My tète-à-tète about astrology! ;)

Disclaimer:

I would like to point out initially that the scientific community considers astrology a pseudoscience or superstition. The following are purely intended to provide facts from my life, and the inference part is left open for all the readers to arrive at. :)

The Google SMSChannels service is one of the lesser known free services provided by google. This is part of the google labs, which serves as a testing ground for new services being developed. I had come across this while browsing randomly a few months ago. I subscribed for certain channels like Cricket updates, Soccer news, and most important of all, the Astroyogi, to which this blog post is dedicated to. ;)

I've never had great belief in the concept of astrology, and I consider this sun-moon-star game as plain jabber and nothing more. This belief of mine might take roots in the fact that I don't know much philosophy, and also that I don't intend to. I would now like to share a few very recent instances, where I made much more fuss about astrology, than I've ever done in my life. :)

#1:

To everyone's astonishment (including that of mine), I had cleared the programming round and made it to the technical interview, in the campus placements of athenahealth Inc. I was running a very high temperature for the previous few days and could barely sit, let alone speak. I was made to wait for about 4 hours in the sweltering heat of the sun outside the CUIC, hence I never had any real hope with the physical trauma I was undergoing then.

My anxious wait for the interview was intercepted twice by our protagonist, the Astroyogi of course! ;) First of the 2 messages came at about 11.30. It read, "You will face problems in communication today because of the moon." Then at about 1.00 pm, I got the same message once again, with an added line. "Your actions will bear fruit only if you finish it by 12 noon today" :-| It seemed to me like, someone was keeping a watch over me, and sending me messages in accordance to what is occuring there. But it seemed funny to me in hindsight, that I was unsuccessful that day, in accordance with the message. :(

#2:

The next incident was at the CSE department symposium of B.S.Abdur Rahman University, Vandalur when I was about to take part in the puzzle championship. I teamed up with Arthu, and we didn't expect to be in the finals, because I felt our prelims performance was way below my own par. We were filling our tummy, and were thinking about leaving. Our hero entered the scene just at the right moment! :)

The message read, "Lady luck will bestow her smile upon you, and you will walk away with all the honours in your activities." The very next minute, I got a message from the event organizers that we were selected for the finals. Later in the day, we actually won the event, to my huge surprise. We both were totally bowled over by the coincidence which happened that day. :)

#3:

Being a CAT aspirant, it is really difficult to keep my mind off what happened during one of the mock CATs of T.I.M.E. I was way too low on the confidence levels, having already secured a double hat-trick [cricketing terminology..4 in 4..LOL ;)] of unseen failures. I was having a fever this time too, and I went to the test in absolute nonchalance, and I could also say that I wrote it just for a formality.

When I started to write the test, I sensed that it was a comparatively easier paper than the others and hence, I began to grow in confidence with each minute. Just then, I got the message from our lead guy, which read, "Today is your day. Nothing you get involved today will go wrong. Your confidence will get a huge boost." The message did prove to be true, though out of coincidence, as I secured a place among the toppers in the test for the first time. :)

Everyone in my friends is laughing these days whenever I get a message, as whatever significant happening to me, lies in accordance with the Astroyogi messages. When I think of the randomness of the various incidents listed here, smile creeps up inevitably. People are even telling me to hope for a similar message on the day of the actual CAT! :)

P.S.:- By the way, I forgot to add the FYP Zeroth review part.. Almost everyone in our department knows how scopeless our situation was on the day of the review, but with all due credit to our hero, we scraped through!! ASTROYOGIVIRGO rocks! :D

Later,

Vijay.

Randomly running amok!

It is the time of the year when everyone who is aspiring to apply for higher studies, begins to dust up their GRE or CAT materials and starts to brush up the concepts so that they acquire a stranglehold on their confidence levels before the actual exams with their improved performance in the mock tests. Instead, as specified in the earlier post of mine, my performance, which steeply goes down everyday leaving my life meaningless, is a very good indicator of how I'm going about this business of mock tests n stuffs.

People don't know what to call me, insane, freak, nuts and what not! People close to me already feel that I'm the best example of the waste of prodigy wherein casualness breeds casuality. My friends have called for atleast some amount of practice being necessary towards the CAT inorder to stand a chance to even dream about the test, but those barks have fallen on deaf ears till now, as always.

I do not know why I possess such a nonchalant attitude towards life, but it is simply the drive which I lack to an extent, to survive and succeed in my career. Prabhu, my close friend, has started shouting at me that it's high time I start working hard for CAT, or be prepared to face the worst. And I've been deferring the start of serious preparations as much as I can, coz of my laziness. And I am a person to complain of life being full of boredom with nothing to be done! :(

Two weeks back, myself and my friend Vivek, struck upon a random thought that we would run the Chennai International half-marathon (21.1 kms). We never know how we could come up with such queer thoughts, as we both have nothing to go in common with athletes. But still, we took it up randomly as an endurance test and decided to give it a try. Some 5 days before the event, we started to practise running, so that we would not have a nightmare on the race day.

For about three days, we both would run for about half an hour in the evening and for this sake, we would stay put at the hostel for over five hours, doing absolutely nothing but sleeping n chatting. And thus went the whole week, doing nothing but wasting time in the name of practice.

THE RACE DAY:

On the 27th of last month, the day on which everyone would have woke to worship the goddess of knowledge, I woke up early at 4 o clock and left for college. Halt there guys! not to study, but to accompany Vivek from there to the venue of the marathon. We started from college by 5, as we had to be there at the War memorial by 5.30. We went in Vivek's bike and parked the bike at the Island Grounds parking lot and went to the War memorial.

We reached there on time, and waited for the race to begin. It was announced that the International runners would be present at the start of the grid, then the national level runners, and then the state runners. So we were at the very back of the grid and waited for the race to begin. By the way, the guy who announced talked that much badly that none in the crowd could have understood his so-called English language. The race was finally flagged off at 6.05 by MP Kanimozhi, who is the mind behind this charity event.

The route map is shown in the figure given by the side. We both had this map in our pocket and started the race together. We had to start from the war memorial, and run through the marina, santhome and till besant nagar via adyar. and take a U-turn and return back to the war memorial. The very thought of the huge distance sweated the whole body of mine, as I had not run a distance greater than 8.5 kilometres in my entire life.

As expected, Vivek lagged behind and I started trotting along at a decent pace. I know that I'm not a good runner, but the thought of finishing the race spurred me on without halt. But when I crossed the 8 kilometre mark in about 35-40 minutes, the eventual winner of the event, John Wambus from Kenya was on his return way (i.e) he crossed the 13 km mark! From then on, my motivation and pace slowly waned off. I was simply jogging slowly as I knew I could finish the race within the deadline of 3 hours anyways. What's more, the women leaders, who started the race 20-25 minutes after us, overtook me when I was at the 9 km mark! :(

I reached the halfway mark and on my return at the 11.5 km mark, saw Vivek who was slowly jogging at the 10 km mark on the opposite side. Then it was a painful run back to the war memorial, as I had developed a serious sprain in my knees, as a result of which I could not move my legs properly for the whole of next week. The rains in the morning didn't help our cause any further, as the feet in the shoes went heavy and running became very difficult on the waterlogged roads.

Then finally, I completed my race in about 2 hours and 20 minutes, almost twice the time taken by the topper. :( And I waited on and on expecting Vivek to reach there. He finally made it in the exact duration of three hours viz, at 9 o clock. Then, we both came to college, took our bikes and drove home. I've never experienced that much physical pain in my life as that day, but the cause of charity for which we ran made us forget everything. But how the very thought of participating in the marathon sprang up suddenly in our minds, is still puzzling even to myself.

Later,

Vijay.

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