Entha kazhikkathe...

The day b4 today.. Rahul,the Executive Engineer from Tata Tele Services had come for the weekend from Ernakulam.. The Sheikh Don.V.Samji who landed from Saudi Arabia the week back(He is still living in teh dream world of Saudi Arabia!), The Do not Disturb Engineer from Tata Elxsi..Oops.. The Design and Development Engineer Shyam.. ,Scientist/Gazetted Officer whom people know by the name Robin. and the people who are waiting to become top draw Software Engineers @ Infosys ( Provided they Dont kick us out.. ) ie Me and Kurien all met together for the evening!
All of us except Shyam spent some time @ the Idyllic Atmosphere of Trivandrum museum.. Sharing Don's Saudi Experiences, Robin too sharing his first week experience at ISRO.. And eating the sweets brought by Don.. Then the next halt being the Railways station to see off two of our friends leaving Trivandrum to make their careers @ HCL.. Nishad and Sajith.. The last outing for the dayw as eat out!! and at 845 in the night neither did Zam Zam have any space for us nor NoorMahal!! Boohoo.. Had to have food @ a hotel called Sapphire.. Post food all of us parted to our own ways.. And Me having to Drop Kurien at his house.. had to spend the night there cos it was too late!
Now comes the most funny part.. Me and Kurien in the Activa.. Cometh Museum.. and A police shows his hand and asks us to othukkuka the vandii..

Police: Evidenna Varunne????
Me(Innocently): Kazhichiitu varuva!
Police ( With a Oho Look on his face!): Kazhichitto? Ahaa.. Enthaa kazhiche??? ;)
Me:(With a sheepish Grin!!) : Dinner kazhikkan poyatha.. food kazhikkan..
Police: Dinnero?? Appozh vere onnum kazhichiille..
Me: Illa Kazhichilla..
PolicE: Appol... Entha KAzhikkathe????????????????
Me(With a Surprised look..): Kazhikkarilla.. Sheelamilla!! ;)
Police to his Fellow Policemen.. : Nalla Kuttikalanu thonunnu!! and asks us to go...

A Day in the life of an Engineer waiting for his D.O.J

8:00 am - Wake up.. (May go upto 11:00 am..)

8:30 - Coffee... Breakfast.. (Mostly this never happens.. Coz when i wake up.. No
one is left at home to give me coffee or Breakfast!!)

9:00 to 1:00 .. Browsing.. TV.. Sudokuing.. Lazing around the house.. Browsing thru
the sports page of The HINDU(Jus tht.. )And the last page Tidbits..

1:00 - Lunch.. (Preferably a heavy one.. To compensate fr the Missed Breakfast!!)

And i guess i dont need to write what follows next... Zzzzz....

5:00.. Opens one eye with a hell lot of Difficulty.. Sees the clock.. Says tht.. ITs
just 5:00pm.. Then.. Goes back to sleep..

5:30 - Wakes up finally.. 6:00 - Welcomes dad home.. Says hi.. Chats up with him.. His usual array of Questions.. Result vanno.. DOJ vanno.. Ninakku mathramaano varaathe.. Ninte ella
friendsinu vanno.. [:D]

7:00 to Dinner - Chatting.. Browsing.. Tv.. Same as the Schedule in the morning..

9:30- Dinner..

Then.. Reading Books till i doze off..

[PS:- Another Big pasttime is to get Chelavu from those of us who have Joined.. and
have drawn their first salary!! [:d] Nothing gives more pleasure than that!! ]

People with different ways of spending the time more worthwhile than this.. Suggestions are always welcome!!

A relation That i wud love to Forget!

Long since i Blogged... One of the many reasons for this long layback.. The Dream Titled Convergence.. Univ exams.. Project and blah.. Blah...

Met during the Sixth Semester... Took as a friend.. Became Tight Friends.. Talked for long hours on the phone.. Smses.. Chats... Silly Fights.. Lots of Fun! Hoped that the relation that Wud go on for ever!

But... A few words that were not supposed to be uttered were spoken... Then... Crash.. Bang.... Everything is [:(] Wud love those good days to be back! But.... I guess it wll never be like those sweeet days!

Signing off this Blog with a heavy heart... Wishing that those Good ol days wud be back!

A fun-filled journey through the real ME.

Guyss.. I did this one taking a cue from Akhil's blog.

10 Favorites:
Fav Season: The Rains
Fav Sport: Cricket. .
Fav Time: Dusk and Dawn.
Fav Month: April.Fav Actor: Kamal Hassan, R. Madhavan, SRK, Aamir Khan, Hrithik Roshan, Saif Ali Khan.
Fav Actress: Kajol, Rani Mukherjee and Vidya Balan …
Fav Ice-cream: Pista .
Fav Food: I eat all sorts of Veg Food! Veg Fried Rice and Navratan Khorma and Malai Kofta are a few!
Fav Drink: Coffee .
Fav Place: Munnar. It is paradise on Earth. One of the best places that I have been!

9 Currents:
Current Feeling: Pulling Out My hair!.(Solving a Damn Tough Puzzle!)
Current O/S: Windows XP Current Windows open: Asianet Dialer, Yahoo Messenger (Lotsa Chat windows), Winamp
Current Drink: Just drank some water.
Current Time: 6:59 am.
Current Mobile(s) used: Sony Ericsson Z300i
Current show on TV: Was watching K3G on Sony TV.
Current Thought: I need to finish this blog fast and go to have my breakfast. Gotta run to College.
Current clothes: A plain t-shirt and jeans.

8 Firsts:
First nickname: No idea!
First kiss: None till now! (Waiting for my first)
First crush: P*********. Was in my school!
First computer: A P3 that I had after my tenth exams!
First job: Nothing worthwhile mentioning here! A Few Offer letters to boast of!
First movie I watched: (Mom and dad say that I have never allowed them to watch a full movie when I was a kid.(A Cry baby! )
First shave: Can’t remember.

7 Lasts:
Last Coffee: At 6:45 in the morning.
Last movie: On Comp, is The RoadTrip. and at the Cinema, it was Lage Raho Munnabhai .
Last time I drove: Yesterday night I had taken my Vehicle to buy the groceries (Hoo. What a hardworking boy I am!!)
Last time shaved: Yesterday (Mom has been shouting for the past two weeks!)
Last website visited: Orkut.
Last software installed: RM to MP3 converter.
Last pill I had: Crocin, somedays back for headache. I get these blinding headaches once in a while!

6 Have you evers:
Have You Ever broken the law: Naa.. Am a Law abiding Citizen. [:P]
Have You Ever been drunk: Drunk. Was I?? . Just that my eyelids were heavy and my head reeling ;)
Have You Ever climbed a tree: Not even a single one.
Have You Ever kissed someone you didn’t know: Waiting for that special moment.
Have You Ever been in the middle/close to gunfire or bomb blast: Am I Crazy?
Have You Ever broken anyone's heart: Some were intentional but I couldn’t help it. Many that I didn’t know. All’s a part of life.

5 Things:

Things you can hear right now: The sound of the fan in my room J
Things on your computer table: Computer, the modem, Calculator, My Blood Donor’s Certificate, A Sketch pen with the cap missing, An empty refill, My mobile. The list is endless. (A virtual dumping yard!)Things on your bed: Bedspreads, pillows (:P), Lotsa strewn magazines, Mobile, Cordless phone.
Things you ate today: Just a Cuppa Coffee.
Things in mind: I don’t want to go to college. Badly need to catch some sleep. It’s been long since I have woken up early. So am drowsing off sitting in the front of my P.C4
Places you have been today: None that I remember of!

3 People you can tell anything to: 3 is too small a number. For the fun of it they are N, M, and K. The list goes on and on.

2Choices:
Black or white: White.
Hot or Cold: Cold.

1 Thing you want to do before you die: Guys this is my ambition! Want to be the owner of the world’s biggest Food chains And take over Tendulkar's And Zak's :D

Anyone who’s Interested can take up this tag. I’d fun doing it.

April 29th - Read on..

Placements have always drawn interest from all Quarters. Be it The parents of Prospective students at the Different Engineering Colleges, The students themselves asking the seniors in the college “Chetta ivide ethokke company aa varaaru??” The truth is that in the present scenario, The Engineering Colleges coming up like new flats and other residential complexes, Parents and students alike don’t have any other criteria to judge an institution other than the Campus Placements that the college boasts of! I have been Lucky enough to study in a College that was just 4 years into its operation when I landed in it and the college has shown an exponential rate in the number of Campus placements!! Hats off to Ramesh Sir, Our Placement Coordinator without whose untiring efforts nothing would have been possible. He has transformed this college to a college that boasts of more than 75% placements which is something Stupendous for a College that is just into its eighth year. The placements for our college started on April 29 2006, when we were going through our sixth semester studies. The Company that was at college was HCL Technologies And the mechanical branch were not allowed to take the tests. The company was for the Circuit Branches as the Company puts it!
Cutting out all the crap! Coming to the turn of events that happened just before the placements, A few students who feel that they have studied enough for the day plan to get out classes in the name of Campus placements and start the work. The work is pretty easy. Involves Collecting the marks of all students who meet the required Cut-Off and enter that into an Excel Sheet and if necessary to verify whether they meet the required Cut-Offs!(Now you know how easy an work that will be!! )
It was the first company that was coming to our college and every student worked their asses off to get placed! Was I one in that group? Yaa . Not exactly. I didn’t work that difficult! What sort of crap did I cram up into my head?? We had a combined study two days before the day the company was supposed to be in Campus! And sadly the placements were postponed from that day! We named the day C-Day!!


C-Day
I don’t remember the exact date but the only thing that I remember is that we had gala time @ My house. I, Robin, Rahul and Kurien met up to brush up our C and C++ Skills which were a necessity for every company that recruits freshers. The study materials had been taken out and Kurien as usual began his classes on what all topics that he knew! Sadly that is the time when our Eyes fell on the Carroms board in my room. Slowly but steadily our attention began to divert from studies and ten to fifteen minutes later we were @ the board! The teams. Hari and Rahul pitted against Kurien and Robin. The game went on for over an hour and was evenly fought. After the game we decided that a bit of browsing won’t do us any bad. We started to collect some Info on the company that was coming to College! We found about the CEO and the various projects that the company were undertaking at that stage. Robin had pointed out somewhere in his resume that he was a Free Software Freak! We searched up some stuff about the Free Software Foundation (FSF) and something about the various advantages and disadvantages that a Free Software had! We had heard companies grilled us on the topics that we mentioned in our resumes! So these thoughts lead us to do some Ground-work on the topics mentioned in the resume! By the time we finished this the time was past twelve. And Studies had taken place for less than ten minutes. We started with our second game of Carroms! This went on will 3.00 am in the morning and we decided that it was enough and retired to our Sleeping Bags!

C-Day (This one is the original!)

Nothing much to write about this day because this happened two days before the Company was supposed to come. Everyone was studying really hard so that they could make it to the interview stage! Seven guys were there and we literally shared the information that we had. Discussed the various doubts, That’s it! We had learnt the very basics of C/C++ over a period of two hours! And the topics drifted off. We talked on everything under the sun. Chit chatted and finally dozed off.

D-Day

The D-Day arrived. The day was the 29th of April, HCL technologies on Campus, The first company that’s coming for our batch. Dressed up in the best attire, I leave home and reach the college by 9:00. The attire is something which I hated the most. A full sleeved Shirt and black pants. Hoo! How I hate such kinda attire!! Had the Pre placement talk by the company’s Bigwigs. Was fun listening to it. Not listening to a single word in that! The placement procedure was simple. We had a placement test which tested our knowledge on C/C++ and the basic Aptitude and then a Personal interview!
The test was an objective one. It was Blah Blah Blah.(I Forgot! ) The time had come when the HCL guys were going to read out the names of the persons who cleared the test! All of us assembled near the staffroom waiting in bated breaths. Yeay!! Hooray!! I cleared the test!! It was sad to see many of your pals missing out. And the shock in waiting was the class topper missed out!
After this all of the selected guys assembled and were given the basic lessons in Electronics by Sandeep(Buji) and we just had a quick run-through on the basic terms in C++.

Interview Time

Knocks Knocks…
Me : “ Sir ,May I ? “
Panel: Yes you may. Take your seat.”
( I take the seat and in the process handing over the carefully filled up resume to them! )

Panel: Introduce yourself.
Me. My name is so and so.. And the intro went on.. “Sir, My hobbies are reading. I read a Lot. “

Panel: ”Who is u r favorite author ?”
Me: Sidney Sheldon.
Panel: He is not a good writer. I hate his style of writings and what not.
Poor me: (I Become defensive for a second.) and was helped out by another member of the panel asking me to defend my favorite author. I go on saying that I like his style of writings citing some example.

Panel: See the way your results are falling like the BSE Index.
Me: Cooking up some brilliant reason about my grandmother being serious and me having to attend her.(They believed it. Good Gracious, I lie so well.)

Panel: Which job do you prefer? A Hardware one or Software ?
Me: (Basically I have heard that both jobs are interesting.) Taking a Gamble I say that I prefer a Hardware job over a software job.
Panel: (Pointing to another guy in the panel.) Mr. X is offering you a job in his hardware firm for a lesser salary than the software job. Which one will you take?
Me: I will take the hardware job over the software job.
Panel: Don’t you think that you are undervaluing yourself. People come to us daily asking for software jobs and you are one among the very few asking a Hardware job. Don’t you think you can ask for more salary?
Me: Sir , I would like to work in a field that I prefer rather than a field the one I get more pay.(Hoooooo.. don’t know how I made this up!)

Then Some Hardware Questions followed which I answered in a satisfactory manner.

Panel: Thank you Hari!
Me: Thank you Sir!
Time : 10:00 pm
Room no:208 @ GECB!

All the people who took the interview were asked to assemble in the room. And they read out a list and the people whose names were not in the list were asked to move out. ( Sad that those people missed out and they were lucky enough to be placed in some other company that visited the campus! )
Then one of the HCL Guys said..

“ Welcome to HCL.. “

The HCL guy says. “ Your performance in the technical part was very poor and not up to our mark.” And thus he started blaming us on our techie performance . Time was running. It was close to 11:00 in the night and at this time of the night he asked us to take a C/C++ Test which we had to agree. After saying this, He says then “Take the Offer letters” .We were so happy to hear these words. And after that he handed over our offer letters and we had to fill it up in our own handwritings . The posting was at Noida and the pay was 2.2 lacs per annum.

Sweet nothings of Life.

1. Winning the La’Fest in my 12th Class. It was an OVER THE MOON FEELING. Nothing better than that to remember my school life. Reaching School back at 8 to 9 in the night and having the trophy in hand and assembling in our school Basketball Court with a chair in the middle and the trophy in that and all of us guys dancing around that chair.

2. Getting an Admission into a Government College which means that I save a lot of money for my parents

3. First year seems to be a year when you slowly start getting into the groove of College life and behave like a goodie goodie guy. But Me. Playing when the teacher is taking a class. And cutting the class behind sir’s back. (Thanks to our Sir who taught us electrical Engg. Learnt to do this!!).

4. Gifting attendance to our dear friends By the Phenomena called Proxies: D. Itz real fun to call other people’s numbers and get a treat from them for doing so. Really enjoyed doing that.

5. The Study tours and industrial visits in the college. (One never visits an industry!). The awesome time I had with my friends during such tours is something unforgettable. I really miss those tours and make me think. Won’t something like that happen again? The various photos that we clicked during our tours. Seeing that again Makes Me Damn Nostalgic!

6. The Birthday and Other treats we had, the sweet moments that we spend with our loved ones never seem to return back. And the food there. (Yummy!!)

7. Phone conversations have given me more happiness than anything else. The endless phone conversations with no disturbances. (How I would love the Telephones department to provide me with a Phone that has an Outgoing calls free Facility!)

8. Traveling around in Don’s Car makes me very happy.Itz the speed at which he drives and the control that he has which thrills me. I love seeing sights when I am out on the road. So I prefer being the pillion always.

9. Getting a Big Bear Hug from my best pal when I got my first placement. It was such a warm moment in my life. My friend being so happy that I got the job.

Confessions of a Rash Driver

It has been pretty long since I updated my blog.. This thought process landed me to a very important day in my life.

Date: 23 March 2006
Occasion: A Seminar Organized By ASUS Conducted at Sree Chitra Thirunal College of Engineering, Pappanamcode
Vehicle: My tukdaa Kinetic Honda - A thirteen year old one.

The D Day Arrived. The 23rd of March. I had heard the previous day that there was a Seminar organized By ASUS Conducted at SCT. Frankly speaking, I was the least interested in going there. But the usual monotony of the classes at college made me cut the crap classes and attend the seminar. I would label my Vehicle as something stupendous and rocking. But they call it the kuthara vandii. Tats how my friends dub my vehicle. Reached the seminar on time. The seminar was very interesting and a really interactive one too. The seminar was real fun. Met up with a few of my old friends studying in that college. And sharing some time with them..
The return trip was the one which made the day a most memorable one for me. Me and Kurien on my vehicle. Radhakrishnan and Vasu on His Activa. I jus love racin around on my Kinetic Honda. Am a born racer at heart. My friends have tried their level best to make me ride slow.. But.. “Pattiyude vaal... ".. I Love accelerating and racing on the road.. While we were returning.. We were breezing through the NH-47.. Overtaking the lorries and busses.. The best advantage that i had in my vehicle was that the speedometer in that was not working. So i couldn’t see the speed at which i was driving.. So nothing could scare me.. We reached Karamana and we had the first minor scare. We were jus going steady on the busy road.. And an auto driver.. Tried overtaking us on the narrow road. Pushing us into the side of the road.. Lucky for us. We dint fall off.. Continuing with our drive..
The place was the curve from the Public library road via the Church and the road that connects to PMG. Near the Chandrasekharan Nair Stadium.. I jus love taking turns fast.. And i believe that i can control my vehicle.. I thought that this will be jus another usual turn and i took the turn.. And the next thing that i remember is my vehicle somersaulting and the next second we are on the ground.. What happened waas that my Really Crazy pillion rider was afraid of the speed that i took the turn.. and he turned to the other side. I lost my control.. I jammed my front brakes.. The Vehicle somersaulted with the Front Wheel as the fulcrum. The vehicle took a 180 degree turn.. And after landing it jumped in the horizontal direction. The next thing that brought me back into life was an ALTO Screeching behind us.
The greatest thing about this fall was that nothing happened to both of us!! I just had a scratch on my hand. And the vehicle had minor repairs. Immediately after that incident the first person that I thanked was GOD Almighty. Such a bizarre accident and nothing happening to us. There are many small and freak accidents that end with the persons involved in them on the death-bed. God is really great. Even today I and he consider the day as our Second Birth. Our Re-Birth.