Friday, December 11, 2009

Wedding bells!

Nope not my wedding! But my cousin's! :)

Finally one by one my cousins are agreeing to get married. Sadly the wedding dates always clash with my exams. This time was no exception. My cousin decided to get married the day I had my lab exam!! But as they say all is well that ends well.
Why go to the end so soon? I'll start from the beginning.

2009 was slowly making way for 2010. And we thought the year would just pass away with the usual exams, tension, no fun mantra. But Surprise! Wedding bells started ringing for my cousin and we all were very happy for him :)

Everybody started making plans. The elders decided all girls would wear a saree for the wedding. Our immediate reaction was "What?!?" The thought of wearing a saree scared us because it was a first for most of us. But the sports that we are, we took it up as a challenge.

The great challenge of managing a saree for a whole day!! :D

Soon began the shopping spree that left the boys and men of the house impatient to be done with the wedding!

Now, there aren't a lot of customs in our caste. Its just a few rituals after which we have a lot of time to chat with guests. Since it was a second generation wedding, the youngsters took it up on themselves to make the wedding a memorable one. We planned a kind of sangeet a day before the marriage.

We had a 6-minute dance and I must say I have never practiced so hard. Then we had a few songs and a dance by other invitees. But the highlight of the evening was a skit specially made for the would-be couple. We made a spoof on how they met and life before and after marriage.

This skit is rather special for all of us because everyone chipped in with their idea and we had a lot of fun during its making. Needless to say the skit became a huge hit and we had people praising us for it long after the wedding :)

Amidst all this I totally forgot that I had an exam the next day. Before I knew the D-Day arrived. I fretted about my lab exam. I knew I wasn't prepared for viva. Heck I wasnt even sure about the programs! We were called in and I picked a chit. Relief flooded me when I opened it. I had got the easiest program and I quickly executed it. Since nobody had finished I was called for viva. But lady-luck smiled on me again. The external asked me conceptual questions which could be answered by any student who had understood the subject well. The questions required me to apply my brain than give out textbook answers. Both, me and my external, were pleased with each other and I walked out of the lab in 30 minutes flat!!

Immediately, I rushed home, changed into the saree and was on the venue bang on time! :)

The wedding proceeded smoothly. Finally it was time for us to leave. But we brats stole the bride and refused to let her go until the groom promised to pay up :D when our bargaining ended it was already 2 a.m. Nobody wanted to believe that the celebrations were about to end but it did, leaving us with heavy pockets ;) n lots of memories! :)

Sunday, November 15, 2009

Crush Me!!

Yes!! It's happened again! I have a new crush!! :)

I am the teacher's pet and as usual, I was called to do some volunteer work. Why is it called volunteering when we are actually forced to do it?? :O Anyways I went to meet the lecturer and there I saw this cute guy who also happened to be volunteering!! Lucky me! :D The lecturer said he was an ex-student and was helping us.

One look at him and I knew I had a new crush! He watched me come in with that cute smile on his face. He was with his friend whom I hardly noticed ;) He quietly listened as I spoke to ma'm. To my surprise, he took a dig at me, with that smile full on. I retaliated. Even without being formally introduced a friendly banter ensued between us. Just when the fun had begun I had to leave wondering if I would ever see him again...

College went on for a few days and our study holidays started. One day the same lecturer called me. There was an alumni meet and nobody was ready to volunteer since internals were coming up. Feeling too lazy to go to college I gave her the same reason but to no avail. After a bit of emotional blackmailing, the social worker in me said yes.

I went to college at 8:30. The function was supposed to start by 10:30 and nothing was ready. I was asked to take charge of the registration counter along with my friend. There was utter chaos with people arranging chairs, hanging flowers, moving things... As I wandered about helping here and there, I was asked to assist two guys who were putting up the banner. I walked to them. The guy fixing the banner asked for a pin. I looked up, he turned to me, and I saw the same impish grin on his face and heard the same whoop in my heart!!

He was wearing a white shirt and blue jeans. My favorite combination! Sigh! :)

Again, we did not acknowledge each other verbally. But I knew he remembered. To my delight, he asked me whether the banner hung properly and all I could say was "umm.. yeah"!?! Why does it always happen to me? :( I just can't get the right words out...
We spoke a few more times, with him asking me, in full sentences, to do this and that and me responding with yeah, sure, okay. Arrghh!!

Finally, people started arriving and I went to the registration counter. Once I stood there, it was back to business. I thoroughly enjoyed talking to the ex-students who were there despite the long gap and their busy schedules. I met the first engineers who graduated from my college. They were really sweet. In between, I had my guy checking on me and this time I managed quite well :)

By noon, I and my friend were still at the counter while everyone else went for lunch. We were starved. It looked like we were forgotten. Thankfully two guys from mech came to our rescue and offered to stay there while we had our lunch. We thanked them sincerely and went towards the dining hall. It turned out that indeed we were the last ones for lunch. There was a long queue with a group of guys towards the end.

We were not sure what to do and then I saw him. He was standing in the group forming the rear of the queue. He saw us and at once he invited us to join the queue. I and my friend looked at each other sheepishly thinking whether it would be right to break the queue. But he didn't relent and we had to give in and join them. I faced him to say thanks.
He looked me in the eye and for the first time, I noticed his eyes. They were dark brown. His eyes twinkled with the dimples in place. It suited him really well!

The noon dragged on and it was time to leave. I did not see him again and there was no chance to say bye. But like they say "Kabhi alvida na kehna.."

The guy will stay on as one of my best crushes and brown eyes will always remind me of him!!

Monday, September 21, 2009

Acharya Devo Bhava!

Honesty is an important word. Be honest to God and be honest to yourself.

I have always been a good student. Regular and obedient. I am the kind of student who thinks Acharya Devo Bhava (A teacher is equivalent to God). But of late i dont feel the same.
This is because the lecturers are no more honest to their profession. They just see it as an extension of college life.

Usually colleges employ students who are just out of college. The students themselves would not have understood the subject and they are made to teach them. Such lecturers end up being trapped in a profession they hardly like and dont even care about. When students ask them doubts they feel insulted and try to take revenge on them or start buttering the students so that they wont ask any more doubts(sic!). The teaching profession has become a joke due to these kind of lecturers.


Then in my second semester I went for CAD tuition. Shankar Sir taught us CAD. He was such a committed and student friendly lecturer. He would take continuous classes. He called the 9 to 12 pm batch the devils batch! :) He would not mind repeating a solution or concept any number of times. He was very patient. I remember calling him at 6:00 in the morning, on the day of my CAD exam, and he answers my call and clears my doubt just like in class without a hint of irritation in his voice. No wonder he got so many awards. What a brilliant lecturer he was!

Next, I have to talk about Manjunath Aradhya Sir. I have attended his classes for quite a few subjects like Data Structures, Electronic Circuits, OOPS, Microprocessors and now Java. But the man just amazes me with his understanding of each subject. Honestly he doesnt teach according to our syllabus and his classes may not help us for our internals or exams. But he sets a firm foundation and prepares us for our career ahead.

I have seen many lecturers who just mug up lines from the text book and blurt it in front of us. But Aradhya sir teaches us the concepts. Every line he says has to be clear and rational.
For eg, many lecturers just tell us Java doesnt support pointers. But Aradhya Sir explains that pointers are supported in Java but they cannot be explicitly created by programmers because they might use those pointers to access private data thus hampering data security. I know it may not be clear from my words but Sir can convince anyone!

Every class i attend makes me think he is so knowledgeable. He knows so much. He could have easily joined an MNC and made lots of money. Instead he chose to impart his knowledge to thousands of students who can share it with so many others. His honesty and dedication to his profession increases the respect in me for him.

I have heard many mechanical engineering students saying Shankar Sir is nothing less than God for them. The computer science and information science students echo the same for Aradhya Sir. They have communities dedicated for them on orkut! I ll always remember them for being the two lecturers who rekindled the lost respect for lecturers in me.

Saturday, September 5, 2009

back to blogging..

As i get back to blogging i realize i have already started 7th sem! That is a long gap between my posts. But my life has been such a wonderful ride until now that i hardly have time to pen it down :) There have been a few bumps too and i think i have managed them well :)

I ll start where i left off. The sixth sem CG project - Graphics Editor. There were very few people who were designing a graphics editor. Out of them, our main rival was The Boys Team! Yup, am not kidding. TBT had kicked off the coding much earlier than us and knew much more than us. We, The Girls Team, wanted to do a better project than them. We had to start from scratch at a very short notice. That is how began the competition which kept egging us on and finally resulted in TGT winning over TBT!!! HURRAY!!! Our project was much appreciated by the students and the staff :)

The success of the project made me work hard for the semester exams. I concentrated hard on maintaining the highest score. But the semester exams turned out to be such a shock that i almost thought i wont pass! Thankfully i got a distinction :) but i couldn't top :( In fact, i wasn't even in the top five!! Not the one to give up, i shall regain my position this time for sure :)

The academic issues will go on. But i shall remember sixth sem for another reason. I had the maximum fun during these days. I always had a regret that i was taking life too seriously. This belief was enforced by the fact that i had nothing to write in my blogs except my college life and exams.

And then things changed or rather i changed!
I got invited to a reunion and i met my school friends. Slowly my contacts developed and my social life improved.
Our family went on a one day trip to Sripuram and it was beautiful. The next day i bunked internals!!!
Next Came The Raghu Dixit Concert! The guy is just amazing! 3 hours of great music and entertainment. I felt young again :)
My confidence grew by leaps and bounds and soon I was organizing a reunion! Can you believe it? I expected a really poor turn out. My friends encouraged me a lot making me thank God for the wonderful wonderful friends that i have. Quite a few people made it and i had another feather in my cap.
These and many more things made me fall in love with life all over again!!! :)
”Live every day as if it were your last, because one of these days you will be right!”

Sunday, April 5, 2009

food for thought

the last week has made sure that i ll be pretty busy in the coming weeks!! :)

6th sem is supposed to be the most enjoyable year of engineering. that's bcoz the final year students hardly come to college and by 6th sem you would have got to know your classmates and everyone else in the college much better. much like saying 6th sem ppl will be the 'laadle and dulaare' of the college!! ;)

but that's hardly the case in our college. my classmates are still at loggerheads with each other and the lecturers seem to be possessed by gabbar's atma! no companies are interested in recruitment and vtu has decided to kill us with their revised syllabus!! moreover there was supposed to be an inter college fest in our college which is on d verge of being cancelled!

heh heh.. i jus love complaining!!! :D

however i must say 6th sem is quite challenging. we have to build a graphics package for our computer grahics lab using opengl. the catch is we have started learning opengl this semester! hail vtu!! :) but i really really really wanna code this thing all by myself. so i have been going through a lot of tutorials and stuff. and when i am about to start on this project we hav internals!!! well, that's my college life for you.

but hey i have a social life too!! ;)

last week it was my friend's birthday. i have known her since school. she is the ideal friend with a genuine personality. it's always a treat for me to go there since i get to meet most of my school friends. on my birthdays its just cousins and family. so this is one opportunity for me to spend time with my friends. it was a lot of fun!!! :)

and as usual now its time for me to log off. i cant post the favorite songs list today. but i ll surely post it next time and i ll update more often as i ll be working on my project real sooooooon.....

Sunday, March 8, 2009

sleepy sunday

it is a sleepy sunday. normally i get up at 6:00 a.m. so that i dont miss my college bus. so on sundays i take the privilege of getting up late(that's somewhere around 9:00 a.m.!! )

one look at my table and i thought i would faint! i am very possessive about my study table and the mess on top of it woke me up properly!! i got to work immediately. seeing me cleaning, mamma joined in and we managed to reset the whole place.
that's a whole morning gone!!!

i just finished my lunch. thinking of new excuses to postpone studying for the internals... ;)
mamma is glaring at me! i better get to work!!!

Saturday, March 7, 2009

sixth sem

finally i have started off with sixth sem. we have our core subjects from fifth semester. so we need to really concentrate on all subjects henceforth.

this time vtu decided to release the results quite early. i got 78% and i have scored the highest in the entire computer science branch!!! yipppeeeeee!!!!! (welll.. i told u am a nerd!! :) ) remember my dbms lab exam where in i forgot the 2nd normal form?? well the examiner decided to forget it too!! she has given me a whopping 50 on 50!!! God bless her!! :)

the classes move at such a slow pace. it's a torture sitting through them. the only bright spot is we have classes only till 1:00 pm i.e., only till noon.

we were supposed to have campus recruitments this year. but due to recession most of the companies aren't taking freshers. a very bad situation for us..
this made me think of higher studies. most of the people are going for it anyway. thinking of taking up the gre. i am not so sure whether i ll be able to answer even 10% of the questions asked in it. even if i make it somehow (miraculously) i am too attached to my family to leave them and go abroad...
its a tough life!!! :(

lets think about the problems later!!!

we have our fest coming up in may. our college has been conducting a small fest every year. this time my friends and seniors want to make it big!!! they are thinking of conducting an inter-collegiate!!! yooohoooo!!! :D
but our khadoos princi has different plans :( yet we aren't going to give up so easily!!
student power zindabad!!! :)

thats all for now. internals next week. back to business...

Monday, February 2, 2009

d best vacation ever!!!

itching to give a blow by blow detail of each day of my vacation!! :)

i was actually going through my cousin's snaps while she was on a trip to chikmanglur. those sixth std kids give way too funny comments!!! hahahaha...

5th- 9th Jan:
coming back to my vacation, we had this training which i still dont wanna talk about. it wasn't bad but nothing to write about either! ;)

13th Jan:
then i went with my friends to garuda mall! its not often that i go out with friends. so the day was very special. we went to 'the scary house' which by the way was not scary at all!! :P later on we went to coffee day right next to garuda! dont even think of buying choc milkshake over there coz its way too expensive!! :)

14th- 17th Jan:
we went to my native- mangalore. we went in a tt- tempo traveller. again a lot of fun!! :) i got to see some age old rituals being performed over there.

17th Jan:
the day we were travelling back to bangalore and my sister came down from bombay!!! we didn't sleep the whole night!! we kept chatting, checking out the things she had got from there, teasing her.. i love my sis!! she is the best in the world!!! :D

19th Jan:
we went to sridhar gudda, near rajarajeshwarinagar, just my family. there is a nice temple n then you have lots of stairs and if you go at the right time you can see the sunset, which lasts for just a minute or so.

31st Jan:
my parents' marriage anniversary. its the 24th year!! :) we had a big party. its going to get bigger and better next time!!!

1st Feb:
it had been some time since d last 'cousins only' get-together! :) yesterday we took an impromptu decision and all of us went out to this new place called 'rasa' in malleshwaram. beautiful ambience with torchlights all around. but the food and service could have been better. but anywhere with my cousins is definitely a big hit!!! :D

Friday, January 30, 2009

It has been a long time since i posted anything. that is because my vacation is going on..

Hols started on Jan 1st. I invited the new year by partying hard and dancing harder!! ;) Later we had a soft skills training program by infosys ( cornerstone consulting something something :) ) It was on for 5 days and i enjoyed myself. After that i went to my native but just for 2 days. Had to rush back home. Finally my sister is back from her training!!! :) It feels like she had never been away from me!! Chatting, fighting, roaming around, late nights, giggling, movies.. we havin been doin all of that and more! Life is going great for me!! :D

p.s: this is just the brighter side of my life.. i got to know my results will be out by next month and college reopens on feb 5th!! :( who cares?? :P

Friday, January 2, 2009

Happy New Year!!!!

My first post of 2009!!! Wish you all a very happy new year!!!

Finally am done with the exams!!! Yippeeee!!!!

Exams really tire me out. I hate getting up early or staying up late. Basically am lazy! :)

But 5th sem exams knocked the wind out of me. The syllabus was changed for our batch. So we cant bank on previous year papers. To add to our woes, the model question papers wern't released this time. So we didnt have a clue how the papers would be. That's all I can write about exams right now.

We have placement training this time. 5 whole days in college! :( College reopens in Feb. So we have about 20 days. I have a lot of plans for this vacation. I am not sure how many will be actually put into action.

I watched a movie yesterday. It's called Miss.Congeneality. Old one. It's about an FBI agent - Gracie Hart, played by Sandra Bullocks (my favorite), who handles a case related to a beauty pageant. The case needs inside info about the pageant and the FBI assigns this task to Gracie. The twist is Gracie is so not lady-like. The movie goes on about how she solves the case and meanwhile discovers the woman within her. It's a nice movie to watch on a lazy afternoon.