heart of the bloodiest killer. But the professor was above that.Still his sharp eyes and scolding had no effect on me … coz I am used to it. After the usual last and final warnings he let me in.

I started scanning the seats from the backside. All back seats are filled and the inmates are in a state of subconsciousness in their way for unconsciousness. I managed a second last bench. The cuties and the nine pointers have started taking down the notes as and when a word emanates from the professor’s mouth .Others are free birds in dreamland. I joined the majority. The call for attendance made everyone awake. At that time everyone would be alert coz 80% of it is something that is expected from the future software engineers.

After boring lectures I had my meal and plunged into bed for a short rest. Aswin was a bit excited coz there is robotics lecture in the afternoon .He is speaking to some tronix guys about the future of robotics and about the great projects that he is going to undertake in future in robotics .Every one there is sitting open mouthed suggesting they are impressed by his great visions .But I wasn’t …coz I hear his great visions and project work daily .What ever field in the world he has some great unpractical visions and future project works. Tronix guys left for robotics lecture. I made my way to programming lab. Programming is the worst thing one could imagine doing with a comp. Compsci is said to be the coolest branch. But arrays, pointers, pointer to pointer and dynamic memory allocation makes it less cool. After a long fight with segmentation faults and various errors the lab is over .

Tea and then straight to room. Chris and Aswin are already back after robotix lecture. Their afternoon was free … only robotics lecture….!!Doesn’t matter, tomorrow I have only 3 lectures. Every dog has a day! I and Chris shared interesting experiences in the class while Aswin was enquiring to somebody whether there is any area other than robotics where he could lay his hands on. Now according to him Robotics is not that a great field and he is happy to find it atleast now!

Chris and Aswin are two sides of a coin. Nothing could be more unlike. According to Aswin tronix has reached a level of saturation and a break through in optoelectronics would happen in near future which would make tronix go down and the whole world would be after optoelectronics. So the point is …there is no point in studying tronix hard. This is his excuse for neglecting the studies and for pushing his points down. He spends his time in chatting and messaging. While the other freak Chris is a download maniac. He used to explain the importance of upgrading from winamp 5.05.3.103 to winamp 5.05.3.104 (which would hardly be one more bug free) and would scold us for not keeping up-to-date as far as technology is concerned! According to him even if we won’t bath we should keep winamp updated and should download the latest Intel drivers.

I started out with Aswin. I am heading for gym and Aswin for volleyball. There was a mangoliad (Chinese like) man in the gym half the size of me but is heavily built and would play with thrice the weight I could manage and is a constant source of jealousy for me. After gym I would meet Aswin in the cricket pitch for a bit cricketing. Mean while Chris would be playing POP or AOE which could make him fatter and fatter day by day.

We three would be having supper in canteen today as the mess ppl would be messing up with food. Then all in front of lappy. Serious study nothing else …wanna be better pointers this time!! Class notes (topper’s notes) would be scanned and would be available in BLAN (B- LAN). I would copy it and start reading. Meanwhile orkut and gmail are opened and minimized and would end up in maximizing orkut and minimizing the notes and eventually the notes would be closed to prevent bad thoughts!!

We have a jobless filter in the campus which mess the urge of the future engineers to gain knowledge on various sectors of life .It had in possession a set of keywords and the slightest smell of any of these words in any of the site would be more than enough for blocking the access to servers.So we had almost a clean online culture with only past times like mailing and orkutting which itself has a major share of our college life.

3 hours is more than enough for digesting a meal according to latest researches in medical sciences. Well I mean it’s time to go to mc (mini canteen).Computers go into hibernation while I would join my friends . Walking in the campus at night is a pleasure. The serenity is tempting. After walking for five minutes we reached the final destination .Wow mc!! Everyday ends here. So many ppl are entering and leaving. They have a nice business and would make better revenue than an average bar. We had double attached as usual.

I would be almost unconscious when I reach the room.Bed would be full of books and papers and all kinds of fucking shits .I would dump myself among them. After a hectic schedule I fell asleep , not for a full stop but for a comma as the seniors say……….because I know there is yet another day ahead …………….zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz