Caring for and being cared for!!!

In life, you care for a lot of people. A lot of people care for you. But it is PAIN if the person you care about the most doesn't even bother!!! Learn to live with it. I'm learning myself. Distancing is a good way of doing it. Live like the lotus leaf they say.

THE Final Year - Unarguably THE BEST

Alright. Some time in hand now. And I am not sleepy. The last month has been pretty hectic. Now that I'm done with my work for the year :D I can BLOG.. Final year has been waiting in the drafts for quite some time now.

Placement BEGINS.. First comes TCS, I decided to give it a skip because it had a 2 year bond, then was CTS. Skipping all the details - I got through and got the offer letter the same day. Happy??? Well.... Almost.

After a few days comes DE Shaw, the highest payer - 11.7 LPA.. Who would wanna miss that chance??? But you remember my CGPA fiasco? I was not allowed to write the test because I was NOT A 9 POINTER. I'm sure I would not have gotten through. Not that smart you see......

Again skipping details. I got into interviews for 4 companies. Got rejected by one which said "You would not find the job exciting!!!" (WTH???) Another company after a million rounds of interviews has still not given my result. Another company rejected me because my grades weren't "consistent" and finally got into the company I'm currently working for - Mu Sigma Business Solutions. Was I happy??? Hell yeah.. Though it was not a core electronics company that I wanted to be in, the job profile I thought sounded cool I was gonna be a Business Analyst :P Yippie ;)

Skipping a lotttttttttt more details....... I did not want an internship in the 7th semester (does not mean I could have got one if I had wanted to) because I wanted to spend my final semester freaking out..

All through this, I just felt great being in THE FINAL YEAR.. The guys we looked upto when we were in the first year. The guys who could skip classes, the guys who got to do all the "co-ordinating" work.. You know.. It was us now..

Came the 8th semester - unarguably the best days of my life. No classes. One project which wasn't very time consuming, an understanding guide and awesome project mates. This was when we went for lunch to palakkad and for tea to ooty. That's LIFE.

Any movie that got released, I made it a point to watch it first day. Played basketball everyday like crazy (I sucked at it... Still do ...) roamed the entire city with Rafi in my bike. Checked out almost every single restaurant in Coimbatore. Hung around a lot in friends' places, again organized robotics for Kriya and screwed up big time (http://vineeth88.blogspot.com/2009/03/kriya-09-robotics.html). Above all made many “friends for life”.

It all seemed like it just started, but there it was – the final review right in front of us. All that I wanted was not to get a re-do which will make me stay another 6 months in college. The review went on well in spite of us not having done great work.

After the reviews got over, we had one last week to spend at the hostel.( PSG Tech hostel = heaven – (good food + good looking girls)). We had so many things to do in the last one week. Library clearance, lab clearance, alumni induction and of course having as much fun as possible. We – the entire boys strength of ECE went around race course walking. The next day we had our T-shirt scribbling ceremony where people write random stuff on each others’ T-shirts. Some of them were really great wishes (“Hope you get laid soon” was something that was there in everybody’s T-shirt). After all that fiasco, the last DAY we spent taking photographs of every interesting point of our college – department entrance, the landmark bridge, hostel entrance, the hostel register where you sign in when you enter late (I have seen Jason Bournes, John McLanes and all other Hollywood action heroes in the register), the hostel snack bar, the basketball court and everything we could set our eyes on.

Next morning, guys left one by one. I was the last one to go home. I have heard so many stories about “macho guys” crying during the last day - the last goodbye, but we were “super macho guys” who did not cry. None of us did!!! Really!!! Felt great that we all departed the way we lived life – KING SIZE!!!

No matter how miserable your college life was when you were in it, when you look back, those would still be the BEST DAYS OF YOUR LIFE.

I finish off with a quote from Shawshank Redemption:

“I tell you these walls are funny. First you hate them. Then you get used to them.Enough time passes... You get so dependent on them. That's institutionalized”

Just replace walls with college, the sentence holds so true.

Miss my college life… No matter how much fun I have now, nothing equals the fun in college..

I dedicate this series of posts to all the people who have directly or indirectly been a part of the 4 years and made it so WONDERFUL.

Third Year - Pre-final in a lot of senses!!!!

Hey all. I'm back to my dear old blog of more than a month's hiatus.

Q.Why did i not blog?
A.Well. Nothing. I was plain lazy.
Q.Why do I come back to it?
A.Two weeks of joblessness will rekindle your blogging spirits :D

THE THIRD YEAR....

Third year was a major transformation period. Whatever seemed too important in the second seemed trivial in the third. Class "interaction" is one perfect example. I spent so much time thinking how good the class would be if everyone spoke to everyone else, but by the time we were in third year, I realised we were better off the way we are.

All the trivialities apart, this was when we (I, Vijay, Karthick and Sundar) started spending all our time in the PSG Tech - Infineon Embedded Systems Lab. We first started off developing a Robot - An Autonomous Pathfinder. That was one major disaster. It worked well till the moment it mattered. When we were being evaluated, it bombed. One of my teammates (name better not mentioned, but everyone who knew our group would have guesses by now :P ) was almost in tears, but the others were the usual joke cracking, babe watching self. Our other project took one major chunk of our time in college. There have been days when we were in the lab for 3 continuous days - without break. All that paid dividends when we won so many awards for our project. It was even published in an International journal. Even the Robot which we thought was a disaster impressed people from a company called Atmel that they ended up publishing that in their own online journal.

These two projects taught us a lot of things. It was because of these two projects that I learnt to be level headed. Whenever we were commended, I remembered the wild stares we got when our Robot bombed. So we never really celebrated much.

Pre placement preparations had begun in full swing. There were some sections who were busy preparing for GRE and some who were busy with CAT preparations. Overall, it was time to get serious. But me being me, decided to do GRE, but thought learning words to get scores was too stupid. As a result of which I did not prepare for GRE. CAT really was out of question back then. I thought my project would fetch me a job in some decent core company. It was not to be so because my already screwed up CGPA got all the more screwed up as I went further downhill in the 5th semester.

So, we (entire ECE strength in hostel - even though I wasnt a hosteller, I was almost always in the hostel) decided to do combined studies for the 6th semester. We split the syllabus of each subject among 10 - 15 odd people and learnt only what was allotted to us. End of the day, we would discuss what we learnt. We thought this was a good way of conquering the monster called End Semester Examination, this too proved to be a disaster as my CGPA tumbled to an all time - unimaginable low. I had people from other departments asking me what happened. Most of them thought it was because of some fallen relationship. But hell, nobody was ready to believe that I was getting LAZIER.

At the end of the 6th semester, I was nowhere near my classmates. Those who started preparing for GRE with me ended up getting good scores and started the app process whereas I was still in the FIRST WORD LIST from BARRONS because I thought I was smarter in not learning words to get a score. Since I wanted to do GRE, I did not prepare for placements and they were about to begin. It was then that the realization dawned upon me - I HAD SCREWED EVERYTHING UP :)

To be continued......

Second year!!!

After a long time, I come back to my dear old blog. Work kept me off it for so long. My work as a Business Analyst at Mu Sigma is fun. I'm enjoying the work so much that I even dream of numbers, insights and excel spreadsheets :)

To begin with, one thing that stands out in the second year is Intrams. For people who don't know - Intrams is PSG Tech's intra college cultural fest. There were a variety of events like Footloose (Dance), 2-D, Movie Spoof, Woodstock. I was a part of 2-D. It was supposed to be a skit that examines two sides of an issue. We started off with "Reservations based on caste" and did well. When the prelims came, we were asked to change the topic as it might "hurt" many people. That hurt nobody but us. After weeks of story and dialogue writing and rehearsing all nights after attending college in the morning we were rejected. We had one day to come up with something new. We decided to do something on "Democracy". Saagar wrote the entire script in one night, I and Niranjan came up with a few punch dialogues here and there. Finally we finished the script that night and did one or two rehearsals in the morning. Nirmal Davis was in charge of Music. When the moment came, we were all bloody nervous. Still, it went on with punch dialogues, good music and some REALLY BAD ACTING :D still, we won the FIRST PLACE. Our joy knew no bounds, we all jumped, hugged each other, hooted, howled, whistled, screamed and literally flew over to the stage. After all that we went through, it was simply amazing. Felt great. ECE won in footloose, 2-D, Theme show, Woodstock and many other off stage events. The name Blitzkriegerz became so famous that we had people who passed out call us and ask who that is :)

Apart from Intrams, I alongwith 3 other guys decided to make a Robot for a contest in Anna University. We were the only second years, even though we were eliminated in the second round - by the eventual winners, we felt good because we actually did something in Robotics. Then, I did not know that Embedded Systems lab and Robotics would become my identity in the next two years.

Friends we just knew in the first year, became BEST FRIENDS in the second. Went into a relationship which like most relationships progressed from very sweet to really bad. Finally we broke up in the third year after a lot of contemplation.

Second year was when I got an 8 point CGPA for the first time. I thought it was just one off and I would return to be a 9 pointer next semester, it was not meant to be. I remained an 8 pointer from then on. Getting a 9 point CGPA seemed too easy in the first three semesters, but became almost impossible since then.

The second year also had us trying to improve the "Interaction" in class and failing miserably. Thinking about it now, I feel like a fool for having attached so much importance to things that were actually not important. Then, it felt like if we did not win in Intrams, we would not be respected. The very next year, we did not even go see what was happening in Intrams. What seems extremely important in one year, seems very trivial in the very next year. That is how you can realise you are GROWING UP. I certainly GREW UP a lot in the second year. It taught us a lot of things because I made a lot of mistakes in the second year.

My Experiences in P.S.G College of Technology - First Year.

First day – We all go into Y-201 for the department orientation. Our HoD Dr.Jayaraman talks about how proud we must be to be a part of this great institution. Well, I guess I was – that day. He calls out roll numbers, asks everyone to introduce themselves. People I knew used to call P.S.G College of Technology heaven - for the number of good looking girls it had. So expectations were high indeed. But roll call didn’t seem to reflect on what I had heard outside. The best looking girl of ECE was not even half as good looking as the average looking girl of my school. Being in a school that was well known for the number of good looking girls didn’t help my cause. But life had to go on.

I made quite a few friends on the very first day. Like Saagar once said, the first friends you make in any place will always be special to you. No matter how the relationship ends. First internals, I flunked in 3 subjects. But made up by getting great scores in 2nd and 3rd. P.S.G Tech had a great system in which best two of your three internal marks are taken for assessments. Apart from that, first semester was completely eventless. We felt like school kids in a college. College was nowhere near what Indian films showed them to be. Films based on colleges should be banned in India for misleading the students. So, that was some disappointment too. The second semester opened up new avenues to us. We had KRIYA 06. P.S.G Tech’s own tech fest. We all were looking forward to it because that would be our first real exposure to college fests. Being first year GUYS, all that we were asked to do was:

1)Move tables.
2)Move chairs.
3)Move boards.
4)Move more tables, chairs and boards.

The first year girls had more interesting things to do:
1)Wear a saree.
2)Welcome participants.
3)Write down their names.
4)And just simply look good.

In spite of the lack of good looking girls in P.S.G, they somehow managed point number 4, maybe point number 1 helped :D (on an average, girls look better with saree).

Well, in what way Kriya 06 helped? I guess it didn’t. But it got me more friends, and got me interested in organizing events which would become the most important part of my life later in life college life.

Then we had internals, semester exams n all dat. I got a 9.13 in the first sem and 9.25 in the second. I expected a 9.5, but when it came to marks, I’m always happy with what I get.

Fitting my entire college life in one single post would not make sense as you would have to read through pages and pages of personal experiences. So, the next post would contain my experiences in the second year.

-Vineeth

Life at the end of 4 days in Mu Sigma Business Solutions Pvt Ltd.

If there is one question that goes through the mind of every engineering graduate after he actually graduates is - "What next???" Well, luckily I dint have to wait for really long to get that answer, the company that hired me called Mu-Sigma business solutions had asked me to join on the 1st of June (It was actually advanced from 28th of september which incidentally happens to be a holiday for Mu-Sigma according to its calendar :P ). Things that I had been putting off for later had to be done. I applied for my PAN card and got it before I left. Even thought PAN is issued by the Income Tax Department which is a part of Government of India, the entire process went about without much of a fuss because it was actually outsourced to a company called Karvy consultancies. So that was pretty cool :) The other important document I had to get before I left was my passport. I have been postponing it for the past god knows how many days. Finally I did drop in at the passport office, application had to be done online and I did, I was given an appointment on the 8th of June which actually happens to be a working day for Mu-Sigma and I could not take off during the first one month because it was the training period. So poof, there goes the passport.

After all that visiting relatives and temples formalities that goes on in South India (Esp Tamilnadu), I left for Bangalore with friends and relatives waving their hands at the bus stand(you actually don't get trains from anywhere on earth to bangalore, you have to book it a millenium in advance). I roamed around aimlessly in Bangalore for 3 days as I landed quite earlier because I had to meet the house owner and there were loads of other formalities to finish.

Finally, THE DAY came. It was June 1st. I had to join office. I was all excited about it. I woke up at 6 A.M without the Alarm. Wow. That was some day. It normally takes 3 alarms, a bucket of water, music at full blast, some yelling and the smell of lunch to wake me up at 12 Noon :D

I reached office earlier than I was expected. I was in the office by 8.25. Saagar who happens to be one of my best friends from the first year was with me too. It was a great feeling. People started coming in, we had to fill in one cartload of forms and meet another boatload (Mu-Sigma Jargon) of people. It was hard remembering most of their names because apparently, the part of my brain that was supposed to hold memory had some malfunction, I still haven't been able to figure out how to fix it. Well, getting back to what I was saying, I made quite a few friends at office in a very short while. One thing I noted the whole day was that there was not even a small glitch anywhere. Things went on really well. It only showed the amount of pain that had gone into the planning. Hats off to guys at Mu-Sigma for having done such a great job on the very first day.

Second day was AWESOME. We had real fun exercises to be done. First we were paired with one seemingly unknown person and were asked to introduce each other. Helped in knowing one extra person than we already knew. Then came a team building exercise, we had to build a tower out of paper, clips and glue stick and market it :) we were split into groups of 5. Fortunately my group had one genius called Abhishek who did most of the design part. We did all the cutting and pitched in with a few suggestions gere and there. Most of the presentations were highly creative and witty. I started loving the people already. Then we had a session on "office etiquette" after which we had to organize a meeting. Again we were split into groups of 6 and our group had really enthusiastic people. The meeting went on well too. End of the day, we knew a lot more people than we actually did at the end of the first day.

Third and fourth days were full of classes. Maybe I now roughly get the idea of what people at Mu Sigma meant by a "hectic schedule". We had sessions non-stop with no real breaks in between. The way they make it sound, the work actually seems exciting. If it really is as exciting as it sounds, I'm sure i'll end up having a hell lotta fun. I'm LOVING THIS PLACE and THE PEOPLE.

Signed off at the end of 4th day at Mu - Sigma.

Kriya 09 - Robotics and my gratitude.

I was in charge for Robotics in Kriya (again). For people who don't know, Kriya is PSG Tech's national level techno-management fest. I was supposed to conduct two events - Robotics design challenge which was supposed to be a display of best robots selected from the abstracts sent to us (visit http://psgkriya.org/2009/robotics/generalrobotics) and the bot race which was an image processing event (http://psgkriya.org/2009/robotics/bot-race).

General Robotics was scheduled to be on the first day of Kriya 09 - 6th March, Bot race was supposed to be on the 7th. The final round of General robotics was scheduled for the 8th of march. The first day of general robotics went without much of a glitch - the only minus being the amount of exhaustion it brought upon me. After the event, we had to setup the arena for Bot race. It was supposed to be of size 4m x 4m. We needed volunteers. 10 first year guys, 2 3rd year guys and myself went to pick up the arena from a place that was roughly 2 kms from my college. We hired a tempo to carry the arena to college. With the help of my juniors, i was able to place the arena in the quadrangle and mount the webcam on the roof. Here I want to mention my special thanks to my junior M.G. Ramachandran - the secretary of PSG Tech's student's union. He mounted the webcam on top of the quadrangle. For the first time in 4 years, I saw an SU secretary climb a ladder and do menial jobs like these. We finished the work by 2 A.M and I left for home.

The next day began at 8.30. The day started off a disaster with a fluctuating power supply to the system that had the webcam feed, we could not install MATLAB (the software required to do image processing and send commands to the Robot in the arena). By the time we fixed it, the time was 11.30 A.M. Due to the lighting conditions, the webcam feed wasn't good enough. We were thinking about various alternatives. It was 2.30 P.M and we had to finish the event fast because open quiz was about to start in the quadrangle. It was then that Anush - the overall coordinator for Kriya suggested that we shift the arena to the IM yoga hall. Aishwarya of the event and resource management team was resourceful in arranging the hall in a matter of minutes. We shifted - again with the help of first year guys. Now we again had to fix the webcam and position the arena which took another hour and a half. We started at 5 P.M. The event which was to begin at 8.30 A.M finally began at 5 P.M. Just after a team finished its run, the webcam's position changed due to a tape falling apart. We had to mount the webcam and start all over again. There was complete unrest in the room. I couldn't handle it anymore. Fatigue started to set in, lack of proper food and sleep was taking its toll, add to it the amount of stress that a day full of disasters gives, I was feeling dead. I asked Srinivasan, Sathappan, Vignesh and Ramachandran of my class to take care of it. I went out, saw the open quiz, attended a meeting and came back near the main PR desk only to find out that Bot race and open quiz were the only two events that were yet to finish and that the staff advisor of SU who was incharge of prize money wanted to leave. I din't wanna put the participants through anymore hardships. I knew the winners and the participants would be extremely disappointed if I fail to give them the prize money in time. I was expecting a miracle and that was the small but sufficient delay in the ending of open quiz. The time taken for the prize distribution of open quiz was just enough. The moment the last team to win a prize came out, the bot race winners were there. They got their prize money in due time, all the participants were happy. I still had to apologise for the amount of screwing up I did. So I sent a note of apology to all the participants through SMS.

Next day was comparatively smooth, I finished the presentations in due time and the winners got their prize money and certificates without much of a mess. I really wanna thank Anush for having given the right idea at the right time, Aishwarya for having arranged the hall in such short notice, Srini, Sath, Vignesh and Rama for having spent their time in organizing bot race in spite of not being the event coords. They were there for me when I needed, I owe them a lot. A very very special thanks to all the first year guys who helped me with everything. Diwakar, Aravindh, Lokesh, Vishnu, Karna, Dino Karthick, Aravindh (there were two Aravindhs), Sathish and all others.

Above all this, I must not forget to thank the participants who stayed with a load of patience and did not force me to hurry up at all. I cannot express my gratitude in mere words. Thanks a million everyone.

February wasn't as good as I wanted it to be!!!

Come February, love is in the air. The month which has the Valentine's day - which of late has been one amongst the most celebrated day. I neither support, nor oppose the celebration. I'm fairly neutral when it comes to it. Like I mentioned in my last post, a lot of things kept me occupied. This is just gonna be a look back through those "not so colourful" February days.

The first week, I was down with a minor fracture due to falling down in a game of basketball. It wasn't very serious. I was not supposed to strain my left hand, I did as I was asked to and I was alright soon. It also coincided with the Indefinite closing of all colleges because the government thought leaving the students as they are can create a law and order problem. So I did not have to bunk college. The same week, I was also supposed to go on a Pilgrimage to Sabarimala - a famous temple atop a mountain in Kerala. Though I'm agnostic, I respect people's sentiments and especially my mother's, so ended up going there. The next week, we really started sincerely working on our project. The whole of that week went in researching and working. That also happened to be the Valentine's week (its no longer valentine's day alone, its celebrated for a week) and as expected there wasn't much to it in my life. I did not propose to anyone, nor did I get proposed to. Spent a quiet Valentine's day at home. The week after that, I had to settle a serious issue between two of my close friends. The whole of that week took a toll on my mental well being. I was becoming someone that I was not. I was becoming increasingly irritable and the reason was a combination of lot of things. The tussle between my friends, my inability to concentrate on my project because of genuine lack of interest, my inability to sit down and prepare for GRE because of my laziness and above all my inability to get rid of my lack of interest and laziness. I thought it was time I took a break from all this and spend some time hanging out with friends.

Thats when came a plan made by my friends, we all decided to go to cochin on the 23rd of feb, stay there for two days and spend the last day in Veega land - an amusement park in cochin. We were having a great time, Rahman's oscar victory made us celebrate all the more - even though we had no part to play in his victory, we all belonged to the generation of people who grew up listening to Rahman, so we felt proud and happy. I personally don't see it as India's victory, its only Rahman's victory, and he won it for a work of hollywood which according to me wasn't Rahman's best. His music in more than a dozen Indian films have been far superior to that of Slumdog Millionaire. It just happened to be Rahman's first Hollywood score and they recognised it. Coming back to my life from Rahman's, we were half way through the first day when a call from my mom came with a shocking news attached - my dad was hospitalized. He had severe stomach ache, doctors suspect something wrong with the pancreas. Scan reports showed nothing like stones so my thoughts raced. I feared the worst. I thought it was gonna be pancreatic cancer. Mom asked me to leave immediately. My friends there were of great help. They decided dat I leave at once and that they'll carry my luggage. It was a very good plan, because wasting time going back to the room and packing up wasn't my idea too. My friends gave me a few encouraging words too. That meant a lot to me. Its in times such as these that one really knows the value of having true friends. And the ones I had were the best I could ever get. Thanks to all of them. I left immediately to the Bus stand and took the first bus to Coimbatore and so started the 6 longest hours of my life. Even with a very pretty girl by my side in the bus (that was not deliberate :D, that was the only seat available in the bus), I was not happy. I wanted to know what was wrong with dad. I called up mom, she said it isn't very serious. But I still feared the worst because it's my mother's character to make sure that I don't worry too much about it. I did not know what to do. I wanted to talk to someone. I din't wanna spoil the party mood of my friends back in Cochin. A very recent friend of mine came to my rescue, I'm very indebted to her for what she did that day. Then I reached coimbatore and found out that the condition that my dad is having was called acute pancreatitis. It was some form of an infection of the pancreas. Strictly no food orally for 3 days, all the nutrition he got was through intra-venous fluids. After that, doc said my dad has to follow a strict diet regimen and he was discharged on the 27th februray(friday) after 5 long, gruelling days at the hospital. I was with him most of the days and bunked college on all 5 days. After a really long time, I visited college yesterday, now things seem fine. I feel fine. But February really was HORRIBLE, HORRENDOUS, HORRIFIC - they all mean the same anyway :D

P.S: Blogger's editor tells me that my spelling of colourful is wrong, but I prefer to stick to that spelling rather than the American version.

Indefinite Closing of Colleges - Yippie???

The title just happens to be a hint of what lies ahead.

Disclaimer: If you are a supporter of LTTE and their so called noble cause, you are advised against reading this.

Indefinite closing of colleges because some impulsive, hot blooded, moronic, wood-headed student riots in support of LTTE??? Who are these LTTEs??? They definitely aren't doing the work of a Mahatma to deserve a riot in favour of them. They are killing people - innocent civilians. Suicide bombings in the city of Colombo, using poor Tamil residents as 'human shields' and waging war against a country for more than 2 decades in the name of a fight for liberation are all things reserved for terrorist organizations. There are ways to fight for liberation, killing innocent people is just not the right way to do it. The cause and means of LTTE is no different from that of Al-Quaeda or the Lashkar-e-Taiba.

And why do students become a part of every damn problem in this country? The problem lies within the students themselves. Learning is the only duty that a student has. And my dear fellow students, it is not your duty to fight the dirty politician's fight. It does not mean you must not stand up against evil. That is a right and duty of every citizen, but rioting in favour of an organization classified as a Terrorist Organization all over the world isn't something expected of you - Mr. Student. If thats something you have been doing, it only means one thing - you have been misguided.

And the indefinite closing of all colleges in Tamilnadu??? Why??? Oh, you din't know students aren't students anymore? They are goondas, they are supporters of terrorist organizations, they are miscreants of the first order, they are Anti social elements. And hence, they have been forced to vacate hostels and go home so that they do not indulge in any form of violence. See - this is the kind of image the student community currently has, all thanks to the unlawful behaviour in the recent times (law college riots, the current support of LTTEs are all a few examples).

Well, personally, I feel - damn the image. I am a student, all my friends are students, we are not what we are portrayed to be. I speak here on behalf of the entire student community:

The rioting, terrorist supporing clan is only a minority amongst us. By and large, we are a responsible lot. Responsible towards our nation, towards our families and towards ourselves. We are future politicians, beurocrats, entrepreneurs, defense personnel, scientists and much more. We are the future of India. So do not include us in your dirty politics and spoil our and our nations future.

Finally, my message to all students: for a moment, think of the right and the wrong. Do not be guided by blind emotion, vengeance and hot blood. Violence will not provide answer to anything - it only makes the answers more difficult to find. And above all, do not forget your parents for whom your education is much more important their life and happiness.

DAD - The Hero.

After a few incidents of the past week, I decided that I should write about my dad. Something like a tribute. I'm doing this because of three reasons.

The first one being the Tamil movie Vaaranam Aayiram, which truly was a genuine tribute to a dad from a son.

The second reason is my experience at the State Bank of India - I went there to open an account, my dad gave me two bags, one had all the forms fully filled up and the other had all the documents that I would need as a proof, two thousand rupees that I had to pay in the bank, a stapler with pins and a glue stick. He sent me there with clear instructions as to what is to be done, all I had to do was follow the instructions and I finally had my account opened in under an hour. In the same bank, I saw people coming back for the nth time to do this, where n generally varied from 3 to 5. The officer in the bank who was helping with opening the account told me that I was able to finish it so soon because I came in with whatever was required and that I had really planned well. I just thought of my dad that moment.

The third and the most important reason is that, I really haven't appreciated what my dad has done to me and I really don't know how to do it. I guess this is the best way, letting people know what a great man my dad is.

When I was a kid, I used to be a very inquisitive kid, used to pester people with a lot of questions and my dad was the only one who could answer everything. From that day, whenever I have any QUESTION as in technically or in finance etc, I ask my dad and he almost always answers my question. I have wondered so many times as to how he gained so much knowledge when there were not many sources of information like the present. Then I realised that it is because of his interest in learning. There have been so many instances when he has learnt from me, which proves he really doesn't mind learning from someone so much younger than him. This is something that I must acquire.

One striking quality of him is being systematic. He was the one who taught me that proper planning will help you achieve anything you want. Whenever we go out of station, he meticulously plans each and every detail of the visit, and we have never faced a problem. That really is something that I must learn from him. I have never seen him go late to any meeting or function or any other important appointment. He always keeps telling me that there is nothing wrong in starting early. When I talk about his meticulous planning, I remember my visit to Bangalore in order to write the BITSAT. He was in bangalore a week before that on office duty and like always, he finished his work soon and was free in the evening. He asked me for the address of the BITSAT centre over phone and visited that place. He found out the bus to be taken, the route in an auto, the distance from the hotel I was gonna stay in and how long it would take from there. So when I went to write BITSAT, all I had to do was follow his instructions. In spite of the downpour that day, I was able to reach the centre without a drop of water on me. If he hadn't visited that place beforehand, I really wouldn't have been able to locate the centre and write the test.

The things that I learnt from him have made me what I'm. He was the one who taught me about electronics. That was way back. I guess I was in my 5th grade when he gave me a regulated DC power source, a small light bulb, a switch and a small motor. He showed me how they worked. Then he asked me to figure out various ways to connect the circuit and make the bulb and the motor work. From then on, for years I have broken so many things that he bought. TV's remote, a remote controlled toy car, a pocket radio, a torchlight are all small examples that I remember now. But he never scolded. He just let me do things my way. I guess thats what gave me this interest in electronics. All the successful projects, my strong fundamentals in electronics are all because of what my dad showed me.

He has always asked me to be strong, courageous and outspoken. A scene in vaaranam aayiram reminded me of this incident - when I was bullied by a senior guy in school, he was the one who told me that I should not be intimidated by people who are BIG. That is something I follow till date. I never let someone intimidate me and no matter what happens, I stay calm, composed and strong.

He taught me to think for myself and never let anyone else take decisions for me. Throughout my life, he has never influenced my decisions. One quote that he always told me was "Don't be the football of other's feelings." When I decided to take up Biology as a subject in 11th in spite of being sure of doing engineering, he did not say a word. After 12th, when I told him that I was gonna do mechanical engineering, he did not object. And after my best friend's advice, when I decided to take ECE, he said he was happy because he personally liked electronics as a subject and thought I would do well if I take that up as my course of study.

He was the one who showed me that saying sorry costs nothing but lets u gain so many things. Whenever he has a fight with mom, he would be the one to make up. Things generally became smooth after that. I figured that if he din't say sorry so often, things would ve been really different in my family.

He taught me the various approaches to a problem. When I was in my 8th grade I used to be amazed by the speed with which he calculates, when I asked him the secret, he taught me so many ways to multiply, add and divide. That was my introduction to mental math in a completely different light. From then on, I always devised my own ways of doing math. Sometimes they were simple, sometimes they were complex, but those are the methods that I still use, the methods that I FIND simple.

Above all this, I'm a mom's child. I'm closer to my mom than my dad. I love my mom more than anyone else on earth, which also includes my dad. I share my personal life to my mom I tell her about my friends, my college life, the fun that we have and everything that happens and when dad asks me about all this, I just give him one word answers. He really hasn't showed his displeasure or asked me anything about it. My mom tells me that my dad at times feels bad that I don't tell him about my personal life. But not even once has he asked ME about it. It just shows what a gentleman he is.

I don't really know why I have written this. I guess I'm doing something by writing pages and pages about this great man. My Dad - My Hero. I don't really find it difficult telling my mom that I love her. Even when i'm talking to my friends it isn't very difficult so explicitly tell them how important they are in my life, but when it comes to my dad, I really find it very difficult. I really haven't told him that I love him, that he is important to me, that I respect him a lot and all that and even he hasn't told me any of this. I guess thats the thing about being a dad and son. You don't tell each other about the love and respect you have for one another and still cherish the bond.

The First day of the 8th semester.

Like I already said, our final semester was dedicated entirely to our project. Lot of my classamates have gone for internships to various companies, I decided to stay back here and spend my last semester in college. Today was the first day of the final semsester, quite unusually, I went to college on time i.e 8.30 AM and was surprised that there was no one in our department (thats Electronics and Communication Engineering by the way). Last time I walked in as the first person in class was back in the 3rd semester for entirely different reasons. Anyway, coming back to the topic, I really thought I'm gonna be bored to death for the next half an hour or so. Luckily, my class guys started coming in one by one and GOD, that was some relief. As usual, we started talking about last semester grades (a topic that I personally try to avoid) and came to know that Sundar (the genius of my class) became a 7 pointer. Oh my god, what an achievement, his rate of decrease in grades has been much greater than mine ;) my highest was 9.25 and lowest 8.3 and his highest was 9.42 in the first semester and now its 7.3 OMG. Like he said there has also been an increase in the rate of decrease of his GPA every semester. Then we discussed about decreasing functions, their decreasing first derivatives etc etc when our class representative came and told us that the lab was opened. PSG TECH GRD ECE COMPUTER LAB the lab that was previously called impact lab is gonna be our centre of operations for the next six months. According to my seniors, these six months are the most unforgettable days of college life and with that in mind, we entered the lab, I had a background music running in my mind and without doubt it was from Cheran's autograph (For people who don't know - Autograph is a tamil film about revisiting school and college days). The first thing that we do in the impact lab almost always is signing into our respective mail IDs to see what new mails we've got. Like always, I had a few mails from the groups I had subscribed to. Then we decided that we had spent enough time in the lab and decided to go to the canteen. Let me tell you, our canteen's Hot chocolate is simply amazing. We drink it everytime we go to the canteen. After the usual disappointment that we have in the canteen because of the absence of good looking girls (and by the way, its not only the canteen that disappoints us in this regard), we came back to the lab. We were then asked to register our fingerprints for attendance because from tomorrow, the finger print reader is gonna be our attendance register, something that I thought was a technical wonder when I just entered college. Time has flown by and it was our time to SHOW OUR FINGERS to the fingerprint reader. After that ritual, we again went into the lab and started editing our department association website, my god the code really seemed greek and latin to me. Sundar was doing the editing part and I was just looking at it. Then the 2nd years came in and they were having Data Structures lab. That was something that I really loved in my 4th semester, not because of the subject, it was just because I could sit for two hours in the A/C and not do anything. After all that editing work, the time was 4.30 PM it was time for us to pack up. We again went to the canteen had a cup of coffee and dispersed.

Well, going by my standards, the day was quite usual, nothing out of ordinary, so to say the least, it was damn boring. AND HENCE... I decided that spending my time with the project is much better than just being jobless in the lab.