A post on-the-fly

Let me get started with this post by firstly explaining why this post is named “A post on-the-fly”. In simple words, its named so because I am literally flying right now. I am writing this post while travelling from Bangalore to Delhi on seat no. 22-E of Flight No. 9W-812 of Jet Airways (sharing the flight details just to prove that I am actually flying, I could have asked someone to actually take a picture of mine writing had I got a camera with me).  So, just in case I write anything stupid in this post,  pardon me for that, considering that I am HIGH right now (literally !!!).

Before you start judging me I should better explain what forced me to write a post in an airplane. Am I so freaked out that I have nothing else to do in an airplane than to write a blog-post? It’s certainly not that this was my first choice of passing time, I tried involving in other activities but none worked. Somehow I forgot to save some movies or sitcom-episodes on my laptop from my hard-drive. The only movies I had were Hera-pheri and Garam-Masasala (featuring Akshay Kumar and John Abraham, NOT to be confused with some erotic B-grade) on my laptop, since I had watched them only a week ago (again, I had watched these movies atleast 10 times each), I was in no mood to watch them again. Then I switched to watching some technical-educational video which I had, but the man was blabbering in such a low voice that I was not able to understand even one word he uttered. When you are travelling in an airplane, there is something which happens to your ears and your hearing-ability reduces significantly. I am not sure what’s the exact reason behind this phenomena or what it is called as. I used to think that it’s because the atmospheric pressure is different at such a high altitude, but then somebody suggested that they do maintain appropriate pressures in the airplanes, so that could NOT be the reason. So, I am not sure, if someone reading this post knows why such an effect happens please do explain that in the comment section (or else I would figure it out sometime, Google is my friend).

Why did I not try sleeping? Hmm…that was a sound option, so I tried that too. But sadly there was some child travelling in the plane, who was crying in the highest pitch human ears, could hear. May be they should ban bringing children on the flight for the convenience of other passengers, or charge some extra bucks from them, and use that money to provide us with ear-buds. Or maybe they should start a separate service to courier “weeping kids”. Before you board a plane, you need to deposit your children at the children-counter (make sure you get your children tagged correctly, else they might get routed to some other flight). When you reach your destination airport, there your children are revolving on the children-belts waiting for you to collect them. It’s more easy for the parents and the co-passengers as well (a win-win situation and it should be fun). If some child-activist is reading my post right now, I am very much going straight to jail. Ok, so when all other option failed to satisfy my desire of having an enjoyable flight to Delhi, I thought fine let’s do something different, so I ended up writing this post.

Enough justifying why I am writing this post. Let’s talk something in general about airports and travelling in flights. Since the last year, I have travelled quite a lot in flights, and thankfully these travels have been funded by one company or the other. Rather this is the first flight where the entire expense is born by me, and I have spent fucking 12k bucks on it (another reason why I wanted to have enough fun in the flight because it was so damn expensive).

Anyways, I would admit that I am not really a fan of flying in airplanes. Let’s try to figure out the reason behind it. The first reason is certainly that you cannot see anything outside the windows. The first time I sat in a plane I was very excited about sitting on the window seat, but 10 minutes in the air, I realized you cannot watch a shit, there is nothing to watch, it’s like the same stale picture outside your window. On the contrary, It is a much better experience in trains where you could watch a lot outside your windows, the fields, the people waiting at the railway-crossings, people doing their regular stuff, the jungles, the long train journeys (which are especially fun if you have someone to talk to). I just love the train-rides.

I also hate the ultra-small room for you to sit, one could hardly move (the bastards are biased against economy class people). One other aspect which irritates me about the whole flying thing is the fucking high prices of the food in airports. Firstly, you do NOT allow carrying any food, then you delay flights, and then when a person is hungry, the only options you gave him is a plate of idli for 200 bucks (what are those silver idlis or something? Do you dip mix melted gold in the sambhar? ).  I also get irritated when they start to give the instructions before the take-off. No one listens to that; even if you do you can’t remember so much. They have a safety instruction guide kept and they actually expect people to read it. And yes, they also keep a sick-bag somewhere under the seat. I have no idea where it is kept, sometimes it’s under the seat, sometime in front.  What do they expect, when a person is having nausea, he should firstly solve the puzzle and figure out where the bag is kept? Btw the flight attendants making those actions accompanying the safety-instructions reminds me of my physical-education classes in school, where the entire class would line up, and start doing some dumb exercises (And we were even graded on that, ha dumb and dumberer).

Ok, I am done cribbing about air-travel. Now, let me share the fun part which I enjoy.  I like the part when the plane takes-off and when it hits the ground while landing. It’s like a free adventure-ride in a fun-park, but the sad part is the excitement is only for a minute or so. Sometimes I think that may be the airlines should try to make the whole flight experience a bit more thrilling. May be sometime they should shake the plane for no reason when in air, dive the plane all of a sudden, or maybe giving it sharp turns in the air. Sometime they may also try to enact a fake-hijacking attack; that would be some really cool stuff. Even the cabin-lights blinking like a disco-light would also make the whole travel much more exciting. Ah…they could also try carrying some freaky animals or reptiles in the plane to scare the shit out of people (Remember Snakes on a plane, it was a fun movie). 

And how can I forget this part, last but not the least, you get to see some really gorgeous women on airports (and I am not just talking about the cabin-crew staff). If luck is on your side, you might get a seat next to one of them, never ever happened to me though (once a beautiful woman was sitting next to me, turned out she was married).

Before I end up this post, let me try and compare the various domestic-flights I have travelled in. Some people might not be aware, but there are two sub-classes which comes under the economy class (for geeky fellas, inherits from the economy class). One is “Kingfisher-economy-class” and the other “pathetic-if-you-can’t-afford-kingfisher-economy class”. Kingfisher is just too awesome, free food, free TV, more leg-room, better looking air-hostesses (technically it’s not free since you end up paying a higher price than any other flights). I got a chance to travel in Kingfisher recently (It was a funded trip, just to clarify that I did NOT spend that much money myself). When I entered the cabin, I was greeted by some mail-attendant and I said to myself, “C’mon Mr. Mallya what is this? I thought you were a stud-guy, but this being greeted by a male-attendant is simply not acceptable”. Personally I do NOT like male-hosts (flight stewards as they are called officially), they simply does NOT fit in the job (I admit I am being a SEXIST here). Anyways, it seemed Mr. Mallya listened to my prayers, he suddenly appeared on my TV screen and he told me that he himself has selected each and every air-hostess on the plane, then  I saw some really angelic stewardesses, and I said “yes sir I believe you, you certainly did select them. Thank you for that, you are my hero”. He sent Yana Gupta as well on my TV screen to assure me of that. He also asked me to mail him in case I have any issues in the flight. His id was chairman@kingfisher.com. Oooh, I was being treated with importance here J Thumbs-up for Kingfisher !!

The captain of the plane has announced that they are landing in a while so I need to end this post now. But before I leave, let me just give you a brief overview of the “pathetic-if-you-can’t-afford-kingfisher-economy class” experience. Indigo is the cheapest (generally), they do NOT give you even H2O for free, and charge you fucking money just in case you feel the need for some food in the flight.  I have no issues with the Indigo cabin-crew though. Jet airways charges a bit more, but gives you food. Jet-lite charges more than Indigo, but do NOT provide food and I was NOT even impressed by the cabin-crew, waste of money.

It’s time to end now. Happy flying J

PS-   1) My vocab and selection of words is deteriorating, I should try to improve upon this. 

2) This post was written a few hours ago when I was in flight travelling from Bengaluru (don’t you dare call it Bangalore) to New Delhi (it’s NEW like a freshly baked caske) for Diwali vacation J

Excuse me....did I say that ???

Sleeping only a couple of hours for the last few days,  I was in no mood to write a new blog post anytime soon. But this post here - http://nsitonline.in/component/content/article/143-studentexperiences/395-vijit-singh.html acted as caffeine to me, I am got ready with my laptop to write a post. This post has made me thought that may be I should work on my telephonic-conversation skills, since there seems to be a large gap in b/w what I said and what the person at the other end understood. So, I thought of clarifying what I actually meant and answer the questions myself. More than making clarifications, I certainly want my juniors to remember me as a bastard senior who roamed around giving stupid and preposterous ( I am so sleepy, I had to consult a dictionary to spell the word correctly) suggestions to the juniors. Ok, so without harassing my sleepless soul more, let’s get straight to the point and start dissecting the questions one-by-one.

Q.What initiated the passion for coding in you?
This is the closest among all the answers to what  I actually meant. Well, yes AI challenge certainly was the time when I started to love developing softwares. I would NOT say that I love coding, I hardly code much, and I kinda suck at it. There is a subtle boundary b/w coding and developing softwares. Coding is just a part of it, but let’s not get into that.

The 2nd point mentioned here is also correct. I certainly owe a lot to my seniors. Manusheel, Deepank and Mohit, thanks for always being there to answer all my crazy doubts. For records, they do help me out every now and then even now.

Q. What preparations do you advice for various stages of placements?
Yes, initially to understand C and data-structures I did read Kanetkar books. But somehow this post (with kanetkar mentioned thrice) makes me look as if I am Kanetkar book seller or his cousin or something. Anyways, Kanetkar books are good only for the novice guys who are learning to code or understanding the basics. Even for them it makes no sense just reading the text, its important that you solve all the important questions mentioned at the back of each chapter ( I solved each and every question).

Let’s discuss some significant points regarding placements and interviews at this points. Most of them are mentioned in the post, but I just wanted them to be compiled.

1) Our syllabus sucks, that’s nothing new. But the important part is to realize that though most of the subjects are blood-suckers, there are some which are you should not neglect. You should always try to understand these subjects thoroughly while they are a part of your syllabus, so that while preparing for  preparations, you need NOT start from the scratch. Some of these subjects which I can recall now are -

- Data structures: Firstly do it from some basic book. There are many good ones in the market. Tenanbaum is good for getting deep understanding. Again the important part is that you solve the exercises mentioned after each chapter in the book.

- Algorithms: The course-makers have done the craziest thing by coupling Algorithms with Discrete mathematics. This is the greatest disregard possible to any subject. Algorithms is important. Cormen is BIBLE. Love it, and do it to whatever extent it is possible. Frankly, I really struggled understanding this book. I can NOT understand many of the sections written in the book, but reading the book certainly makes you good enough to crack any coding interview.

-OS: This has always been one of my favourite subjects, mainly because you could related it so closely to the real-time systems we deal with. Galvin is really good, you should try and finish the book atleast till chapters. If you aim to crack some biggie, knowing the basics of OS is inevitable (some junior who has cracked some biggie firm, without turning a single page of Galvin, would be showing his middle finger to me right now). Also, you should discuss the concepts you read in the book with your peer-groups, Galvin is a bit ambiguous at times. Discussion would help you clarify the concepts.

-Networking: Its important that you have some idea about how internet works et al before you go for placements. Believe me, it helps. Read Forouzan (or whatever is the exact name of the book).             

- Database : though these concepts are not asked extensively, but you are expected to be good at the basics, like normalization et al.

- Learn OOPS: Being in COE, they never thought OOPS would be of any help to us, so they never had a course on it. People do assume that knowing just C would do. But, knowledge of OOPS always helps in the way you approach the problem and the way you write the code. Its certainly an added-advantage, some firms would reject if you have no understanding of OOPS at all.

- Basics of Linux: You should use it atleast once in your entire span of college, and have some idea about how the basic commands work. No one asks it directly, but indirectly it helps.

2) It’s important to realize here that in my previous point, I do NOT mean that you should cram all these books. The significant point is to realize that you understand the concepts well, the means by which you do that does NOT matter. Try to discuss the concepts you have read with friends, search more on Internet, try to solve new problems, better create new problems.

3) Though I have not been a part of the formal placement process, so I am not the best guy to comment on this. But to the extent I understand the placement searson, it’s not just about testing your knowledge, but it’s equally about testing your patience. Jayesh has correctly mentioned in his post here - http://nsitonline.in/component/content/article/143-studentexperiences/405-jayesh-chaudhary.html that you should not get disappointed. You would see your people whom you thought were not as deserving, cracking the best of the jobs. But the important aspect would be not to loose hope, luck do matters at times in placements. But eventually you would be able to crack a company which matches your skill-sets. And it’s not just the placement season, lots and lots of people switch companies after college. there are plethora of off-campus opportunities out there. So, campus-placement is not the final fate.

4a) Code, code and code. Its very important that you are able to write the code glibly at the interview. The best way to ensure that is that you always practise to code. Participating in online competitions is a really good way to do that. Read mahesh’s post here - http://nsitonline.in/component/content/article/143-studentexperiences/406-mahesh-sharma.html

4b) Many peopel are not comfortable writing the codes on paper. Contrary to this, most companies ask you to write code on paper. Always start practising this one week before the company arrives.

4c) Always analyze what you write. No matter what code you write, you should always analyze its time and space complexities. Make it a habit. Also, always look for edge and corner cases. Companies always judge candidates based on these two aspects.

5) When in an interview, always try to involve your interviewer with you. Always speak your approach loudly, many a times they tend to help if you are moving in the right direction. Always remember if you bored your interviewer, chances are high you would be rejected. Be enthusiastic.

6) Maintain your grades. No matter whatever people say, they help, they always do. Try to score as much as possible along with being good at other fronts.

7) Always try to figure out what you want to ultimately do. this is the most difficult decision to make, but narrowing down the options you want to pursue always helps. As Akash has mentioned in his post - http://nsitonline.in/component/content/article/143-studentexperiences/399-akash-gangil.html , experiment as much in your initial years in college as possible. strike out the options which you did NOT enjoyed.

8a) The last year of college is one of the most important year, which you would always remember in life. The first half because of the placement season, and the second half because you would get a chance to relish a level of freedom which you have never done before.

8b) Do choose your BTP seriously, do NOT just do it for the sake of it. This is the best opportunity in which you could work on a field which you always wanted to explore, but never got a chance to do that.


Some other places where the post misses out:

1) You forgot to mention my internship at Microsoft :P Taking an industrial internship always, helps, try to do that.

2) somehow in the last section, it appears I was the most disappointed person when they banned ragging. But what I meant was that no ragging has led to less interaction between the seniors and the juniors. That implies that you need to make more efforts at your end, to get in contact with your seniors. Participate in fests, socities, that helps. Overwhelm your seniors with your doubts. Somehow NSIT lacks a formal mentorship program. if possible, such a program should be established, where one mentor should be some senior from college and one should be some alumni.

3) and for God's sake, I do NOT use this vijitthetopcoder@ everywhere now. My mail-id is vijitsingh89@gmail.com.

PS- Ignore the grammar and spelling mistakes. As they say "Bhaawnaaon ko samjho" !!

God Help Them !!

I am not exactly sure how should I go about writing this post. I have so many feelings to express but I could not find the appropriate words to pen them down. I am not sure what point I want to put forward through this post, so let us just assume that this post describes my views on one of the recent happenings in one part of the world, which has left me with an aching heart. Please bear with me if this post lacks a proper flow of ideas, it is going to be a random accumulation of my feelings and thoughts.

When I was in Class-10th, I read a chapter as part of our coursework, “The Ultimate Safari”. The chapter was a story about a young black Mozambican girl living with her grandmother and brother in a refugee camp. The story described how she lost her parents, how her village was burnt down by bandits, and how they were forced to flee to a refugee camp in order to save their lives. The way the author had narrated the story was extremely gripping, it used to make me cry and I just loved the story. But I always read it as a fictitious story. I used to assume that such a situation can never occur in reality in the recent times where everything around the world is so well organized. But my delusion was broken when I came across some of the recent happenings in Somalia and the harsh times people are facing there. In case you haven’t still guessed it, this post is going to be about the recent issues in Somalia. I by no means intend to propose solutions for the Somalia crisis in this post, I hardly know much about the issues, to suggest anything. This post is just going to express the views towards the Somali happenings from a lay-man’s perspective.

For those who abhors coming face-to-face with newspapers or news-channels, let me start with describing where Somalia lies in the world map. Well, Somalia is an African country and lies in the eastern-most part of Africa. It shares its borders with other countries like Kenya, Ethiopia and Djibouti. Somalia lacks a concrete government since 1991 and has been one of the most poorest and violent countries since then. Most of the southern parts of the country are controlled by the Islamist group Al-Shabab, which has been declared as a terrorist group owing to its connections with Al-Qaeda.

The conditions in this war-prone and poor country have further been worsened by the long-lasting drought in major parts of the country. There is hardly any food to eat or proper shelters to live. Millions of people have already died and even more are on the verge of death because of starvation. Parents are watching their children die and children are losing their parents every day. There are only meager hospitals around and even they lack proper equipments and medicines. Cholera and diarrhea are spreading like an epidemic. Most of the people are fleeing to refugee camps across the borders to save their lives. These camps are already over-crowded and living in horrid and stinky conditions.

The worst part is that this is not all. Had this been any other country of the world, there would have a hope of amelioration. But Somalis have yet to encounter their most terrible nightmares. UN has already declared famine in many regions of the country. Government and UN aid organizations are trying to help, but they are facing severely hard times because of the regions controlled by the Shabaab group. The leaders of the group are stubborn to accept that Somalia has been famine-hit and they are hostile against the aid agencies and their workers. People are also not allowed to leave the Shabab territory and most of them are living as prisoners. The group’s activities are turning Somalia’s famine into the worst humanitarian disasters mankind would ever face.

I always used to think the world has evolved as a great place to live as compared to ancient times. The world is advancing in every sector. We are all living in the most digitalized times, with the coolest of the gadgets, sophisticated vehicles. We are exploring the space, the moon and designing innovative colossal buildings and structures. Luxuries are being defined and redefined.  Sophisticated chips are being fabricated, super-computers are becoming more powerful and humane-like robots have hit the market. But the Somali crisis have made me ponder that all these advancements fail to serve their purpose if we could not save tens of thousands of fellow human beings from dying in the most unacceptable conditions. There were immense number of warnings issued by United Nations about the drought hitting Somalia, but still we failed to take the right measures to prevent or at least deal with it correctly. The countries around the world have the most advanced armies, highly sophisticated weapons, but we still fail to curb a small terrorist group from some remote part of the world. I wonder why US doesn’t play their Godfather role here and jumps to save the Somalis, as they faked to do in Afghanistan. May be because they cannot find any immediate political interest in the Somalia crisis. Anyways, we should let poor US deal with their own debt crisis firstly.

I think it is time for me to end this post, I need to take rest, need get up early tomorrow, lots of work to be done. Well, this sounds to me like an irony. When I am working towards improving the shopping experience of people living in one part of the world; there are millions of people in other part of the world who are dying of starvation. Makes me laugh at myself and the kind of work I am doing. But it also raises an important question in my mind, “Are we born equal?” What fault do these Somalis have apart from being born in part of the world which is poor?

The Somalia crisis calls for the powerful countries worldwide to get unified and provide Somalia with the military, monetary and medical aid that the country beseech at this time. All the constitutions of the world stand void, if we cannot provide all the people of the world the basic “Right to live”. I believe that we do not have the right to claim that “we are advancing” or at least to claim that “we are advancing in the right direction”, until we can ensure that each and every individual in any part of the world has an equal right to live and an equal opportunity to grow. If we still haven’t achieved this goal, then mankind certainly has a long journey to complete.

After reading Acts: 16:31 of Bible, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shall be saved, and thy home”, the only prayer I can do is that God, please help these people strengthen their faith in you.

PS- 1) Frankly I did not write this post as an appeal for people to donate money primarily because I am not sure how much that could help. But still if you feel like you could donate, then here is one of the sites I found - http://givethemshelter.org/donate .

2) My knowledge about Somalia and recent issues is demarcated by whatever little time I get to read newspapers and Internet news articles. It is by no means exhaustive and I really apologize if I have unknowingly shared a wrong fact in this post.

3) As always, pardon me for any grammatical or spelling mistakes. Drowsy I am.

The Quest for a Home !!

As I am writing this post, I am not sure what exactly I am going to write or how would the post turn out, but it should be something related to my experience with finding my house at Bangalore. I should refrain myself from calling it “my house” since I do not own the house, “rental apartment” is a more apt term. More than just sharing my experience, in this post I have tried to apprehend the experience of a “fresh-college graduate” in finding a rental apartment after moving to a new city. Those who have invested enough time in finding a house and faced the hardships, could relate with my experience in this post. However, for those lucky bastards who were able to bag a job offer in their local cities or those who believe in eating from other’s plate (those who move in with their friends, while these friends had made all the efforts in finding the home), my post should sound as a “ridiculous arrangement of random words”.

If you are a software engineer, or if you have joined a software related MNC, then I guess you must have stayed in the company’s accommodation for the first 15-20 days after you moved in the new city. There is an ubiquitous aspect about these “company-provided accommodations”, they are “fucking awesome”. They are way better than what a fresher could even think of affording right after college. Each time I firstly saw these accommodations (during the internship at Hyderabad and during my joining here in Bangalore), I was awe-struck. I would just stand for the first few minutes, looking at the awesome ambience of these rooms, for they were the most beautiful rooms I had ever seen in reality. Anyways, no matter how astonishing these “company-provided accommodations” are I have never been able to properly understand the company’s intention behind providing us with them. These companies spend a splendid sum of money for these accommodations (50k was my bill at hotel for 15 days. 50k = monthly rent of a person for atleast 7 months), only to make us realize, “Hey lad! this is what luxurious life looks like, and mind you pseudo-engineer, your life after these 15 days won’t be any close to this. Now, go enjoy in these 15 days whatever you can”. The situation is analogous to stuffing a goat with food before killing it for meat. A better approach could be to provide us with some mediocre stay for the first few days and helping us with the brokerage and finding a home with the remaining saved money. Anyways, I am no company-policy maker, so my suggestions don’t count.

So, after spending the first 2-3 days in the heaven-like place, I started to get the nightmares about where to move from here? What if I can’t find a place in these allotted 15 days, I would be on road. The foremost task before you start looking for a rental apartment is to find flat-mates. Generally, you end up with one person less or one person more than what you are looking for. For me,  I know one person (Puneet Kumar, the AI champ), and finalizing the third person was NO cake-walk. To some extent  I still don’t know who finally would be our final flat-mate. It’s a twisted story, I won’t get into that. The next task is to finalize your requirements. These requiremnts are generally hypothetical in nature, because finding a rental apartment satisfying all these needs and fitting in the budget is like finding “a needle in a haystick”. A senior of mine, Mr. Taneja (MT as he is well known as) is an exception to this rule, for he found a 2 BHK in the best locality in Banglore (Indranagar) at the cheapest prices I have heard of (12k).

Anyways, once you have finalized your requirements, the real game starts. The rules for the game are simple, (1) Find a reliable broker. (2) explain him the requirements. (3) go searching for houses from place-to-place. (4) get disappointed to find out there are no apartments matching your requirements. (5) lower your requirements or higher your budget. (6) meet with the owner. (6) apply your best tactics to negotiate with the owner. (7) pay the rent and absurdly huge security money to the owner. (8) pay the broker, more negotiations. (9) look for beddings at the cheapest rates. (10) find a cook, a maid, arrangements for cooking, ah! and it’s a never ending game.

There are two important aspects of this game, especially if Bangalore is your play-ground. First, you are already half-lost, if you are bachelor. Bangalore apartment owners (like Pakistani umpires~try figuring out the analogy on your own), seem to be highly biased against bachelors. If you are a bachelor and you are looking for a home in Bangalore, then you are committing the highest possible crime. The look they give you when you tell them you are a bachelor makes you feel as if you have molested their kids. I wonder if they are promoting “live-in relationships”, but whatever, I had to forfeit some of the best rental apartments found, as a consequence of being unmarried. The Second unique aspect about this game is the continuous “peer-pressure”. Unlike in other areas of life, where people envy you for “how much you can spend”, in the game of “Who finds the cheapest house”, people envy you “for how less you are spending on an apartment”. You become a matter of social disgrace and mockery if you have rented a home at a higher price than what your peers or friends have rented in a nearby locality. So, you would reject an otherwise perfect apartment, which was well affordable and suited your requirements, just for the sake of renting a cheaper house than your peers. The problem is similar to a travelling-salesman problem only that here, there are many salesmen who are looking for the optimized routes, and you certainly do not end up being the longest-route-finder.

I must admit that the last 2 weeks had been really strange for me. I have lived the life of an estate agent (sometimes I believed if I had come here for working as an engineer or for a training as an estate agent), a lawyer (I rewrote on my own large sections of my legal lease agreement), a deal-maker ( you need to negotiate and bargain with every damn person, be it the owner, the broker or any damn shopkeeper). And as I am sitting here in my newly-rented apartment, may be it’s time to finally play a Software Engineer (after all that is my bread-and-butter-and-jam).

PS - I know there are grammatical errors in this post, kindly ignore them. After hopping from shops-to-shops to buy beddings, I have no more energy left to re-read the post. This reminds me I still need to buy bed-sheets, huh!!!

Adieu Theory exams : My experience with writing exams.

I am so very excited while writing this post. Finally, I am done with the theory exams (or better lame engineering theory exams). I just hated them, loathe, abhor or whichever synonym of “hate” is out there in this universe. I have a problem, I am terribly bad in anything I don’t enjoy doing. And I have never been delighted while writing these exams. No wonder, my grades very well reflected that.

Anyways, I was not always like this. There was a time when I was really good at cramming stuff and used to be very excited preparing for the exams and attempting them. But that was way back till the high school or may be till the 1st semester. Things started to change in second semester when electronics came into picture. To be frank, electronics has always haunted me more than any other subject. Primarily, because the books we studied sucked big time, and we were never assigned any teacher from the EC department, it always used to be some irritating person trying to fake teaching (teachers like them…..I can’t remember their names should be put behind the bars). Anyways, understanding the subject always used to be boiled down to reading the book a few days before the exam and trying out some questions from previous year papers. This scheme used to work for my batchmates, but I don’t know why it never worked for me. I would cram the electronics concepts but would never be able to understand their significance. And hence I found it very difficult solving problems with a slightly new perspective during the exams. I tried adopting various methods to understand electronics, but all were in vain. And then we were stacked with more electronics in third semester, and since my basic concepts were weak, I started to find it difficult to cope up with it. Though I was able to score kind of decent marks, but I started to feel frustrated for not being able to solve the complete paper.

And it was at this point, that I started to loose interest in theory papers. Though in later semesters they introduced some computer subjects as well (though only for the sake that we were enrolled in computer science course- I mean where in the hell do they teach algorithms along with digital mathematics, that too with a teacher like “Ms. Serial Kisser”). Anyways, by the time computers were introduced, I had lost all interest in writing exams. I find it really difficult to do things just for the sake of doing them.

Another reason for me abhorring exams was my “super fast and super phadoo handwriting”. Some of the compliments which I have got from teachers on my handwriting are, “Was there an earthquake when you were writing the paper?”;  “were you ill when you gave the paper” and “I cannot understand any word you have written”. Had I had a scanner now, I would have surely uploaded some piece of my writing. My writing is legible in normal times ( it’s never good though) but it deteriorates exponentially with the speed. So, when it comes to writing in an exam, it’s no more good than “pieces of unreadable alphabets put together”. This was the time when I only used to code and hardly used to write anything in between the exams.  So, writing in exams used to be a tough call, more like a toddler making an effort to write for the first time.

So, in around fourth semester, I was too frustrated with these exams. I just stopped believing in them. Giving exams was a very dreadful task for me. I must admit that preparing for theory exams and writing them around this time was one of the worst times I had faced in life. It was very difficult for me to study for these exams, since I had no motivation whatsoever. I would just sit in the exam-room thinking I had to again go back and prepare for the other exam. Those 3 hours used to be so daunting for me, I would gaze at other people and find they were writing with so enthusiasm as if this was their last chance to write. Each time a person would go and take a supplementary, I used to get more frustrated thinking how can he/she fill sheets so fast, when for me filling each page was a burden. Ah...that was bad, bad time, that’s why I am so elated today.

Anyways, things had improved since the 7th semester. Primarily because of two reasons. First, there were more computers to read as coursework, which I loved (of course barring Expert Systems). Networking I just loved, Forouzan is certainly the best book I have read in my entire college life. Second, I have started making notes for almost everything I read. Note-making is a wonderful habit, helps a lot. This was something I learnt from SushyB and Sakloo (They learnt it at Vidyamandir, shit, they never taught any such cool things in Fiitjee). Since I was writing now throughout the semester and the holidays, writing exams was not such a mammoth task.

Anyways, so though I am left with a not-so-great percentage and some really bad memories (how can I forget 40 marks in Microprocessor and 48 in Power Electronics), but I am very ecstatic that the theory exams are finally over (Read postscripts :P).

PS- 1) Juniors will not like this post.
2) Intrinsic assumptions are that I will pass all the exams with awaited results. And if I decide to go for higher studies, the subjects would be much more interesting and hence I would enjoy attempting exams.

And so dies Mr. Obama, oops Mr. Osama. Now what ???

After almost 10 years, 2 wars, many many lives, billions of dollars and a plethora of political drama, Mr. Osama is finally dead. Was the life of one person worth such investment? Well, I won’t discuss this shit here, who am I to make this decision, let the media and the leaders fight over this issue. I would just try to describe the situation from a common man’s perspective or rather from my perspective, the changes I have observed since yesterday. As I have been ill since yesterday and haven’t gone out, so all the news I have got is through TV (Idiot box as they call it), radio (yes, I listen to it sometimes), Internet (I am always online here) and a few telephonic conversations with my friends.

            Ohk, so the first question which pop up in a lay person's mind is, so am I any safer now? No silly, certainly not. Though America might picturize the whole situation as if they have uprooted terrorism, it’s completely fake. First, I heavily doubt if a 54 year old man in deteriorated-health conditions and nowhere to go would be involved in planning any terror attacks. Second, instead of mitigating terrorist activities, this incident might have just sent vibes of vengeance among the terrorist groups. This doesn’t mean that I oppose Osama’s death, but the reality is that it might just result into sudden rage among terrorists. Anyways, “My name is Vijit, and I am not a terrorist”, so am not sure how they would respond, but yes I am certain that they won’t get any terrified (though I wish they should).

            Anyways, so I was notified of the incident early morning through the radio tuned to 98.3. My reaction as I was trying to brush my teeth, pressurising open my brain, “Oh yeah, Osama, oh was he still alive?? so he is dead...hmm... but does that mean today is a national holiday?? no. then I need still need to go to college.” When I came to some senses, the first question I thought of was how did they confirm it was him, there were so many cloned-Obamas running around, how was the confirmation made. Later, I read somewhere or someone told me (I couldn’t recall- thanks to the medicines), that they did made the DNA testing for the confirmation. Still I coudn’t buy this reason, primarily because when did they catch him earlier to get his DNA at the first place. Also, I guess they have buried him in some sea/river soon after his death, so is DNA testing such a fast process, I am not aware of it and I don’t even plan to research into it.

            The funny incident took place in the evening, when I called one of my friend and he wished me “Congrats”. I got excited and started wondering, what have I done which I am even not aware of. All my excitment was brought down to shackles, when he told the wishes were related to DEAD Mr. Osama. “Fuck You”, I already knew this, you pumped up an ill person for no reason. Anyways, in the night I called another of my friend, and thinking wishing on Osama’s death is the trend of the day, as soon as he picked up the phone, I wished him “Congrats”. Though he didn’t get much excited, but I became very furious when he said, “Who is Osama??” WTF man, is there anyone around who doesn’t know Sir Osama. People might not know who our President is, but everyone knows Osama here, but this dude was different. Anyways, after making much efforts to make him recall about 9/11 and stuff, he finally recalled who Mr. Osama was (10 years, duh !!!).

            That was my outlook, now let us see how the world is perceiving the whole incident. Well, first of all its gold raining for news channels, they are making the most of this incident. “The Royal Wedding” has now been replaced by “The Royal Death”. Channels are busy in making their own pathetic stories showing how Osama was killed, where was he killed, what was he doing when they killed him, what bed he used to sleep on, which medicines he used to eat, which company sleepers he used to wear. I wonder if the US forces had called the channels to shoot this all up before they started the mission. And channels like IndiaTV, the way they show their news, I wonder if someday I would end up breaking my TV set.

            Well, similar are the situation in the political world as well. They have got the chance to play their favorite game, “The Blame Game”. Pakistan is busy trying to prove that they were not aware of Osama’s residence in Pakistan and that the whole incident was unofficial and unethical (how does that matter thought??). US is busy showing that they finished this operation all alone with no help from any other country. Also, this would certainly boost up Mr. Obama’s chance of coming back to power in the next term. He surely must be very excited (One of the post related to Obama’s excitement I found on Internet, “I would have been terrified had I been Ms. Michelle Obama’s *****” .India I believe is not very sure about its response. Mr. Singh must be wondering if he should wish Pakistan officials or not. Probably, Ms. Gandhi might help him take some decision. And I am waiting for the opposition to put some allegations on the UPA government, though I wonder what it would be, but opposition leaders are sharp, let there be happen any incident around the world, and they would make up a very apt allegation against the government and then this ultimately result into a halted session (well I would discuss Indian government sometime later).

            Osama has died. But his death has surely left many unanswered questions behind him. Many days of crispy news material, media has found. And countries and politicians have found a lot to fight over. For me, I have got my software engineering assignment to finish for tomorrow, so I would rest my post here.

PS- 1) I haven’t read today’s newspaper which I should have read before writing this post.

2) I haven’t re-read the post since I have stuff to finish before sleep. So, I am not very sure what exactly have I written. Please ignore any mistakes. And the formatting sucks as well.

3) I am not drunk.

Disclaimer- I didn’t mean to hurt anyone’s sentiments through this post. If someone is too emotional about the 9/11 or Osama’s death and find my post to be oppressive or abusive, then I heartily apologize. 

Save ELECTRICITY, whenever you can !!!

Before you commence reading this post, I would suggest a small exercise which would get you in the same mood as I am while writing this post. Switch off the fan/AC of the room you are sitting in while reading this post. Turn off the lights. If you are on your laptop and your battery is fucked up like mine, then switch off the power supply and try reading the post, before your battery drains out. If you are on a desktop, switch off the power supply and start listening to those irritating UPS sounds. How does it feel ? I bet its not a serene feeling. If you are indeed following this activity, then for the next few moments you would be experiencing the life me and many many others have been living in summers. Now, lets get started with the post.

I reside in Ghaziabad and like everyone else would admit that I unconditionally love my city. So, all those who ask me why don’t I stay much in hostel, this is certainly one of the reasons that I like spending time here. Summers had always been more enjoyable at my place until 2 years back  in 2009 when we started to face acute power shortages. I still very well remember those summers, I was supposed to complete a project in 20 days and we used to get electricity only for 8-10 hours daily. I used to sit in front of my laptop, with fan and lights turned off to save Inverter power . Didn’t use to listen to music to save my laptop’s battery. That was certainly one of the worst times I had faced in life. Every year I feel that the conditions would improve, but the conditions have only worsened since then. Now the power-cuts are much longer, more erratic and the appliances would hardly work with the voltage they supply.

Anyways, the purpose of this post is not to discuss my personal woes, I still believe we are the better-offs, we have got inverters/generators as our saviour. The conditions are more wretched for the lower classes of society, especially the lower-middle class and the lower class who could not afford alternate sources of power (And what about the people below poverty line? Ha...they hardly have homes to live, but let’s not get into poverty here). Electricity I believe have become one of the basic necessities of life, sadly there are large sections of the society who are still deprived of this facility. As SunnyD would have said here, “Power Cuts pe Power Cuts, Power Cuts pe Power Cuts, yahee toh miltee aaye hai humein, nahin millee toh 1 ghante ki bhi bijlee” or SRK would have said, “ek ghante ki bijlee ki keemat, tum kya jaano babujee” (In case you didn’t understand the context of the dialogues, please skip).

Anyways, these experiences have made me understand that one does not understand the importance of things one possess (“Ghar ki murgee daal barabar”- couldn’t recall the appropriate english version). Take it or not, all of us end up wasting a lot of electricity, I myself never realized its importance. But after my recent experiences, I have become cautious regarding my usage of electricity.

In case you are still wondering, why the heck have I written this post, so let me reveal that the purpose of this post is to discuss some measures we could take in our day-to-day life to save electricity. I bet we all are well-aware of them, but somehow they always shift beyond our conscious mind. So, here they goes:

• Turn off fans and lights or any other electric appliances when not in use- Some people wonder, whoa, that’s so basic, who leaves them switched on. But is this really true??? Believe me, I find a lot of fans/lights switched on in classes and hostel rooms. Try to develop the habit of turning them off before leaving. Also, if you find them switched in any classes, please make some efforts to switch them off.
• Switch off appliances in your home when not in use- I wonder if we could be omnipresent and could use all the appliances in all the rooms at once, atleast the way I have found people using appliances in their homes, it makes me feel that they believe in omnipresence. In many of my relatives’ and friends’ places, I was surprised to see that they keep fans, lights, TV in all their rooms switched on. When I confronted them and asked why, they replied, that they never noticed. That’s why I made an explicit point here, instead of merging it with the first point, so that you dont’ leave them unnnoticed.
• Turn off your computer monitor when not in use- Many a times, we use our computers just to listen songs or sometimes we leave leave our workplace when the computers are executing some task. In such situations, you should consider switching off your monitors.
• Use Air-conditioners optimally- We should realize that ACs should be used for the purpose of cooling, not for freezing. One of the studies I read mentioned that 23-24 degrees is the optimal temperature for Indian urban homes.
• Use fluorescent lamps wherever possible- Try using fluorescent lamps instead of bulbs whenever you can. I don’t have the exact statistics, but they save a lot of power in comparison with their yellowish-counterparts.
• Be wise in following the above advice- I have just made some suggestions, but you need to be WISE while following them. For example, if you are leaving your room for a minute or less, then switching off appliances and switching them on would consume more energy, then keeping them switched on for these very short spans.
• Spread the word- Share this knowledge with your friends, family and relatives. Try to explain them them various ways to save power. WARNING- Some of them might start considering you paranoid but atleast a few would understand. Also, if you know of other ways to save power, do share them in the comments.

PS- For those who did follow the activity I mentioned in the beginning, they must have realized the agony. And as I continue to work in similar situations, you could turn on your fan/light/AC/power-plugs :)