Just Around the Corner

And as the quarter approaches its end, only the last leg is left. The last couple of assignments and exams and submissions. The last two days have been quite interesting. Yesterday was the submission deadline for the third homework of Algorithmic Game Theory. I was clueless as usual, offering my 20 cent worth ideas wherever I could. My group has a couple of really talented individuals who just concoct solutions for the homework problems out of nowhere. Really admirable.

I also played a lot of foosball yesterday during the assignment. I was surprisingly good at it, more so than usual. I was basically on a foosball high, beating everyone left, right and center. Today, is unfortunately different. Just lost a game 1v1 with a person I would probably defeat on any given day.

But today is special. Not because I wrote a lot in the seminar course, so that making a summary for submission would be easy, not because a fire alarm rang during class today and that we had to evacuate the building, but because I got my first dollar value paycheck today. Just made a scan of it as a souvenir and then deposited it into my checking account. Probably, this would be the first and only paycheck, and I've set up direct deposit, which will take effect as soon as I receive my SSN.

Also, I went shooting with a friend yesterday to the botanical garden. I was pleasantly surprised to find it a nice quiet environment for introspection. I think I'll be using it in the future, the only downside being that it is open only during working hours. Anyway, back to the point, the photography assignment this week of nature, and I got quite a number of good shots. I've been slacking off on the assignments lately due to a lack of time and motivation, and it felt good to hold my camera in my hands again.

The class is in half an hour, I have a lot of work to do, but I wanted a good break, so I thought I should update my blog as I haven't done so in a while. Kind of a random post, this one.

Time to decide what to spend my pay on!

Later then.

Pushing the Limits

It's been a busy busy quarter. I've taken 3 courses, one of them is really difficult. Add to that, a friend convinced me to join a Digital Photography course, which I really wanted to since a long time (extra curricular, of course) and I've been trying to play Racquetball as much as possible (try to make it everyday)

More recently, I got an on-campus job, which is great, but it seems to be pretty intense (and fun!) It started just yesterday, but as it turns out, it's cutting into my study/fun time and has begun to affect my humor even before becoming a full-swing part of my schedule.

I think I'm doing too much, but as it turns out I have been very complacent lately, and haven't been challenging myself enough. I take this as an opportunity to push my limits to see if and when I reach breaking point. It's really difficult, and I've not even been getting enough sleep (and food?). I can't believe I overslept, and almost missed my 8am class today. That's almost never happened before.

I intend to keep up this charade, until the quarter is over or I break, whichever comes first. It'll be a miracle if I'm able to sustain myself with all these till the end of the quarter, and I'll come out as a really strong, albeit crazy person. If not, I don't think there's any shame dropping an activity or two from the above.

People around me have been challenging themselves continuously and I need to do the same to find my limits. I think I'll know when to stop as soon as I see bright spots before my eyes and feel the fatigue that I haven't felt since a really long time.

Later then!

A Magical Class

Finally, something happy to write, after all the droning I've been doing for the past few posts...

So... most of my days are spent wondering what the #$%@ am I doing here. The classes are dull, there are way too many papers to read, and there is actually not enough time to digest all the material that we read. I think it would be better if there were fewer papers, but they were discussing in depth. However, such is grad school...

Anyway, so after a couple of weeks of classes where nothing special happened, and I was very unmotivated, something really interesting happened today. In the CS219 class, someone thought that the professor was out of town, attending a conference, so he spread the news that the class was going to be conducted by a TA. Result: half the class was absent. However, this was a very nice thing to happen.

As usual, the class started with a student volunteer presenting a paper. The professor seems to be in a really good mood, and was asking him a lot of questions about the paper. The student was trying his best to answer. The discussion was quite animated, and even some of the students, including me, chipped in discussing various extensions and applications of the paper, the drawbacks, advantages, etc. sometimes questioning the student, and sometimes helping him...

Then, we had a quick break, which I and a fellow student spent discussing some more with the professor, which was cool!

Finally, the professor presented a couple of new concepts and discussed another paper. Surprisingly, he was asking some simple fundamental questions to random students in the class. A couple of times he asked me too. Thankfully, I could answer them successfully. At some points of time, I even got the feeling that I was actually conversing with him in front of all the students. This feeling was exhilarating, and I felt like I connected with the professor on a completely new level! Something this profound normally doesn't happen, and I was delighted that it happened with me...

The class was perfect simply perfect, there were a lot of discussions, a lot of ideas thrown around. It was fulfilling.... and it is such classes that get me through the quarter, making my life feel worth something.

I yearn for many more magical classes like this.

End of Quarter 1 (UCLA Rocks!)

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!

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.

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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........

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!

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!