Yet again.. Another year in review!

This is the one post that I have been consistent in writing, since the inception of this blog. I remember completing my review of 2009 in a sort of last minute haste. This year I have the luxury of a copious amount of time in hand to collect my thoughts and put them across :) 

Ah 2010.. "Eventful" would be too inadequate to describe this year! A vast gamut of personal experiences- pleasant and otherwise, combined with a world waking up to a whole lot of important issues (none of which this indolent girl has posted about :-/ ) have made this year more important than a mere conclusion to the first decade of a new millenium. 

On the Personal Front...

I have definitely grown up substantially! And No, GlaxoSmithKline shall not take credit for this. The growing up process that they claim their drink enhances, has not occurred! Relationships- their making and breaking- have helped me realize myself. Realization of what core values I respect and expect in people I mingle with, has made me take pride in the ethics I have imbibed implicitly. The second half of this year saw me learning a lot more than CAT basics and 7th semester ECE stuff. 

Lives of great men all remind us, we can make our lives sublime, and, 

departing, leave behind us, footprints on the sands of time.

I have been inspired by a few such great people, who have already achieved some success in their struggle for the well-being of deserving and talented students! Juxtaposed against certain societal equals whose driving force in taking up one of the most noble professions is nothing beyond the monthly cheque, these people's lives and their actions are a lesson in the true meaning and spirit of communism, unblemished by the Ayn Rand-style-hypocrisy! For the Rand follower in me, this has been a good experience at viewing the other side of the coin. 

On the other hand, I have also had trysts with the true-Rand-style pseudo communists who do stuff that are supposedly "good for all", giving "opportunities" to all. Ha! Comrades, Communism is not about sacrificing Talent at the altar of Incompetence!

I had two major losses in the family this year. A friend who came home for the first time early this year asked with awe "Are all your grandparents alive?". I replied with extreme happiness "Yes!!". There couldn't have been a moment I have damned more during this year than that. I have no one who now responds to my calls of "Manni.." or "Paati..". 

I gave the much-anticipated Common Admission Test and followed it up with three other entrance exams. I have displayed extreme competence in one of the three mentioned in the latter part, displaying my acute inability to distinguish between printed words- "saturday" and "sunday". The result of the possession of such skills has been the absence of a certain "Shilpa Suresh" in a certain PDF called the IIFT GDPI shortlist. The CAT is very much on the wall! In fact, CAT 2010 brought out the Humane Nature of the IIMs! To err is Human, isn't it? ;-D

Now for The Bigger Picture..

Let me now tear my eyes away from the mirror and look at the world around me! There has never been a shortage of movies in Indian cinema depicting Corruption! Guess it's now time for the Real-Life-anti heroes to have their heyday in the media. King Cong has  given the sack to Suresh Kalmadi (the genius who welcomed Princess Diana with Charles during the CWG Inauguration :-D ) and Ashok Chavan, on grounds of revising "Charity begins at Home" to "Everything Monetary reaches the society after serving home and family". The currently-hot 2G scam involving Namma ooru Raja is nothing short of the Biggest Ever Act of Corruption in the history of, well, everything. Even Vijayakant has not reeled off such a huge number in any of his statistics-revealing punches! The harmful side-effects of Radiation are very much in focus!

Obama came visiting and took the easily-impassioned compatriots off their feet with impressive prepared speeches and a few diplomatic replies. Say the things the Indians like to hear and they'll love you! Mr.BHO stuck to this wise one-liner and had a successful stint here, hinting at the goodness of India being a permanent Security Council member while his Secretary of State had been more veracious in opining on the issue, as revealed by Wikileaks. 
Ah Wikileaks! The Sensation of 2010. The Talk of the World! I love it for the one purpose it served- Showing a spade as a spade and a club as a club! No diplomatic sweet-talk or nonsense involved. Just plain true facts! For a person like me who has experienced the frustration of trying to get one just need satisfied (and failing eventually) by traversing the layers of bureaucracy and coming across hypocrites and sycophants, there can be nothing more refreshing than the Simple Straight Truth! Don't we, the people, deserve it?

There does exist, one class of people whom I do loathe more than the hypocrites and sycophants.  In fact, this lot's right to exist is seriously in doubt. The child-abusers. How on earth can they even dream of inflicting pain and horror on the blooming buds of the garden of the Earth? I was satisfied to note that one such non-human who had murdered a couple of kids from my town was shot down by the cops.

Alright, now that's enough cribbing for one post, I guess. Let's face the facts. The World around us is Ugly. Unfair. We can't realistically hope for a radical change in a mere three hundred and sixty five days. But we can definitely hope for a marginal improvement in the right direction. The issues in the spotlight now should help raise the public awareness and create a better place for us to live in. Let organizations like "Fifth Pillar" which promote anti-corruption flourish! Let more people get back their lost cellphones like my mom did :)  and fewer if not none, lose them in the first place! Hoping to crib about fewer things in the next year's post :)

Joblessness- Or is it?

The romance with this began two years ago..

As we tried (in vain) to fool the rickety kits in the Communication Engineering Lab into functioning agreeably, I used to throw jealous glances at those super-seniors seated in the Impact Lab, with not a single care in the world- yes, no observations/records,no classes, no assignments and absolutely no written tests! "Wow!! What won't I give to be in their shoes now.." used to play at the back of my mind every now and then.

Come sixth semester, and there was a fresh batch of insouciant seniors out there in the Impact lab! By then, I had made up my mind- No Internship! This kind of joblessness needs to be experienced before I plunge deep into the corporate world, not to resurface for a good forty years or so. 

And Now.... I sit in the same Impact Lab, not knowing what to do, chit-chatting, shuttling between TestFunda and PagalGuy, checking mails every fifteen minutes and of course discussing means to bypass the attendance system. Work on the Project shall resume in due course of time, but as of now, it's just time to chill out and actually sort out those things I've always wanted to do, but never did, citing a lame lack-of-time as reason. These six months, I hope, shall see me learning a few life-lessons (for instance, a life-sustaining skill such as cooking!) and working towards the realization of some long-cherished dreams..        

Hi there!

So, I am finally back after a "break" that broke out of control and extended too long. No reason is reasonable enough to justify my not pursuing this enjoyable hobby. I'd rather start posting straight away.. 

So Long!

Consistency.. Competition.. Confusion.. Apprehension.. Accuracy.. Inspiration.. Disappointment.. Surprise..

Well I am in my own muddled world... Shall be off this space for sometime while I hope to......

Coping Without..

I've contemplated,
Many a time;
Those brief instants-
Of madness- I'd call them.

On the way home
In the school-bus,
During Thunderstorms and
Those nondescript moments
Whose roots are known to none.

Imagination is Bad-
I'd declare to myself.
A shake of the head,
And then back to
The bliss called normalcy.

But now I'd say,
Imagination was Better-
Much Better than This.
The Pain. The Void.
Reality makes them Worse.

Those warm trails
Burn my cheeks in solitude.
To dam is more agonizing.
Bonds hurt when broken, with
One end on the earth and the other beyond.

Would it hurt less,
Had the bond been weaker?
I ask myself.
A pang clears my head.

Each smile, Each story,
Each dish you made for this brat,
Each non-pampering reprimand,
Each pet-name,
Is worth an ocean!

That tingling laughter,
That voice,
Those phone-greetings,
That last kiss and the last hugged-sleep-
Remain evergreen. Be it two months or two centuries.

In Muse Mode...

As I read Jan's text on friendship day, realization suddenly dawned on me. This is the last chance for most of us to celebrate the first Sunday of August, as students!
I take a trip down the memory lane, though the heavy Forouzan textbook on my lap suggests a different form of activity for now.

I do not remember when exactly we started celebrating Friendship Day. I never knew its purpose and did not care enough to find out. It just meant fun, pure and absolute, in our good old school days. Running around on the First Monday of August, a scissor in one hand and a roll of "Friendship Band" in another hand, we used to tie the cut out pieces of the band around the hand of anyone we even remotely knew. There was a lot of competition on who got the maximum number of bands on her hand. Some even had bands extending upto their elbows on both hands! Cycling back from school, I remember trying to show off my hand and seeing how many people noticed the "Status Symbol" of any middle/high school kid.
Those days of innocence were gone soon enough and there occured two phenomena in my life- College and Cell Phone. Text messages on the value of friendship became substitutes for the affectionate and eager fingers that tied the colourful bands around my hands. Tying bands in college was "childish" and never practised. We had once contemplated tying Rakhis to all guys in the class ;) but Friendship bands were obsolete!
I feel sad as I respond in the negative to the messages from my school friends asking if I'd attend the Alumni meet scheduled for tomorrow. Though I had been looking forward to this meet for months, it must be postponed now. Whether or not I shall succeed in the endeavour I plan to pursue instead of attending the meet, No One Knows! Hoping for the Best!
Shall update this space on my Cisco-adventure, even if it becomes a misadventure, resulting in my having lunch at home on Monday with alternate plans buzzing around my head...

An Incredible thought that worked!

Placement Special Classes- The words that were anathema to me two months back. I would happily spend any number of hours at KT, racking my brains with Quants while I'd simply loathe spending half an hour doing C Snippets. I was just that way, and no amount of requests or even orders delivered with hard-concocted glares from my PR Yasoda (who, by the way, is otherwise an Epitome of Patience) could change me. "Give me an apti paper; I'll solve and return it in ten minutes. Give me a C paper; Forget it."- was my attitude. Placements were something I had failed to visualize in the near future.
Suddenly the P-fever caught up in our college last week with the much-hyped D.E.Shaw(10.5-12 Lakhs per annum) coming in first and rejecting all B.E. candidates. Along the trail came ThoughtWorks on Friday. I attended the Pre-Placement Talk and decided that I wouldn't go beyond the first couple of rounds at the maximum. (J2EE is considered most basic there and I knew nothing other than a little of C/C++).
After breezing through the Logical written round, I faced an interesting coding problem, upon solving which, I was shortlisted for the Technical Interview the next day. This was where the jitters began! My software knowledge was almost next to nothing and I had to attend an interview along with CSE and IT students who were skilled in languages I hadn't even heard of!!
The interview brought me a flood of relief as the panel member wanted to check my understanding of previously learnt concepts and analytical skills rather than question me on things I wasn't familiar with. Still, unsatisfied with my performance, I went home. After lunch, came a call from my PR- "You are selected for the next round. Come as soon as possible". Absolutely befuddled, I rushed to college, to find Yasoda grinning happily and handing me a "Complete Reference to C++" text, saying "Ithu varaikum epdiyo vanthutta. Take an effort and prepare for this round. Get placed, Shilpa. Do your Best!"
Moved by her concern, I did make an effort to read that gargantuan book. For ten minutes. Then followed a sheepish grin at her. She couldn't help smiling. We put the book away and started chatting! My only preparation for the second interview was asking the questions posed to the people who finished before me in that five-hour gap. It was then that my respect for Yasoda grew rapidly. A girl who has opted out of placement, having no business other than giving me company in the serious Waiting hall, sat there more patiently than me, encouraging and helping me keep my calm. For a question on an electrical circuits (posed to a friend) she even called her father (a TNEB employee) to get the doubt clarified!
Astonished, Awed and thoroughly Happy to have such a selfless girl for my PR, I went and attended the second round confidently. Towards the end of it, I put forth my wish to be a Business Analyst, which, I think, made all the difference. After a comfortable chat (HR interview) and a short written test, the boy PR congratulated us! Two ECE students were part of the Four who finally got placed!!!
Yasoda's smiley-filled message reached every inbox even before the offer letter was lodged between my fingers! She was absolutely thrilled. Untiringly, she had bought something for us to eat, at 11 p.m. when I was inside the cell!!
We exited the Placement Cell, 30 minutes short of midnight, ecstasy writ all over our faces. Explanation to watchmen, drive on a rain-wet road, walk to the hostel, friends receiving us and Food! at midnight :) :)
A wonderful day (and night)- through and through!!