Life @ IITK Part - VI

Slumber Blog

More than a month since my last post. May be, it's another consequence of moving into the real world. Well, I see a lot of changes in myself after I moved out of iitk to a city like this. These are the things I had planned to post by mid August and nothing has materialized till date.

• The post about Life @ DAV. Started it a long time back and is yet to be finished. Had a plan of posting it at least for Susi's birthday (yesterday) and .. well, I am searching for a reason to put my procrastination in a better way. Anyway, Belated Birthday wishes dude.

• Had plans of finishing the Life @ IITK series with a post containing all my favorite pics from July '05 to June '07 . All I have to do is select a few from the tons of pics in my HDD.

• Thought of writing about a funny incident that happened during one of the finance induction sessions. A fresher who joined a month earlier to me was asked to give a presentation on investing and the chap had opted for an introductory talk about Stock Exchanges. He wrote it as "sex " in his ppt and had further classified them into physical and virtual. The guy didn't notice it and went on with Physical and Virtual stock exchanges. And the icing was that whatever he said was perfectly correlating with both the topics and it was really fun.

• Had been getting a lot of Gyan for inferring the corporate jargons properly and getting to know what it really means. Really funny to hear about such stuff. May be its going to take some time to get a sizable collection but generations to come may thank me for that :P

• Lot of trivial and funny incidents that happened during various phases of the induction program that I am not able to recollect now(problem of aging, you know).

• Been planning to revamp the entire blog for more than 6-8 months now. If you come across any weird template, do let me know. I may be interested.
  

I don't see myself posting more than a post per fortnight . Not that I am busy, just lack of motive to sit down and write. Either way, the reader must be happy, I guess.
And the slumber party continues.

Happy Independence Day!!

Things I did in the past 20 days

• Defended my thesis. My report can be found here after a month or so.
  
• Sent my system and other stuffs to a friend in Hyderabad.
• Got some 19 no-dues and my provisional certificate within 2 days from my defense.
• Had a total night-out with friends in iitk (farewell always sucks, you know!!) a day before my departure.
• Had to endure a 40-hour long journey to chennai.
• Spent 50 hours with my parents and brother (I am visiting TN after a year).
• Catching up with Rias and Murali for a couple of hours.
• Came to Hyd on July 2nd morning and reported to my employer the same day.
• Turned 23 the same day and it was a different b'day in many ways :)
• The city is good and clean. The weather is perfect (probably anything be fine after surviving a summer in kanpur).
  
• Met some UG mates of mine in hyd.
• Been in training (9 to 6, around 20+ strength) for the past two weeks and have started liking the company.
• was into apartment hunt after training and in the weekends. Finally got one that is to my liking and hope the family junta likes it too.
  

Rest later.

IITK leads the race !!

IITK is ranked number 1 across all technical institutions in the country. More on it here or last week's India Today edition. I quote some of my favorite here.

'The institute has constantly...., owning largely to its computer science deptartment, reputed to be the best in the country.'

'IITK Deputy Director Kripa Shankar believes that "it is the philosophy of giving students central importance that has produced its long and esteemed list of alumini". One of these happens to be Infosys founder N.R. Narayana Murthy, who recently contributed Rs 11 crore to the institute for the development of a new computer science building.'

Life @ IITK Part - V

Life @ IITK Part -IV

The Mokkai group's Official whatever..

The Official T-Shirt
Design 1

Front Side

Back..


Design 2

Front

Back..

Some pics...

PS: Bit busy to give a narrative :) Probably living in a place where most don't read tamil has its own advantages.

Life @ IITK Part -III

For the past 2 days, CS dept conducted test and interview for admissions for M.Tech and Ph.D for the academic year 2007-08 and I volunteered for some invigilating and evaluation work. The entire process reminded me of my test and interview couple of years ago. There were around 200 candidates who wrote the test, out of which 40 were shortlisted for interview and 20 were given the admission. The persons who went before me for the interview mostly said Algorithms or Theory of computation as their area of interest and each one of them were interviewed for at least 45+ minutes. I too had prepared algo for the interview and when I went in, the room (its actually a classroom) was filled with all profs of the dept and may be, on seeing all great CS researchers of India ready to butcher me, I said mathematics as my area of interest instinctively when asked. I distinctly remember the surprise on most profs' face and I knew that if I don't mess it up, I'll make it. They asked just three simple puzzles out of which I answered 2 and was almost through the third one. I was asked to leave soon and the whole interview lasted for a maximum of around 10-12 minutes. The third puzzle which I didn't answer completely is this.

"Given a set of n two dimensional points, find a method to draw a line such that there are exactly n/2 points on either side of the line?"

Things have changed drastically in the next couple of years. The test has become more mathematics oriented with emphasis on discrete mathematics and one ought to mention whether he is a systems guy or a theory guy and he'll be interviewed accordingly. The GATE score for direct admissions is kept as 700 this year which means that your GATE AIR should be less than 65 to secure a direct admission without going through the hassle of test and interview. Even not being in a metro and with the pollution levels in the city (but the campus is a paradise!!) its good to see people who come here leaving offers from iisc and iitb (the two institutes which are on par with iitk for CS and are in metros).

Indian Bureaucracy - What the???

A friend of mine from iitd had sent me a couple of HDDs of capacity 820 GB through a well reputed courier agency in the south some 2 weeks back. When I enquired a week back, came to know that it was seized by the Sales tax team as it didn't have a document saying it's for personal use and not for commercial purpose and I was supposed to pay some 5000 bugs as sales tax. Doing some search on the net found that all we needed was a sound proof to claim its genuinely for personal use and we got the proof ready in no time. The particular person in charge(Call him X or whatever) of the seize gave us all possible hints to bribe him some 2000 bugs and get it done. Not falling for that made me and my friend roam the city for 2 days in the hot sun and we got it done after a lot of paper work (really a lot by any standards!!) and it also meant that no productive work for 2 days. But the look on X's face when he issued the drives said it all and we felt relieved, just relieved. Probably its difficult to identify such people who corrupt the system and we weren't too happy to let him off.

"Cowardice asks the question, 'Is it safe?' Expediency asks the question, 'Is it politic?' Vanity asks the question, 'Is it popular?' But, conscience asks the question, 'Is it right?' And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but one must take it because one's conscience tells one that it is right." - Martin Luther King Jr.

PS: btw, my system's total HDD capacity is now 900 GB :) Don't ask what I am going to do with it.

At last...

Still a long way to go.

Catch 22*

A part of me wants to finish my thesis asap, head home and spent some quality time with my family whereas another wants to prolong it and live the academic life to the maximum. I'd love to continue my academic life and hopefully I'll return to it sooner than later.

* Check this to know more about catch 22.

Nainital

Had a great trip.
Night 0:
As usual, we started late and after a hectic 13 hour journey with some breath-taking views along, we reached Nainital at around noon the next day.
Day 1:


We headed for Snow View located atop the Sher-ka-danda Ridge by cable car.

Had a good view of snow bound Himalayas including Nanda Devi and Trisul and it really was wonderful to see snow covered mountain peaks while the temperature reaches as low as 3 degree Celsius.
The trip down was equally thrilling with cable car accelerating and us experiencing the force of gravity from altitudes of around 25oo m was thrilling. Had some fun there too.
Came to know of a small fall near by and on our way, encountered snow at lots of places. I really pity the driver who came with us and kudos to his patience for putting up with us that too after driving for more than 14 hours non-stop. On seeing snow, we changed our plans and started playing around.
At last, we headed for the falls and though we were traveling for the past 18 hours none of us were tired and we had a lots of fun in the falls. It was a too small a fall to take bath and hence we just played around and took some snaps.
We decided to call it a day and at around 7 pm reached our cottage and gave the driver the day off and we started roaming the city. One huge advantage for Nainital over other hill stations is that it is far less polluted and the large lake at the center of its town add to its charm by a huge extent.

Day 2 :
Well, we couldn't see all the things as we planned. We missed out on visiting Jim Corbett National Park as we ran out of petrol and found that the shops in the entire town are closed till noon because of Holi. We just had to wait for about 3 hours during which we saw a couple of kids playing around and were happy to join them.


Saw a steep hill near by and went for a trekking for around 2 hours and covered around 4-5 km distance and around 500-800 m altitude.

We then headed for someplace where there were geysers. Saw this fall and was stunned by its beauty. It was surrounded by mountains on all sides and the water was freezing and damn pure.Yeah, we changed our plans again and had a good bath there.

We then started our trip back with lots of good memoirs, great scenarios and large bouts of vomiting including yours truly.

On the whole the trip was awesome and we had lots of fun. Though nothing went as per plan and we did miss out on a lot of places. But that was how it was supposed to be, wasn't it?. It gave a much needed break for me. Its good to be back in the campus.

Nainital - Prelude

A couple of things are preventing me from starting my thesis till March 8th. Made a decision with other friends here to go to Nainital this weekend. We decided on it in a matter of few minutes and it really makes you feel comfortable when people don't ponder over things a lot and have fun. Will be celebrating Holi in Nanital then. Planning to spend the remaining 4 days by reading something about economics or derivatives. Well, I wanted to get a feel of them for more than a year now and somehow things didn't click. Will make up for it in the 4 days following the weekend. Life seems to get much complicated and much more challenging!! I am having fun.

Happy Holi!!

PS: Finished reading Spouse. A must read for everyone who wants to have a better spouse and be one. Started reading it more out of curiosity. The most important take away was "to get married for the right reasons" and I wonder how many people in India understand that.

Art

Today got a CVS update from Dr. MC which ended like this.

"Enjoy! This was the last bit of art that was left out from the simulator."

I think seeing your work as art is the pinnacle of dedication.I often hear techie guys (mostly software people) complain about their work and show off their irresistible need to go into the managerial line as they think techie work is boring and they don't want to get their hands dirty. What we need is, probably, a change in attitude to see our work as an art and not just another number crunching or coding job. Most people who lament were once passionate of the same "art". What has changed them? May be their job profile. May be their financial/family needs. But I seriously believe that we must see our profession as an art and get our masterpieces out of it.

Life is Demanding

I chose not to go home. To revert back after making all the plans of how you are going to spend your vacation is quite tough but I have my own reasons. I see some light in my thesis after being deadlocked for over a month and I don't think I'm going to enjoy my vacation when I know what is to be done and leave it unfinished. I hope my friends down there would understand my situation. Anyway, that leaves me to celebrate another Holi in iitk. Planning to take bhang this time.

PS: Bought the book Spouse by Shobhaa Dé. Have read good reviews about the book and planning to finish it by Holi.

Josh

Pretty much, josh(the event, not the literal meaning) is over for me now. I've cramps in most parts of my body and my toe is bleeding. But still, It was a wonderful thing to go out with your mates and dish it out to the opponents.

Anyway, had a wonderful dinner in Dattatraya's home and all the 305ians had a good time. And we came back racing in the heavy rain which was even more fun. It has been raining heavily for the past two days and I couldn't think of anything but home. Planning to go home soon.

Today's gyaan:
The cuisine of Maharashtra is less spicier.

Josh Part-II

Well, things didn't turn out as expected.
In Football, we won 2-1 .
In Table Tennis singles, it basically was a warm up round for me. 11-4,11-6.
In Basky, came the shock. We were up against the insti team and lost it convincingly. We were one of the good teams competing this time.

Heck!! Who cares? Atleast we gave a good fight.

Life @ IITK Part-II .. Burp

Today we threw a placement party (doesn't make sense, right? but that’s how we call it) to our juniors. Another CS batch at IITK getting 100% placed. The party was pure fun. It was a bit different for me. As I was contemplating about life (yes!! contemplating my dear reader and not sleeping as my friends say) and the tempting dinner (Yummy!! the paneer starter was really good), I never thought the vicious minds of my friends were working furiously. They came up with this. Me pitted against a junior who at least was considerate enough for the first few minutes(thanks mate, I owe you one) and then called his shots. Well, I’ll leave the rest to your imagination. Everyone needs a laugh at the end of the day.

Anyway, I too had my chance to support (and mock at) my poor Y5 friends. I am not alone. And Murali called me meantime and as usual we started discussing about things that are going to change the world and ended up doing a feasibility study of marrying a punju or gujju girl. The results are encouraging!!

Josh Part-I

And here it is finally. More to follow.

Life @ IITK Part-I

sabu: you may be getting 2-3 months training in Goa. Now that’s something. Coffee on you (no pun intended).

punnu: yup. But I think 2 months is overdose... (gives me a pathetic look... I get it now and go into confession mode)

me: yeah, I know. (sob..sob..) The first week will be fun... second week I'll realize that I am single and by the end of the first month, I will be desperately single. (the toughest part is to survive the second month)

sabu: who asked you to be single?

me: as if I have options..

sabu: yeah, thats true... (yes, you guessed it right.. the same pathetic look)

punnu: Make yourself a bait.. (wink)

Now that’s what the screwed sex ratio in IITK does to you. I get back to my room and start contemplating. Here goes my mitigation plan. Probably what I can do is get a bunch of people who are single as my close buddies and try my best to keep them single during the entire stay(also its comes on top in terms of feasibility) . No, I am not jealous. It’s just to prevent those unholy thoughts that come along. So Dear God, please make a note of it and keep my close friends single. If you have a better idea, do drop them.