At last I got a reprieve to write something in my blog! The last 3 days were directly from hell. I had a PDS lab test (ok.. not exactly hell there) followed by Engg Drawing and Math, the next day and Phy lab test (purely hell) today. I still got phy test day after... but then again its day after. (I'm sure its pretty much this attitude of mine that made hell - ya i DO know it but it takes a lot to implement it)
Anyhow, the world wide web doesn't need to know the procrastination of a teen - its just too common! Ok where was I?? Well, I don't seem to remember much of what I have not told about earlier but if I do remember I'll tell along the way! Now, almost everyone's in exam fever.. I said almost cuz i know i am not! We were playing badminton just a few minutes back. Its weird really... Exams are one thing that brings all IITians together. Boys love it greatly cuz they get a genuine reason to talk to gals and gals love it cuz they don't have to show off anymore to get boys attention! ;) Ok jokes apart, it really makes more than half the students more social partly cuz they like telling each other who has studied the least and appear cool, partly cuz they really haven't studied anything and feel it would be good to have the company of those who are like him/herself, and also partly cuz they know that socialising is wasting time and time ain't precious... (ya i know.. i am going lame - must be the subconscious tension of exams - if you meet me now you wouldn't find a livelier person!!)
Speaking of gals, did i tell you that this place is a heaven for them?? The ratio's like 1:20... Really frustrating for me. I was thinking of having some fun after coming here.. I guess I'll just have to wait till the despos try their luck. ;) But anyway its good to have them as friends. They are usually very helpful. USUALLY - mind you. There's this gal in my section who only thinks of her.. She haven't got any friends either. I mean its just the first 3-4 months and basically everyone's your friend at the moment - how DID she manage to alienate herself so fast?? If she was a maggu, I would have understood but she ain't getting the top marks either! phew.. An exact opposite to her and one of her only 'friends' is this hyperactive (in a good way) and friendly gal! But she ain't so good in pds.. I would have been happy to help but she isn't asking much after the first time. Ya I DID try to teach two gals, programming. Was fun in a way. But this other gal wasn't really interested in learning! ;) Ok that's too much already.. If you wanna know more, contact me. I got elders listening on to this blog!
The internet is soooooo helpful to keep in touch. The best thing i like about it is the social websites. FB, twitter and orkut are everyday activities already. Having internet and lan connection directly to the room had to lead to this. But i don't regret this. I don't think i would have got in touch with my old pal Ashutosh any way else. He's in Toronto now and we just got in touch after SIX YEARS!! We were best friends for six years before that!! I do blame myself for not continuing contact then but i was also an idiot then and a gr8 maggu. The biggest lesson I have learnt in life is that without friends, life is hell. You have to shut your mouth and that is something i have learnt to live without. I give the credit of that to my two years in Bangalore. My friends Saketh, Suhail and Mohsin taught me that studying isn't everything. If it wasn't for Saketh's constant bickering about the system (i miss what he did best - shout at the principal), and Suhail's and Mohsin's indifference, I wouldn't be the super - active guy i am now. But i am digressing off the main topic.. Oh by the way my efforts to publicise my blog are slowly paying off.. Thank you twitter, fb, gtalk, linkedin and wherever else i have mentioned my blog!! (i have already started forgetting!)
Well back to classes.. So the first sem is about to reach its close by next week... The highlights have been PDS and Mechanics. I would really miss PDS.. I am thinking of using the video library available over the lan to continue studying programming and web designing. I am guessing we will continue with mechanics in the second yr - so not so sad abt that.. it IS really interesting. Math could have been interesting in the hands of a gud prof but i guess i just havta mug it up along with physics.. Physics is even worse actually.. I mite even have a backlog in it if i dont study. The tv shows and movies over dc are just too overpowering in attractiveness!! :D Don't worry i am not about to fail! (that's what everyone says around here but many do fail the first exams)
That's all for now. I'll probably give you good news after the exams which get over on 26th. I got NCC camp after that.. Did i tell you about ncc?? oh well.. later! a bientot!
Friday, November 13, 2009
Sunday, November 8, 2009
<-life goes on->
The saying 'time flies' is just too true when you are enjoying yourselves. And that is exactly what I have been doing these 3 months!! Enjoy, enjoy and when i have sometime - enjoy! It is already the best 3 months of my lifetime!
Well, where to start... I left you just after the admission procedures, right? Thereafter, I learnt that there were quite a few guys from kerala whose rooms were near me. These guy - Jerin and Joseph (who incidentally are almost always together) - knew a second year from before. And another - Saneesh - got a room near some keralite M.Techs. Hence we got in touch with the group - Tech Keralites. But all that was in the social scenario.
The dean (or dosa as we so 'lovingly' call him) made us a week full of orientation programmes to get us acquainted with the system. It was quite interesting to learn all the facilities available to us. But I learnt soon that it was almost a waste of time 'cause we could have learnt all that they said ourselves better. The only good thing out of that was the contacts we got which we could have got from a brochure!
Then came the classes. I had high expectations for the professors and their methods of teaching. I don't remember what my first class was but I soon learnt that the fame the teachers got outside IIT was only because of a few professors like my mechanics sir : Prof. B. Maiti and pds sir : Prof. Rajib Mall. My physics and math professors couldn't have made the two most interesting subjects in the world more boring than they have done now. Staying awake in class was a dream that even hard core maggus find it difficult to make real.
In between all the classes, we had selection procedures, workshops, interviews, etc. from all the societies in iitkgp. There was dance, drama, singing, literature, robotics, entrepreneurship, sports, interviews for representing iitkgp in certain fests and for volunteering... I went for the dance workshop. I was quite a beginner in dancing. I hadn't really danced since 2nd grade!! But i liked the concept.. So the seniors were impressed.. but they settled for selecting those who already knew a bit of dance... Since drama workshops were going on along with the dance, i couldn't try them out too! Of course, i didn't go for the singing. I don't even know one full song!
The most popular society was without doubt the Robotics Society and mainly KRAIG (which was its technical division). After all, we came here to become engineers. Its but natural that we are attracted to robotics. But I didn't get selected into either the Robotics team or the KRAIG team.. For KRAIG, there actually was a written test and it had to be conducted in 4 classes with a strength of 200 each!! I didn't listen to many of the robotics lectures anyway. So it wasn't much of a shock...
Then the next best thing was the selections for Kshitij and Springfest, the two big fests - the former technical and the latter social and cultural.. We heard a lot about it from our seniors as to how much fun they are.. They were both in January and the promotions and preparations were starting soon.
But before that there were the midsems... They were, in short, a nightmare.. With all the happenings going on, I never did do much studying except for the beginning of the sem. I would put a lot of blame on dc++ though. DC++ was THE best thing to happen in iitkgp. In iitkgp, we have the largest lan network in asia connecting all the laptops and computers of the students from every room. I have not yet found something that cannot be found in dc. Movies, tv shows, stand up comedies, e-books, softwares, music, bhajan (u know what i mean and if u don't, i ain't gonna explain), video lectures, comics... the list goes on forever..! So who in the right mind would not check it out and thus waste hours on it?? I must have watched atleast 30 movies after reaching kharagpur apart from the ones the show every saturday at the Netaji Auditorium (which anyway has poor sound quality)!
Well anyway, I did do some mugging towards the end. My habit of understanding the subject while in class itself paid off in the end and i just passed in physics. Got a respectable grade in math and did well in comp. Our mech prof still hasnt told us how bad we did in his subj. I presume it would have to be VERY bad for him not to reveal it to us. or VERY good. Who cares??
Then came the Durga Puja Holidays. We got abt 10 days of holz. And so i decided to go to kerala. I don't remember well but i think mom did call me to go meet her instead.. Oh by the way, i call my parents everyday. Most guys think that's not necessary or its childish.. but i love them so and mom would freak out if i didn't anyway! ;)
So i had a good time in kerala being nice to my relatives and vice-versa.. But i was craving to spend more time in kgp..
Ok, after that came the selections to become advertise SpringFest in various colleges.. I think I did well to the point that they heard that i wasn't going to kerala for my winter holz. They weren't very interested to publicise in colleges of UAE!! The same thing happened in an interview to publicise GES - 2009 (Global Entrepreneurship Summit) except that this one was almost a sure selection till that point. Oh then there was this interview for selection into Space Society which was in collaboration with ISRO.. I really wanted this one to work out.. I donno why i didn't get selected.. I think i lacked self-confidence then. Anyway my friend Kelin got selected by bragging about himself (or so he told me). He told he had skills he didn't have and is in quite a fix now!!
Backing to the social scenario again, I still have keralites to be one of my best friends yet. Saneesh, the gr8 sleeper, Govinda, the lazy, and Jerin, the super lazy were in my section and we often go to class together... Oh, except for Jerin who starts bathing when the class is supposed to start..! Then there's the bookworm Joseph, the funny-n-witty Abhinav, the pj-cracker Kelin, the hot(he's muscular - just to clarify that i ain't gay - yet) Atul, the serious Jerrin Joy (ya we have two jerins - one with a double r though), the super-duper serious Jijin and rival-to-Kelin-in-pj-cracking Anirudh. That's basically the ones i am usually around with when it comes to keralites. Then there's Rishabh (got to meet him cuz he was Joseph's roomie but he's a member of HTDS - one of the cool societies), Abhishek (the pervert roomie of Abhinav), Saurabh (the less pervert football freak living opposite to Joseph) and Vishnu (who knows malayalam, telugu, marathi, hindi and english - jack of everything, king of none - so he's the butt of a lot of jokes). That's a small list of those who i know but these are the ones i see most often..
One of the greatest traditions in iitkgp is GPL -> Gaand Pe Laath. If you have had the unfortunate luck of revealing your b'day to anyone in kgp, u r in for a series of nightmares in the nights preceding your b'day. But one of the funniest incidents happened during my b'day... The group came to gimme my share and Joseph was talking abt him being a black belt which incidentally i am too and so is Govinda, and on his first kick, i clenched and he goes "OOOWWWWWW!!!!" :D I mean, what the hell???? He kicks ME and HE goes "OW"??!! He's still the butt of certain jokes regarding that... Anyway, the most recent one we gave was to Joseph itself. He had not told us that his b'day was on 7th Oct and we decided to celebrate it on 7th Nov with more macho. We roused him from his sleep, gave him a gud GPL, got some water (in the meantime he started running), i chased him, splashed him on his butt (after all it needed cooling!) and ya it was all my idea! ;)
Our hostel is a 10 minute cycling from the class. We have classes mainly in Vikramshila (V4)(with A/c) and some tutorial classes (taken by PhDs or MTechs) in the main building(without A/c - damn). So if you woke up late some day, it is quite difficult to summon your butt from your bed, to the showers and then take a cycle till class. So we do proxying. Easy and simple. Though some have found it to their chagrin that it isn't SOO easy that you can put a completely different sign! Akshay (a friend of a friend from abudhabi) was a victim to mech sir once.. When i think of punishment in iitkgp, it is inevitable to think of disco (Disciplinary Committee before you spit out your coffee). Abhishek got caught for writing 'If you are the Abhinav i know, you are pissing me off!' in the IIT site meant for "study purposes only!" His parents got called and he had to do some work in the library.. but I gotta appreciate his nerve.
Well, where to start... I left you just after the admission procedures, right? Thereafter, I learnt that there were quite a few guys from kerala whose rooms were near me. These guy - Jerin and Joseph (who incidentally are almost always together) - knew a second year from before. And another - Saneesh - got a room near some keralite M.Techs. Hence we got in touch with the group - Tech Keralites. But all that was in the social scenario.
The dean (or dosa as we so 'lovingly' call him) made us a week full of orientation programmes to get us acquainted with the system. It was quite interesting to learn all the facilities available to us. But I learnt soon that it was almost a waste of time 'cause we could have learnt all that they said ourselves better. The only good thing out of that was the contacts we got which we could have got from a brochure!
Then came the classes. I had high expectations for the professors and their methods of teaching. I don't remember what my first class was but I soon learnt that the fame the teachers got outside IIT was only because of a few professors like my mechanics sir : Prof. B. Maiti and pds sir : Prof. Rajib Mall. My physics and math professors couldn't have made the two most interesting subjects in the world more boring than they have done now. Staying awake in class was a dream that even hard core maggus find it difficult to make real.
In between all the classes, we had selection procedures, workshops, interviews, etc. from all the societies in iitkgp. There was dance, drama, singing, literature, robotics, entrepreneurship, sports, interviews for representing iitkgp in certain fests and for volunteering... I went for the dance workshop. I was quite a beginner in dancing. I hadn't really danced since 2nd grade!! But i liked the concept.. So the seniors were impressed.. but they settled for selecting those who already knew a bit of dance... Since drama workshops were going on along with the dance, i couldn't try them out too! Of course, i didn't go for the singing. I don't even know one full song!
The most popular society was without doubt the Robotics Society and mainly KRAIG (which was its technical division). After all, we came here to become engineers. Its but natural that we are attracted to robotics. But I didn't get selected into either the Robotics team or the KRAIG team.. For KRAIG, there actually was a written test and it had to be conducted in 4 classes with a strength of 200 each!! I didn't listen to many of the robotics lectures anyway. So it wasn't much of a shock...
Then the next best thing was the selections for Kshitij and Springfest, the two big fests - the former technical and the latter social and cultural.. We heard a lot about it from our seniors as to how much fun they are.. They were both in January and the promotions and preparations were starting soon.
But before that there were the midsems... They were, in short, a nightmare.. With all the happenings going on, I never did do much studying except for the beginning of the sem. I would put a lot of blame on dc++ though. DC++ was THE best thing to happen in iitkgp. In iitkgp, we have the largest lan network in asia connecting all the laptops and computers of the students from every room. I have not yet found something that cannot be found in dc. Movies, tv shows, stand up comedies, e-books, softwares, music, bhajan (u know what i mean and if u don't, i ain't gonna explain), video lectures, comics... the list goes on forever..! So who in the right mind would not check it out and thus waste hours on it?? I must have watched atleast 30 movies after reaching kharagpur apart from the ones the show every saturday at the Netaji Auditorium (which anyway has poor sound quality)!
Well anyway, I did do some mugging towards the end. My habit of understanding the subject while in class itself paid off in the end and i just passed in physics. Got a respectable grade in math and did well in comp. Our mech prof still hasnt told us how bad we did in his subj. I presume it would have to be VERY bad for him not to reveal it to us. or VERY good. Who cares??
Then came the Durga Puja Holidays. We got abt 10 days of holz. And so i decided to go to kerala. I don't remember well but i think mom did call me to go meet her instead.. Oh by the way, i call my parents everyday. Most guys think that's not necessary or its childish.. but i love them so and mom would freak out if i didn't anyway! ;)
So i had a good time in kerala being nice to my relatives and vice-versa.. But i was craving to spend more time in kgp..
Ok, after that came the selections to become advertise SpringFest in various colleges.. I think I did well to the point that they heard that i wasn't going to kerala for my winter holz. They weren't very interested to publicise in colleges of UAE!! The same thing happened in an interview to publicise GES - 2009 (Global Entrepreneurship Summit) except that this one was almost a sure selection till that point. Oh then there was this interview for selection into Space Society which was in collaboration with ISRO.. I really wanted this one to work out.. I donno why i didn't get selected.. I think i lacked self-confidence then. Anyway my friend Kelin got selected by bragging about himself (or so he told me). He told he had skills he didn't have and is in quite a fix now!!
Backing to the social scenario again, I still have keralites to be one of my best friends yet. Saneesh, the gr8 sleeper, Govinda, the lazy, and Jerin, the super lazy were in my section and we often go to class together... Oh, except for Jerin who starts bathing when the class is supposed to start..! Then there's the bookworm Joseph, the funny-n-witty Abhinav, the pj-cracker Kelin, the hot(he's muscular - just to clarify that i ain't gay - yet) Atul, the serious Jerrin Joy (ya we have two jerins - one with a double r though), the super-duper serious Jijin and rival-to-Kelin-in-pj-cracking Anirudh. That's basically the ones i am usually around with when it comes to keralites. Then there's Rishabh (got to meet him cuz he was Joseph's roomie but he's a member of HTDS - one of the cool societies), Abhishek (the pervert roomie of Abhinav), Saurabh (the less pervert football freak living opposite to Joseph) and Vishnu (who knows malayalam, telugu, marathi, hindi and english - jack of everything, king of none - so he's the butt of a lot of jokes). That's a small list of those who i know but these are the ones i see most often..
One of the greatest traditions in iitkgp is GPL -> Gaand Pe Laath. If you have had the unfortunate luck of revealing your b'day to anyone in kgp, u r in for a series of nightmares in the nights preceding your b'day. But one of the funniest incidents happened during my b'day... The group came to gimme my share and Joseph was talking abt him being a black belt which incidentally i am too and so is Govinda, and on his first kick, i clenched and he goes "OOOWWWWWW!!!!" :D I mean, what the hell???? He kicks ME and HE goes "OW"??!! He's still the butt of certain jokes regarding that... Anyway, the most recent one we gave was to Joseph itself. He had not told us that his b'day was on 7th Oct and we decided to celebrate it on 7th Nov with more macho. We roused him from his sleep, gave him a gud GPL, got some water (in the meantime he started running), i chased him, splashed him on his butt (after all it needed cooling!) and ya it was all my idea! ;)
Our hostel is a 10 minute cycling from the class. We have classes mainly in Vikramshila (V4)(with A/c) and some tutorial classes (taken by PhDs or MTechs) in the main building(without A/c - damn). So if you woke up late some day, it is quite difficult to summon your butt from your bed, to the showers and then take a cycle till class. So we do proxying. Easy and simple. Though some have found it to their chagrin that it isn't SOO easy that you can put a completely different sign! Akshay (a friend of a friend from abudhabi) was a victim to mech sir once.. When i think of punishment in iitkgp, it is inevitable to think of disco (Disciplinary Committee before you spit out your coffee). Abhishek got caught for writing 'If you are the Abhinav i know, you are pissing me off!' in the IIT site meant for "study purposes only!" His parents got called and he had to do some work in the library.. but I gotta appreciate his nerve.
Friday, November 6, 2009
My first foray into the best engg college in india!
I was in Abu dhabi before reaching Kharagpur.. My father works there as a sales manager in Ajecobond.. I had to take a Gulf Air flight via Bahrain (which by the way is the place i was born and i was going back there for the first time after i left the place... i have absolutely no memory of bahrain if anyone was planning to ask me about Bahrain) to Mumbai and then another flight to Kolkata... It was a grueling schedule but we managed to make it just on time for all the flights... What i noticed first about Kolkata were the amount of cycle rickshaws there! I was shocked to see them as i had thought they were the minority nowadays... I took a vow then and there that i wouldn't travel in a rickshaw pulled by a human... (But of course, that vow was broken pretty soon as my parents weren't that sensitive to this matter when they saw the size of IIT Kharagpur and the daunting task of getting from one place to another made them hire a rickshaw.. But i am sure that whenever i am not under my parent's direct control, i won't hire one.)
We reached Howrah railway station with a pre-paid taxi from the airport. As soon as we got out, we were surrounded by porters.. Father finally agreed to a person who said he would get us a seat in a train to Kharagpur... We booked the tickets and almost rushed into the compartment our porter was leading to when Mom noticed that it was for the disabled.. Dad started protesting and we waited for the TTR and by giving him a handsome bribe, we got to travel in a A/C compartment. We got seats beside a boy and his father. We soon learned that he was also headed to IIT Kharagpur. His name was Anshul and he was coming from Chandigarh. {"So HE is my first acquaintance in IIT"} Dad and his dad started talking and soon we were talking about "what not"..... of course, most of it was Hindi and my mom and brother had a difficult time understanding it. But i don't think they got bored 'cause the scenery was breathtaking. All the fields and stuff were exactly like what we usually see in Kerala. I was amazed to find that there were so many similarities between West Bengal and Kerala...
As we got out of the station at Kharagpur (which is the longest railway station in the WORLD) by noon, we had a IIT provided bus waiting for us... I soon learned that Kharagpur got its name only for its IIT and railway station.. Most would say that they got a grand feeling when they entered IIT campus.. But i was feeling okay.. maybe a tad excited.. that's all...
As expected by us, my family didn't get a decent place to stay in and had to crowd around in my room for the night.. My roommate had already arrived from Gurgaon without his parents (which turned out to be good for us!!). That night we bought stuff like bucket, bed, SIM, etc. required for the room. Next day, I went through with the admission process which turned out chaotic with all the parents hovering over their children and giving advices.... [i think they would have given them advices 24/7 if they could..] My parents had the sense to stay away from the main procedure as much as possible... But of course, there were 2-3 calls asking what was going on... But everything went smoothly for me (or as smoothly as possible in india!)...
My parents got a plane to Kochi that night and i was surprised to see that mom didn't have much advices left for me at the end... (she had a lot when i went to Bangalore for IIT coaching 2 yrs back) Then i realised that my roommate wasn't being silent 'cause my parents were present.. It was 'cause, he WAS like that always!! Unless you ask him anything, he won't reply!! And by asking, i learned that he drinks and smokes too... Luckily he won't do that anytime soon.. 'cause its difficult to find alcohol and cigarettes here... and by the time he finds out, we will be in second yr and may change roommates by then...
We reached Howrah railway station with a pre-paid taxi from the airport. As soon as we got out, we were surrounded by porters.. Father finally agreed to a person who said he would get us a seat in a train to Kharagpur... We booked the tickets and almost rushed into the compartment our porter was leading to when Mom noticed that it was for the disabled.. Dad started protesting and we waited for the TTR and by giving him a handsome bribe, we got to travel in a A/C compartment. We got seats beside a boy and his father. We soon learned that he was also headed to IIT Kharagpur. His name was Anshul and he was coming from Chandigarh. {"So HE is my first acquaintance in IIT"} Dad and his dad started talking and soon we were talking about "what not"..... of course, most of it was Hindi and my mom and brother had a difficult time understanding it. But i don't think they got bored 'cause the scenery was breathtaking. All the fields and stuff were exactly like what we usually see in Kerala. I was amazed to find that there were so many similarities between West Bengal and Kerala...
As we got out of the station at Kharagpur (which is the longest railway station in the WORLD) by noon, we had a IIT provided bus waiting for us... I soon learned that Kharagpur got its name only for its IIT and railway station.. Most would say that they got a grand feeling when they entered IIT campus.. But i was feeling okay.. maybe a tad excited.. that's all...
As expected by us, my family didn't get a decent place to stay in and had to crowd around in my room for the night.. My roommate had already arrived from Gurgaon without his parents (which turned out to be good for us!!). That night we bought stuff like bucket, bed, SIM, etc. required for the room. Next day, I went through with the admission process which turned out chaotic with all the parents hovering over their children and giving advices.... [i think they would have given them advices 24/7 if they could..] My parents had the sense to stay away from the main procedure as much as possible... But of course, there were 2-3 calls asking what was going on... But everything went smoothly for me (or as smoothly as possible in india!)...
My parents got a plane to Kochi that night and i was surprised to see that mom didn't have much advices left for me at the end... (she had a lot when i went to Bangalore for IIT coaching 2 yrs back) Then i realised that my roommate wasn't being silent 'cause my parents were present.. It was 'cause, he WAS like that always!! Unless you ask him anything, he won't reply!! And by asking, i learned that he drinks and smokes too... Luckily he won't do that anytime soon.. 'cause its difficult to find alcohol and cigarettes here... and by the time he finds out, we will be in second yr and may change roommates by then...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)