NITC - after a long time :)

Visited my alma mater, NIT Calicut last weekend for Ragam.. Man..it has been a long time.. lot of changes, lot of new buildings...lot of new stories ( read gossips ) .. Guys, NITC has changed a lot :) ..Some good aspects..some not-so good aspects.. Before getting into those, take a look at the snaps below...

( Most of the content in this post might not make any sense to non-NITCians.. Sorry for that ) ..

== > This is the how the entrance looks like now.. Closed gates, security guards etc at the start of Raj-path .. Almost all parts of the compound is encircled by 6+ feet high walls with glass pieces on top to prevent any of those old-style jumpings from hostel campuses..


Heard Papachan and Chechi have closed down their stalls ( didnt go there ) becoz , mess is compulsory now...( That is bad.. Isnt it ?? ) .. The Kattangal Shake shops , Mamachan etc are said to be still there..But to go to Kattangal, u have to go through the main gate..So, unless u have a bike, its a very long detour...Predictably becoz of this, number of bikes in the campus have increased..I even saw a girl riding a Pulsar -- Sorry guys, no snaps of that :) -- Four five years down the lane, we may even see girls giving lift to guys and waiting around F-hostel on their bikes.. Thats a good prospect..Isnt it :) ?





Any guesses which is the hostel shown on the right side ==>
? Hold your breath .. It is C-hostel.. It was one of the most poorly maintained hostels during our time... NITCians, please comment on this change :)

.. Opposite to C-hostel there is a new commercial complex coming up ( no..not of the b'lore shopping malls type :) ).. It is something which'll have a stationery store, saloons, gym, etc..etc..
( No Snaps of LH i.e, Ladies Hostel :) ..though i did go near that area :) )

F' has a new floor now..Its a 3- floor hostel now.. All the hostels have net..The CC or computer center is known as "Orkut Center" now... The cases of fake profiles, profile hacking etc are very common.. Future hackers getting trained :) ..

An orkut community indicating the availability of bandwidth => http://www.orkut.com/Community.aspx?cmm=6918141


Another one..."Orkuttans@NITC" :) => http://www.orkut.com/Community.aspx?cmm=14983528





==> Atlast a saving grace..The MC..aka Mini Canteen still looks the same..

I had a portion of "Double Attach" and "Lime" ....
That place reminded me of the nocturnal life we had during our times..

At around midnight, this place used to be swarmed by people..

" Chetta , Oru Lime tea.."
"Randurpya aimpaisa.."... ( Colloquial way of telling 2Rs, 50 paise )

"Oru Double attach"....
"Oru slice .... " ... And so on....


Below are a few snaps from the evergreen concert and fashion show ( Rechristened as 'A La Mode ' after the ban on fashion shows in Kerala ) .. "A La Mode" is read by keralites as "Alambode" :) ..Apologies for the poor quality of photos..My Motoming didnt work properly in fading light ..







Above and left, Evergreen..

Right, A La Mode ( Fashion show )
... After a long time, I could do cat-calls and howls without any apprehension :) .. Before the fashion show night, MSF did a protest march in front of campus against vulgar shows

......Thankfully or otherwise, there were no mini-skirts on stage and we were kept in never-ending anticipation ..The last four teams in the show had only guys among them and recieved maximum intensity cat-calls , abuses etc :)

I couldnt get there for Shaan's show, which was very good it seems..Even political opponents agreed on that.. Shaan rocked :) ..

Met with my teachers Vinod Sir , Nazeer Sir and Saleena Ma'am.. Talked a lot..


Few news which came from my teachers, old contacts and friends who are now working there / doing mtech there...

* Students are more career conscious now..The preparations for CAT,GATE etc start early..
Those were the exams which we gave just like that during final year ..A GRE cult is not yet there..

*AIR Rank 1 in GATE for EEE is from our college and that too an S6 student... Lot of other top 100 ranks too in all departments.. And 8 IIMA calls, 2 IIMB calls...etc ..etc..Good going juniors.. :) ..My GATE rank was some 800 odd in prefinal year and 1300 odd in final year ( I studied a bit in final yr :) ) ..

*Now, to the funny part.. Director/dean issued a circular banning liquor bottles in the campus..A guy was caught because he was having a very good collection of liquor bottles..and becoz somebody tipped him off :)

* The next day the circular for the ban of bottles was released, a record number of beer bottles, and other stuff were recovered under the notice board where it was pasted...Dont know how spiced up the story is :)

* ECE - 2004 passout batch, your " Vaal - street " incident is a regular phenomenon among even the first years now :)

* Lot more spicy stories....but can't put it in blog :) So, censored :)

All in all..It was a very nice experience :) .. See some more of my memories @ NITC in this earlier post


Ajith

Volunteers Needed ...

Alright, some serious stuff... There is an organization called Asha , which focusses on education for underprivileged children ( U can read more details at http://www.ashanet.org/ ) . As part of fund-raising activities , we are planning to organize a corporate quiz here at B'lore ..This is something which has been successfully organized at Hyderabad over the last two years and has yielded good funds by means of sponsorship, registration money etc... Please note that nothing in terms of when, where etc are not yet planned for B'lore... Basically it involves talking to HR / managers of different companies about the mission of Asha, asking them to sponsor few teams from their organization ( The registration fees at Hyd was 5000/- per team ..and around 35+ teams came ) which can be done through your contacts, mails, phone...etc..It also involves roping in some sponsor to pay the prize money ( At Hyd, it had to be paid from registration money ) , getting a reputed QM to host it for free, getting an auditorium for free (At Hyd, it was hosted at ISB ) , printing leaflets, preparing web, registration etc... So, in a nutshell, it involves talking to lot of ppl , convincing them about the mission of Asha, and roping them in...

We need a core group of volunteers based at b'lore who'll help us in doing this.. It'll involve using your contacts ( c'mon, make some practical use of orkut, messenger etc ) ..Essentially it would mean that you'll have to sacrifice sometime -- perhaps a significant portion-- from the weekends which you'll be spending with your girl friends /boy friends , pubbing, partying, window shopping at forum ( I too belong to this category ) etc ... People from other cities are also welcome to help us with their contacts in companies, friends etc..But more importantly we need people at b'lore who are willing to sweat it out for this...

So, if u r interested, mail me at - ajithprasadb@gmail.com -- or comment here ,I'll get back to you.. Also, if you are not from b'lore but happen to know someone in b'lore whom you feel will help us in doing this, please pass the message to them too....Don't put this message to public mailing lists or anything like that...I dont want spam here... If you feel you can help / someone whom you know can help , get them in...Basically, trust your instincts rather than blindly trusting the internet in propagating the message...

Thanks,
Ajith

Dream Interpretors ??? ( Modified )

I'm getting a dream nowadays that I'm writing my std 10 language paper again ( Malayalam paper 1) ..This is not like one of those numerous engineering subjects like Theory of computation ( which has a text book -- Lewis & Papadimitrou -- that has almost all possible printing symbols in this world) , Software Engineering ( Sommerville fame -- ask any NITCian about this book,95% chance that u'll hear #$%& ....) or Electrical engineering ( semster 1 ..- I forgot the text book name-- maybe I studied on photostats... or maybe I didnt study at all.. ) in which I somehow managed to pass the test / fool the evaluator , whatever the case may be... Malayalam first paper is something in which I scored 48 / 50 --- The dream caught me so paranoid that I actually verified the marks in the SSLC book -

Any interpretations on what this dream means.. ?? Don't say that I've to go to Pareeksha Bhavan at Trivandrum and see if still my SSLC records are still there and haven't been eaten by a cow or anything like that ( FYI, Some years back there was an incident in which few SSLC books were recovered from the garbage bins at Calicut University and many were already eaten/half eaten by the cows roaming around there. ) .

Another interesting dream which once I had was getting lost in a forest with ... err , not a babe.., but with a professor of astronomy ... And we ended up debating about topics ranging from astrology ,astronomy , physics ....and so on.. I woke up before I could find a way out of the forest...

And, perhaps this will qualify to be one of my most weird dream ever -- It involved me wandering in a big city searching for a person..The dream is so vivid and vague at the same time that I can remember lot of places where I walked, but I can't remember whom I was searching for....I still dont know which city is this..it has a kind of medievial architecture, with a
beautiful sea side.

Maybe I should buy Sigmond Freud's "Interpretation of Dreams" :)

( PS:- The inspiration to write the first dream came after reading Neihal's post ,which made me realize that there are many people in this league...

Second and third dreams were added after I came to know that Serendipity tagged me to write on dreams )

Ajith