Learning the System

The Male Chauvinist

2010-02-27T10:36:00.002-12:00

male chauvinist
n.
A man whose behaviour and attitude toward women indicate a belief that they are innately inferior to men

Through 4 years of my engineering degree, I don’t know why, but I had the image of a male chauvinist, atleast for some! Some of my friends thought I was one of those and I didn’t bother explaining! – to put it in short.

3 years after, one fine afternoon at Pool meadow bus station, Coventry. I was walking towards the stand for my uni bus when a pretty girl, who seemed to be lost, approached me for help. “Could you please let me use your phone?” I think I handed her my phone even before my mind started decoding what she had said! She called her boyfriend, asked him to come and pick her and thanked me as if I just saved her life – “I am so grateful, you are my guardian angel!!”

Another afternoon at the same bus station [there is only one at Coventry, in case you are thinking why I am always wandering around the bus stations].. I was just re assessing my financial state, sticking my hand deep into my wallet, realizing I had just enough for 1 meal at McDonalds when another lady approached me. I could tell it was vodka from the smell, or lack of it. “Do you have 50pence? I m short of 50p for the bus ticket” I knew I hadn’t. But I had 20p as change, which I offered. She said “Are you sure you don’t have a pound?”. I gave her the 20p and said that’s all I have. She took it and didn’t even thank me. Quite rude, I thought.

The list of incidents goes on.. a lady raising funds for iskcon temple, one representing cancer research UK, 2 pretty ladies at the club with a bucket for helping the people of Palestine.. and on and on! This fund raising activity by the ‘weaker’(or stronger??) sex quickly became a major drain on my finances and I don’t carry any paper money anymore when I go out! I met the vodka girl again at the railway station and I had to literally run away! Now, I know that I would never give my phone or even a penny for that matter to a fat beer drinking middle aged homeless guy. It’s the women!! Its them!! :-O

I always knew I was not a MC, but the conspiracy is, how did these ladies know?!!

A Good Year

2009-12-19T11:48:00.001-12:00

A Good Year - It is a nice Russell Crowe movie. Why am I talking movies today? Well, I want to pick out one small scene from that movie and relate to what I am going through now. Max Skinner (Russell Crowe) tries to impress a French lady by helping her out with her waitress duties at a small restaurant. She is not sure as she thinks Max might break the glasses. He reassures her saying: “Don’t worry darling, I have served as a waiter at some of London’s finest restaurants when I was a student”.

Well, I have absolutely no intention to compare myself with Russell Crowe. However, this scene, along with the money, is an inspiration for me to work at a restaurant here. It is an Asian restaurant which offers buffet lunch and dinner with what it claims as authentic Indian dishes. It actually means, the dishes are tailored with less spices, so that the locals don’t go red on eating them! But it is hard work fellas! My job title says waiter, but I am doing all sorts of work possible at the restaurant and then, I am not paid the legal minimum wage of £5.85 per hour as well! Desi shop owners here are known for their ‘kanchoosi’ when it comes to paying wages.

All other waiting staff are really pretty girls, Romanian and Bulgarian(which is ofcourse another inspiration for me to work there :P). Initially I was wondering why the owner should let me work there as the only male waiting staff. Then, I realized that he wants me to do all the physical stuff, running all over the place, taking used plates to the kitchen, filling up cutleries etc. However, last Friday I earned my first Great Britain Pounds – a £20 bill and no price for guessing where I went – straight to the nearest club! :) Fosters never tasted better! Ones bought with Punjab National Bank’s money used to taste a little different?!

Coming back to the movie scene, am I telling you that now I have what it takes to impress a waitress anywhere in UK?? Naa.. the point is, I have done one more thing in life, to look back after years when I earn a lot of money like Max Skinner :)

The South Indian Guy!

2009-12-14T23:40:00.003-12:00

I am useless. I don’t have any work here and still I can’t find time to update my blog! My vacation has started and the realization that I will be even more jobless for 1 month has eventually lead to this blog.

As Ameeth had commented, there are a lot of chinkees here… believe me, a lot! I have 3 in my course group of 6 people. They are really nice and they sort of have this respect towards our ability to handle English better! And just like Russell Peters mimics the Chinese, they keep asking “How do you say ‘hello’ in Indian?”!! I often try to explain to them that ‘Indian’ is not a language, and that we have 21 official languages and 29 states and counting(thanks to the latest one).. But this discussion often ends at “OMG, that’s it. That’s too much information for 1 country”! Most people have this notion of learning about a country one by one, language, appearance, food, clothing etc. But when it comes to India, its way beyond their scope of understanding! And most of them give up! And I guess those who don’t, fly in as tourists. By the way, I have to admit, the hottest chicks are the Greeks!

However, what I want to write in this blog has got nothing to do with Chinese or Greeks. Still I think it might be interesting reading. Me and couple of other mallus here have formed the Coventry Club Goers Association. We know exactly which club to go each day for the best crowd and cheapest drinks. For example, Monday night inside University Copper rooms is 1 pound for entry and 1 pound for BEER(FYI, 1 pound for a pint is insanely cheap in UK). This would be essentially be a student crowd whereas the weekend nights at another place called Lava would be a much older crowd. However, once these people start drinking, there is not much of a difference between the two! Why do we go to all these places? Well, the answer is simple – to ‘socialize’!

And one such day, or night rather, I was at Lava, sitting on a sofa. There were 2 girls drunk like skunks dancing in front of me. One African guy who was sitting next to me called me and said: “Dude, 2 girls yeah… lets go for them”. Though I didn’t know him, I knew it is normal here, to ask for company to go and hit girls if they are more in number and I am told it will increase the chances of success(Adding ‘yeah’ after every other word, I learnt, is the easiest way to fake British accent!). I politely told him that they were not alone and there was a huge guy a little far away from them. This huge guy, I noticed, was holding ladies’ high heels and girlish bags, and he was looking at the girls as well. It doesn’t take a MIT geek to figure out that this guy should be their body guard or someone. However, I had to spent some time(shouting coz of the loud music) to convince the African that its not a great idea to go for them then. I was successful though, as the African agreed to my point. But then, he looked at me and asked, “Are you from South India?” I was surprised and asked him how he guessed my origins so precisely. “You are intelligent. I have heard that people from South India are intelligent and good with numbers and computers”!!

It is interesting, isn’t it? how people form opinions from what they hear about people from other countries. Maybe the African is right. I have applied intelligence, numbers and computers several times at work to solve and cover up issues. And I was never recognized in my company, let alone ‘South India’! Here, in this country, a simple observation earned me recognition! Maybe I had too many intelligent guys at work, always looking for chances to step over me and go higher up the ladder. And after all the interaction I had with my classmates, I have come to this conclusion that, if there were not thousands of legal restrictions for people like me to work here(visa and otherwise), every job here would be filled in by folks like me. And that, I now know, is precisely the reason for all the restrictions put in by the border agency. As it has turned out, finding a job for students like me, is like a 100 meter sprint with a curved starting line. Starting from behind, we have to cover more distance inside the same amount of time!

The UK Adventure

2009-10-13T01:46:00.002-12:00

I am going to do the daring task of apologising to people for not keeping in touch after I flew from Calicut. Sorry folks! And in my defence I would say I didn’t have a permanent phone line and an internet connection yet all this while. Which is why I have been thinking of writing something down about this whole UK adventure in my blog, and so here I go.

London Heathrow:

I arrived in the 2^nd busiest airport in the world on 1^st Oct. There was a big queue in front of the immigration counter. As my turn came, I realized that I didn’t have the funding proof (loan letter) with me. But I survived the scare as they didn’t ask for it. Will I ever learn?? I took the bus from London to Nottingham where I was supposed to meet my brother in law. Jet lag, hunger, head ache and sleepiness were compelling me to close my eyes as I sat in the bus. But the beauty of London did not allow me to! Picture perfect! We could take random snaps at every 2 miles and each of them would be brilliant wallpapers!

The Great Chennai rush!

After spending a day with my brother in law, I was waiting for the bus to Coventry at Broad Marsh bus station in Nottingham. I had a fairly large luggage with me to be loaded onto the bus. As the bus came, I tried to work my way to the luggage section with all my 3 bags, so that the driver can load them onto the racks. As I did that, I think I brushed the hands of 2 black men and one of them was so annoyed that he shouted at me “Whats the matter with you man? The whole bus yours!”. Yeah right.. I wish I could take those 2 guys to Chennai so that I could show them the Great Chennai rush!! J The first thing I noticed about this place, is the amount of personal space each individual possesses. You are supposed to apologise if you come even remotely close to a person!

Everything for a price

As soon as I reached Coventry, me and my roommate started house hunting. We checked out the city centre in between only to learn that you will get anything here for a price. Taxi will cost you atleast 5-8 pounds and minimum charge in bus is 1.2 pounds . 1L Beer for 2 pounds was a welcome sight atleast for me. One should really come here as a working professional or a tourist with lots of pounds to spend. Instead, I have come here as a student with lots of pounds to shed!! Yes, I am sure to shed some pounds as I walked almost 15km on our first day doing house hunting!

The Warwick Business School

We managed to get a temporary place to stay inside the university for a few days thus buying ourselves more time for house hunting. First day at WBS was awesome! We realized that the ‘Mallu teashop in moon’ story could actually be true as we learnt that there are 6 mallus in an international class of 65! Besides, we have people from Spain, Nigeria, USA, Azerbaijan, Greece, Cyprus, etc and ofcourse the Brits and the Asians to form a truly international community. I might join the football team for our class with Antonio Medina, Serik Akimgerev and co for the University 5-a-side league! Honestly, I am way out of my comfort zone. But I like it. If I was missing something at my work in Chennai, It was probably this. The word ‘awesome’ might fall short in describing the sprawling university campus and the facilities inside. Its all exciting and fun. But in the evening, when all of this is done, I return to my room and switch on my laptop, I see that all my folks back home are either offline or idle! Yeah, the 5 hour gap implies that all of them would be asleep. I now know why my good friend in New York comments on any photo uploaded by our folks in orkut. Its his way of telling people, hey I am still alive, and I miss you all!

Alright folks, thats too much for a single post. Let me leave it here. And as you might be aware, comments from people helps me know that atleast some one has read it :-) Good or bad.. keep them coming!

Powered by Punjab National Bank, Driven by Instinct!

2009-09-17T07:45:00.006-12:00

This is a delayed release. I had written this entry long back but I held back from posting it due to a specific reason. When one of my friends asked me why I am delaying the next post, I told him its a “technical issue”. I will be explaining the issue later in the page.

For those of you still wondering what the title is all about, it is about my Post graduation plans in UK and PNB is of course the bank which was kind enough to sanction the necessary funds for that. I have been planning to do something with my life for almost a year now. Simple reason being my monotonous office life in the same damn project in the same damn position in the same godforsaken tool for a mighty 24 months! That is when I started speaking to educational consultants for US, Singapore, UK, Australia etc. But typical of me, my planning process is never continuous. I will meet a consultant on a weekend and then forget to follow up for 1 month. I think I should not be blamed so much coz I know its typical of a software Engg to fail in finding time for personal things.

Serendipity:

That is when 2 of my friends from Calicut rang me. They had a tone of desperado in their voice. “Dude, lets go to UK for MS, Its now or never!!”. Next time I went to Calicut, they took me to another consultant over there. I came back to Chennai carrying the same spirit they had instilled in me, went about the internet, found the course I wanted, and applied. All along I used to check with my good friends what they were upto, they used to tell me “yeah, waiting for this letter, that letter from HOD” and stuff. My application for MSc in Information Systems and Management in University Of Warwick got through and almost simultaneously, my good friend flew to London for an Onsite assignment! The other guy lived happily ever after in Calicut! Serendipity is ‘accidental discovery’ and as many of you might know is a John Cusack movie. Those of you who don’t know about the movie can still find peace if they have seen “J-J”, the Maddy flick in Tamil which is an adaption of the English original. Yes, I accidentally discovered that I am post graduate material!
I think lot of us are driven by instinct. Some of us just ignore the gut feeling and continue with life. “Look before you leap”- wise men used to say and I actually follow a tweaked version of the saying. I look for the worst case scenario before every instinctive leap. Given the state of Job market in UK, the worst case is, I come back to India, after the course, having to pay 25K EMI for the educational loan. It is not as bad as feeling guilty 2 years down the line, for not attempting a change in life, I thought. However, irrespective of what I think, I have no absolute idea of where life is going to take me. Varunnidathe vechu kaanam! Which leads to:

The Uncertainty principle:

Coming back to the specific reason due to which this blog was delayed, I was not sure of revealing my plans in my blog as I didn’t have my visa at that point of time. And my worst fears came true when I was handed the rejection letter for my visa for a banking term misread in the loan letter!! Those were times of uncertainty for me. I found myself surrounded by mammoth realities of life – The Visa rejection – The enormous Loan – The Job I had already quit. That is the beauty of life isn’t it? One moment you feel you are cruising through and the next moment, you find yourself hopelessly not in control of things! But then, I took care of things that were within my control, talked my way through and extended my stay on the job, re-applied for visa and waited. All’s well than Ends Well. The end was good, I got my Visa stamped!

I will say bye to Chennai soon and I am looking forward to my 10 day vacation at home before I finally take the flight to UK. As my time here runs out, I get the feeling I am leaving behind a lot of good things. I thought I had made all the friends I could make when I was in College. I was wrong! I have made so many good friends here in Chennai, as I keep on adding to my colourful friends list!
Until next post... Comments please! As always 

The 3 perspectives: The Cribber, The Lemonade and The Elephant

2009-08-22T07:12:00.007-12:00

I can see that my last post here was in Oct 2008. I know 10 months is a long time for a Gen Y blogger to go without posting. But I am not a typical blogger am I? I put crap either when I get bored or when some crap happens to me. Now, I am bored. So here goes..

Once a friend of mine told me that virgo men are keen observers. If you don’t already know, I am Virgo and I feel I am a decent observer. Not that I believe in character of an individual being determined by his sun sign, But they(sun signs) sometimes give interesting observations about people. This obviously means that sometimes they fail in it horribly as well. But that was not our point, was it? The point is and was, I am a decent observer. Decent enough to gather enough information of character traits of people around me and to categorize them into 3. This is by no means an exhaustive set, simply because observation is an ever running process.

The Cribber mentality:

The cribber is never happy or at least he pretends to be always unhappy. He looks upto people above him and laments his fate that he is not in their shoes. Surprisingly, I have learned that cribbers are the easiest people to get along with! Provided you can let your ears take the beating once in a while and you can insulate your senses from his words. The positive of having such a person along with you is, no matter how deep the shit you are in is, you will be able to forget it just by looking at this guy. But then, there is this irritating feeling of pessimism around them.. always. If four cribbers are locked in a prison with Rakhi Sawanth, they will still crib about not having Jennifer lopez with them until the point where Rakhi gets irritated and disappears!!

The Lemonade mentality:

I came across this punch line or quote somewhere on the internet – “If life gives me lemons, I will make lemonade out of it” and I feel that several of my friends fall into this category easily. Such people always try to make the most of whatever they have. If being happy is the aim of life, this will be the easiest way to fulfil that aim. But then, some might argue that such folks lack ambition, which in some cases is true. This line of thought suppresses the potential of some. If 4 such guys are locked in a prison with Rakhi Sawanth, they will probably exchange her for 4 ladies from her make up crew and will live happily ever after!!

The Elephant mentality:

Now this is a master piece, for 1 in every 10,000 will have this line of thought. Imagine yourself all dressed up for office, fresh as ever walking out of your apartment. Suddenly you step on an unruly part of the road and falls over on your back facing the sky. A crow flies by and answers the nature’s call all over your face. Now as you lie there, with shit on your face, facing the lovely blue sky, if you are able to console yourself saying “thank GOD, for Elephants cannot fly!!” , then you are of elephant mentality. It’s not over, you are still lying there, and by some weird natural phenomenon, an elephant flies by and does the same on your face. Yes you know what you should be telling yourself? - “It’s OK, It’s my fate!!”. There will always be this “it could have been worse” dimension to such peoples’ thought and there is an air of submission around such people.

In the highly unlikely case that you are still with me and still reading, I am sure you are guessing who all in my friends circle will fall in these categories. Where do I fall in? Hm.. I would say in the lemonade set of folks. But I would call mine the Neo-Lemonade mentality. Coz, if I am given lemon after lemon after lemon, I will quit! And try to change something in my life using parameters that are within my control.

Right, I know where I am heading. But you folks will know in my next post. Do try a new feature that I have added in the blog, thanks to Google Connect - you can “follow” my blog using the top right section if you are kind enough after you leave your valuable comments. :-)

Million Dollar Industry

2008-10-10T21:59:00.004-12:00

Folks, It has been a long time since i ve posted something here.
Like many of you, I was caught up in the tide of project delivery, support
and bla bla.. Its not that I ve got rid of all these stuffs now... actually its
even worse than before now. But the only difference is that I started to realise certain things. In this industry, the hard worker will go on working hard...
He ll get more and appreciation and bonuses... Until he realise that his best days have just passed by.

It took 15 months for me to realise the golden truth that "controlled commitment" is the way to go about here. :-)
I know I sound very technical. Its some thing I ve picked up from my office culture.

If you are assigned something at 6 30 in the evening and you dont want to take it up.. you should sent a mail with the line "this will be the first thing 2moro morning" and just leave.. have a beer.. do whatever..:-)

As long you are able to throw out weird jargons at regular intervals, it doesnt matter whether you do your work or not. There will be some committed folks who ll get the work done at the end of the day. Frankly I was one among such folks until not long ago. Like srinivasan says to Mohanlal..."Ellathinum athintethaaya samayam undeda.." Yes it took some time for me to realise this.

Another pivotal thing point that I dint know was how to play according to the audience. You should not keep on playing well as there is the imminent risk of ending up impressing the wrong manager...!!

I got bored of my project and I approached my manager planning to give a hint that I need a move on.. MY manager let me in, offered a seat.. and then, what followed was unbelievable. I was totally brainwashed. I felt like working for Microsoft once the discussion was over.. Now I know why these folks are paid so high. To keep people like me interested in the challenges and oppurtunities which are really not there..!

I dont know what made me say all this.. This might not be of any help to the freshers in the industry also. coz most of the above points will sound silly and funny. You will not learn until you are victimized.

Whatever.. atleast I started blogging again now.. Now that I have my lappy and net.. I m looking forward to putting some more crap here....

Comments.. please......

Referral:
Please check my friend Doni's blog.. Its updated and its quite good.

Hot hot Chennai

2008-05-03T20:05:00.002-12:00

I really want to do blogging regularly.. But I dont have a PC there in Chennai.May be I can take my old one over to Chennai. But as of now, I blog only when I come home and feel like writing something..

My last post attracted some steamy comments from some. Although I didnt understand completely what my friend had said, but I did get the essence of his state of mind while writing it. Anyways, I wrote what I wanted to say, and I really dont want to create a cascading debate.

Now about the title.. I think the title is actually a massive under statement. Chennai is
damn hot. So hot that I dont feel like coming out of my AC office or my beach side
apartment. Now we are hearing that within a week the temperature will increase a
small matter of 5 degrees..!! We have a football team in our company and we practise every weekend. That is when we feel the real effect of Hot Chennai sun. Towards the end of the session the ground almost fumes..! and its not even 8 o'clock in the morning..! I wonder how Sehwag batted for 1 full day, in Chennai Chepauk stadium. Hats off.

Speaking of Chepauk, we went to see the IPL match between Chennai and Kolkata. My business analyst team mate calls the IPL a "daylight theft". He is right. We could see all 5 days of the test match from morning to evening for 200 bucks. But now its just 3 hrs for 200 bucks!! But the corporates have now sort of accepted this... Anything cheap is considered substandard by our folks rite..? Anyways I went for the match only due to utter curiosity. I had never seen a cricket match from the stadium. Never again. Not that I didnt enjoy it, It was great infact.
I could see Dhadha and Ponting in about 20 mts distance. But its not about the game. Its about the big names when it comes to cricket. It can never match the excitement of a football stadium. Probably Doni will disagree. After all he had sustained 3 full days of Chennai heat seeing the test match..!

What else in Chennai? Yes the 'Aadi' sales will kick start shorlty. Anyone planning to come to Chennai, dont even think about it now. Probably August mid will be the best time. Thats when you can buy 1 AllenSolly shirts and get 2 free..! and the climate will be much cooler as well.

Its 1:20 pm and I got to board the 5:25 Chennai mail. Back to Chennai, back to deadlines and
project meetings. Comments.... :-)

The Proffessional:

2007-12-03T11:50:00.000-12:00

Hi people. If you had read my last blog, I had mentioned that I wondered why my company is paying me for sitting idle. Now I know why. And yes I am eating my own words. For the past 2 months I am in project and very much a 9am to 8pm proffessional.

I was just reading through my last 2 posts and was literally laughing because; the situation now has really changed. Gone are the days when we used to spend hours ‘thinking’ whether we should go to college. Here although nobody cares whether you are coming in time and all, they really do care about the deliverables that should be submitted on time. This means if I go home early today, that automatically implies I have to stay late tomorrow.

To make matters worse, the work is not all about sitting in front of machine and coding. There are so many things to do before we actually do what we thought ‘programming’ was as many of you might have already realized. I have to design a datamodel and present it to the bosses. It will be at least 1 week of clarifications and changes before it finally gets froze. These designing days are far more stressful than the development days!

We have a small MH at our home in Chennai. Don’t worry, I wont go bla bla bla about MH again. By the term ‘small MH’ I didn’t mean a small group of MHittes. We have 2 seniors (not our college) and Tinu also apart from me, Doni, Sumesh and Amar. This is not including the 3 seniors who left onsite since we came here. After a stressful day at the office we people usually go to the nearby beach. Then everybody will try to leave their office frustrations at office itself and we will discuss about ‘the new babe near our cubicle’ kind of stuff. By ‘MH’ I meant the tight bondage(typical of the MH) even though we are small group. Recently we have another small MH as well where Jovin and co lives. So, all is well after office. But It couldn’t be said about office though. Some days will be ok, some days will be awful. All part of the game.:-)

3 months in Chennai and have we changed? Yes. I have certainly put on some weight. Sumesh and Doni have gone more stupid. We hear more Malayalam melodies. We are putting such songs as our ‘hello tunes’ as well. Amar has more responsibilities and Tinu has more girls to get gifts from than before…!

At last one word to the Banglorians… We have not reaped business out of friendship. When we call some one from our batch, first thing we ask is “enthundeda” and not “ethra cheque kitti?” (like Banglorians)
No hard feelings…….. Just my thoughts.. Please leave your comments as usual… :-)

Corporate Days..!!

2007-09-12T20:50:00.000-12:00

I dont know why I dint blog for this long. Maybe because I related my college andhostel too strongly to my blog. So when those 2 disappeared , I felt like zero inspiration.Or maybe I was reluctant to admit that my best days have passed me by without my knowledge..!!
I always believe that 'boredom is mother of blogging' . I m bored bored and bored....Thats y I started blogging again.So here I go...

Daily morning, I to come to this freaking cold place, sit in front of the system, and somehow see off the day. Every 3 or 4 days I ll have a module test. Then only I realise that I ve been taught the Marvellous concepts of datawarehousing and also that Cognos, informatica etc are pretty cool tools which can earn me a lot of cash. I still cant digest why the hell my company pays me for this...!! Maybe this is a grooming phase.. maybe I ll eat my words later..;)

I had only heard of the 'weekend' culture. Now I m living it. All we want to come our way now is the one and only 'Friday'.Me and my friends here plan so much for the weekend during the weekdays that we had separate email threads for that. And then the 2 precious days (saturday and sunday) flashes by so quickly that I dont even get time to get a decent nights sleep..!! InCollege everyday was a Sunday. Oh I love lookin at the comsci timetable i posted earlier....!!

Once I finish my training I was told that I ll be transferred to ' the bench' . Some of u might ve heard of it. They say its the most enjoyable part of our career. Technically it is the gap between our training completion and project assignment. The HR calls itthe Available Talent Pool or HR backup or something like that. Anyway I m lookin forward to the bench which will be my secondphase of 'doing nothing' .

Now a word to those still awaiting call letters. No matter how bored u feel urselves at home, believe me it will be so much betterthan the life in the corporate world. So guys enjoy ur life at home as long as u can and also practice sitting idle for 6 hrs everyday..Coz you may need it...!! Watch this space.. U know.. maybe I ll post some more crap again when I get bored... And dont forget thecomments... ;)

Part 6 - Being CET comsci

2007-05-06T17:35:00.000-12:00

I had completed this post.. but poor me.. i had no ups at home. So when the current was gone.. Everything was gone as I had forgot to save it.. Anyway here I go again..

Too many references to MH had raised many eyebrows and too many young ladies in my blog had sent out the wrong impression about me among my readers. So I decided to set things straight.. I will now explore another equally important part of my time at CET.. Being The Comsci.

I was first called a comsci in first year by a senior named TM(ya all knows). He was lookin for a pretty girl in our class. He came running to me and asked me if I was a comsci. I dint knew what the hell that meant then. Seeing me bamboozled he continued... " Never mind, can u call **** out for me?" Then later I realised that it is short for Computer Science Student and the legacy behind the term!!!;) and for the next 4 years I would live and practice - 'the comsci way'

Being a comsci is all about doing nothing. Sorry correction--> Being an average comsci is all about doing nothing. We dont have to come to class. We dont have to 'study' for internals.. All we should do is to keep ourselves alive and healthy enough to write the university exams!! The deal after that is a totally different matter. But until then, we are the laziest bunch in college.

But dont be mislead by my words. No we wont get attendance and sessionals for free. Instead we get 'just enough' attendance and 'just enough' sessionals which would make us eligible for a decent chance at the universities. And this is why I emphasized the words 'average comsci'. Because the super comscis as i like to call them, comes to class, works hard for series.. etc. They are rightly rewarded with hefty sessionals which my friend azher(see links) agrees separates poor souls like me and him from them when the final results come.

Now lets look into the timetable of an average comsci. This would be the daily lifecycle of an Mhitte comsci ofcourse as I dont know abt others'. But I believe it ll be similar.
9 30 am -> Good morning
10-12 -> Shud I goto class? Who is in class? sms messages are fired... Oh its lunch time!
1 20 pm -> Finally I m in class. but the teacher havent turned up yet!!
3 pm -> Please.. somebody come to class and teach something..!! I am bored!!
4 pm -> Allright, college front and then Mess.
5 30 pm - > The only productive thing I do everyday.--> football ( nowadays i play 'creative midfield')
7 30 -> food
8pm- 3, 4 or sometimes 6 am -> Computer..... games,orkut and stuff..

The comment about football is not a joke.. I sometimes stare at a layman at college front or kingini and think " What do i know that he dont know?" After 4 years of technical education, all i learned coming here is to play football better!!!

Now.. abt placements...No matter how hopeless you are, U ll get a job if u are a comsci here. But the super comscis would take away all the laurels by grabbing out of the world offers from out of the nation companies. The 9 guys who got into microsoft are the pride of the college. The cream of CET!!
Well done guys.. No I m not flattering... This is a sincere applause, as the hope of a treat has already far disappeared.

As for me and azher, we ll have to be content with an ordinary job in CTS or TCS. After the entrance exam, we all came here as 'The cream of kerala'. Although some sustained that stature, people like me had become 'The paste of kerala'. Yes, the paste that will be used to brush the teeth of consultancy firms in Bangalore, Chennai and Technopark.

Now for those who are awaiting their entrance results like my lil brother.. Do you want to enjoy college life to the max? Do you want the best chicks( girls read hunks hehe!!) in college in your class? Do you want a decent job with minimum effort ? Join Cet comsci.

P.S Come on people.. Is it hard to leave a comment after reading?

Part 5 - Drunk!!

2007-05-01T10:48:00.000-12:00

Statutory Warning-Consuming Alchohol is injurious to health.

"Dileepe va randennam adikkam.." AC came to my room and said.
I looked around my room and i dint see my room mate. I went outside my room and there he was. He informed me that i have become a seasoned drinker in a month's time. He is right. And i won't defend my deeds. This was "vall night". After the program i could walk all right[to my surprise!]. So I took a round trip around the hostel to avoid my room[for obvious reasons] and found a system.." I will chat, I thought". I found a familiar face online.. 'a lady from my class' .Remember 'the angry young lady'? No this is not her. We chatted God knows and i dont remember what.. Just hope I dint say anything out of the script...

-------REWIND------>

MHday started very early for me. Yes from morning itself. The night was wonderfull. The next day i got plenty of messages telling me that i was a terrific dancer. 'The angry young lady' is not all about anger.. She is a good actor as well. She showed me later my actions so that i could get a picture of what i was that night.. But believe me she saw nothing actually. Thank god the LHittes go back early. Otherwise they would have ...... oh GOD..!!

------REWIND-------->

Kodai tour from MH. My first time. Everybody get drunk in the MH tour, thats default!! "Santhoshathinte angeyattam!!" Mr.Horse said as I took my first shot.

The common thing about all 3 occassions is that after drinking i would do and say things which normally backfires in the form of chori. Another lady of my class[ what will we call her.. ok 'Tall young lady'] wanted to know whether it is worth to give up my 4yrs of clean image and enter the world of drunkards?? Frankly.. I dont know.and this is not an answer to her..

But in all 3 occassions there was something notable. On Mh tour, me taking a shot gave "extreme happiness" to my friend. Why? For 4 years we were together as a batch [not as corridors]. What will remain when we find our own paths is these moments of "extreme happiness".

Mhday is the day we celebrate MH. For others MHday is all about food...But what I like most about that day is the long night. The song "Chalthe.... Chalthe..." and the candle lights we pass on to our juniors. Even the hardest heart wept that night.. Everyone knows there wasnt a dry eye in MH that night. But was liquor necessary? open to argument..

Vall night is the day our juniors arrange a party for us.. A farewell if you like. And when the most respected guy in MH came and called me.. i could not resist..

But is it worth the image? The image of a neat boy.. I dont know.. I remember teasing my [elder]brother by calling him a drunkard when he did his Engg.. He would urge me to drink as well. But i resisted!! What is it now that i cannot resist? Its about MH isnt it? its all about MH. I would have been so different if I was else where as is the case of all MHittes.

Part 4 - The Beginning of the End

2007-04-19T17:01:00.000-12:00

This is it... the revolt is almost over...

Friends, I am back blogging after almost 1 1/2 years. I had given up blogging after my controversial part 3. Believe me. I got life threats via sms even from madhya pradhesh..;)

Just thought I would jot down something about my perception of this farewell concept. Yes its the thing thats going through everyones mind in college now.. We are gonna leave the college shortly. The classes are already over with only the series to go.. and as my title goes.. "the revolt" is almost over.. Just a few more hurdles to go. So was the revolt successful? was the objectives achieved? Please look at the pic below.. and do u see a victorious rebel? or an arrogant one or an exhausted one? Does he have any regrets about the outcome of the revolt? Is he ready for another one?

The Rebel with The Crow

I ll just try to answer these questions through my perspective..

Victory???
Was the revolt successful? Well thats still to be decided with a crucial result to come and a university to go.. I have to say the minimum targets have been achieved. 'The Rebel's ' eyes has some amount of satisfaction.. maybe a job was his primary target. Clearing all the papers first time he thought was easy and just like
that... he failed.. which i ve already mentioned in other blogs.

Arrogance???
Well he should be arrogant, shouldnt he? y? because he is an MHitte!!. ;) Dont worry I wont go about hailing Mh again. The rebel certainly has an air of arrogance about him. Some of his friends dint like it.. esp of the opposite gender. If i dare to put even a remote reference to any of those people, I might have to stop
blogging for another 1 1/2 years!! So i wont.

Exhausted???
Regular setbacks in the struggle seem to have taken the beating out of The Rebel. He gets 2 supplies every odd sem!! with s7 results to come.. looks like he is prepared for another brace. But he will feel he is so much better than some of his friends. But he looks like he got what it takes to see this off doesnt he?

Regrets???
Time to get a little sentimental. Does he have regrets? ofcourse he do.He wishes he had A P [lost friend] with him in Demo week. Also he wished chettai and prasoon had got a job..As for himself...perhaps he should have done better in academics. Perhaps a better job himself. Perhaps he should have made a few more friends of the opposite gender.. maybe.[Has he ever talked to all the girls in his class?? ofcourse he has...but..]

Ready for another one???
After 2 months he will be working for CTS [hopefully]. Will he be ready for that? he should be.. He should be able to shrug off his laziness in time and be ready to grab his oppurtunities in the corporate world. 4 years in MH has made him resistant to almost all kinds of addiction, all kinds of bacteria, all kinds of sanitation and living conditions!! So it has to be one hell of a problem to trouble him......I quote him..

"CET taught me that life is not a bed of roses
MH taught me it doesnt matter!!"

- The Rebel

P.S - its 5 in the morning and its MH day today. Today will be a long and wonderful day with 'programs' starting from morning itself.. So i better get a bit of sleep.

Part 3- Angry young lady from LH

2005-12-24T09:53:00.000-12:00

Happy X'mas friends...Now i know how the mega serial makers manage to film episodes after episodes without any major developement in the story.. I will clarify. After part 2 , i was thinking what the hell am i going to write as part 3. And i ve promised a part 3!! Then one night a young lady came online and we had this little chat... Got it.................. part 3!!!.

angry_young_lady: So wat do u do in the hollidays?
maximuz_2: hm. nothing really... eat, sleep, blog..
maximuz_2: and hey, i m learning php as well.

(maximuz_2 is my yahoo id ofcourse)..I know the young lady and i know she doesnt know what the hell this php is . And so yes it was a cheap attempt to play a smart guy..But you never know.. girls sometimes fall for these tactics. We then continued to chat about everything including blogs and i reffered my friend(see links) Eldo's blog to her and warned her not to read that. I knew that the present content is not suitable for an LHitte to read and i also knew Eldhose, with his excellent language skills , will write excellent stuff soon as well. But after sometime:

angry_young_lady: against ur better advice a read eldo ka blog...
angry_young_lady: uska effect hai.
maximuz_2: u read that??
maximuz_2: !!!
angry_young_lady: ya jus now..
angry_young_lady:hmmm..n u knw wat..
maximuz_2: wat
angry_young_lady: wat evry1 says bout mh spirit n stuff..
maximuz_2: m..
angry_young_lady:i dnt give a damn..
angry_young_lady: as long as it doesn denounce others..
angry_young_lady:if u say..
angry_young_lady: u guys do much more than chat.
angry_young_lady: fine.
angry_young_lady: agreed.
angry_young_lady: but if u say..
angry_young_lady: "unlike u ppl"
angry_young_lady: it gets me..
angry_young_lady: u guys got a world of your own..
angry_young_lady: n v have ours..
angry_young_lady: y praise urs at any1 elses expense?>
maximuz_2: hey that s how a php tag ends '?>'
maximuz_2: oops sorry bad joke
angry_young_lady: hmmm!!!!!
maximuz_2: go on
angry_young_lady: u call dat a joke ryt..
angry_young_lady: no im done.

(thanks to yahoo for the wonderful archiving service in its messenger!)

Now i still believe that was the most hopeless joke i ever said..(i never says much jokes).But sometimes the only way to survive against such an onslaught is a real, bad, harmless joke. As you can see , I was so successful in silencing the angry_young_lady with that one comment.Although you might guess she went offline, she was nice enough to continue chatting.. She then taught me what the does the word 'hypocrite' mean and explained to me the 'I DONT GIVE A DAMN ABOUT THE WORLD' attitude.

Coming back to the topic of that chat... I really dont know why we 'denounce' others and praise our world 'in the expense' of other's worlds.. To be frank, I had no reply to her comments... All i know is after 20 years of existence in this planet... nowhere else could i find this kind of togetherness, this kind of affection, this kind of freedom, this kind of fearlesness, this kind of bondages than in my wonderfull MH. Yes MH is my world. I agree that others may have similar feelings of their 'worlds' as well. But if you ask me 'why did u praise ur world in any1 elses expense?' sorry you got to be an MHitte to know that.

Seriously, if 500 of indias future engineers and thousands of present engineers(MHpassouts) believe that we are special, then there must be something... But my friend here won't be able to understand that as she defenitely cannot be an MHitte. As is the case of all our wonderful friends of the opposite gender. MH was a mystery for all these years for them and let it be so......

Sorry people, i remember putting a bunch of questions in part 2 and i havent come across any of those today...But surely.. we have a lot of time in our hands , dont we?......and do post your comments wont u?

Part 2-I've got company!

2005-12-21T10:06:00.000-12:00

The wonderful thing about MH is that whatever be your plight, u will have company. We got all kinds of guys here. Guys with 54% attendance , guys with as many no.of supplies as there are papers..u name it.
Once the s5 results are out,I want my readers to try one thing.....

Goto the most popular search site and search for 'MHittes without supplies'. Whatever search optimization they implements by then... You surely will get the result:

Did you mean: Mhites without apples?
No standard web pages containing all your search terms were found.

Suggestions:

* Make sure all words are spelled correctly.
* Try different keywords.
* Try more general keywords.(like dayscholars or students)
* Try fewer keywords. (yes cut the suppli part)

Now do i have to say why the most popular search site would behave this way?..... No Sabil, Its not because all mhittes have supplies,.. it was a f****ng joke!! and the picture is f****ng edited(pic removed due to technical reasons)!! Sorry... lost my temper for a while ...
Somebody told me that we should do stuffs like these to interest readers ..I got the the most popular search site bit somewhere from the net..

Anyway what i meant was that i wasnt the only one experiencing the 'free fall from glory' I know Dasan the 52nd rank holder in state entrance who suffered 3 or 4 supplies in s4 apart from 2 in s3..and i know Joy,the once IIT aspirant (screening qualified) who is fighting his way through more than a dozen supplies.. and ofcourse the brilliant and talented Jaydeep Krishna who is now waging his war against attendance,condonation and supplies( and still finds time to organise dyuthi).

And the examples never ends there..Nearly everyone in MH has such a story to tell about himself. Ofcourse there are some people still in the springtide of their academic adventures..but incidentally, a majority of these guys dont qualify for the term MHitte( and that explains the search results...shut up sabil!!) . Having said that, there are geniuses here(who does well in studies and qualify for the term MHitte as well)....very few of them..but gems in their own right.

So why does it takes to be an absolute genius to survive this system? Why is it that being brilliant or talented not enough for an MHitte to do well in class? What is that invisible force pulling every MHitte down as far as marks are concerned? Or are we(MHittes) going down at all in the first place? Or are we just going down mark wise and advancing in another unexplored aspect?

These are some questions i would like to explore...But as a matter of fact i am feeling very sleepy! The time is now 3:30 and if i dont sleep now.. i ll miss my moms wonderful breakfast! I got a comment from Donichayan urging me to start righting against the system fast, but being a great blogger himself he certainly will understand the plight of a sleepy blogger and will forgive me!(u can find links to more such great blogs under the links category).Also if you like what i write, please leave a comment and if you dont like...dont tell anyone!.So answers to the questions...part 3(to be continued)

Part 1-Free fall from glory

2005-12-20T05:54:00.000-12:00

This is a journey through the life of some hostelites, their joy, despair and the harsh realities of hostel life and how they struggle to scrape through the system that is btech...The original title was meant to be 'the screwed system' or something like that but later i decided to abridge the Big B's words from my fav hindi movie sarkar...
"mujhe jo sahi lagtha hai me karhta hu, woh chahe bagvan ke khilaf ho, samaj ke khilaf ho, police ,kanoon , ya phir, poore system ke khilaf kyu na ho"

Free fall from glory:

Aug 26th 2003.... the premiership season had just started and my team manchester united where doing great. Although the arrival of ruud and departure of beckham had put me in a difficult position as to continue my support to man u, I remained a faithful man u fan for 30 more days until super frank came to the forefront with chelsea...Well.. seems i ll have to write another page on my premiership faith change..

But the other main story of august 26 2003 --> that was the day.. i arrived in tvm to seek admission in the best engg college in the state. I am the second among 3 boys in my family and i was the favourite as far as my parents were concerned to top the academic charts... I did justice to their faith somewhat as i topped every year thru my high school and managed to get 12th rank in SSLC( the biggest and the easiest exam in asia!!!). To be frank I was embarrased really to be noticed ( the only 'boy' to do it from calicut that year). All i did was mug up my lessons again and again. I was such a devoted mugger that i cud remember the pages of the text book in the exam hall(all right that was a bit too much..sorry!) Then i went on to get formidable ranks in CUSAT and AIEEE and a reasonably good 778 for kerala.

Right ..enough for the self procclaimation. The reason i went for that little flashback is to prove the magnitude of my downfall. I remember my father telling me that he once heard from an astrologer that there is no one to beat me in studies!! My parents expected me to obviously top my class and ofcourse get among the university rank holders... but little did i realise what CET had in store for me.

The first year came and went as i scored 79.93 in my unis. Obviously my parents couldnt digest that but they later learned to digest my results(or in other words, i taught them) !! In s3 2 supplies and by the time i cleared them...i was 72.7. and then in s4, there were no supplies for a change (and yes another minus 7) and 65%. As you can see i was steadily loosing 7% each sem and all my parents care about now is that i get thru without any supplies. So that is how i taught my parents to digest engg results. And now, after the s5 exams it looks like i ll continue the arithmetic progression(or degression rather) but this time with a bit more dignity (maybe 1 or 2 supplies).

Eventhough i am staring down the barrel, I still have a chance of getting a job just because of the reputation of my college.. but the downward momentum is pulling me further just as mother earth pulled the damn apple on to newton's head. But one relief factor is that i am not the only one experiencing such a free fall as we will see in part-2. (to be continued)

2005-12-11T21:05:00.000-12:00

Rite, my first blog then. Saw a couple of my friends' blog and suddenly all of my friends got blogs!!! So i thought ya better late than never.But i was fed up with some of the blogs i read. Some where really boring as everyone was talkin abt when they wokeup and wat they had for breakfast and all!! Although it is the general trend and the general way to write blogs,i m really not for it.We r publishing this right? So its got to be atleast sensible if not meaningfull. Or else it got to be real fun.Any way in my blog u can accept none of this kidstuff as i m goin to use this as my medium to write wat i think abt things.I dont know whether it ll make interesting reading but i ll try my best(Got nothin else to do really!) . Rite, enough for the intro.So wait and hope for better things rite here.....