Summers (China, JNC), back to KGP, MS, OP, Recruitment, IC & midsems

Life IS hectic. When you start living it fully, it is rarely that you get a chance to document it. But when you do, the memories you recollect makes it yet another great experience!

At the start of the summers, I was sure I would get bored at some point of time. But AIESEC always surprises you. The internship I went through in Shanghai taught me a lot of things. My job role was to teach English and basic information about the environment and the World Expo that was happening there. I was working under the project "Hands on Expo, Hands on Love!" The fact that I got to experience Chinese culture along with personal development in Shanghai, Suzhou and Beijing is in many ways thanks to the AIESEC team there - Mango and Cami from AIESEC in Fudan University were very helpful :)

I visited a lot of place in and around Shanghai. You can always have a look through of some of the pics in my Flickr album - www.flickr.com/photos/theworldendstoday/. Living a Chinese lifestyle with other interns from around the world - Malaysia, Poland, Mexico, Indonesia, Russia - was a humbling experience. Of course, the fact that all of them were girls did help in the overall greatness of the experience.

Four weeks into the internship, I got news that the most awaited national conference of India is coming up a week prior to my ETD (does that exist? Expected time of departure.) from Shanghai. So, I cut short my trip and went directly to Silvassa near Mumbai for another great experience! Our Local Chapter in IIT Kharagpur won the prize for Best Virtual Platform Utilization. Since, I was also a part of the team that brought it for IIT Kharagpur, I was overwhelmed with joy! And of course, I made a lot of friends there. It is when we interact with others that we get to really know the extent of our achievements and shortcomings. When we see that youth across the country is working towards the same goal of creating experiences, your zeal to work increases automatically.

Some other things I did which may be noteworthy of mention :

• I went back to Mom (she would have come to kgp and killed me if I didn't) and bro. Their stay in Chennai was getting more settled which I noticed after Mom started going out to the city ON HER OWN!!! 
• I met a good friend from Bangalore - Mohsin who seemed horrified that he's now living in Chennai and studying in Trivandrum. 
• My results came out too. Ya, I had passed but my marks were, to the horror of my parents (mind you, only my parents), one of the lowest in my batch. 

BACK TO KGP!

Megnad Saha Hall of Residence

I wasn't sure what I was expecting but my flight back to Kolkata and the road trip to Kharagpur filled me with excitement of the year to come. It gave me a feeling of belonging when I saw the gate and the building that will play a major role in my future. But I guess that was just me forgetting what was in store for me. You see, classes hadn't started. Nor had the famous OP or Orientation Programme. I had known that my new hall of residence was gonna be Meghnad Saha Hall of Residence and I was sarcastic of the general notion that you will develop an attachment for the hall if you are in a senior hall and that your hall mates will be your best friends. But then, I hadn't gone through OP. OP started and soon, MS became a term that will be engraved on my grave. Classes started too, but I soon learned that classes are not really the one thing that holds a KGPian to KGP. Hall activities and Societies, and of course, LAN, is what gives the KGPian, the KGP feel. That was what I was missing in my holidays. I can't believe that I missed KGP in the 2.5 months I was away. No wonder, seniors cry at convocation. (I never really understood why, before) But hey, I'm only 1 year down the road. What would I know?! Even hardened KGPians (dual degree) cannot say with complete confidence that they know KGP. 

The Entire LC at Information Seminar

For me though, AIESEC will always be an integral part of my life in KGP.  I firmly believe in its ideals and want it to succeed in KGP. That was one of the reasons of my involvement in the Organizing Committee of the recruitment process in July/August. And man, was that a great experience! It was my turn to implement my belief that a member who believes in AIESEC will work for it. Time to transfer the "tempo". And we did. We organized the best recruitments ever in any society's history in Kharagpur. It was fun to give "fundae" to juniors who had no idea about KGP. I was wonderstruck at how ignorant of KGP I was when I first came here. But at the end, I am proud to have got such enthusiastic new recruits into AIESEC.

Classes included 2 department courses and 4 other courses. The good thing was that we didn't have any labs and thus most of our afternoons were free of classes. But then, that is also a bane. Cuz, then we have 6 exams to deal with at the end.

After another few weeks of class came the International Congress 2010 which I wanted to attend so badly. One of the reasons was that we were conducting it in India for only the second time! I got selected as the Organizing Committee member of one of the events along with Ankit Jain - India Night and I got the opportunity to present Indian culture to the delegates which consisted of member from 107 countries! Since,  we had one a nation-wide campaign by AIESEC India, we also got the chance to send 10 other delegates. It was a once in a lifetime opportunity and we took it!

No, those aren't KGP girls. How can they be??

And of course, then came the next round of exams as promised by IIT KGP. Mid Sems were around the corner and we started the strenuous task of trying to study what we didn't for the last 2 months in 2 weeks. Admittedly, I did better especially due to the threat from my parents of allowing no other activity (read AIESEC) if I didn't maintain an agreeable mark range. (my grade point had dropped to 7.16)

So overall, I couldn't have hoped for a better 8 months. (Or maybe if I had gone as OC for NLDS 2010 which is going on now)

Thank you 2010!

<-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.