End of an Era

It was a long time back that yours truly wrote a NEGATIVE FLASHBACK of the college life. That was just a different point of view to the conventional one taken when someone looks back at one of his/her most memorable days. I have my nostalgic moments too. The last few days have been real tough.
The very thought of leaving this place makes me feel sad. Its almost similar to leaving your HOME. FOREVER.
"I'll always remember". A topic with a similar name was created by a friend of mine in our Orkut community.
I guess this is an ideal place to list all the things that I would never want to forget. Well, it sounds quite contradictory right?? I m telling that " I'll ALWAYS REMEMBER " and yet, I m writing it down here. I would like to let others know too about the wonderful times I had here.
Each day was a new experience. First and foremost, I ll always remember the day when I stepped into the campus. A million expectations from the campus. Though some of them ( read many :P ) were not fulfilled, so many others were.
The very first working day had a blooper. I stepped into a classroom where a lecture for the senior batch was supposed to take place. I d missed taking down the timings of class! The same day, the walk back to the hostel during the lunch break was made tough by the seniors ho watched each step and wanted us to greet them! At that time, it was quite difficult, but soon, e learnt to get over it.
The second thing I ll always rememebr is the RAGGING. Though very mild, I definitely enjoyed the sessions. Being made to dance, sing, act and what not!
The first train journey back home, the ragging sessions during that journey, the body building contest in the train. ( yours truly won that event for posing like a tr00 bodybuilder...lolz ). And of course, each trip back to college and the countdowns for each vacation. All of them seems to have gone past in a blur.
I ll always remember the good times in the hostel. It was amazing to spend time with all the guys. The kind of fun we had. There have been times when I was the butt of the joke, but then, there were other times when I had the chance to take revenge as well :D.

Its been a very amazing ride. I ve missed a lot of stuff which probably deserved a better mention here. I would love to make use of this post to thank all the people who were instrumental in giving me a memorable time in here. To all the people ho changed me from a shy, good for nothing guy to a loud mouth, good for nothing guy :D I m not going into a long list of Thank You and I dont want to miss amy particular person.

THANK YOU ALL FOR MAKING ME FEEL AT HOME!

A -ve Flashback

Its the final semester in college. Just  a little under 90 days to go for the course to get completed and the Bachelor of Engg tag to be bestowed upon half a thousand of qualified ( are they really?? ) engineers who have completed their courses. Its that time of the year hen everyone in the above mentioned category take a look at the things that have happened all through their 4 years or more in their college life and try to take back with them, the fond memories. Everyone getting filled with nostalgia.

But, hold on a second, was it that great? I think it as pretty great with all the friends and the amazing times we had after classes and in the hostels. The parties we had, the picnics we undertook, the events we organised, the events we participated.....all had its share of fun. Not to mention getting that one thing that evaded millions of Indians, Jobs. But that's were it all ends. I would like to take a look at all the bad things, if not all, atleast some of them that happened and are the bane of this institute, which quite incredibly, was voted 9th best tech institute in the country by a poll. So, here goes my -ve flashback.

It all started 3 n a half years back, July 12-13, 2004 when yours truly went for the counselling an took admission in this college, based on its reputation as one of India's finest technical educational institutions. How excited was I at the prospect of being among the best in the country. To be frank, I still wonder, how all these guys' brains work so efficiently. Let me get back to the point.  So, it was decided. BIT MESRA it shall be.  The train journey itself gave me nightmares and still gives me a few. I ve written a seperate post on the train. Finally, we landed in Ranchi. 
The city was nowhere close to the ones I d been to. This place sucked, 
so to speak.
I thought, that only the city sucked. The campus could still be awesome. That proved wrong. The registration got over. My parents left. Homesickness was at its peak on the first few days. Slowly, that moved away.

The first of those experiences were during the registration itself. Never knew that people coul be so insincere to their work. All the staff were taking an extended lunch break. One and a half hours to eat lunch? Did they include the time for afternoon nap too in that? Then the rudeness of the staff. They were barking at even the slightest mistakes, like a small swap in the arrangement of the documents. How could these people have been recruited? Well, this was a small does of things to come. Sample vedikkettu ( fireworks display ) as they say back in my place.

Then came the unenviable task of opening a bank account in UCO bank. I havent seen a worser staff in a bank. My dad always goes about criticising the way Canara Bank, where my mom works. But this stood way above the rest. Unpolite staff with an even more unnpolite manager! The account opening took a lot of time. Thankfully, they didnt say that they cannot
 handle more than 20 acocunt openings in a day as it would mean eating up into their leisure time (read working hours).
This was not the end of the story with the bank. I ve had to wait for 2 n a half hours before my transaction was completed. This, on  day when there was very little rush.
But, the way all good things come to an end, so do the bad things. I d managed to top Comp Sci in school and the award was Rs 500 and an account in SBI. So I got my ATM card and thus, it was the end of the story with the bank. Well, not exactly, coz my account still exists ( or does it ) with a minimum balance. I ll close it someday and just like my friend did, write a letter to the manager and throw it in his face.

The faculty was nothing to boast about as we, atleast I, were to soon find out. 
No prof ( even the junior lecturers add that tag to their name!),
could speak English properly, except for a few young gentlemen who had the fortune of having quality English medium education. As for their academic abilities. I wonder how any instituion could bestow these degrees upon some of them. There are of course exceptions. A few brilliant teachers strewn here and there. But the overall quality was pretty poor. Some of them have the brains to prove that the Dimensions of current = that of voltage, and that too, at a national seminar! Some of them defied the laws of physics with their derivations. Others, were too busy finishing the course that they didnt even care whether the students were understanding anything. There were teachers ho would just turn up to take attendance and leave. 
Well, I wont blame that lot. They are atleast indirectly
admitting that they dont know much. Atleast, they were not boring us. Then , there was this unique class of teachers. Ask them doubts and they ll leave you even more confused!

The administrators were the worst. Worse than those politicians. All corrupt and didnt give a heck about the student's welfare. The Dean student welfare was held by 3 different persons in these 3 n half years.  Different, only in appearance. All of them had only one agenda in their minds : "How to put the students through torture". They did that in every possible way. 
Imposing exorbitant fines for least of students faults.
Not providing us with adequate freedom, it is worse than a prison. During the cultural fest, a "Professor" abused a final year guy badly, 
abusing him by his mother. 
Even though, the students were in protest at midnight, nothing was done. That guy went unpunished. An apology was the least he should have done. Even that didnt happen. What are we? Some kind of inferior creatures?

Now, no writing about this institution can be complete without a mention of MESS FOOD. When the food gets slightly better, the standard of service deteriorates and when the standard of service finally does get better, the mess management changes. This continues till date. The new hostels which were constructed have 
private caterers taking care of the mess.
Our Juniors are a trifle luckier than we are/were. And finally, when all these issues were settled, the system of No extras came into effect.
Previously, we could opt for some of the extra dished served, and the amount would be added to the mess. Now, there was a system of general bill. THe mess menu was standardised and a guy, no matter he ate the "delicacy" for the day or not, he had to pay for it. Thus, for a guy, whose mess bill used to be around Rs800 now shelled out Rs1500-1700 per month on stuff he disliked. Also, for demand dinner days where meat or paneer would be served, coupons had to be taken for the same,
atleast by afternoon of that day. This meant that we have to foresee our future and predict whether we will be fit to eat those. These coupons could be used only on that particualr day. It could not be carried forward to another day. I have been a victim of this on a couple of occasions. I take the coupon in the afternoon, but the very food from the mess
puts me off for the night. That in my opinion was the worst that could happen. Helplessly watching 20-30 bucks disappearing into thin air, for no fault of yours. Actually, theres a fault that we did. 
Eat from the mess!

Enough has been written for now. There are a few more issues like Powa, or getting things done through contacts at the apex, the sad net connection, pathetic cultural fests and you name it, we got a problem there! If I Go on writing about all this, I can write a book on it and as my friend jokingly remarked, it can give Chetan Bhagat, a run for his money :P This is a BITian's true viewpoint of the institute. He may say that the institution rocks and all the stuff. 
This is REALITY and reality is always very very BITTER.

A Day to Remember

It was a Wednesday like all other Wednesdays so far this semester. Classes from 8 am till 12.10 pm and then the rest of the day, no classes. I decided to take my guitar, which was beginning to hurt my fingers while playing because of the strings going too high, for repair to town. For company, I called one of my friends. I met another friend of mine on the bus and we decided to go togetehr and complete our tasks and return. The bus took a little longer than usual to reach town, caused mainly by a rally or party meeting which was called by a locl political party. This being our college, the buses wouldn't have plied, if the issue was a little serious. So, the bus took us finally to town. I showed my guitar at one place, where they gave it back to me saying that there was absolutely no fault with it! I definitely knew that something was wrong, as it was becoming increasingly difficult for me to hold the strings when playing and here is this guy who gave it back to me telling that there was no fault!.
I gave it in an adjacent shop and its gonna take them a week probably to get it back in shape. The bridge ( the long portion of the guitar for the uninitiated ) was slightly bent and they would have to do a lot of stuff it seems. It remains to be seen how much work was needed for this.

We decided to have lunch and went to a chinese restaurant. We had food and then, this friend of mine wanted to get a new pair of shoes. We went to all the footwear showrooms in that part of the town and finally, he decided to get a pair.

We had some more time before the scheduled time for the bus and so, we decided to have a cuppa at Cafe Coffee Day. Finally, it was time to move on. The shopping didnt end there. We did a bit of window shopping before heading for the place from where we needed to catch the bus.

We waited n waited n waited for the 6 pm bus to come, which never did. A guy from our batch brought this great news that all the buses after 4 pm had been cancelled due to a traffic jam on the highway.

We then took an autorickshaw. That took us around the city through a lot of bylanes before they also started getting jammed.  Add to this the Rickshaw Driver's blabbering about his vehicle running out of fuel. The trip was totally irritating.

Finally, we decided to walk all the way till the road was cleared. But that was a herculean task. We needed to walk atleast 3 km before such a situation could happen, atleast in the best case. We started walking. We walked n walked n walked. The place where we had supposed that the road would  get a little clear came. We asked a few guys in a jeep whether they ca give us a lift till the main junction near our college. They agreed and we boarded it. That was to be shortlived as the jeep gtot stuck in another jam. We got down from the jeep and started walking again.

The Murphy's Law cannot have a better proof! As soon as we got down from the jeep and started walking, the jam got cleared and the vehicles strted moving smoothly. Then, it was another long walk till the junction.

There was one auto rickshaw parked out there. We hired that and reached the college gate at 9 55pm, 5 mins before the gate closes.

As soon as we reached, we went straight to a shop and got a packet of potato wafers and a soft drink. That was the dinner for the night.

Some bad news was in store however. 2 of my friends had fallen ill that day.

There couldnt have been a worser day. Of all days, the supposedly " Cool Wednesday "

An Incident in d Lyf of a Guitar Beginner

I started playing the guitar a year back. Well, I m still where I began. I know its gonna take me a long time to be as good as a................. BEGINNER!! Still I always loved this 6 stringed instrument. I would like to narrate an incident which happened where my guitar learning helped me.
My lab exam was happening the other day.  Experiments were allotted to us on the basis of lots.
I picked up a sheet which asked me to set the range for an instrument which would then measure level of liquid in it. It was such a CHEAP experiment. I wrote down the necessary things on the sheet provided for the write up.
When I decided that it was time for the experiment, I searched for a Screwdriver which was needed to rotate a screw which would adjust the reading on the Digital Display. I could not find one. I asked the concerned Lab Assistant for the same who could not find one for me. Time was running out. I tried using all the stuff from the tip of the scale to my room keys to turn the screw. Nothing worked.
Suddenly, I thought about taking out my ATM card from my wallet and using the tip of it to turn the screw. But inside the same slot as my ATM card was  Guiatr Pick! This was Perfect. I used that to turn the screw and oila! It replaced the screwdriver perfectly.

Guitar couldnt have been closer to METAL right??!!!

Now, to how the guitar pick came inside my wallet.

I didnt take my guitar home during the holidays which we got recently. I had kept that pick in my wallet just to show off that i played the guitar, if some guitar landed in my hands from somewhere

Smart or Dumb??

Two days back, a friend of mine ( actually a senior ) asked me to add my blog id to a list maintained by a 2k2 passout. A very noble idea I suppose aimed at bringing the fellow bloggers of BIT together. I myself found a few interesting blogs from within the list. One of them talked about the Reliance Smart mobile connection and the wonderful....er .....irritating consequences of opting for that connection.

Yours truly has himself suffered a lot after he decided to go for Smart rather than Airtel or BSNL Cellone( getting a Cellone connection was something similar to moving Mt Fiji in those days ). And I didnt stop there. I went to the extent of upgrading my connection to Smart Life. I had my reasons. I only made calls home and so, needed a connection which provided low STD rates. Also, the SMS came at a rather cheap 25p/msg. I had a few problems here and there, with the messages not reaching the destination by the time I wanted it to reach. And the occasional " Network Busy ", only that occasional meant once every 2-3 hours! So here I was, without any complaints cause I as still able to call up home, and talk to them for about 10-15 minutes, every 2-3 days.

The real irritating part started a few days back. The only SIN I committed was recharging my credit with a 300 bucks voucher. It was supposed to be a top up card, mine being SMART LIFE. I dialled the number which would let me recharge my phone. The recorded voice said, " Your new Balance is so and so....The services associated with it would be activated shortly". Little did I know that the supposed service that they were going to provide was " Barring of STD facility " as well as undelivered National msgs even though my balance decreased by 25p every time I tried sending a message. I thought or rather hoped that this would be alright in 24 hours. But that was not the case. I could nt call up home from my phone any more. I used my friend's phone to give missed calls and they would call me back. The problem with this the first time was that my mom actually thought that I d lost the phone and was trying to cover it up with such a story of recharging and STD facility getting barred. She even told me that she ll send over some cash to buy a new phone! I asked them to call up on my phone whenever they felt the need to.

This is not the end of the ride that I had to take. I tried calling up the customer care.( I wonder how they call it CUSTOMER CARE when they are least bothered about customer grievances ) They wouldn't answer the phone! When I finally felt that I d had enough, I decided to visit their office and lodge a complaint. I was asked to keep my phone switched off form 8 30 pm to 10 00pm. I still dont get the logic behind asking me to keep my phone switched off. Though it was a Hope against Hope Hopen as Ogden Nash would ve put it, I still hoped that it woul get alright. As expected, it didn't. Now, I could go to them only after my midsems. So the weekend after midsem, I headed for the Smart office once again. This time, I tried to act as if I was the most pissed off person on earth. And I threatened to move court if they didnt rectify the problem by night that day. The utterance of the word 'Court' seems to have done the trick. The time they said by which my STD facility ould be back was 8 30. At 8 31 pm, I made my first STD call for more than a month by my phone.

So the next time someone has a problem with the Reliance Smart ( Dumb ) people threaten to go to the court if your complaints are not heeded for more than a week. Things which may usually take more than 1 month to do will get done in less than 6 hours!

Getting a Life

I was reading the much talked about book, 'How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, GOt Wild and Got a Life'. The book was in the news for all the wrong reasons. The authoress was criticised for plagiarism. One day, she was being praised for having written a wonderful book, the next day, she was put to shame with accusations of plagiarism. Plagiarism is not something that I m going to write about in this blog. If at all any of my articles are used commercially, I may come under the scanner as well for using a few lines here and there from greats.( A few company names are also there. Hopefully, I m not sued for putting the Google ads in here which can very well make this blog, a commercial venture :P ).

Before I take a detour from the topic, Let me get straight into it. Its the central character of the story that caught my attention. 'Opal Mehta', the studious yung girl, who buried herself under the books and a few classical music lessons to fulfill her lifelong dream, er , her parents' lifelong dream which was forced upon her isnt it? Her parents do assess the gravity of the situation and make amends, but then it is fiction. Reality is way different. Anyays, I m not writing about Parenting either.

Where was I? Yeah, Opal Mehta, the studious girl, 'Padhaku' as these kind of people are referred to in this part of the world. I know that a few of you reading this ( if at all any of you take the pains of reading this :D ) are going to raise their eyebrows and say, " What a Hypocrite! This guy himself is a Padhaku and he is asking the padhakus to get a life !!!". Well, to say the least, I am not a padhaku. I may have been, but that was long back in 2nd semester. I got a life then itself, so I can be no longer classified in that category :). Scoring decent grades should not necessarily mean that anybody is a Padhaku. There are so many factors which are taken into account while putting people into that category, the primary requirement being a very high GPA. The biggest factor should be that he/she should be like Opal Mehta. Controversies apart, this is one book of the very few I ve read that summarizes how guys fail to miss on what life has to offer just because they need to slog to make it BIG if not necessarily happy.

My college has got a few Opal Mehta like characters, who dont have any friends. The people who may talk to them are the LAB partners. THank goodness they got into very good companies which will pay them very high. Maybe, they think thats how their life should be. Without any friends, all their happiness to themselves within the confines of their rooms or apartment or whatever. But let me tell you, being an Ex- padhaku, If I came under the classification even remotely before 2nd semester, I know what I missed in life. I hardly had any friends outside of my classroom. EVen those were very few in number. My ignorance about many guys who happened to be in the same batch as me is testimony to that fact. I realised what I missed and from then, on I ve been happy. I m enjoying life to the fullest, being serious when the need be, being the casual bloke when the situation is such. Well, I guess, I was not thinking about writing about my own experiences here. I was thinking of writing about the loads of Opal Mehtas being created in the world today.

Pursuing a dream, they fail to see what life has got in store. They forget that socialising is one of the essential traits of mankind. Its not that, one should ignore his/her studies, responsibilites or anything serious for that matter. But ain't we missing upon a lot of things just because we fear that failure to make it to our goal . We surely will get a second chance unless, we are risking our lives trying to do it and fail, dont we? THen why should someone miss upon a lot of things that life has to offer? Life is not just about books and work. Its about fun, Its about adventure, Its about wholeness, Its about getting a life. So Padhakus...GO GET A LIFE....!

The Second of its Kind

Once I got into TCS, I had made up my mind to appear for all companies that were good and for which ECE was considered. However, there was limited success with me clearing just one ritten test and failing to do so in 3 others. It had become a routine for me by then. Attending the Pre placement Talks, writing the written tests and declaring proudly, " Company ## - REJECTED!" THough I was telling like this, deep inside, I really wanted to get into some company. Not because the company from which I got the offer was bad, but because of what was being told by people back in TVM which hurt my dad and mom.

THe weekend was going on as usual. I didnt even know as to when GLobal Logic was visiting the campus. The only thing I knew was that I was gonna give it a shot, no matter when they came. On that SUnday morning, my friend came and woke me up telling that the Global Logic PPT was at 8. He did so at 8 30. I quickly brushed my teeth, swallowed whatever was given in the mess
(I dont remember, what or how much I ate ) and rushed outside the hostel, only to find two guys returning from the insti. They told that the PPT was at 8 PM rather than AM!. So I came back to my room and started my routine weekend activities like chatting and reading the newspaper. I went to get a haircut too. AFter that, some of my friends from the otehr hostel called me up to ask whether I would like to join at the canteen. I went to the canteen alongwith them, only to find that it was closed. We marcehd from the canteen to the OC and had food. We spend around 2 hours there and came back to the hostel at around 4.30. I chatted with my friends who were online for another 2 and a half hours before it was time to leave for the PPT. I went there, attended the PPT, liked the company profile. IT was time for the written test.

The written test had 2 sections. Tech and Apti. Apti was of 20 questions and Tech of 35 questions. Both together for a duration of 40 mins. AFter the test, I was not that confident of making it as the paper was relatively easy and I supposed that almost all would ve done as much as I d done. They told that the result would be announced by midnight. I came back to the hostel to complete my lab record as I was supposed to attend the LAB the next morning. Around 12 30, a friend of mine came and told me that I was gonna have an interview the next morning.

I woke up at 7 in the morning. It was Onam, the most important festival for Keralites. I went to the insti at 8 to find out that my interview was at 10 am. I settled down inside the TnP waiting room. My interview happened at around 12 noon. THe interviewers were really cool. Never seen such cool guys ever. THey were really easy going and I was soon in my comfort zone in the HR round. I should say that Rock music was my SAVIOUR there. THe guy had asked me to talk on a topic of my choice for 2 minutes and I chose Rock music. I told what I d written in my previous post over here. It was time for technical and then the management round , all of them through which I breezed through. All the time while giving my interview, the only thing on my mind was the delicious Onam feast which millions of Keralites the world over would ve been relishing on at that time.

I went to see the results in the evening and my name was called out. I had grabbed my second offer! This was the best Onam gift ever. I was really happy. GUess my feelings at that moment should ve been on the TV ad which says , " THere are somethings in the world that Money cant buy".