Sunday, December 27, 2009

Je m'ennuie.

I'm bored. 私は退屈午前. Rwyf wedi diflasu.

So bored, took to translating it using google language tools. Apparently the last one is in Welsh. The first word has no vowels! Seriously, unless the whole first word is silent i don't get how anyone can pronounce that without getting their tongue sprained.

Today was dull. Aggie come back. Fast.

Finally found the XKCD strip i've been looking for. Took me more than 2 hours of clicking the random button but hey, it was totally worth it :)



Swanky new lounge Fiona opened bang in the middle of Dharampeth towers. Checked it out yesterday. Couldn't believe that all that designer interior could be located right between a store selling fake reebok shoes and one that sells American tourister suitcases. But the trip there is totally worth it. Striped, spotted and coloured marbles on the wall, booths with their own LCD TV screens and a ceiling that has wavy bits of muslin interspersed with blue lights make it kinda radical. Not something you can expect in Nagpur. Oh, and the cocktails are out of this world :)

Note to self: Get Lindt to cheer self up.

Saturday, December 5, 2009

Faith

"Follow me down to the valley below You know
Moonlight is bleeding from out of your soul"

Porcupine tree. *sigh* the people who gave us 'Lazarus' and songs titled 'Every home is wired'. And one day some twisted dude way up there decided that their concert was to be on the same day as our registration. College sucks all over again.

Was looking up old albums on the internet and I came across these





Now I finally know what I wanna be in life. A cover art designer for music albums. Someday you'll find my name in the back of a super-awesome CD cover in really tiny print. Someday. 'Cuz I gotta have Faith.

Sunday, September 27, 2009

To the moon and Back

They found water on the moon. I'm too filled with awe to say anything more.

Monday, September 14, 2009

National Instruments

Petrified. This is what i was before my first interview. What seems like ten thousand rounds later, I still don't know if I have the job.

Let me explain. The first company which came for placements was TCE. Without any prep, I was lost in the technical test.It being the preliminary elimination round, I was happily not shortlisted. Supremely unprepared for any sort of interview, I was unperturbed by the outcome. This should ideally have instilled some amount of fear in me so that I ready myself for the next company to knock on our college's door. Unfortunately, but not unexpectedly, it didn't.

The next company to arrive was NI. Intimidating and awesome. Sudeep, the badminton hero of the trical department came and gave us a seminar about the job and the company's products. Suave and sophisticated, he had completely transformed form a college 'stud'ent to a professional in just a matter of a month. Impressed, people bombarded him with queries about the selection process and the talk quickly degenrated into an informal discussion about how awesome it was to work at NI. The seminar opened with a Dilbert video, went on to clips of robots that UG students designed playing football and ended with another Dilbert video announcing how awesome it is to be an engineer. :)

That did it. I had this horrible urge to clear the interview and all the rounds which stood in my way. There was only one dark spot in the glorious picture in my head and try as i may, it seemed that my mental eraser made no difference how much ever muscle i put into erasing it. This blip was the CAT style aptitude test. With all the CAT aspirants oozing confidence, I was sure I was a goner but somehow, Lady Luck decided to give me a break and voila, my name was in the shortlist.

I was now in full panic mode. So much to do, so little time. I didn't have my file ready and neither did I have an extra copy of my resume. To top it all off, I had to prepare for a technical presentation. Hoping that nothing would go wrong, I ran from the internet cafe to the xerox shop to the reading room to the hostel till I was ready to explode. After some deep breaths, I calmed my hyperventilating self and waited in the TNP cell for my round of Group Discussion to commence.

Hoping against hope that I don't get a topic regarding some obscure branch of politics or the food habits of the Jingotaka tribe of Honolulu, I entered the room. Thankfully, the topic for the session was "Advertising is just a diplomatic way of telling a lie" and we, the generation brought up on extra sweet chocolate frosted sugar bombs and mindless television, were able to bullshit safely for the given 8 minutes.

It was nerve-racking waiting for the next shortlist, what with guys pacing about the hall like expectant fathers from an 80s movie. After it was announced, we had the technical presentation which went off smoothly, thanks to the fact that i knew my summer internship project like the back of my hand.

Having decided that ignorance is bliss, I decided not to prepare much for the interview. Anyway, how much electrical engineering can a person cram in one night?
I was scheduled to go in second, owing to the fact that me and Sachin Gupta(FYI, he is the tronix topper) had the OPJEMS exam in the afternoon. Sachin went in and I was all alone in the waiting room. The clock ticked away, and it was so unreal. All the companies which had come so far had interviews that generally lasted 15-10 minutes on an average, but this one seemed like it had no end in sight. I forced Piran to open his mouth and talk, just to prevent my mind from wandering into dangerous lines of thought.

After what seemed like an eternity, Sachin came out. His interview had lasted for about one and a half hours. My turn was next. I go in. After some brief clarifications regarding my resume, they begin by asking me the most difficult of all questions- "Describe yourself". After that, they ask me to make up a story on the spot because I had said i like to read and write. I stumbled through that by making up some vague story about the auto driver being a murderer-psycopath and how i escape his clutches to save the day.

Then came the technical part. One of the panel, a Mr. Sameer Nagpal, explained to me that a topic will be chosen(of which i will have absolutely no clue about), and they will help me figure out an answer. This was so that they could see how my well my thought process works or if I am just a well disguised robot which has no mind of it's own. A clever ploy on their part. Anyway, it was an interview like no other.

There has been and there will be none like it. If I didn't know something, they were almost happy about it, pointing me in the right direction so that I could figure it out. These were smart people. Very smart and super cool too. In what seemed like no time, it was almost 12 and i had to rush for my OPJEMS test, and they let me go after a couple of more questions. The interview was such that I couldn't gauge how well I had performed and i decided to put the thought out of my head. This is of course, after answering the question "How'd it go?" about two thousand times.

Was happily out in Sadar in the evening, just getting out of Reds, when i get a call asking me to come to the TNP cell asap. Reached there in casual clothes and a headache. An interminable wait later, they call me into the cabin and grill me for anther couple of hours. By the end of it, I was shivering with cold and nursing the worst headache I've had in a long while. When they told us that we'll be sent to Bangalore for more interviews, I didn't know whether to whoop in joy or to break my head on the nearest wall. The impression I got of the workplace was a fun filled atmosphere, with Pizzas and bean bags on Sunday nights and maddeningly full workload otherwise. Seemed to guaranteed awesomeness.

An unexpected interview over the phone happened yesterday. Flying to Bangalore hopefully this week. By the end of this week, I'll know one way or the other. Can't wait to meet more people at NI. Whatever happens, it's for sure gonna be a whole new world.

Monday, August 24, 2009

Travelogue-Calcutta




I love Calcutta. Even before entering the city, you can feel it. Travelling by train, your can see buildings dating back from the British period when the tax for cemented houses was so high that people preferred to keep the walls unplastered. The entire city smells of the colonial era. It's actually IN THE AIR. I mean, the city hasn't changed at all for God's sake. At least most of it. Still has tiny, narrow alleyways with so many buildings crowding it that I shudder to think what would happen in the event of the slightest tremor. Still has acrid smoke in the air and old, rusting signs that reek of English manipulation and broken down trams that will probably never be fixed. Ever.
It's the city of artists and philosophers and dreamers. Looking back, my first memory of Calcutta was playing with my cousins outside Victoria memorial and looking over the shoulders of hundreds of student artists trying to capture the image of exquisite Colonial architecture.
The last time I visited Calcutta, my cab driver treated us to early morning tea which we drank from teensy mud cups. Taking his time with his chai, he seemed to be in no hurry to get anywhere and gossiped away with us while he nursed his brew. Now, that is what I call leisure.
Though I'm just 19, I had this feeling of nostalgia. It was so weird. And beautiful.
I was just wishing that the city would never lose its flavor,it's culture, when I looked out the cab and noticed the change of scene. The glittering lights. The fancy cars on the road. The fashion conscious people. The brand new shiny malls. It was like any other metro again.
Not that I was complaining, mind you. I had my share of fun eating fries and pink ice cream and shopping, but it's just that the charm of the old city, Calcutta more than Kolkata that continues to make me dream.

P.S. The world's best golguppas are only available in the streets of Cal :)

JADED

A lot of weird things have been happening to me lately..It goes something like this..
First, the watch that was recently repaired breaks. The watch that took it's place(my brother's fast track) also decides suddenly to stop working. Then, after a couple of accident free weeks, much to my embarrassment, i fall off my bicycle. Later, the only pair of pants which fit me rips. I catch a cold right before my TOEFL(also known as 'the longest most boring exam ever') and hence I cough my way through the listening and speaking sections. Same day, my phone and calculator drown in a puddle and when i go to fix it, the shop is shut! I go to get my watch fixed and while it's being done, my bag's zip decided to come off in my hand. Add to all this the bag-repair fellow fixes it upside down..
Was i jinxed or was i JINXED?
If it was not for a bike riding office going superhero I might have just collapsed into a puddle of hysterical jelly.

Wednesday, July 29, 2009

Wishful thinking

Starlight, Star bright
The first star I see tonight
I wish I may, I wish I might
Have the wish I make tonight..

Been a week since fourth year officially started. Running around for registration and re-registration took up most of everyone's time leaving us with precious little mojo left. Add to that placement forms and the officials who disappear in the blink of an eye and you get one tired and irritated person.

Only good thing was Dominoes and books from the new 'digital' library. Good things happen to people who register early :)

It's Wednesday, meaning mid-week crisis. Life's a dull shade of gray. Need someone to colour me purple, pink, blue and green. Like maybe Bubbles in PPG.

Wednesday, July 15, 2009

Protected

Finally my laptop is safe from viruses, trojans , worms and the hundred gazillion types of things that can go wrong to Windows. Got Kaspersky a couple of days ago and my God, the things that can go wrong trying t instal it .

But turns out that the Kaspersky support group are warm friendly people and most importantly, are not malingerers, so I managed to get my problem fixed :D Way easier if i had adopted the tuxedoed penguin instead of Windows but the mere ordeal of having to adjust to a new environment gives me a big-sized headache. So Kaspersky it is..atleast till 17th July 2010.

Aggie, this means your lappy is gonna be safe come Monday. Or tuesday, whenever you get to college.

Wishing my life was protected from unwanted creeps too. But, can't complain because i don't have to bother with annoying-as-hell interupptions stating with a supercilious air that my key has been blacklisted. No more piracy.Arr..

Monday, July 13, 2009

GRE

Considering im giving this 'exam' in a few days i think its appropriate my first post is about it.


Revising from the infamous Barron's word list today. Though where I'm gonna use acidulous or acerbic when I can just say 'she/he/it sucks' is beyond me. But unfortunately for me I am going to have to undertake this torturous task of learning words and their meanings out of a book printed on the worst quality paper. paper so bad that you can practically see through it's gray thin sheets and God forbid if you use an gel or an ink pen, you will never see that page whole again.

Anyway, it's not like I didn't learn anything. Apparently abysmal means bottomless. Then what the hell is 'abysmal performance' supposed to mean??bottomless performance??i always assumed it meant hideous or something so bad that it looks, feels and smells like puke on your shirt.


P.S. To all those planning to give it in the near future a bit of advice...beg borrow or steal Kaplan..will do you guys a world of good.