That was a date of mine! ;)

It was the 29th of last month, a saturday. I heard from Mass the previous day at the Workshop written about in the forementioned post that there was going to be a technical symposium of the IT department the following day at Velammal Engineering college, titled Lumieres '09. (Gawd! Is there such a word?? I never knew!! :( ) He asked me to attend the symposium as he felt I might be able to participate in something, and might even win some prizes in technical events. [Guys, don't laugh! He claims that I'm a techie! :D ] I told him that I'll try to come there the next day. He had asked me to reach Chromepet by 7 in the morning, so that we could go together, and that Kicha, his quiz-partner, would come straight from hostel.

I was sleeping till 8 as usual, and when I woke up, I found none in the house. Mom was out of station, and my brother had left for office. I was locked up from inside, without my knowledge. The bitter thought of having to cook a meal for myself and do the household chores drove me crazy. Just then mass called me, and shouted at me like anything for not coming there. And then, on hearing a single word from his mouth, I jumped up and got ready to go to Velammal. Guess what!? ;)

He told me that the events start only by 10.30, and hence I informed him that I'll join him in coll. Then after a gruesome journey of about 90 minutes in bus, I reached the place, which was near Puzhal. The registrations were closed by that time, and I was the last guy to be allowed to register for the events in that symposium. I decided that I would try out my hand at quizzing and more importantly, Web Designing! When I made up my mind that I would take part in these, Kicha n mass fought amongst themselves so that who stand a better chance of winning the latter event in the event of they teaming up with me ;) A consensus was finally arrived upon, and it was confirmed Kicha would be my teammate in Web Designing as his Photoshop skills won him a place alongside me, and Mass would dare to go in as a Lone-Wolf! :D

Before the Web-designing event, I went to attend the quiz prelims in an online test as a lone-wolf. When they asked me where my pair was, I told them that I'm SINGLE. [No pun intended! :)] They ran their eyes through me as if I'm a big quizzer. :D I went inside, occupied a machine and started reading the questions. Out of the 25 questions, I think I would have got about 9 right on my own. That's not the story tho! I had to hint about the prelims qns to these 2 Quizzers who had been to the EEE dept. prelims then! :( Without being noticed, I did the ugly job, and reconstructed almost all the questions, and handed it to them. Luckily, they knew most of the questions as it appeared. They went in, finished their prelims and as expected, made it to the finals as the toppers in prelims!

Then came the moment of the day! We three were already 30 minutes late into the web designing event. Until that time, I had a decent opinion about Kicha's technical skills. But what happened thereafter clearly showed that Kicha was surely a cut above the rest :) Kicha and myself were asked to create a website for I-pods, and mass [He was a lone-wolf mind you! :) ], was asked to create a website for laptops. We three took our seats, and got down to business! Mass opened MSHearts game in that Web designing contest (!), and started playing. Unable to bear this, the system shutdown almost immediately and refused to switch on. And then, what Kicha did was even more hilarious! He opened an image in the site created by some earlier team in photoshop, and being a techie, he redefined the 3-fingered-salute there! viz, Left mouse button+Ctrl+Z! [I guess you could guess what I'm arriving at :D ] I too lost the mood, and started chattering away with Mass there. After another half-an-hour of the same 3-fingered salute, Kicha could recreate the magic of the original image on screen! :P Then, fed up of this routine, we saved the already existing folder of someone else and left the arena, in the name Vijay_Kishore, as the sole reason of my visit to the college, the LUNCH time, was elapsing! :)

And there ends my tryst with a technical symposium, and none in the earth could imagine doing such a thing as to go to a college symposium, being lazy to cook a meal for himself!

Later,

Vijay.

Sparks flew everywhere! :)

It was last week's friday, the day after my birthday. I was sleeping in my bed till 7.30 in the morning. Suddenly, it struck upon my mind that my good friend, Deepak had instructed me the previous day not to miss the workshop which would be conducted by WIPRO's Mr.Pavan Soni, the next day morning in our department seminar hall. He had attended the same workshop few days earlier at the adjacent campus of ours (IIT-M), and told me that it was really wonderful, and worthy of attending surely. I assured him that I would come to college and attend it even though we didn't have classes that day.

Never in my life before, have I attended any sort of seminars or workshops, even those which are conducted by TIME institute in connection to CAT, as I had a sense of feeling that seminars are a thing to be attended by serious n sincere guys, most of whom would be nerds. And, I don't belong to that category anytime in my life! But since Deepak, whom I really admire a lot, along with Mass, told me to attend it, I decided to give it a try. Many people from my gang told that they would come the next day, so we decided to attend it. I had not got even a hint about what the seminar was all about, and I was really hoping that it is nothing of a technical one, as I felt that I could not stand the day, if it happens to be so.

It was scheduled that the seminar would start @ 9 a.m. on friday. But, I was travelling with Mass in his bike at 9.25, nearing college! [You guys know about my punctuality in everything rite?! :)] It's wrong to be regular and punctual anywhere! At last, I reached the place by 9.40, by which time, the handful of poor guys n girls who were present already and were on time, were at the receiving end of the wrath of a CUIC official saying really stupid words like,

This is an student centered initiative.. You are so irresponsible.. Blah.. Blah..

I call that stupid coz these days, I have started to wonder if the CUIC atleast thinks about the majority of students of the University, let alone care about them later [Guys in my academic range would understand what I'm trying to arrive at! Ah free.. Don't wanna deviate from the main topic :( ]. Another stupidity I witnessed here was that, he was scowling at the punctual guys and girls, and not at us. And this happens everywhere! So that doesn't bother us. :)

Then, the guy flared up on seeing us late, but a little later, true to the age-old saying Better Late than Never, he let us into the hall. We were comfortably seated there in the chairs, but there were no signs of how the day did turn out to be later. There were about 6-7 girls and about 10 guys at that time. Then, to gather crowd and please the Wipro guys, many juniors were thrown in after being apparently threatened about the attendance by the staffs. Then, in a mean gesture, there came Mr.Selvamani, a staff liked by one and all (!) who threatened the students right in front of everyone, about their attendance.

SESSION #1:

It was then, by about 10 a.m, almost an hour late, that Mr.Pavan took centrestage. After introducing himself and the name of the workshop as "Let Sparks Fly", he told us as his first words, that a clear opinion has been etched in his mind that CEG is totally irregular, irresponsible, and what not! No one in the world dares to start his lecture as robustly as he did, and all of us were taken aback, even though he was true. The guy had been to numerous institutions like the BITS and the IITs, and it was obviously impossible for him to take it in his stride, the unpromising reception he got over here. But he was really smart, and he radiated extreme confidence and serenity when he started the talk. I soon realized that everyone is bound to be captivated by his speech, and I was proved right.

The guy was not serious in his talk and didn't expect us to be serious, but he wanted us to be sincere. [He explained the difference between the two :) ] He spoke on the various stages of a product development, and on various other marketing ideas. His entrepreneurship came to the forefront, and I could sense that I was gradually getting involved in the workshop, and was following him closely. He stressed on the need of the Insight (Knowledge), the Idea, which is the base for all innovations and discoveries earlier in this world, and then, after all the processing of the ideas involved to come up with the product, there arises the need to package the product suitably to meet the demands in the market, inorder to determine the success of any product. By the end of the first session before the Bio-break (a term introduced by him again :D), with our show of sincerity, there was a marked change in his attitude towards us, with him saying that we had almost brought about a mood swing in him, and he thought that this was going to be one of the better workshops he had ever held.

SESSION #2:

From the second session onwards, the workshop was centered on teamwork activities. There was the mortality rate to be encountered, as a result of which only about 40-45 people returned to the seminar, after the bio-break. It started by 10.40. Each team had to have atleast two girls in it. Our team comprised of many people from my gang, so there was no marked uneasiness in the air. The team comprised of : Kicha, Mass, Cisc, Vasanth, Pandan, myself, Vijitha and Nithya (H batch girl). There were 7 teams in all. Arthu was sent off from our team to another team which had Deepak in it, to maintain the balance of the teams.

The concept of the session was to jot down all the problems faced by the present-day world, and solutions on how to rectify them. We were asked to create a mind-mapping of the problems and their solutions, and were given about half an hour's time. Vijitha was designated as the scribbler of our team, and we all made notable contributions with our own ideas. But, one guy who stole the show was obviously Cisc, given his unparalleled imaginative power. Kicha came closely second though. :P Most of their whimsical ideas were written as the hypothetical solutions to various problems plaguing the world. We had a whale of a time with everyone being in a flippant mood, and contributing with ideas of their own degree of weirdness. :D

SESSION #3:

The final session of the day, after the lunch break, was the implementation phase. :) Each of the 7 teams was given an important problem, and was asked to create a model city where that problem is solved either through technology or other means. We were assigned the task of creating a city with 100% literacy rate. We got down to planning our implementation, and once again, Cisc being the frontrunner in terms of the eccentricity of the ideas offered. After creating another mind-map for this specific problem, we got down to the implementation.

Some of the weirdest ideas which were fabricated by us were, Literacy Tablets [Courtesy : Cisc], Literacy implanted Genes [Courtesy : Kicha], Literacy Monuments [Courtesy : Vijitha I guess..not sure ;) ], Lessons on sarees, Literacy Vending Machines [ROFL!! You Rock da, Kicha :D], Robotic Arm [Courtesy : Mass]. I was one of those very few guys in the hall, who happened to think of highly rational ideas, which were also feasible, unlike the random thoughts of others...LOL!!

After the design part was over, Kicha and Mass remained inside to present to the panel of jury, our city, which was called the LIT CITY, as it was a city enlightened coz of cent percent literacy, and devoid of ignorance. This title was an extempore imagination of mass. :) Our team was adjudged the second. More so, this workshop was rated as probably the Best one by Mr.Pavan of all he had conducted. That is why, I have titled the post like this. :)

Later,
Vijay.

P.S:- Check out Pavan's blogspace about the workshop experience in CEG HERE. And BTW, for the group which developed the Singara Chennai, Arthu and a girl named Preethi represented them. They had an excellent chemistry with each other even though they were not adjudged in the top 2 teams. :P

The Bizarre Sathyam Adventure!! ;)

I've never been to a cinema with my gang of college friends till a couple of days ago, which may be felt by many as absurd for a guy like me who knocks around in perpetuum with friends. This grotesque experience of mine happened on Tuesday, the 18th of this month.

It was the eve of the red-letter day of the most popular figure in our gang, Dinesh, better known by everyone as the MASS! ;) Classes ended for most of the guys with the third hour and for some, with the 4th hour. We all decided to spend the afternoon at the Sathyam Cinemas and have a ball. It was decided that we would go to an English movie titled Public Enemies starring Johnny Depp and Christian Bale, unanimously (though I was not involved in the decision-making process). Everyone was furious with Mass for not bringing his car to take us to theatre, and also, for not offering us a birthday-eve treat. :D

This was actually my first ever English movie in a theatre ever since I came to high school, so I was pretty apprehensive about going with them initially. Only after they told that I could easily follow and enjoy the movie, I decided to proceed. Eleven Usual Suspects decided to go to the movie at last and the list comprised of Mass, Arthu, Cisc, Vasanth, Pandu, Santhu, Shyam, Ram, Vicky, Deepak and myself.

We all reached the theatre by 1.50 for the 3.45 show. Halt there Guys! Don't ponder why. It's necessary to reach the theatre 2 hours in advance for a theoretical possibility of getting the 10 rupee tickets! [We're perfect local lads] ;) We were impersonating Rajni and Koundamani (thalaivaaaa!!) while we were in the queue. [Does Mannan strike a note??!! :P] We were the cynosure of all eyes at the cinema, but we're not ones to be bothered by all those! :D

When we reached the ticket counter, Cisc was the one with the money hence he was left the job of buying the tickets. But Lo! There were only 6 tickets for the movie for which we had come! :( Then, in a moment of madness, mass and myself shouted that we would instead go for Kaminey, a Hindi movie starring Shahid Kapoor in a dual role and Piggy Chops. Though this was induced by the highly positive opinions about the movie, We both didn't listen to anyone's animosity and told Cisc to go ahead and buy eleven tickets for Kaminey. The others were extremely annoyed as I was the only one there who could understand Hindi a little better than the others. And, what's more, I am almost an abecedarian in the language. :)

Then, after buying the tickets, without paying heed to all the brouhaha around, we reached Shyam's house which is within a stone's throw from the cineplex. [I wish I own a house there, Lucky fellow Shyam! :(] All the other guys were locked up in a room and doing something, God alone knows what! And being an ardent cricket fan, I started to watch the drab 5th ODI between B'desh and Zimbabwe at Bulawayo. When I switched on the tv, the Zimbabweans were tottering at 80 odd for the loss of 6 wickets. After about another hour of humdrum cricket at its best, everyone left for the show as it was about to commence shortly.

We reached the cinema, and were near the entrance, when a couple of guys took a detour to have a glimpse of someone in a niggardly attire. As if this wasn't enough, when we were about to enter the cinema hall, some were waiting like guards letting others to pass in for this sole purpose! ;) The guards glowered at our guys like we were causing a pain in their neck. But, anyone who knows us would certainly understand that this is nothing new. :D

When the movie began, everyone who was fighting for a seat near me so that I could be their interpreter, started to feel bad as I was not listening to the movie at all, and was totally engrossed in the chatter with Mass. Even those who started to feel that they should see the movie, lost their interest fully, courtesy Mass and myself. :) I just understood the gist of the first half of the movie with the few scenes I watched, and explained to some others what I could make out, during the interval.

Then, came the anti-climax at the end of the intermission. We thought that we could occupy a seat in the more luxurious 90 rupee ticket arena, as we felt that we won't be caught. When I went there, mass called me over to his next seat where Santhu had just sat down. I was engaged in a brawl with him, and as he refused to let me sit there, I sat (lay :D) on top of him and refused to get up. The security guards felt this to be too much of a nuisance, and they charged towards us intending to throw us out.

When we noticed this, Ram, Vicky and myself quietly ran away and placed ourselves among the 10 rupee ticket seats. The others didn't listen to us and stayed put at the same place. The guards came and almost whacked the others out of the theatre. [Those people won't accept this particular statement. :D] We three saw the second half completely without any sort of disturbance, and infact liked the movie and its narration, true to the reviews I had heard earlier.

But, that day, the story of the movie didn't linger in my mind. Instead, the thought of oneself being thrown out of a cinema theater, which seemed highly hypothetical till then, happening right in front of my eyes, had me in splits the entire day! :)

Later,
Vijay.

[P.S:- The characters and the incidents mentioned above are truly factual and nothing fictional. You can feel free to ask any of them what happened that day at Sathyam :D]