Forgive me for the unimaginative title, but I just had to give a post a title before I actually get around to publishing it...
Now to business...
Phew! It's been a hell of a journey. I'm sure there's a lot of posts online about Grad School and lots of comics too. Let me take some time to describe my last week, and my adventures in the United States.
The last few days of the quarter, tension running high, I had two submissions on the last day of the Fall quarter and both on the minute before midnight on Friday night. The first of the two was an Advanced Operating Systems assignment. We were supposed to do the lab and a challenge problem. I had already done the lab a couple of days before, however, a challenge problem was pending. I like doing challenge problems as although the problems are usually defined (we do have the freedom to come up with our own, but I lack creativity and usually go the textbook approach) how to get around to actually doing them is actually up to us. So even though many people attempt the same challenge problem, the results are often contrastingly different.
The second submission was a project which was in particularly a bad shape, mainly because it was challenging, and as it was quite open-ended, there was no end the project could come to. We wanted to do as much as possible, so in order to get enough done, I and my project team began work and did two successive night-outs in the EGSA (Engineering Graduate Students Association) Lounge, but got our project in shape for submission.
On Thursday, we had an AOS challenge problem demo session. Some of us demonstrated our challenge problems we had implemented. I had not gone prepared to present anything, but ended up doing an impromptu presentation anyway. And yes, there was awesome cake and cold ice-cream!
I also had to do a challenge problem for the last lab, so I spent almost the whole of Friday doing that. I ended up doing a decently good challenge problem, and also implementing the "cp" and "mv" functionality in the shell. Both submissions were done, and the quarter was finally over!
Did it end there? Not quite!!!
A couple of weeks back, I had registered for a ski trip to Lake Tahoe (a bit east of San Francisco) and we had to leave on Sunday morning. As it turned out, since I was going to be in Los Angeles, I hadn't carried too many warm clothes from India. Therefore, I had to go shopping with some friends in order to get a waterproof jacket, some ski trousers and a couple more things from Target. It was late by the time we came back, but I had asked one friend to come over for tea (ended up in being dinner!) We had a pretty amazing time, and by the time we were done, it was around midnight. It was a fitting clelbration for the end of the quarter, and..... I still hadn't packed for the trip!
After packing, I realized that if I slept, I would never be able to wake up in time for the trip, so I chatted some more with the friend I had over for dinner (thankfully, she was online) and ended up sleeping for just one hour, and all the way on the bus to Lake Tahoe.
The next three days were quite amazing, to be honest. I ended up learning how to stop, and how to turn (while on skis, obviously!) and ended up falling around ten times in all. I also got to ride a ski-lift. I finally got to see it snow! That had been one of my dreams. There were also a couple of things I learnt about myself while we were there. We all (60 of us) stayed in a huge lodge and enjoyed spending time together. Turns out, I hate it when there's too many people making a lot of noise or playing load music in the same room, especially if I do not know most of them personally... Thankfully, I had a friend who saw this immediately, and helped me get away from all the ruckus. I should work on my people skills...
The food was awesome, and the staff in charge of the trip was very organized, helpful and a lot of fun. I met a lot of people and made a handful of friends. Around a dozen of us also played Taboo on the day before departure back home till 2:30 am. The game is awesome, and we made it guys v/s gals, which made it even more fun. We tried our best, and I'm happy to note that we won by sever points less than the other team... We had also played a couple of games of Shrink on the previous days which was also fun to play...
The ride back was almost uneventful except for the fact that we saw Lake Tahoe (finally!) and watched a couple of "good" movies.
I thought the fun was over, and could finally look forward to some free time. But no, not quite yet!
Turns out, my roommate's friends had come over for the holidays, so we went to Venice Beach the next day! The water was so cold that we couldn't stay in it for more than a minute. However, me and my trusty DSLR got a decent number of amazing shots of seagulls flying, and of the sunset. Made the trip to the beach so worth it....
As if that was not enough, the next day, all of us went to Universal Studios Hollywood! We went quite late though, and it did not help that it was a rainy day. There were a lot of amazing shows and rides there, and I think it'll take another post to write about all of them, and all the fun we had there.... I finally got my picture taken in front of the Universal Studios globe (one more thing I wanted since a really long time) The studio tour was amazing, the Shrek 4 show was cool, and the Mummy and Jurassic Park rides were thrilling (roller coaster - one which also went backwards for a bit, and Aquadive at Esselworld respectively) We came back at night, and had dinner at Chipotle (yummy!)
It was an amazing end to the first quarter at UCLA with lots and lots of fun, and several gigabytes of pics!
Looking forward to more stuff we'll be doing over the next few days....
Later!
Saturday, December 18, 2010
Friday, December 17, 2010
Something's Changed
This was a post I had written a long time ago... dated 10/4/08 10:34 PM
Just decided to publish it because of all the effort I had taken to write it...
All the people I refer to in it.... please don't take it personally, they were only observations from my side.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
It's day 3 of the inter-hostel cultural-technical competition Zephyr.
It all started with an innocent IM message from a friend asking if I had even attended a single Zephyr program.....
Rewind.....
2 years back, in my first year, our enthusiasm was obviously very high so we had attended almost everything that had come our way... including Zephyr. It had been fun watching the various competitions in the Auditorium such as Mr n Miss Zephyr and Fash P.
1 year back.... I and all of my friends had gone home due to an electricity problem.... hence missing the entire Zephyr.....
So back to the present.
The IM message really got me thinking. This semester, till now atleast had been somewhat... no very different from the previous ones.....
The last two years in college, I had been practically jobless, doing whatever came to my mind, enjoying, watching a lot of anime, series, movies, etc... Nights meant hour long walks with my friends, talking about random stuff, picking on one another, pulling each other's leg now and then and all sort of fun stuff..... We used to discuss a lot of stuff, knocking on each other's doors a lot of the times, inventing new and crazy lingo, play carrom...... Basically spend a lot of time together..... We also had most of our subjects in common, allowing us to attend classes together.
This semester, things started out a lot differently than expected. Since I was CS, and most... no almost all of my friends were EEE or EnI.... we hardly had any subjects in common, and our timetables hardly matched.
We still had DECO classes together.... however the subject was quite interesting and the continual and incessant chatter and random comments kept irritating me and did not allow me to concentrate.... since then I chose a different place to sit during class.....
Mostly, the times we met were only during meals, that too very rarely..... All our late night walks had become extinct... It was as if there was a wall between me and all of them....
But then I saw that half of it or maybe more.....was also my fault.... Since it was the CS subjects I was studying, it somehow seemed to make me more confident and sure of myself, and maybe even arrogant to a certain degree. After all, I had been waiting for these since four whole years.... I sympathised with the fate of the EEE/EnI students who had almost double the workload we had..... Atleast that's what I felt seeing that their course work was calculus filled, and taking into consideration that calculus is my weak point..... God alone knows how I got through the Physics and Electrical Sciences courses.....
One evening, one of my friends was gonna treat all of us. I was invited, but I told him that as I had some work, I would be slightly late..... As the work was computers related, and as fate would have it, I totally forgot about it,..... (knowing me, as I am, I can live without food or water for a few days, as long as I have a computer with me.........) and remembered only late at night..... I was surprised that not one of my 'so-called' friends had even tried calling me to find out if I was gonna come or not...... So much for friendship....... I do not know if I had wronged any of them in the past.... If so, I'm really very sorry.....
I really don't know what went wrong and where.... I had always been one who did not like having too many friends, but the few I had were and are true gems.....
Anyway, these experiences taught what I had heard but not believed from people more times than one..... that school is a controlled environment, but the rest of the world, even college is a place where you have to fend for yourself.... you are alone, and will have no help whatsoever...... What you make of yourself is in your own hands.......
Jeez... I seem to have drifted off the topic....
Yeah, so there was a DJ night organised...... some of my friends had attended the Mr n Miss Zephyr in the Auditorium, and unfortunately, I had not been able to make it due to my tight and busy schedule......
After having dinner alone...... I was sort of bored and exhausted... but just coz DJ nite was being organised..... my feet carried me there..... I was hoping to meet atleast someone whom I knew.... who I could sit around and chat with.... it had been a long and tiresome day...... But as fate would have it, no one could be found..... and I walked away disheartened.....
However... because of that, I walked around the campus for almost an hour, treading on familiar ground like I had several times in the past..... but now alone, instead of with friends to chat with..... thinking..... pondering...... about various random things...... I finally had some time alone to myself.... to go where my feet took me..... wandering......
But you know what..... at the DJ night, and mostly at all other 'audi' events, I have had this pricking sensation inside..... It always felt that by attending these kind of programmes, I was wasting my precious time... which could have been invested in doing something much better.... as if there was something higher to achieve, which I would miss if I wasted time attending events that sometimes were quite boring and did not interest me...... and honestly, music and performances were entertaining but they did not really add to me or my experience or knowledge in any way whatsoever.....
Either way.....
Something had definitely changed........
Just decided to publish it because of all the effort I had taken to write it...
All the people I refer to in it.... please don't take it personally, they were only observations from my side.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
It's day 3 of the inter-hostel cultural-technical competition Zephyr.
It all started with an innocent IM message from a friend asking if I had even attended a single Zephyr program.....
Rewind.....
2 years back, in my first year, our enthusiasm was obviously very high so we had attended almost everything that had come our way... including Zephyr. It had been fun watching the various competitions in the Auditorium such as Mr n Miss Zephyr and Fash P.
1 year back.... I and all of my friends had gone home due to an electricity problem.... hence missing the entire Zephyr.....
So back to the present.
The IM message really got me thinking. This semester, till now atleast had been somewhat... no very different from the previous ones.....
The last two years in college, I had been practically jobless, doing whatever came to my mind, enjoying, watching a lot of anime, series, movies, etc... Nights meant hour long walks with my friends, talking about random stuff, picking on one another, pulling each other's leg now and then and all sort of fun stuff..... We used to discuss a lot of stuff, knocking on each other's doors a lot of the times, inventing new and crazy lingo, play carrom...... Basically spend a lot of time together..... We also had most of our subjects in common, allowing us to attend classes together.
This semester, things started out a lot differently than expected. Since I was CS, and most... no almost all of my friends were EEE or EnI.... we hardly had any subjects in common, and our timetables hardly matched.
We still had DECO classes together.... however the subject was quite interesting and the continual and incessant chatter and random comments kept irritating me and did not allow me to concentrate.... since then I chose a different place to sit during class.....
Mostly, the times we met were only during meals, that too very rarely..... All our late night walks had become extinct... It was as if there was a wall between me and all of them....
But then I saw that half of it or maybe more.....was also my fault.... Since it was the CS subjects I was studying, it somehow seemed to make me more confident and sure of myself, and maybe even arrogant to a certain degree. After all, I had been waiting for these since four whole years.... I sympathised with the fate of the EEE/EnI students who had almost double the workload we had..... Atleast that's what I felt seeing that their course work was calculus filled, and taking into consideration that calculus is my weak point..... God alone knows how I got through the Physics and Electrical Sciences courses.....
One evening, one of my friends was gonna treat all of us. I was invited, but I told him that as I had some work, I would be slightly late..... As the work was computers related, and as fate would have it, I totally forgot about it,..... (knowing me, as I am, I can live without food or water for a few days, as long as I have a computer with me.........) and remembered only late at night..... I was surprised that not one of my 'so-called' friends had even tried calling me to find out if I was gonna come or not...... So much for friendship....... I do not know if I had wronged any of them in the past.... If so, I'm really very sorry.....
I really don't know what went wrong and where.... I had always been one who did not like having too many friends, but the few I had were and are true gems.....
Anyway, these experiences taught what I had heard but not believed from people more times than one..... that school is a controlled environment, but the rest of the world, even college is a place where you have to fend for yourself.... you are alone, and will have no help whatsoever...... What you make of yourself is in your own hands.......
Jeez... I seem to have drifted off the topic....
Yeah, so there was a DJ night organised...... some of my friends had attended the Mr n Miss Zephyr in the Auditorium, and unfortunately, I had not been able to make it due to my tight and busy schedule......
After having dinner alone...... I was sort of bored and exhausted... but just coz DJ nite was being organised..... my feet carried me there..... I was hoping to meet atleast someone whom I knew.... who I could sit around and chat with.... it had been a long and tiresome day...... But as fate would have it, no one could be found..... and I walked away disheartened.....
However... because of that, I walked around the campus for almost an hour, treading on familiar ground like I had several times in the past..... but now alone, instead of with friends to chat with..... thinking..... pondering...... about various random things...... I finally had some time alone to myself.... to go where my feet took me..... wandering......
But you know what..... at the DJ night, and mostly at all other 'audi' events, I have had this pricking sensation inside..... It always felt that by attending these kind of programmes, I was wasting my precious time... which could have been invested in doing something much better.... as if there was something higher to achieve, which I would miss if I wasted time attending events that sometimes were quite boring and did not interest me...... and honestly, music and performances were entertaining but they did not really add to me or my experience or knowledge in any way whatsoever.....
Either way.....
Something had definitely changed........
Friday, September 24, 2010
Over to Los Angeles
Having completed my stint at Bangalore without too many professional hiccups, I was blessed (in hindsight, really?) with an admit to the Masters of Science program at multiple good US universities. After fighting a tough mental battle to choose between Purdue (my first admit) and Georgia Tech (my second admit) I was faced with an even more difficult choice when UCLA was added to my list of universities.
It is often said that whenever you are confronted with a difficult choice, you should learn to read the signs. As it so happened, I decided to attend Georgia Tech this fall. Then, I chatted with a soon-to-be classmate at Georgia Tech, and she was quite surprised that I was choosing Georgia Tech over UCLA. Her arguments in favor of UCLA got me thinking again, and just on the day I was going to send an email to UCLA asking them to cancel my admission, I decided to attend UCLA. I am indeed thankful to her for giving me a fresh perspective.
So now, my journey took me to UCLA, Los Angeles in California, the state known for its brilliant weather all through the year. Having settled down in a nice and cozy home, classes finally started just yesterday. The first class Advanced Operating Systems was fun, just the way I had expected it to be. However, we were burdened with tons of reading to do for next class.
Los Angeles is a very nice place and UCLA is cooler! We've now had four orientations till date and many welcome parties. It's amazing to be in a place so active, alive and diverse. I only wish that I had done my undergrad here too...
My next mission is to try stay afloat in the piles of stuff I'll have to read and assignments I'll have to solve before deadlines.
More later!
It is often said that whenever you are confronted with a difficult choice, you should learn to read the signs. As it so happened, I decided to attend Georgia Tech this fall. Then, I chatted with a soon-to-be classmate at Georgia Tech, and she was quite surprised that I was choosing Georgia Tech over UCLA. Her arguments in favor of UCLA got me thinking again, and just on the day I was going to send an email to UCLA asking them to cancel my admission, I decided to attend UCLA. I am indeed thankful to her for giving me a fresh perspective.
So now, my journey took me to UCLA, Los Angeles in California, the state known for its brilliant weather all through the year. Having settled down in a nice and cozy home, classes finally started just yesterday. The first class Advanced Operating Systems was fun, just the way I had expected it to be. However, we were burdened with tons of reading to do for next class.
Los Angeles is a very nice place and UCLA is cooler! We've now had four orientations till date and many welcome parties. It's amazing to be in a place so active, alive and diverse. I only wish that I had done my undergrad here too...
My next mission is to try stay afloat in the piles of stuff I'll have to read and assignments I'll have to solve before deadlines.
More later!
Sunday, June 6, 2010
Cube Hunt - The End
I had written a post about my search for a perfect cube way back in January 2008. It's been two and a half years since then. I had forgotten all about cubing till only a few weeks back when the occurrence of some events made me look for something to do to get my mind off stuff.
Rummaging through all the junk that I tend to accumulate over time, even in the short span of six months at Bangalore, I came across my old cube. It was quite difficult to handle, and a few cubelets even came off when I rotated it. However, since I had completely forgotten how to solve it, I turned back and learnt the solution from scratch. I also remembered the post I had written on my blog.
Now, since I was in a new city, I began the search anew. There was a pretty huge toy shop near where I lived, so as soon as I got my first opportunity, I asked if they had a high quality Rubik's Cube. Much to my dismay (no surprises there...) if was out of stock here as well.
Now, I had a friend over from college, so while showing him around my area, I took him to the Forum, which has a huge store called Landmark. Describing Landmark would take an entire post in itself, so I'll just say that it is the largest general purpose store I have seen. Of course, the sections of my interest are books and music. It also has a toy section, so I took a chance and asked if they had Funskool Cubes in stock.
Thankfully (phew!!!) they did, and so I walked out of the store, a proud owner of a new cube, a cube that turned so easily and effortlessly that it was a charm to solve.
Thus ended the two years and a half long cube hunt!
Rummaging through all the junk that I tend to accumulate over time, even in the short span of six months at Bangalore, I came across my old cube. It was quite difficult to handle, and a few cubelets even came off when I rotated it. However, since I had completely forgotten how to solve it, I turned back and learnt the solution from scratch. I also remembered the post I had written on my blog.
Now, since I was in a new city, I began the search anew. There was a pretty huge toy shop near where I lived, so as soon as I got my first opportunity, I asked if they had a high quality Rubik's Cube. Much to my dismay (no surprises there...) if was out of stock here as well.
Now, I had a friend over from college, so while showing him around my area, I took him to the Forum, which has a huge store called Landmark. Describing Landmark would take an entire post in itself, so I'll just say that it is the largest general purpose store I have seen. Of course, the sections of my interest are books and music. It also has a toy section, so I took a chance and asked if they had Funskool Cubes in stock.
Thankfully (phew!!!) they did, and so I walked out of the store, a proud owner of a new cube, a cube that turned so easily and effortlessly that it was a charm to solve.
Thus ended the two years and a half long cube hunt!
Thursday, May 13, 2010
My Interview for TECHBYTE
Hi All,
I was recently interviewed for TECHBYTE, which is a magazine the Computer Science Department of BITS Pilani Goa Campus has come up with this year.
Thought I should put the contents of the interview here for those who do not happen to have access to the magazine.
First of all, many congratulations to you!
Thank you very much!
So tell us, What is your work ethic? How did you manage all the awesome stuff - Placement, IIM calls, GRE score, admits, CGPA?
Well, there was a saying in 3 Idiots that went something like this... Pursue excellence and success will automatically follow. This has always been true for me. I have always lived life one day at a time, trying to make the best use of it. No, I don't mean I always made the best use of my time, or always studied, or anything like that. I just did what I felt like doing. Some days it was chatting on DC or Google Talk, some days just bunking all classes and watching TV series the whole day, but on some days, I would actually have to get down to business and get some serious work done, be it completing assignments, or studying for the (never ending) T1s, T2s and compres.
Yeah, the transition from school/junior college to BITS was tough for me, and I'm sure it has been the same for many people. I started out with a 7.79 GPA in the first semester. Thankfully, my parents believed in me and encouraged me to do better than just blaming my computer for the poor GPA. Yeah, I had a computer with me right from my first day at BITS. You may not believe it now, but people around you, friends, parents and especially professors do matter a lot and influence you in ways you may not see immediately.
Let us start with the 'CSI IT Idol of Goa'. How did that come about and how was your experience?
Yeah, with this competition I just got lucky. In fact, I wasn't even thinking of applying to it. One of my friends, Kartik (eragon) asked if I wanted to apply just for fun. And that's why I did. Guess it turned out great at the end. To be honest, I hadn't expected winning the competition. There were numerous rounds to be cleared. The first one was the written test. That was simple enough, Rasagy, Kartik and Yogesh got through it with me. The second was the programming round at Goa University. They asked us to code for some program (to construct and search in a tree, I think) and that was fun as well. The next was a presentation round and I had been asked to present on the topic "Future and Challenges in Cloud Computing" This round had been only a few days after Test 2, so none of us who had qualified had adequate time to prepare. Thankfully, all our presentations were top-notch. The last round was interviews with a panel. I learnt a valuable lesson here. Humour always helps. A small joke goes a long way in creating a positive impression in the mind of the interviewers. It gives them something to remember you by and almost always tips the scales in your favour.
You got placed at Oracle. What preparations did you do for that?
I knew that the placement situation on campus was poor looking at the placements in the previous semester and the general state of the economy. However, we had the good fortune of being visited by some fine companies, Oracle Server Technology being one of them. I think that the matter of clearing the written test is usually a matter of luck and impromptu thinking more than preparation. The verbal section does need the study of English or the inculcation of the very important habit of reading which most of us give up right after coming to BITS due to various reasons. However, if you're preparing for the GRE then this does not pose a problem. The interviews are all about keeping cool and being honest. Tension shows easily and usually brings out the worst in a person. It helps to stay calm and answer confidently, and say that you don't know the answer to a question if you don't rather than fluking. Interviewers can catch flukes and drill you on your answer. At the end of the day, all that matters is what you learnt in your CDC semesters and a bit of luck. The best part about being placed at Oracle was that it happened the day before Waves, and for that very reason, that was the best Waves in these four years for me.
Coming to 'Belling the CAT'. How did you go about it?
To be honest, I was never serious about the CAT or pursuing an MBA course immediately after BITS. It's just that I was curious and CAT has had a reputation of being one of the tougher and more competitive examinations, so I decided to give it just like that. Trust me when I say that I hadn't put in any preparation for the CAT. I gave it in Bangalore on January 30th because I had faced technical difficulties while giving my examination at home in Mumbai. I guess the change in pattern and difficulty of the examination helped me.
How did it feel to get a call from one of the most prestigious B-schools - IIM?
It's definitely a great feeling. In fact, when I got my CAT result, I was pleasantly surprised to see 99+ percentile on my score card considering I hadn't put any effort towards preparation for the examination.
Okay so tell us, why do you think so many engineers go for an MBA nowadays? Don't you think that undermines your first degree?
I believe that pursuing any engineering course helps to build certain skills in a person, some of them being logical thinking, working under pressure, meeting deadlines etc. Even though so many students pursue engineering, some do aspire to be managers rather than pursue a technical career. Studying engineering before management allows individuals to be well versed with both the technical aspects as well as the managerial expertise. This gives engineers an edge when they are at a managerial post in a technical organisation. Hence I do not feel that an MBA undermines the importance of your first degree.
You also did very well in GRE. What preparations led to that?
I gave my GRE at the end of the summer vacations after my third year at BITS. Unfortunately, I wasn't satisfied with my preparation because I ended up not studying for most of the summer (because of the BITSian habit of procrastination) I studied vocabulary for only a fortnight before my GRE date. Thankfully, I ended up with 1400, which is a decent enough score. I regret that I could not pursue an internship during the summer as most of my batchmates did. My advice would be to try to get an intern during the summer vacations after your third year. An internship really helps while applying to universities abroad. And as one of my friends (Nilesh Kulkarni) proved, you do not need 2 months to prepare for the GRE. One can study and give it in fourteen days of tremendously hard effort and get a score greater that mine.
A call from Purdue and recently, Georgia Tech. Lots of options to weigh upon. Which do u plan to take up and what do you plan to study there?
Yes, I got an admit from Georgia Tech just a couple of days back. Other admits I received were from Purdue, University of California at Los Angeles and Ohio State University. Indeed, a good number of options to choose from. I had a very difficult time choosing between UCLA and Purdue before I got the GaTech admit, and now I'm having an even tougher time choosing from the three. Most probably, I will be attending Georgia Tech this fall. My interest has been Networking, Distributed Systems and High Performance Computing. Nettech and my research for the CSI IT Idol presentation helped me realise what my interests were. I had also chosen varied courses in my fourth year, such as Computer Graphics, Artificial Intelligence and Parallel Computing to help me decide, In the end, I decided that Parallel Computing was more interesting as compared to the other two, and this strengthened my interest,
Lots of students here will be interested in knowing how to apply to these prestigious colleges? what all do they look for in the applicants?
Students interested in pursuing a Masters or a PhD should join the BITS2MSPHD Yahoo Group at the earliest. It has a group of really helpful seniors who answer the queries students have about applying to US universities and offer any other assistance if required. One should also start going through the websites of the universities that interest them so as to gain an insight into the professors and their research areas at the university. It also helps to keep in touch with seniors studying there. As far as what a university looks for in an applicant, I think the first parameter is probably the CGPA. A higher CGPA increases the chances of an admit tremendously. Apart from that, the Statement of Purpose is also very important and must be written in a concise manner but must still clearly explain your reasons for graduate study. The SOP allows the Admissions Committee to understand you better and gain an insight into your personality. Letters of Recommendation also matter a great deal. Be sure to work on atleast one project in your field of interest with a professor at BITS. Last but not the least, internships at known research institutes such as IISc, TIFR, etc boost your chances by a fair amount.
After having done it all, do you think it's wise for students to do all 3 things - CGPA, MBA prep and GRE Prep?
At the end of the day, no matter what others say, your CGPA does count a great deal, but at the same time, it's not the only thing that counts. It is also important to enjoy your four (or five) years at BITS as you will never get this much freedom to explore yourself and your interests later in life. Yes, I think it's reasonable and quite possible to pursue all three at once if you are focussed. If you have a specific interest such as pursuing an MBA or an MS, then one must concentrate on one specific task than trying to achieve everything. I wanted to pursue graduate study, so the GRE was my first priority. I gave the CAT just to see how far I could go without any preparation, and I just happened to get lucky.
You must have worked on several computer languages. Which one do you think is the future?
All programming languages are built with a specific purpose in mind. C, C++ and Java were built for general programming, PHP for small to medium scale web development, Perl and Python for scripting. I use a specific language based on the application. For instance, string processing is very difficult in C but is extremely simple in Perl, Java and Python. Therefore, I think there is no one specific language which will be used in the future. However, the simplicity of Python has been really fascinating. I think one should definitely have a look at Python as a language for quick and pain-free development.
Which are your favorite websites for resources.
Google usually helps in most cases. Apart from that a special mention to http://www.w3schools.com/ for some amazing tutorials and http://www.cplusplus.com/ for complete reference for the C and C++ programming languages.
Tell us something about the CSD. The experience, your work, etc. (You must have been partly responsible for blocking several sites huh :P).
Working with the Centre for Software Development was an amazing experience. In fact, I spent most of my time between classes in my third year working at the CSD. I was always interested in the real world application of what I was learning at BITS. The internet has been a severe problem for a while now. We tried our level best to cooperate with the Computer Centre and propose new solutions in order to provide safe, yet fast internet access to students. I believe some of our efforts have helped to alleviate the problems to a considerable extent. We also set up a few repositories for popular distributions such as Ubuntu and openSUSE to promote the use of GNU/Linux in campus. The CSD also brought me in contact with professors such as Dr. D.M. Kulkarni and Mr. Mangesh Bedekar and it has been a pleasure working with them. As students, we understood the difficulties faced by students in accessing certain sites blocked by accident and in fact, we tried to propose ways in which only sites necessary would be censored without affecting the productivity of the internet access. Therefore, we were responsible for unblocking wrongly blocked sites rather than blocking more sites.
Now a few fun questions:
Comments on the new name of the campus?
Any change meets resistance initially, but I think changing the name of our campus has made it stand out from the other BITS campuses. It has made our campus more special and given it a new personality.
If you had 10 crores, what would you do for the campus? Let your imagination run wild for this one.
10 crores is a really large amount. I would probably use it to build a swimming pool (it's really hot in Goa during the second semester) and establish new research laboratories in our campus. And build India's fastest supercomputer in campus too.
Who on campus do you think deserves a golden mural?
Far too many people, in my opinion. The B-dome would be full of them if we made a golden mural for every person who I think deserves it. ;)
One final question, where do you see yourself 10 years from now?
As I have mentioned before, I live life a day at a time, and putting down where I see myself 10 years from now would just be limiting the endless possibilities. As it is said popularly, the sky is the limit, and I would let that be. Just drop me an email in ten years, and I'll tell you where I am :)
I was recently interviewed for TECHBYTE, which is a magazine the Computer Science Department of BITS Pilani Goa Campus has come up with this year.
Thought I should put the contents of the interview here for those who do not happen to have access to the magazine.
First of all, many congratulations to you!
Thank you very much!
So tell us, What is your work ethic? How did you manage all the awesome stuff - Placement, IIM calls, GRE score, admits, CGPA?
Well, there was a saying in 3 Idiots that went something like this... Pursue excellence and success will automatically follow. This has always been true for me. I have always lived life one day at a time, trying to make the best use of it. No, I don't mean I always made the best use of my time, or always studied, or anything like that. I just did what I felt like doing. Some days it was chatting on DC or Google Talk, some days just bunking all classes and watching TV series the whole day, but on some days, I would actually have to get down to business and get some serious work done, be it completing assignments, or studying for the (never ending) T1s, T2s and compres.
Yeah, the transition from school/junior college to BITS was tough for me, and I'm sure it has been the same for many people. I started out with a 7.79 GPA in the first semester. Thankfully, my parents believed in me and encouraged me to do better than just blaming my computer for the poor GPA. Yeah, I had a computer with me right from my first day at BITS. You may not believe it now, but people around you, friends, parents and especially professors do matter a lot and influence you in ways you may not see immediately.
Let us start with the 'CSI IT Idol of Goa'. How did that come about and how was your experience?
Yeah, with this competition I just got lucky. In fact, I wasn't even thinking of applying to it. One of my friends, Kartik (eragon) asked if I wanted to apply just for fun. And that's why I did. Guess it turned out great at the end. To be honest, I hadn't expected winning the competition. There were numerous rounds to be cleared. The first one was the written test. That was simple enough, Rasagy, Kartik and Yogesh got through it with me. The second was the programming round at Goa University. They asked us to code for some program (to construct and search in a tree, I think) and that was fun as well. The next was a presentation round and I had been asked to present on the topic "Future and Challenges in Cloud Computing" This round had been only a few days after Test 2, so none of us who had qualified had adequate time to prepare. Thankfully, all our presentations were top-notch. The last round was interviews with a panel. I learnt a valuable lesson here. Humour always helps. A small joke goes a long way in creating a positive impression in the mind of the interviewers. It gives them something to remember you by and almost always tips the scales in your favour.
You got placed at Oracle. What preparations did you do for that?
I knew that the placement situation on campus was poor looking at the placements in the previous semester and the general state of the economy. However, we had the good fortune of being visited by some fine companies, Oracle Server Technology being one of them. I think that the matter of clearing the written test is usually a matter of luck and impromptu thinking more than preparation. The verbal section does need the study of English or the inculcation of the very important habit of reading which most of us give up right after coming to BITS due to various reasons. However, if you're preparing for the GRE then this does not pose a problem. The interviews are all about keeping cool and being honest. Tension shows easily and usually brings out the worst in a person. It helps to stay calm and answer confidently, and say that you don't know the answer to a question if you don't rather than fluking. Interviewers can catch flukes and drill you on your answer. At the end of the day, all that matters is what you learnt in your CDC semesters and a bit of luck. The best part about being placed at Oracle was that it happened the day before Waves, and for that very reason, that was the best Waves in these four years for me.
Coming to 'Belling the CAT'. How did you go about it?
To be honest, I was never serious about the CAT or pursuing an MBA course immediately after BITS. It's just that I was curious and CAT has had a reputation of being one of the tougher and more competitive examinations, so I decided to give it just like that. Trust me when I say that I hadn't put in any preparation for the CAT. I gave it in Bangalore on January 30th because I had faced technical difficulties while giving my examination at home in Mumbai. I guess the change in pattern and difficulty of the examination helped me.
How did it feel to get a call from one of the most prestigious B-schools - IIM?
It's definitely a great feeling. In fact, when I got my CAT result, I was pleasantly surprised to see 99+ percentile on my score card considering I hadn't put any effort towards preparation for the examination.
Okay so tell us, why do you think so many engineers go for an MBA nowadays? Don't you think that undermines your first degree?
I believe that pursuing any engineering course helps to build certain skills in a person, some of them being logical thinking, working under pressure, meeting deadlines etc. Even though so many students pursue engineering, some do aspire to be managers rather than pursue a technical career. Studying engineering before management allows individuals to be well versed with both the technical aspects as well as the managerial expertise. This gives engineers an edge when they are at a managerial post in a technical organisation. Hence I do not feel that an MBA undermines the importance of your first degree.
You also did very well in GRE. What preparations led to that?
I gave my GRE at the end of the summer vacations after my third year at BITS. Unfortunately, I wasn't satisfied with my preparation because I ended up not studying for most of the summer (because of the BITSian habit of procrastination) I studied vocabulary for only a fortnight before my GRE date. Thankfully, I ended up with 1400, which is a decent enough score. I regret that I could not pursue an internship during the summer as most of my batchmates did. My advice would be to try to get an intern during the summer vacations after your third year. An internship really helps while applying to universities abroad. And as one of my friends (Nilesh Kulkarni) proved, you do not need 2 months to prepare for the GRE. One can study and give it in fourteen days of tremendously hard effort and get a score greater that mine.
A call from Purdue and recently, Georgia Tech. Lots of options to weigh upon. Which do u plan to take up and what do you plan to study there?
Yes, I got an admit from Georgia Tech just a couple of days back. Other admits I received were from Purdue, University of California at Los Angeles and Ohio State University. Indeed, a good number of options to choose from. I had a very difficult time choosing between UCLA and Purdue before I got the GaTech admit, and now I'm having an even tougher time choosing from the three. Most probably, I will be attending Georgia Tech this fall. My interest has been Networking, Distributed Systems and High Performance Computing. Nettech and my research for the CSI IT Idol presentation helped me realise what my interests were. I had also chosen varied courses in my fourth year, such as Computer Graphics, Artificial Intelligence and Parallel Computing to help me decide, In the end, I decided that Parallel Computing was more interesting as compared to the other two, and this strengthened my interest,
Lots of students here will be interested in knowing how to apply to these prestigious colleges? what all do they look for in the applicants?
Students interested in pursuing a Masters or a PhD should join the BITS2MSPHD Yahoo Group at the earliest. It has a group of really helpful seniors who answer the queries students have about applying to US universities and offer any other assistance if required. One should also start going through the websites of the universities that interest them so as to gain an insight into the professors and their research areas at the university. It also helps to keep in touch with seniors studying there. As far as what a university looks for in an applicant, I think the first parameter is probably the CGPA. A higher CGPA increases the chances of an admit tremendously. Apart from that, the Statement of Purpose is also very important and must be written in a concise manner but must still clearly explain your reasons for graduate study. The SOP allows the Admissions Committee to understand you better and gain an insight into your personality. Letters of Recommendation also matter a great deal. Be sure to work on atleast one project in your field of interest with a professor at BITS. Last but not the least, internships at known research institutes such as IISc, TIFR, etc boost your chances by a fair amount.
After having done it all, do you think it's wise for students to do all 3 things - CGPA, MBA prep and GRE Prep?
At the end of the day, no matter what others say, your CGPA does count a great deal, but at the same time, it's not the only thing that counts. It is also important to enjoy your four (or five) years at BITS as you will never get this much freedom to explore yourself and your interests later in life. Yes, I think it's reasonable and quite possible to pursue all three at once if you are focussed. If you have a specific interest such as pursuing an MBA or an MS, then one must concentrate on one specific task than trying to achieve everything. I wanted to pursue graduate study, so the GRE was my first priority. I gave the CAT just to see how far I could go without any preparation, and I just happened to get lucky.
You must have worked on several computer languages. Which one do you think is the future?
All programming languages are built with a specific purpose in mind. C, C++ and Java were built for general programming, PHP for small to medium scale web development, Perl and Python for scripting. I use a specific language based on the application. For instance, string processing is very difficult in C but is extremely simple in Perl, Java and Python. Therefore, I think there is no one specific language which will be used in the future. However, the simplicity of Python has been really fascinating. I think one should definitely have a look at Python as a language for quick and pain-free development.
Which are your favorite websites for resources.
Google usually helps in most cases. Apart from that a special mention to http://www.w3schools.com/ for some amazing tutorials and http://www.cplusplus.com/ for complete reference for the C and C++ programming languages.
Tell us something about the CSD. The experience, your work, etc. (You must have been partly responsible for blocking several sites huh :P).
Working with the Centre for Software Development was an amazing experience. In fact, I spent most of my time between classes in my third year working at the CSD. I was always interested in the real world application of what I was learning at BITS. The internet has been a severe problem for a while now. We tried our level best to cooperate with the Computer Centre and propose new solutions in order to provide safe, yet fast internet access to students. I believe some of our efforts have helped to alleviate the problems to a considerable extent. We also set up a few repositories for popular distributions such as Ubuntu and openSUSE to promote the use of GNU/Linux in campus. The CSD also brought me in contact with professors such as Dr. D.M. Kulkarni and Mr. Mangesh Bedekar and it has been a pleasure working with them. As students, we understood the difficulties faced by students in accessing certain sites blocked by accident and in fact, we tried to propose ways in which only sites necessary would be censored without affecting the productivity of the internet access. Therefore, we were responsible for unblocking wrongly blocked sites rather than blocking more sites.
Now a few fun questions:
Comments on the new name of the campus?
Any change meets resistance initially, but I think changing the name of our campus has made it stand out from the other BITS campuses. It has made our campus more special and given it a new personality.
If you had 10 crores, what would you do for the campus? Let your imagination run wild for this one.
10 crores is a really large amount. I would probably use it to build a swimming pool (it's really hot in Goa during the second semester) and establish new research laboratories in our campus. And build India's fastest supercomputer in campus too.
Who on campus do you think deserves a golden mural?
Far too many people, in my opinion. The B-dome would be full of them if we made a golden mural for every person who I think deserves it. ;)
One final question, where do you see yourself 10 years from now?
As I have mentioned before, I live life a day at a time, and putting down where I see myself 10 years from now would just be limiting the endless possibilities. As it is said popularly, the sky is the limit, and I would let that be. Just drop me an email in ten years, and I'll tell you where I am :)
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Trust
I'm posting to my blog so regularly that it's now getting scary... Either there's something really amiss with my life or I'm actually becoming an active blogger for want of a better pastime.
Keeping in tune with other posts, this one too shall contain no names.
I have a friend, let's call him X. Now, calling him a friend implies that we share stuff.. ideas, thoughts, words, time and sometimes even secrets. Now sharing secrets requires a mutual trust to exist between two people. So, yes there were some secrets kept between us, not just us but amongst all the people I usually hang out with. Now, this was never said, but I hoped that by an unwritten and unsaid contract, certain things would not be spread outside our circle.
Well I have been occasionally frivolous, almost all my life, especially with people I call friends. However, I believe I have also been as quick to apologize when I was hurting someone's sentiments. Needless to say, this has also happened innumerable times with this friend.
Today, I just found out some strange things. Quite accidentally, and almost unintentionally, I stumbled upon some piece of evidence that pointed to the fact that this "friend" had been discussing some of the things I had said unintentionally and accidentally with people whom I had wished not to know those things. And unfortunately, I'm quite sure he knew it.
Well, it's too troublesome confronting people, and needless to say, I won't confront him, for now at least. However, it's not easy to forget such things. Now, the matter that was discussed was probably quite silly and not very important, but it did make me question myself about the integrity of the people I keep as friends around me.
I may sound paranoid, but if you look at the larger picture, people you keep around yourself may not be just your friends, but your business associates whom you will trust to keep business secrets. And a leak at that point of time could bring everything down.
I've always been very selective about who I call a friend, and trust is something I never bestow without thinking it through. But all through my life, there have always been instances when I thought I had trusted the wrong people. And unfortunately, even though some of them have apologized, a sorry just doesn't take back their actions.
I've tried multiple times to rid myself of this paranoia, but there's always someone to re-affirm my belief in the fact that "Trust is a weakness" indeed...
Keeping in tune with other posts, this one too shall contain no names.
I have a friend, let's call him X. Now, calling him a friend implies that we share stuff.. ideas, thoughts, words, time and sometimes even secrets. Now sharing secrets requires a mutual trust to exist between two people. So, yes there were some secrets kept between us, not just us but amongst all the people I usually hang out with. Now, this was never said, but I hoped that by an unwritten and unsaid contract, certain things would not be spread outside our circle.
Well I have been occasionally frivolous, almost all my life, especially with people I call friends. However, I believe I have also been as quick to apologize when I was hurting someone's sentiments. Needless to say, this has also happened innumerable times with this friend.
Today, I just found out some strange things. Quite accidentally, and almost unintentionally, I stumbled upon some piece of evidence that pointed to the fact that this "friend" had been discussing some of the things I had said unintentionally and accidentally with people whom I had wished not to know those things. And unfortunately, I'm quite sure he knew it.
Well, it's too troublesome confronting people, and needless to say, I won't confront him, for now at least. However, it's not easy to forget such things. Now, the matter that was discussed was probably quite silly and not very important, but it did make me question myself about the integrity of the people I keep as friends around me.
I may sound paranoid, but if you look at the larger picture, people you keep around yourself may not be just your friends, but your business associates whom you will trust to keep business secrets. And a leak at that point of time could bring everything down.
I've always been very selective about who I call a friend, and trust is something I never bestow without thinking it through. But all through my life, there have always been instances when I thought I had trusted the wrong people. And unfortunately, even though some of them have apologized, a sorry just doesn't take back their actions.
I've tried multiple times to rid myself of this paranoia, but there's always someone to re-affirm my belief in the fact that "Trust is a weakness" indeed...
Saturday, April 24, 2010
Childhood Ambitions
It's 6:30 am on a Sunday, and I'm awake... :-|
Sitting with my laptop in the balcony, looking out at an amazing view of Bangalore city.
Looking, back, I realize that when I was a kid, I had lots of things I wanted to do. Some of them were kiddish, some were actually useful and worth doing, some were plain impossible...
Decided to enumerate them, here they are... (in no order whatsoever)
1) Collecting all the G.I.Joe action figures and vehicles
2) Completely buying Enid Blyton's Five Find Outers and Dog series
3) Interacting a lot more with other members of Mensa
4) Becoming a HAM Radio operator
5) Learning a new language
6) Becoming financially independent
7) Building a magnetic personality
8) Making a war bot and participating in Robot Wars
9) Reading minds
10)Learning handwriting analysis and palmistry
~MH
Sitting with my laptop in the balcony, looking out at an amazing view of Bangalore city.
Looking, back, I realize that when I was a kid, I had lots of things I wanted to do. Some of them were kiddish, some were actually useful and worth doing, some were plain impossible...
Decided to enumerate them, here they are... (in no order whatsoever)
1) Collecting all the G.I.Joe action figures and vehicles
2) Completely buying Enid Blyton's Five Find Outers and Dog series
3) Interacting a lot more with other members of Mensa
4) Becoming a HAM Radio operator
5) Learning a new language
6) Becoming financially independent
7) Building a magnetic personality
8) Making a war bot and participating in Robot Wars
9) Reading minds
10)Learning handwriting analysis and palmistry
~MH
Saturday, April 17, 2010
Death
Guess what? It's Saturday! Perfect timing for another of my posts...
This time, it's about death.
Various dictionaries define death as the following:
"the event of dying or departure from life", "the permanent end of all life functions in an organism or part of an organism", "the absence of life or state of being dead", "the time when something ends" and "the time at which life ends"
The ideas for this post were thought up on a train journey (Mumbai-Goa or vice-versa) when I was discussing the concept of death with Vigi. We had quite a discussion about the same then...
I always thought of putting down what I thought as a blog post, but kept procrastinating, as it is my habit, till now, when certain events made me realize that I just simply had to write this post in the near future.
The idea of death isn't new to me. I had known it to be the inevitable end right since middle school. In first or second grade (don't remember which) I lost a classmate. I think his name was Varun. I may not remember most other details because my memories about school have grown quite blurry. Then again in high school, I lost another fellow student, this time a girl. She wasn't a classmate, but my mother told me what we had been in nursery school together. It's very unfortunate that I never had the opportunity to know them better. I only wish I had invested more time in interacting with them a bit more when I had the chance.
Then again, in BITS the trend continued.... Lost a person almost every year... Fellow students, director, what not... It's been very sad, but inevitable none the less. In fact, one of the students who passed away at BITS had been the immediate neighbour of one of my close friends. I know he was quite shaken knowing that he would never be able to see his neighbour's friendly face at BITS ever again.
So, back to the discussion we had. What is death? Death seems to be the ceasing of the existence of a living being, for any reason. But yea... I'm living, I experience myself inside me. Pain, pleasure, relief, anger... the entire gamut of 'feelings' and also memories and experiences I have gained through the process of 'living'. It's baffling that I am inside me, and not observing myself as a third person. That feels weird sometimes, especially when I think about it. It brings me to the question, what happens when I die? What happens to my 'self', my so-called 'feelings', 'memories'? Do they just disappear? Whoosh??? Or are they stored somewhere? What happens of my 'awareness' and my unwritten and unshared ideas?
All these questions bring me to a newer, and a more fundamental question...
We start 'living', grow up, learn, start earning, make a family, and then finally die. So what is the purpose of life? Is it just doing the above? All humans do that (I hope). So what makes me different from the rest? Am I just a tool in the propagation of the human race (and hopefully improving its genetic code through evolution) and nothing else? If so, life seems quite pointless, actually. These questions have been troubling me since a really long time, and unfortunately, I haven't found their answers yet. Maybe the answers lie in death itself. Maybe I will find out eventually (after I die?)
What I am more curious about is that have other people (my contemporaries, friends, whatever...) thought about these above questions themselves? Has it occurred to them that these questions are worth thinking about? If so, what are their views? I would really like to hear/read them. Maybe the reason I think about this so much is because I read certain books, mainly "Jonathan Livingston Seagull" and "Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah" both by Richard Bach when I was quite young. These books actually gave me quite a lot of new ideas and made me think deeper. I definitely recommend that you read these books when you do have the time. They're fairly simple to follow, and I believe they'll get you thinking at once.
These made me more 'comfortable' with the idea of death, and made me realize that even if people die (leave?), my life does go on, and new experiences and ideas will still be born (will they be of any importance?)
And so, I keep living my life, trying to hold on to people precious to me, spending as much time as I can with them, lest I lose them and have regrets later on...
Hope you do the same...
Rest in peace, all those who have moved on...
Later!
This time, it's about death.
Various dictionaries define death as the following:
"the event of dying or departure from life", "the permanent end of all life functions in an organism or part of an organism", "the absence of life or state of being dead", "the time when something ends" and "the time at which life ends"
The ideas for this post were thought up on a train journey (Mumbai-Goa or vice-versa) when I was discussing the concept of death with Vigi. We had quite a discussion about the same then...
I always thought of putting down what I thought as a blog post, but kept procrastinating, as it is my habit, till now, when certain events made me realize that I just simply had to write this post in the near future.
The idea of death isn't new to me. I had known it to be the inevitable end right since middle school. In first or second grade (don't remember which) I lost a classmate. I think his name was Varun. I may not remember most other details because my memories about school have grown quite blurry. Then again in high school, I lost another fellow student, this time a girl. She wasn't a classmate, but my mother told me what we had been in nursery school together. It's very unfortunate that I never had the opportunity to know them better. I only wish I had invested more time in interacting with them a bit more when I had the chance.
Then again, in BITS the trend continued.... Lost a person almost every year... Fellow students, director, what not... It's been very sad, but inevitable none the less. In fact, one of the students who passed away at BITS had been the immediate neighbour of one of my close friends. I know he was quite shaken knowing that he would never be able to see his neighbour's friendly face at BITS ever again.
So, back to the discussion we had. What is death? Death seems to be the ceasing of the existence of a living being, for any reason. But yea... I'm living, I experience myself inside me. Pain, pleasure, relief, anger... the entire gamut of 'feelings' and also memories and experiences I have gained through the process of 'living'. It's baffling that I am inside me, and not observing myself as a third person. That feels weird sometimes, especially when I think about it. It brings me to the question, what happens when I die? What happens to my 'self', my so-called 'feelings', 'memories'? Do they just disappear? Whoosh??? Or are they stored somewhere? What happens of my 'awareness' and my unwritten and unshared ideas?
All these questions bring me to a newer, and a more fundamental question...
We start 'living', grow up, learn, start earning, make a family, and then finally die. So what is the purpose of life? Is it just doing the above? All humans do that (I hope). So what makes me different from the rest? Am I just a tool in the propagation of the human race (and hopefully improving its genetic code through evolution) and nothing else? If so, life seems quite pointless, actually. These questions have been troubling me since a really long time, and unfortunately, I haven't found their answers yet. Maybe the answers lie in death itself. Maybe I will find out eventually (after I die?)
What I am more curious about is that have other people (my contemporaries, friends, whatever...) thought about these above questions themselves? Has it occurred to them that these questions are worth thinking about? If so, what are their views? I would really like to hear/read them. Maybe the reason I think about this so much is because I read certain books, mainly "Jonathan Livingston Seagull" and "Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah" both by Richard Bach when I was quite young. These books actually gave me quite a lot of new ideas and made me think deeper. I definitely recommend that you read these books when you do have the time. They're fairly simple to follow, and I believe they'll get you thinking at once.
These made me more 'comfortable' with the idea of death, and made me realize that even if people die (leave?), my life does go on, and new experiences and ideas will still be born (will they be of any importance?)
And so, I keep living my life, trying to hold on to people precious to me, spending as much time as I can with them, lest I lose them and have regrets later on...
Hope you do the same...
Rest in peace, all those who have moved on...
Later!
Monday, April 12, 2010
Ticketgenie ki Jai!!!
Hey Readers,
I really wanted to see a Mumbai Indians IPL match this season. Unfortunately I'm in Bangalore, and the only MI match I could watch here was against RCB at Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bangalore. I had booked my tickets well in advance.
To my great disappointment, I received this email today:
-----------------------------------------------------
Dear Customer
Due to a technical error in the ticketing website, it over sold more than the tickets allotted for online sale, hence we are compelled to refund our valued customers or accommodate them in the coming Semi Final matches.
We do understand your concern and it is not your mistake and at the same time it is a technical error which cannot be undone.
We regret the inconvenience caused to you and request you to bear with us this time and either opt for a refund or opt for the Semi Final Matches scheduled either on April 21st or April 22nd.
The prices for the Semi Finals are slightly higher than the League Matches and request you to bear the difference amount whoever opts for the Semi Final Tickets.
Order No:
Stand:
Based on your decision, request you to follow the instructions mentioned below:
Refund
If you opt for the refund you need to send us an email to refund@ticketgenie.in requesting for a refund. In this case we will process the refund immediately and normally it will take 8-10 Working days to credit your account.
Semi Final Tickets
If you opt to trade in for Semi Final tickets, you have to visit the E Ticket redemption counter (Gate No.19 of the Chinnaswamy Cricket Stadium) on 13th April or 14th April or 18th April and collect the ticket by paying the difference amount. Rs.60/- paid towards courier charges will be adjusted against the ticket amount.
Once again regret the inconvenience cause to you in this regard.
Regards
Manager – Customer Service
-----------------------------------------------------
What a mockery!!! I just couldn't resist writing a reply to this mail....
Here's what I wrote:
-----------------------------------------------------
Dear Sir/Madam,
Your unprofessional behaviour has no bounds. I find it difficult to believe that a prestigious company like yours cannot even build a simple online booking system properly. It should be a matter of great shame to your company.
Having committed this massive error, you also fail to include in the apology mail the difference in cost between the tickets for the match I had booked and the semi-final match you are willing to exchange our tickets for. Even your beautifully designed website yields no data about the prices of the said semi-final tickets.
Please do me a favour by responding to this mail with the ticket rates for the semi-final matches and which stands you are willing to offer as a compromise, so that I will not have to spend my valuable time and energy going to Chinnaswamy Stadium to enquire about the same.
Great work once again!
Regards,
An IPL Fan
-----------------------------------------------------
Let's see how this proceeds from here on.... :)
I really wanted to see a Mumbai Indians IPL match this season. Unfortunately I'm in Bangalore, and the only MI match I could watch here was against RCB at Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bangalore. I had booked my tickets well in advance.
To my great disappointment, I received this email today:
-----------------------------------------------------
Dear Customer
Due to a technical error in the ticketing website, it over sold more than the tickets allotted for online sale, hence we are compelled to refund our valued customers or accommodate them in the coming Semi Final matches.
We do understand your concern and it is not your mistake and at the same time it is a technical error which cannot be undone.
We regret the inconvenience caused to you and request you to bear with us this time and either opt for a refund or opt for the Semi Final Matches scheduled either on April 21st or April 22nd.
The prices for the Semi Finals are slightly higher than the League Matches and request you to bear the difference amount whoever opts for the Semi Final Tickets.
Order No:
Stand:
Based on your decision, request you to follow the instructions mentioned below:
Refund
If you opt for the refund you need to send us an email to refund@ticketgenie.in requesting for a refund. In this case we will process the refund immediately and normally it will take 8-10 Working days to credit your account.
Semi Final Tickets
If you opt to trade in for Semi Final tickets, you have to visit the E Ticket redemption counter (Gate No.19 of the Chinnaswamy Cricket Stadium) on 13th April or 14th April or 18th April and collect the ticket by paying the difference amount. Rs.60/- paid towards courier charges will be adjusted against the ticket amount.
Once again regret the inconvenience cause to you in this regard.
Regards
Manager – Customer Service
-----------------------------------------------------
What a mockery!!! I just couldn't resist writing a reply to this mail....
Here's what I wrote:
-----------------------------------------------------
Dear Sir/Madam,
Your unprofessional behaviour has no bounds. I find it difficult to believe that a prestigious company like yours cannot even build a simple online booking system properly. It should be a matter of great shame to your company.
Having committed this massive error, you also fail to include in the apology mail the difference in cost between the tickets for the match I had booked and the semi-final match you are willing to exchange our tickets for. Even your beautifully designed website yields no data about the prices of the said semi-final tickets.
Please do me a favour by responding to this mail with the ticket rates for the semi-final matches and which stands you are willing to offer as a compromise, so that I will not have to spend my valuable time and energy going to Chinnaswamy Stadium to enquire about the same.
Great work once again!
Regards,
An IPL Fan
-----------------------------------------------------
Let's see how this proceeds from here on.... :)
Sunday, March 28, 2010
People Always Leave
Hi all,
I've been watching loads of "One Tree Hill" recently. I really like Peyton's drawings and comic strips. One I specifically admire is "People Always Leave" because I'm somehow able to associate it with my life. Here it is...
I've been watching loads of "One Tree Hill" recently. I really like Peyton's drawings and comic strips. One I specifically admire is "People Always Leave" because I'm somehow able to associate it with my life. Here it is...
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
The Craziest Week - Part 3
Day 5: Tuesday
I was supposed to leave Goa in the afternoon today and travel by bus to Bangalore. However, at 0030 I got a call from home asking me to come to Mumbai by the first available flight to attent to some urgent business. It is said that "A Friend in need is a Friend indeed". This indeed turned out to be true in my case. In my time of need, both Ara and Addu came to the rescue. Thankfully, Addu had a working printer and he also at an unearthly time of 0130 contacted a cab to take me to the airport at 0500. I slept very sparingly. Having had a bath (thankfully BITS has fitted water heaters) I headed to the airport. The entire journey is like a dream to me. I don't remember anything after I took my seat in the airplane. No recollection of take-off, the flight time or the landing.
I had some breakfast at home, attended to the work I had come to Mumbai for and spent the rest of the day catching up with my lost sleep. I also booked a 0615 flight to Bangalore the following day as I had to go to work.
Since I had a 185 rank in GATE, I decided that it would be only sensible to apply to IISc, a prestigious research institute in Bangalore for higher education. Unfortunately the deadline for the online application was Wednesday, and a demand draft was required before one could apply. Unfortunately, it was a bank holiday and I could not get the draft that day.
Day 6: Wednesday
I woke up early and packed all my belongings. My parents dropped me at the airport well in time for the flight to Bangalore. Thankfully, I was awake during this flight, though still a bit groggy. The in-flight entertainment system played a Hindi movie called "Aladin" which I watched. After landing, I took a city bus to my home which took an awful lot of time to reach. Having dropped my luggage, I headed to the nearest bank branch to get a demand draft for my IISc application. Unfortunately, the printer there was out of order, and I had to take a bus to another branch to get my work done. It took almost the entire morning to get the draft. In the meanwhile, a fellow intern from my workplace called me to ask if I would be able to make it to team lunch that day.
My Engineering Manager had chosen that exact day to take my team out to lunch (:-|) I still had not started the IISc application and that day was the deadline. Half an hour after I came in to work, we headed out for a team lunch to a fancy French place called Medici about fifteen minutes away by car. We took our time chatting and ordering food. We started with starters, then soup, then the main course and finally deserts. We had an awesome time, but I was worried about my application. We got back only at around 1630. To my relief, I found that the application page was still active. I quickly entered all my details and completed my application. Phew!
My PS instructor had set the day for my mid-semester presentation and report submission that Friday and I hadn't even started on either of them. I also had to make a project prototype to demonstrate to higher managers at my workplace early next week. I started making my presentation and made a few slides, but was exhausted by then. That was about all I could manage that day.
Day 7: Thursday
Well, I basically spent my day balancing the coding for the prototype I was to demonstrate next week and preparing the mid-sem presentation and the mid-sem report. I had heard that the new PS instructor was very strict, so I had decided to put considerable effort into the report. I also sent the hard copy of my IISc application through courier that day. Luckily, I managed to complete all three tasks by the end of the day.
Thankfully, the presentation went well and my PS instructor was actually impressed with my presentation. She also didn't see anything out of place with my report (phew!!!) I still have to present the prototype (tomorrow) but I am confident that it will go well too...
Thus ended the craziest week of my life (till now)
I was supposed to leave Goa in the afternoon today and travel by bus to Bangalore. However, at 0030 I got a call from home asking me to come to Mumbai by the first available flight to attent to some urgent business. It is said that "A Friend in need is a Friend indeed". This indeed turned out to be true in my case. In my time of need, both Ara and Addu came to the rescue. Thankfully, Addu had a working printer and he also at an unearthly time of 0130 contacted a cab to take me to the airport at 0500. I slept very sparingly. Having had a bath (thankfully BITS has fitted water heaters) I headed to the airport. The entire journey is like a dream to me. I don't remember anything after I took my seat in the airplane. No recollection of take-off, the flight time or the landing.
I had some breakfast at home, attended to the work I had come to Mumbai for and spent the rest of the day catching up with my lost sleep. I also booked a 0615 flight to Bangalore the following day as I had to go to work.
Since I had a 185 rank in GATE, I decided that it would be only sensible to apply to IISc, a prestigious research institute in Bangalore for higher education. Unfortunately the deadline for the online application was Wednesday, and a demand draft was required before one could apply. Unfortunately, it was a bank holiday and I could not get the draft that day.
Day 6: Wednesday
I woke up early and packed all my belongings. My parents dropped me at the airport well in time for the flight to Bangalore. Thankfully, I was awake during this flight, though still a bit groggy. The in-flight entertainment system played a Hindi movie called "Aladin" which I watched. After landing, I took a city bus to my home which took an awful lot of time to reach. Having dropped my luggage, I headed to the nearest bank branch to get a demand draft for my IISc application. Unfortunately, the printer there was out of order, and I had to take a bus to another branch to get my work done. It took almost the entire morning to get the draft. In the meanwhile, a fellow intern from my workplace called me to ask if I would be able to make it to team lunch that day.
My Engineering Manager had chosen that exact day to take my team out to lunch (:-|) I still had not started the IISc application and that day was the deadline. Half an hour after I came in to work, we headed out for a team lunch to a fancy French place called Medici about fifteen minutes away by car. We took our time chatting and ordering food. We started with starters, then soup, then the main course and finally deserts. We had an awesome time, but I was worried about my application. We got back only at around 1630. To my relief, I found that the application page was still active. I quickly entered all my details and completed my application. Phew!
My PS instructor had set the day for my mid-semester presentation and report submission that Friday and I hadn't even started on either of them. I also had to make a project prototype to demonstrate to higher managers at my workplace early next week. I started making my presentation and made a few slides, but was exhausted by then. That was about all I could manage that day.
Day 7: Thursday
Well, I basically spent my day balancing the coding for the prototype I was to demonstrate next week and preparing the mid-sem presentation and the mid-sem report. I had heard that the new PS instructor was very strict, so I had decided to put considerable effort into the report. I also sent the hard copy of my IISc application through courier that day. Luckily, I managed to complete all three tasks by the end of the day.
Thankfully, the presentation went well and my PS instructor was actually impressed with my presentation. She also didn't see anything out of place with my report (phew!!!) I still have to present the prototype (tomorrow) but I am confident that it will go well too...
Thus ended the craziest week of my life (till now)
The Craziest Week - Part 2
Day 3: Sunday
Sunday is a day I used to wake up late at BITS. Similar... Wasn't sure what I wanted to do... Happened to check movie listings and saw that "Alice in Wonderland" was playing at INOX Panaji. Me, Ara and Voldy decided to go and see it. Voldy was hungry on the way, so we had some stuff to eat at Temptations and I had a Chocolate Milkshake (yummm!!!) and took a bus to Panaji. The movie was quite decent, Johnny Depp's acting was brilliant, and being a Disney movie, it was children-safe.
During my stay at BITS, I had always been to Panaji only when I had some sort of work, and it used to get late by the time I got back to campus. For the first time in 3.5 years did I casually stroll the streets of Panaji, actually looking about, exploring and getting the feel of the beautiful city. It was evening by the time we got back to campus.
I hadn't met quite a lot of people yet. Domi invited me to a walk in the late evening. It had been almost a semester that we had spoken in person with each other. As I discovered, a lot had changed. Back then, we were only worried about grades, but now as we stood on the threshold of our life at BITS, there were more important things to worry about. After a nice long walk around the campus (multiple times, actually :P) I finally bid goodbye and headed to my room for some really required rest. It had been a tiring but enjoyable day.
Day 4: Monday
I had still to meet faculty members at BITS. In the morning, I first met DMK sir, Manas bhaiyya and some of the CC staff whom I had worked in close coordination with just a semester back. I also met the entire CompSci gang, Era, swings, Califus, mumble, etc... - from Goa and Bangalore/Hyderabad who had come to visit campus that weekend. Don't know for what reason I treated them to whatever they wanted at Ice n' Spice. Whatever it was, I enjoyed the feeling. After some good nature jabbing and photographing Califus looking ridiculous, we split up for lunch.
Caught up with Voldy, Shadow and Ara for lunch at Shahi Durbar, also met Vigi on the way and had food with him. It was great to catch up with Vigi. We had worked together in running a WoW server one time. In the afternoon, I went to meet BMD sir. We talked a lot about the changes being implemented in campus and about other general stuff. I had already met RSJ sir in his chamber yesterday (yea, Sunday :-O) Unfortunately, I could not meet MB sir.
In the evening, I collected my yearbook (and many more for all the guys I live with at Bangalore) I spent time hanging out at Ara's room watching OMG Music Videos on DC that I had missed out on during the semester. Also downloaded a lot of the latest TV series episodes onto my 8GB flash disk so that I could watch them at leisure when I returned to Bangalore.
Another interesting thing happened today. The GATE results were due, but unfortunately, my admit card was at home, and my parents were out of town, so there was no way I could get my results unless they came back and sent me my registration number. They reached home only late evening and ended my frustration and not being able to get my GATE score. Thankfully, my GATE rank turned out to be AIR 185 (yay!)
To be continued...
Sunday is a day I used to wake up late at BITS. Similar... Wasn't sure what I wanted to do... Happened to check movie listings and saw that "Alice in Wonderland" was playing at INOX Panaji. Me, Ara and Voldy decided to go and see it. Voldy was hungry on the way, so we had some stuff to eat at Temptations and I had a Chocolate Milkshake (yummm!!!) and took a bus to Panaji. The movie was quite decent, Johnny Depp's acting was brilliant, and being a Disney movie, it was children-safe.
During my stay at BITS, I had always been to Panaji only when I had some sort of work, and it used to get late by the time I got back to campus. For the first time in 3.5 years did I casually stroll the streets of Panaji, actually looking about, exploring and getting the feel of the beautiful city. It was evening by the time we got back to campus.
I hadn't met quite a lot of people yet. Domi invited me to a walk in the late evening. It had been almost a semester that we had spoken in person with each other. As I discovered, a lot had changed. Back then, we were only worried about grades, but now as we stood on the threshold of our life at BITS, there were more important things to worry about. After a nice long walk around the campus (multiple times, actually :P) I finally bid goodbye and headed to my room for some really required rest. It had been a tiring but enjoyable day.
Day 4: Monday
I had still to meet faculty members at BITS. In the morning, I first met DMK sir, Manas bhaiyya and some of the CC staff whom I had worked in close coordination with just a semester back. I also met the entire CompSci gang, Era, swings, Califus, mumble, etc... - from Goa and Bangalore/Hyderabad who had come to visit campus that weekend. Don't know for what reason I treated them to whatever they wanted at Ice n' Spice. Whatever it was, I enjoyed the feeling. After some good nature jabbing and photographing Califus looking ridiculous, we split up for lunch.
Caught up with Voldy, Shadow and Ara for lunch at Shahi Durbar, also met Vigi on the way and had food with him. It was great to catch up with Vigi. We had worked together in running a WoW server one time. In the afternoon, I went to meet BMD sir. We talked a lot about the changes being implemented in campus and about other general stuff. I had already met RSJ sir in his chamber yesterday (yea, Sunday :-O) Unfortunately, I could not meet MB sir.
In the evening, I collected my yearbook (and many more for all the guys I live with at Bangalore) I spent time hanging out at Ara's room watching OMG Music Videos on DC that I had missed out on during the semester. Also downloaded a lot of the latest TV series episodes onto my 8GB flash disk so that I could watch them at leisure when I returned to Bangalore.
Another interesting thing happened today. The GATE results were due, but unfortunately, my admit card was at home, and my parents were out of town, so there was no way I could get my results unless they came back and sent me my registration number. They reached home only late evening and ended my frustration and not being able to get my GATE score. Thankfully, my GATE rank turned out to be AIR 185 (yay!)
To be continued...
The Craziest Week - Part 1
Okay, so here I was, working as usual, when I saw the GTalk status message of one of my friends. It said "Goa this weekend!" or something to that effect. Upon inquiring, I found out that some of the students pursuing PS2 (a six-month internship course at BITS) in Bangalore had booked train tickets to go to Goa on Friday evening.
Unfortunately, the tatkal quota was already full, and I was about to abandon the idea of going along when another person on my contact list IMed me and asked me if I wanted to go on a spare ticket she had. Thus began the almost impromptu trip to Goa and the beginning of one of the most craziest weeks of my life.
Day 1: Friday
I was excited, (a couple of months back, I could not even fathom the idea of going back to Goa) don't know why. Anyway, after a day of work and when I was just about to leave, my Engineering Manager (my Manager's Manager) comes up to my cube and starts chatting with me about random stuff... I am anxious to get out and get going so that I'm not late for the train. Anyway, I finally told him that I was catching a train to Goa that day, he let me go after teasing me about what I would be doing in Goa (yea rite!)
It is true that when you want something really bad, the world conspires to help you every step along the way. As it happened, the list was on my floor when I reached the lobby, a bus came just as I reached the bus stop and a second bus was waiting at an intermediate signal, which took me home. It was probably the record time I had clocked to get home from my workplace.
Anyway, the place I was to meet my fellow passengers... was actually 5 minutes away, but the bus I boarded took twenty minutes to reach, thanks to the circuitous route it took, resulting in my ring tone irritating my fellow passengers in the bus as I could not reach my pocket with a suitcase in one hand and the people around me in the jam-packed bus.
The station we were going to board the train at was in the middle of nowhere and we reached there thankfully way ahead of time by auto-rickshaw. After getting the platform number right and making a mental note of how obsessed a specific gender is with cellphones (:P) we boarded the train.
Some idle chit-chat later, the train reached its first station, stopped for half an hour, and surprisingly started moving in the reverse direction (O.o) and maintained that direction of travel right till Goa. We had bought some junk food to keep us busy and we finally retired to bed at about 10 pm (I think)
Day 2: Saturday
Morning chores in a train are always a bore (Note the rhyme) I woke up as usual at 0645 due to the cold morning air. My first fellow passenger woke up shortly after at around 0800. The second at around 1100 (:-|) Anyway, that's not the point. The journey was quite uneventful to be honest except for some music and solving a sudoku there was hardly anything we did.
I have always believed that life is a learning experience. Every second is an opportunity to learn new things. We all learn from our experiences (or we must) both good and bad. We were quite hungry when the train reached Vasco and we decided to have lunch at a restaurant in Vasco itself. Lunch was quite an experience in itself. No... nothing was wrong with the food, I've dined at the place plenty of times in the past. Afraid I can't say the same about the company. Let's just say I found out the true meaning of "We are known by the company we keep." Let's just say I was fortunate that I did not have to interact with certain people for all these three and a half years I spent at BITS (before that day)
Onward.... we reached BITS (I was controlling myself.... My temper does get out of hand very easily and I need to spend considerable energy on keeping cool...) Anyway, I met Voldy at the gate, smiling as always and in his Microsoft t-shirt. I support open source just as much as he supports Microsoft (:P) After settling in, (it was evening already) we went out to Nes to relive our mid-day meal after CG class last semester one last time. Maggi + Iced Tea have always been a pleasing combo and a pleasant conversation with humor surely made the evening fun. We were joined by Ara, Charlie and Pooh. Then we headed off to Mongi to meet Era and KG who had come by bus from Bangalore. Then I went to Addu's room to meet him. I watched a couple of episodes of House that I had missed, and chatted quite a lot with him about new happenings at BITS.
Later, just like the old days, we played a couple of games of Judgement with the gang. It was great fun. I wasn't too keen on dinner, but my friends quite literally dragged me to NC to get something to eat. A pleasant walk later, I was back to bed, dreaming about random stuff, as usual.
To be continued...
Unfortunately, the tatkal quota was already full, and I was about to abandon the idea of going along when another person on my contact list IMed me and asked me if I wanted to go on a spare ticket she had. Thus began the almost impromptu trip to Goa and the beginning of one of the most craziest weeks of my life.
Day 1: Friday
I was excited, (a couple of months back, I could not even fathom the idea of going back to Goa) don't know why. Anyway, after a day of work and when I was just about to leave, my Engineering Manager (my Manager's Manager) comes up to my cube and starts chatting with me about random stuff... I am anxious to get out and get going so that I'm not late for the train. Anyway, I finally told him that I was catching a train to Goa that day, he let me go after teasing me about what I would be doing in Goa (yea rite!)
It is true that when you want something really bad, the world conspires to help you every step along the way. As it happened, the list was on my floor when I reached the lobby, a bus came just as I reached the bus stop and a second bus was waiting at an intermediate signal, which took me home. It was probably the record time I had clocked to get home from my workplace.
Anyway, the place I was to meet my fellow passengers... was actually 5 minutes away, but the bus I boarded took twenty minutes to reach, thanks to the circuitous route it took, resulting in my ring tone irritating my fellow passengers in the bus as I could not reach my pocket with a suitcase in one hand and the people around me in the jam-packed bus.
The station we were going to board the train at was in the middle of nowhere and we reached there thankfully way ahead of time by auto-rickshaw. After getting the platform number right and making a mental note of how obsessed a specific gender is with cellphones (:P) we boarded the train.
Some idle chit-chat later, the train reached its first station, stopped for half an hour, and surprisingly started moving in the reverse direction (O.o) and maintained that direction of travel right till Goa. We had bought some junk food to keep us busy and we finally retired to bed at about 10 pm (I think)
Day 2: Saturday
Morning chores in a train are always a bore (Note the rhyme) I woke up as usual at 0645 due to the cold morning air. My first fellow passenger woke up shortly after at around 0800. The second at around 1100 (:-|) Anyway, that's not the point. The journey was quite uneventful to be honest except for some music and solving a sudoku there was hardly anything we did.
I have always believed that life is a learning experience. Every second is an opportunity to learn new things. We all learn from our experiences (or we must) both good and bad. We were quite hungry when the train reached Vasco and we decided to have lunch at a restaurant in Vasco itself. Lunch was quite an experience in itself. No... nothing was wrong with the food, I've dined at the place plenty of times in the past. Afraid I can't say the same about the company. Let's just say I found out the true meaning of "We are known by the company we keep." Let's just say I was fortunate that I did not have to interact with certain people for all these three and a half years I spent at BITS (before that day)
Onward.... we reached BITS (I was controlling myself.... My temper does get out of hand very easily and I need to spend considerable energy on keeping cool...) Anyway, I met Voldy at the gate, smiling as always and in his Microsoft t-shirt. I support open source just as much as he supports Microsoft (:P) After settling in, (it was evening already) we went out to Nes to relive our mid-day meal after CG class last semester one last time. Maggi + Iced Tea have always been a pleasing combo and a pleasant conversation with humor surely made the evening fun. We were joined by Ara, Charlie and Pooh. Then we headed off to Mongi to meet Era and KG who had come by bus from Bangalore. Then I went to Addu's room to meet him. I watched a couple of episodes of House that I had missed, and chatted quite a lot with him about new happenings at BITS.
Later, just like the old days, we played a couple of games of Judgement with the gang. It was great fun. I wasn't too keen on dinner, but my friends quite literally dragged me to NC to get something to eat. A pleasant walk later, I was back to bed, dreaming about random stuff, as usual.
To be continued...
Saturday, March 6, 2010
Where do I go from here?
Warning: This might just be the most random post I've written till today.
It's been 21 years. A long 21 years. I've had moments good and bad, joys and sorrows, dreams... fulfilled and procrastinated. Seen times both good and bad. Made friends, lost them, gotten out of touch, back in touch, lost touch...
I really don't know the purpose of this post. Just putting thoughts down as they come to my mind. As you may have read, I'm currently in Bangalore. Bangalore brought it's own share of joys and sorrows. Brought me closer to friends from college, re-discovered the joy of spending time with older friends with whom I had lost touch.
But there's always been this thought at the back of my mind. What do I do now? Where do I go from here? At this point of time, I really envy the people who have a life plan, or who atleast have courage enough to tread unknown ground. As I was discussing with my professors from college about what they would write in my recommendations for application to graduate schools, one of them actually went on to describe my strengths and weaknesses. He called me methodical and said that I was extremely cautious about my approach to problem solving. There was nothing wrong with his observations . However, I realised that this quality was both a boon and a curse. It enabled me to employ the scientific method in all my decisions. However, when there was uncertainty, I would be left in a complete mess.
I have always wanted to be happy and successful like everyone else. However, even after 21 years, I haven't been able to find out what makes me happy and what success is to me. I have always wanted to be anything, but ordinary. But as my life continues, I realise that I'm becoming just another person who did what others do. I seriously do not see the point of pursuing such a monotonous lifestyle. I want to make a difference. To myself, to others.
I used to live life a day at a time, still do. I need to find a goal in life. Looking back joining BITS has given me an opportunity to taste real life while pursuing an internship in my fourth year. It's shown me that I need to take action, and fast. Otherwise it may just be a slide to the melancholy for me. I see no satisfaction living life as I have been living it in Bangalore for the last two months. There's a need for change, a need to achieve something higher in life than just doing what others do day after day, month after month, year after year.
What I've done these 21 years has been a script handwritten by me and executed to perfection with help from everyone who's been associated with me. Now comes the challenge. The script ends here. Time to make a fresh start, a new beginning. So long all!
As a final note, this post made me realise that I had named my blog aptly back when I started writing it in 2007. This post defines the theme of my blog.....
PS: Most of my Saturdays are spent brewing up this sort of crap... Sad really...
It's been 21 years. A long 21 years. I've had moments good and bad, joys and sorrows, dreams... fulfilled and procrastinated. Seen times both good and bad. Made friends, lost them, gotten out of touch, back in touch, lost touch...
I really don't know the purpose of this post. Just putting thoughts down as they come to my mind. As you may have read, I'm currently in Bangalore. Bangalore brought it's own share of joys and sorrows. Brought me closer to friends from college, re-discovered the joy of spending time with older friends with whom I had lost touch.
But there's always been this thought at the back of my mind. What do I do now? Where do I go from here? At this point of time, I really envy the people who have a life plan, or who atleast have courage enough to tread unknown ground. As I was discussing with my professors from college about what they would write in my recommendations for application to graduate schools, one of them actually went on to describe my strengths and weaknesses. He called me methodical and said that I was extremely cautious about my approach to problem solving. There was nothing wrong with his observations . However, I realised that this quality was both a boon and a curse. It enabled me to employ the scientific method in all my decisions. However, when there was uncertainty, I would be left in a complete mess.
I have always wanted to be happy and successful like everyone else. However, even after 21 years, I haven't been able to find out what makes me happy and what success is to me. I have always wanted to be anything, but ordinary. But as my life continues, I realise that I'm becoming just another person who did what others do. I seriously do not see the point of pursuing such a monotonous lifestyle. I want to make a difference. To myself, to others.
I used to live life a day at a time, still do. I need to find a goal in life. Looking back joining BITS has given me an opportunity to taste real life while pursuing an internship in my fourth year. It's shown me that I need to take action, and fast. Otherwise it may just be a slide to the melancholy for me. I see no satisfaction living life as I have been living it in Bangalore for the last two months. There's a need for change, a need to achieve something higher in life than just doing what others do day after day, month after month, year after year.
What I've done these 21 years has been a script handwritten by me and executed to perfection with help from everyone who's been associated with me. Now comes the challenge. The script ends here. Time to make a fresh start, a new beginning. So long all!
As a final note, this post made me realise that I had named my blog aptly back when I started writing it in 2007. This post defines the theme of my blog.....
PS: Most of my Saturdays are spent brewing up this sort of crap... Sad really...
Friday, January 15, 2010
Bangalore: The Next Chapter
A Happy New Year to all!
Destiny once again takes control of my life, bringing me to Bangalore for six months in order for me to complete an internship (also known as Practice School 2 at BITS) after which I shall finally (!!!) be a Computer Science engineer (hopefully!)
My first impressions of Bangalore...
A nice city overall, reminds me of Mumbai to a great extent, sans the efficient transport system, the language and the discrimination.
Transport System: All my friends in Bangalore shall hopefully agree with me on this one. There are only two forms of public transport available (against 3 in Mumbai) public buses, and autorickshaws. The buses are unorganized, have no fixed schedule as far as I can tell and come in far too many categories. They seem to be kinda regular, but searching for a route map for all the city buses is a futile effort. I finally found a booklet on the route maps at BDA complex, bought it, and opened it to see no buses that ply my area!!! The autorickshaws are often a highly irritating mode of transport, the drivers almost always overcharging and never going by the meter. I think they should just make a bonfire of all their autorickshaw meters next Holi...
Language: The principal language spoken here is Kannada (no surprises there!) Not too many locals speak Hindi or English here. This raises the question... What were our constitution makers thinking when they made India a secular state? And why wasn't there a single language which everyone would understand and speak, no matter which part of India they came from?
Discrimination: I can't help feeling being discriminated here at Bangalore. Maybe its my mind playing tricks on me, maybe its real. I thought I would just pen it down anyway. A few observations; I think people here refuse to speak Hindi/English even though they understand it (Hope this is not the case!) and I see bus conductors always asking me for change and handing the local next to me the correct denomination in coins without a single complaint. Also, they tend to defer the task of handing me the change until I actually have to explicitly ask him for it because my bus stop is getting close. And I get the money with grumbling in the local language bundled for free!
Apart from these few minor objections, Bangalore is a perfectly nice place to live, good places to hang out, great shopping malls and coffee shops at practically every corner.
Only looking forward to my first stipend!!!
Later...
Destiny once again takes control of my life, bringing me to Bangalore for six months in order for me to complete an internship (also known as Practice School 2 at BITS) after which I shall finally (!!!) be a Computer Science engineer (hopefully!)
My first impressions of Bangalore...
A nice city overall, reminds me of Mumbai to a great extent, sans the efficient transport system, the language and the discrimination.
Transport System: All my friends in Bangalore shall hopefully agree with me on this one. There are only two forms of public transport available (against 3 in Mumbai) public buses, and autorickshaws. The buses are unorganized, have no fixed schedule as far as I can tell and come in far too many categories. They seem to be kinda regular, but searching for a route map for all the city buses is a futile effort. I finally found a booklet on the route maps at BDA complex, bought it, and opened it to see no buses that ply my area!!! The autorickshaws are often a highly irritating mode of transport, the drivers almost always overcharging and never going by the meter. I think they should just make a bonfire of all their autorickshaw meters next Holi...
Language: The principal language spoken here is Kannada (no surprises there!) Not too many locals speak Hindi or English here. This raises the question... What were our constitution makers thinking when they made India a secular state? And why wasn't there a single language which everyone would understand and speak, no matter which part of India they came from?
Discrimination: I can't help feeling being discriminated here at Bangalore. Maybe its my mind playing tricks on me, maybe its real. I thought I would just pen it down anyway. A few observations; I think people here refuse to speak Hindi/English even though they understand it (Hope this is not the case!) and I see bus conductors always asking me for change and handing the local next to me the correct denomination in coins without a single complaint. Also, they tend to defer the task of handing me the change until I actually have to explicitly ask him for it because my bus stop is getting close. And I get the money with grumbling in the local language bundled for free!
Apart from these few minor objections, Bangalore is a perfectly nice place to live, good places to hang out, great shopping malls and coffee shops at practically every corner.
Only looking forward to my first stipend!!!
Later...
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