Cultural Bonanza

Hi guys I am back to the internet after having got disconnected from it for about a week due to the cuturals in my college( INSTINCTS) and the project review I had a couple of days back. I am happy that both of it went good and there has been no problem. To start with let me tell you about INSTINCTS which took place for three days.

The chief guest for the inagural event was Arya and there was massive response from the crowd for the hero. I expected a lot for his speech as the speech of the chief guests in the previous years have been marvellous( especially Madhavan in 2007). But he disappointed a lot by just gicing a promo show for his upcoming movie Sarvam. 😀 Then the events kicked off and the crowd for the events were more than expected.

My friends who know me well know that I love gaming and that too in particular football. So I took up the organization of the gaming event(FIFA). I have been a volunteer for the event in the previous years but this is the first time an organizing an event for the first time and it was quite a different experience for me. Another thing that was new this year was that for the first time we printed a tee-shirt of our own for the event which is done in most of the colleges and all the people who saw it commented that it was nice. The first day went on usual for all events except for gaming which attracted most of the crowd and was amazed by the number of participants who were registered for the event. I was a moment thinking whether  I will be able to finish off the event in three day time as there were limited number of systems to conduct gaming. The truth is that none of the system provided by the college was compatible for the game. Computers of my friends from hostel were taken and used for gaming in three days. 

Most of the guys who came for FIFA were first year students from different colleges in Chennai and so it was no big issue in moving with them easily and I had some nice time chatting with them and sharing my experience about the game with them. The main event in the second day was the pro show by singer Karthik. Due to some technical problems the event got delayed by a couple of hours and this made the crowd unhappy. The project review was due in a couple of days for me so I had to meet my guide on the third day and because of that I missed out to meet “Neeya Naana” Gopinath who came as a chief guest for a event. This was the one event which I missed in the whole culturals as I love his shows on Vijay TV.

If there is a culturals without a fight then it is said to be no culturals. This was my thought as there was no fight in the culturals for the first two days. Inorder to capitalize it the fight began in the third day morning itself and it was a fight between the students of the same college. A similar fight took place between the final and the first year students of SVCE in the gaming too. But all these fights were small ones and there was no big one till the afternoon. There was a big fight in the afternoon and that marked the trademark of the culturals :D. The Choreo Nite was a big hit and almost all the colleges that performed in the event were superb. As of this culturals I saw just two events which was the inaguration and the last event.

As all our systems were in the computer lab after the end of the day we would be spending the night in the computer lab enjoying a lot in the A.C. playing games in LAN. On the last day it was the birthday of one of the juniors and it was a different experience celebrating his birthday in the lab. This culturals was the best one in a different angle but still I liked it a lot. When I think that I will not be present to enjoy the next culturals( athukulla college senthu 4 year acha?) it is a bit disappointing. Hope the life beyond college is fun filled like this.

MITAFEST

As of the readers would have noted by now my blog has been hosted under a new domain http://www.srkarthikeyan.com and I am expecting the same kind of response from you readers. Feel free to comment on this blog.

This weekend I attended the culturals at MIT College (MITAFEST). For those who don’t know what is MIT, it is one of the leading government engineering college in the state and as it was spoken high of other colleges I expected more from their culturals. First of all I would like to inform you that I haven’t attended the culturals of other colleges and INSTINCTS (Cultural event of our college) is the only culturals I have attended so far. The crowd to the event will be around thousands and our college gets a good number of count in audience due to the overwhelming sponsors we get every year and so I was expecting at least a decent crowd in MIT. The first day when I reached Chrompet it was around 2 in the afternoon( as I had exams in the morning I had to start late). Don’t mistake me to be a dancer or a singer as I went to the culturals :). The reason why I went for the culturals is to take part in the gaming event conducted by them and of course for sighting :). I have took part in a couple of such gaming events before but haven’t been successful in any of them. People who know me must be aware that I am a die hard fan of football and have interest in FIFA. I was shocked at first by seeing the place in which the event was being hosted. It was a place where they park the shuttles and for tamil people try remembering the introduction song from the movie Five Star. Welding works were taking place in one direction within the place and a mere ten computers were used for the gaming purpose. There was a total of 4 events in gaming. I had no idea of posting about this else i would have managed to take a snap of the place. They didn’t forget to collect the entry fee for each event which was much higher when compared even to SRM College which is the only college in Chennai that charges more for events like this. I just went out to check the standard in which I was playing the game and I had no confidence of winning the game as it has more than 8 months since I played FIFA 08 ( I have been playing the new version of the game FIFA09 since it was released in August last year). The first round was much easier and I dominated the game right from the start and I had no trouble in proceeding to the next round of the tournament. So they asked me to come back the next day for the next rounds. I thought for once whether I have to travel around 50 kms for just playing as I wasn’t much confident on the event. It was one of my friends in college who insisted me to give a try to the event.

I went the next day a bit earlier as they told me that the second rounds will commence by 10.00 in the morning. But as there was shortage of systems they extended the prelims till 2 in the afternoon. The place was under an asbestos sheet and this made the place more hotter. I started getting head ache due to the heat and irritation there. I cursed myself for coming to the event. If I had been in hostel I could have enjoyed a lot sleeping :). I thought of spending the time by having a look at other events. As on the previous day I have arrived late I couldnt actually roam around the college much. On the second day I found out that hardly 500 people would have come to watch the culturals. For a leading in the center of the city and having culturals on a weekend this number was too low and I was surprised. Then i consoled myself saying that ‘ இந்த மாதிரி கேவலமா நடத்துனா யார் தான் வருவாங்க’ . I played the next round and I lost the match and I was happier than I would have if I had won it because I just wanted to leave the place. I waited for my friend to finish his match too and so that we can leave for the hostel together. As already stated there was some working going on in the place where the event was taking place and they were welding beams at the roof. I managed to get a picture of the place from the movie for you but the place in reality was far worse than what it is in the movie. My friend CT ( His original name is Gokul Prabhu and CT is his nick name) was playing the match and as I was having a head ache I was sitting in a chair away from him and was facing towards him. Suddenly the people working were shouting and I saw a beam coming from the roof right towards the pople playing on computers. The size of the beam is given in the picture so kindly take a look at it. And it fell right next to CT and the CPU in which he was working flew some 20 feet away. The beam has missed him by just and if it had fallen on him I can’t imagine what damage it would have done. Organisers of the event didn’t even apologize for the incident and they simply started continuing the event as if nothing has happened. My visit to MIT has reduced the respect I had on the college before. Our college culturals is due in a couple of weeks and we hope that the event becomes a success as it happens every year. I invite you readers to attend the event which is scheduled to take place on March 5,6,7.

Give me some idea

A couple of days back I was playing on my desktop when one of my friend suddenly came up to me and told me that all the colleges in the state has been closed indefenitely and that we will be having holidays once again for about a week altleast. I thought this will be of no big issue as things will be pleasant in a couple of days and there won’t be much enjoyment on the board. The biggest surprise came to me the next day morning when they asked me to vacate the hostel. I thought this is something wierd and decided to move to the hometown following assurance from the college that there will not be classes for another ten days atleast. So what am I to do in these days( U just can’t pass time. It’s ****ing bore here) As of now I have planned to download the top 250 movies in the IMDB rating and watch as many movies as I can in the upcoming days. Right now I finished watching the movie Crash based on racialism. So if u have any good ideas for me post me then.

Project review

Most of the seniors in my department have told me that project review in my department is not easier as they start asking some crap in the review and I didn’t believe it till I experienced it myself in the zeroth review. I was a bit nervous about the review as I did nothing for the project other than having a look on it on the penultimate day of the review. Review hall irunthu vantha pasanga ellam pei aranja madiri irutnhanga. This kindled my fears more as I was wondering what stupid questions they were gonna ask me. But there was a little confidence in me as my batchmates were well prepared and I had confidence in them to solve the problem with ease. The project guide was also in support for us so I was hoping this to get on smoothly. To make you know the state of the people inside the review committee here is a small example.

One of my friends was doing a project on designing a robot and he has even took part in the Robotics competition that took place in IIT last year.

Staff: Everything is fine but are u going to sense the motion of the robot

Student: The sensors is used to sense the motion

Staff: How will you program to sense the motion. What language will you use?

Student: The sesnor is a device and it detects the motion of the robot and it cannot be done by programming . The device must be bought.

Staff: Oh, The sensor is a device .. k..k..

This shows how brilliant are the staffs in the comittee and this needed and as I feared they started asking stupid questions to my batch right from the title of my project. They wasted about 10 minutes with the title slide and were not satisfied with the explanation I and one of my batchmates gave them although it is correct one. After around half an hour they left us finally saying that there are a couple of changes to be made in the report and that our project title has been selected. We came to realise the problem only when we approached the staff after changing the report. The staff has understood the concept to be wrong and now wants us to do the project as suggested by him. The new problem statement is about three times complex than the one that we have been working already and as far as I have asked the people who are in the field have told that this cannot be done in a time span of three months( time allocated for the project by the university). I was expecting 2009 to be good but like the previous year it has started out with problems once again.

Photo session

Came back to hostel from home as it was boring to be alone in home. Celebrated a couple of my friends birthdays and also enjoyed a photo session in my friend’s brand new digital camera. Here are some of the pictures.

Poppi told that the digicam had autosmile detection … so tried that

A casual still

Here comes the birthday party at night. The birthday cake

The B’day boys cutting the cake with fear. Posing as though they are going to fire crackers 🙂

B’day boy 1

B’day boy 2

Bumps for the B’day boy

Nothing special in the picture other than the water drops. This is to show the clarity of the camera lol.

I am also into the IT industry

Hello everyone. I am here to share to the happiest news in my life so far. I got a job myself in Cognizant. Still I can’t imagine how I made it done. This happened yesterday. Cognizant came to my college for the campus placements that takes place here for every batch in their final year. This is the first company to come to my college. I had minimal hopes for getting placed in the company as I had an arrear and also to add to it I didn’t have much confidence in myself. But the result is that I got placed in the company which is a dream for me.
The day started out well as all the students were busy preparing to attend the first round of aptitude exams which was in the auditorium of my coll. Believe me or not I just had an hour of preparation for this aptitude exam which is the entrance point for the company. I didn’t prepare for this because I had my arrear exam just a couple of days before it and I was confident that I can clear the aptitude exams and it was only the interview section I feared. All my friends including me were in their best dress that they bought for the placements. I used to be cool usually having no fears for exams but I was a bit nervous as it was to be the defining moments of my career. As per the sentiments of my parents I got wishes from them through phone as I am in hostel somewhat 500 kilometers away from them.
I set off for the exam and the exam was a bit difficult but I was sure that my name will be there for the next round and I was ready to face the interview. As expected my name was in the list of selected students for the interview and I was a little excited about this as I was just one step away from success. Two of my best friends also got selected for the interview with one of them being in my own panel. Getting this job meant many things which cannot be told in this blog as they are more personal and no one except a couple knows about it. I went for the interview and the interviewer welcomed me and I sat in the chair in front of him.
After the normal formalities of asking about me and other details he started to shoot out the questions. But before this I will tell you what I had prepared for the interview. I asked my seniors and they said that the questions will be asked only from the area of interest so I just spend a day on my area of interest so that I am aware of the basics of the subject. The first question he asked me was “What is stress?” As I am a computer based student I thought out this to be a general question and answered “It is the state of a person being in mental pressure.” I was waiting for the next question when the interview rose up, saw me and smiled and said “Dude, am not interviewing for a psychiatric job. It is from Engineering Mechanics. What is stress in Engineering Mechanics?” I was very embarrassed as I didn’t expect such a question from him. Then I replied him that it was the pressure that was applied on a unit area. The next three questions he asked were “What is strain? What is the value of stress/strain? And at last what is the difference between the petrol engine and diesel engine?”
I was a bit shocked as all these were related to mechanics and I had no idea about it and almost hated that subject. That too I was a computer student and various questions were running in my mind at that time. I tried hard and focused on the situation. The interviewer must have read my mind and he changed the subject and came into computer science. I answered some questions that I knew and skipped those I was not sure. The interview went on for around 25 minutes and I returned to my room. The time was around 4 p.m. in the evening. The confidence that was in me the previous round was not with me this time and I didn’t expect a positive result this time. I was a bit dejected and I cursed myself. The results were to be announced at 6 p.m., again in the auditorium.
The worst part is to wait for a result for which you know that you haven’t given your best. I too went to the auditorium and waited there for the result. The company people didn’t keep their time as they kept us waiting for at least 2 hours. Those two hours are the longest hours in my life and still remember how much tensed I was. In the meantime phone calls started coming from all over the state from my relatives regarding the results. I ignored all the phone calls and was waiting for the result. Then came the time at around 8.30 the company officials decided to announce the results and they were reading out the names of the selected candidates and I was quite surprised to hear my name in it. I was very much surprised as there were a lot more of my college mates who had done better but still weren’t selected. I was just overjoyed and felt like flying on top of the world. I am writing this post now before leaving for home for a month vacation. My birthday is just 3 days away and there cannot be a better birthday present for me than this. I am very happy and hope to catch u in quick time.