Trip to Nandi hills

Yeah, the last weekend was FUN. Mottai was here during the entire weekend and we went along with Keyan to many places in Bangalore. The one main trip I had planned was to Nandi Hills. As decided we (Myself, Keyan, Mottai and Sriki) took two bikes and to set on to Nandhi Hills on Saturday. Nandi hills is about 70-75 Kms from Bangalore. The drive was interesting and superb. Definitely those who love riding bike on highways will love this trip, as I did. I think it took around one-and-a-half hours to reach the top of Nandi hills. We stopped at many places on way to take some noshes whenever we can find some on the road side. I took my brother's digital camera and Keyan's had his DigiCam. So whenever possible we also flashed the lights.

At the top of Nandi hills is a Shiva temple, a small park and a hotel. We spent at around an hour or so there and started to return back. While we were getting the down the hill we caugth up a shooting crew recording stuff for a Kannda serial. I think there were shooting some song, I have never seen a song in tamil serial. That looked strange to us. As we proceeded we have to stop at few places to give some work for the cameras. The sunset, the lake along side the road were all looking beautifull. We had some good shots there. As we started to ride in the highway, it was real FUN with the chill air dashing your face. We reached 100 Km/hrs at times and the ride was awesome.

Nandhi hills snaps :
http://www.flickr.com/photos/saponniah/sets/1662126/

The next day too we were roaming around the city. A good weekend passed away ;) Looking out for the New Year eve now. Till now no plans, let me see what happens!!

CRY (Child Relief and You) donation!!

Today from my pocket :), I dotnated some amount to CRY organization. Yesterday we had two volunteers from CRY, Bangalore in our office to get donations for the welfare of CRY children. This is the first time I have spent some money from my pocket to help poor people. A bit of joy here :)

Sakleshpur Trek

The first trek of mine. Sakleshpur, around 6hrs travel by road on the way to Mangalore. Along with my brother and his friends I packed my stuffs for the trek. We have booked the tickets for everyone to Donigal (near Sakleshpur). The bus was on 11:30 pm.

At around 05:15 am, the bus reached Donigal. We got down near a tea stall. It was pretty dark around the tea stall, since it was the only one in that mountainous area. The speakers of that tea stall voiced a tamil song from the film Kadalukku Mariyadhi. It was a pleasent welcome to all we tamilians in the state of Karnataka. Someone told that the climate was around 10 C at that time. We were all shivering, getting all the possible stuffs out of our bags to keep us warm. We then had a hot tea in that tea stall. That made us feel little comfortable. We bought some diesel from that shop (with the plan of a camp fire that night). We then have to walk around 1.5 kms to reach the Donigal railway station (from where the real trek starts). We started to walk on the way that leads to the railway station.

We reached the railway station and got on the track for the trek. It was still dark when we started to trek. We kept moving on the track, we followed the directions of the track. Our destination that day was to reach Edakku Mary by the evening. Edakku Mary will be around 15+ from Donigal. Around 07:00 am we came across a bridge. The steel brigde for the trains to cross. There will be no support on both the sides of these bridges. Luckily the bridge had some plates on the railway track. We cautiously crossed the bridge. Then came the second bridge, this bridge had no plates on the track, that made us feel scary and uncomoforatble while crossing. We all took bath in the stream that ran below that bridge. We too had our break-fast there. We had chappathis, bread with jam and snacks with us.

After the break-fast the journey continued. Then came the first tunnel. I remember that was not too long. But getting into the first tunnel, we screamed to hear the echos and had fun. Bridges and tunnels came across the way. We too stopped at few places to take rest and to have some snacks. As time went the climate got sunny. We people carrying all the baggages felt uncomfortable under the sun. At around 01:00 pm came the longest bridge. It is 120+ meters long. Real good one to cross, the height was too big. Scary but adventurous. The water stream that ran below that bridge temped us to take bath there. We took an another bath there. Getting down to that stream and climbing back to the track was a real trekking, I would say. The path is not a proper one and is really steep. Just after that long bridge was the longest tunnel. It was 572 meters long. It will take 10+ minutes to cross that tunnel. It was completely dark inside the tunnels. We all had torches with us to help us out inside these tunnels. Just to have more fun, we lit up a fire ball when we crossed that tunnel. Everyone was hungry by that time. We then found a place just after that tunnel to have our lunch. It was 03:00 pm when we had the lunch.

To reach Edakku Mary we have to walk 3/4 kms from that place. But two of the guys felt to return back. With the help of a local guy there we took a jeep (the one used to take goods and people from that track to the nearest village) and reached a nearest village. From there we took the local bus to reach Sakleshpur. From Sakleshpur we reacehed Hassan through another bus. After we had our dinner at Hassan we took a bus to Bangalore and reached Bangalore at 02:00 am.

As a whole I would say the trip was FUN, SCARY and ADVENTUROUS.

Snaps : http://www.flickr.com/photos/saponniah/

SIMILITY - Firefox toolbar

simility is easy

The simility toobar is the fast, easy way to find great new content on the web. With just the click of the "recommend" button, we suggest new pages similar to the page you are currently viewing.

Better than search

simility is better than search engines because the recommended pages are generated from other users. We only show you recommendations of sites that other users find interesting and helpful, so you don't need to spend time paging through hundreds of search results.

BikeWala.com, the new kickass site for researching Indian Bikes!!

BikeWala (http://www.bikewala.com/). This is my current project in TU. Check for a new experience in the site and send me the feedbacks or suggestions, if any you have. You can also write reviews on different bikes with our site. Hope this site helps you out in researching the Indian Bikes. Since it is still in the Beta version, many more thing are yet to come :)

Just to keep in touch with my blog!!

:-) Need to post regularly!!

Last week @ TU

Project braintroming is on here at TU. TUers have to come up with new ideas now. By the by, Joe and Steeve are here for this. They are the one who has to approve these ideas. Only those ideas that are being approved are continued.

Last thursday we went the PUB Spinn. I wasn't really in mood to party that day. But atlast I changed my mind to dance and it went fine. Yesterday we went to a place called Club Cabana. That was around 23 kms from our office. I took some snaps there, check out this link http://www.flickr.com/photos/saponniah/. I played five/six volleyball matches there. After lunch I was at the pool for two to three hours. In the evening I was into the Bowling ally for a match. I came second with 103 points. The day ended when everyone were dead tired. I can't even walk properly coz of the pains in my leg :)

Me at Trilogy

Since I reached Bangalore I haven't blogged. That was bad on me, I know, but I cann't help it. It is not like, I felt lazy.. for the first time in my life I can't find time to do these. You know I joined Trilogy on 15th of July and the professional life started then. I'm now under the training process called TU, (Trilogy University). It for three months and so it goes till october 15th.

Its been nearly a month and this is my first weekend I'm feeling free off the company thoughts. Four weeks have gone and we had different schedules for the different weeks. Let me try to recall what we had in the last four weeks.

The first day was a completely different experience. I met people from different parts of India and 18 guys from China, those were the ones with whom I'm gonna spend my days in Trilogy. We went to the hotel Le Meridien for dinner that day. I guess that is my first five start hotel visit. During the first week we had presentation on the company's goals, strategies and like that stuff. I guess we went to the PUB Zero G (Zero Gravity) on that week's wednesday night. That was also my first time experience in a PUB. I don't wanna write down all my experiences there. It was fine and had a nice dance party there. During the weekend we had an event called Scavenger Hunt. Its like the normal treasure hunt game but covering the whole Bangalore city. We had an opportunity to get to know places at Bangalore. That was a FUN event.

The second week at TU is where the real technical part starts. The whole week we had sessions on different technical topics and after every session we had small assignments on those technologies. During that week's wednesday we went BayLeaf at Koromangala for dinner. These dinners are meant for getting close with each other and to relax your mind from the hard work during the day. For the weekend we had plans to go to a place called Wonder Valley. It is located around 12 kms to the south of Bangalore on the way to Bannerghatta. I had spent the whole saturday with my TU mates and Section leads there. We had some event for FUN and some as inter-section competitions at Wonder Valley. Its a nice place to visit as a group. The place will make you laugh and relax your mind, whoever you may be.

The hard time started with the third week. We had three assignments (Track Projects) for this and the next week. It was that time we worked for days that are endless. So many night outs, slept at the office... During that week's wednesday we went to Amoeba at Leela Palace. We had a snow blowing competetion and dinner there. Leela Palace Rocks!! No words for that. Its big.. no its mammoth!!

Veera enna.. the track assignments have come to an end. From the next week we have project brainstroming followed the project work that goes till the end of TU. Joe Leemandt, our CEO is gonna be here for the next two weeks. Its going to be an interesting time ahead.

'Auto 7005' has gone out of my hand

If you have seen me in TCE (my college) then you must be knowing of my vehicle M80 Major. I suppose I was the only one of my time to come to the college everyday by M80. That was unique and unusual. My M80 was fondly called 'Auto' coz., of the sound it produces while on the road. My friends say the sound it produces is exactly of an Auto-rikshaw. It has been with us for the past six years. My brother too used to go the college by that M80. It was actually bought for him to go to the college. After his four years of college, I continued driving that M80 to my college. I was so close to that M80 that I have even met with an accident while driving on that. Though the accident was small, I had a big injury and went through an Arthoscopic knee surgery. I was put on the bed for a period of a month and was advised not to drive for the next one year. But after that I period I continued driving my M80 :)

These days I have been disposing all the good ones along with I have lived. The bicycle was another one. I think we bought that when I was in seventh standard. I loved it and its now with someone. When I called up my brother and told that I have sold the M80, I could feel that he too moved sadden. It has gone out of our hands, but I could feel happy when I think back the moments which I had with that in my college and home.

You know why that 7005, its registartion number is 'TN 58 C 7005'.

Are we on the right path??

Two days back the Tamil Nadu Chief Minister, Ms. Jayalalitha, has declared to cancel the TNPCEE (Tamil Nadu Professional Course Entrance Examination). In the sense only the HSC (Higher School Leaving) marks will be considered for the Engineering/Medical admissions from this year.

To my knowledge I thought that the TNPCEE is the only best examination at the high school level. It is because TNPCEE tests the anlytical skills rather the byhearting skills, on which the HSC exams entirely relies. The main reason they say for the cancellation is that the rural students donn't have fair chances when compared to the urban students. Yeah., I accept. The reason they say is right, but the solution is in the negative way. They tend to move in the wrong direction, I suppose. The solution should be like improving the teaching or education system in the rural areas rather than cancelling the exam itself.

The another issue is that when the TNPCEE is cancelled, there will be no common exam on which the selection can be grounded on. The students of State Board, CBSE, ICSE et al have to compete with the scores from their respective exams. Among these the State Board is considered the easiest one, so another dispute lies here.

I'm fond on Ms. Jayalalitha's decisions. She is educated, she does things well, she executes critical situations with proper knowledge and so many. But sometimes she too falls down like this. An another situation when I was against her decision was when she told to demolish the Queen Mary's college at Chennai. How could this be accepted? It has so many fames, a more than 100 year old college, has so many alumnis all over the world. Its a monument rather than a college by itself.

Someone needs to do something regarding this TNPCEE cancellation order. I'm totally against this. I don't know what the public feels and the how the reaction would be.

Sometime dreams come true

Yeh.. it happened to me when I got my offer at Trilogy (www.trilogy.com).

I had a tough time during the end of my last semester in my college. I had few failures though the reason was on my part. I was totally discouraged by myself. I thought I was not up to the mark and really want to prove myself to the world that I can do something that is unique. Yes, I was searching for some opportunity to work on that. It was during that time, my friend Vellai Pandi (nick-named "white") came with a visiting card of Mr. Deepak Babu, an employee of Trilogy, India. White told me that Deepak addressed few people at TCE and the talk was about his company and the openings that are available at Trilogy for the freshers. I have already heard of Trilogy from my friends and my brother. I thought this would be a good challenge to work with. I contacted Deepak and enquired regarding this. His reply was positive. I had then set my mind. I started to move towards the path leading to Trilogy. I lended a book on Algorithms and Data Structures from my department library. Since that was during my exam time, I have to postpone my preparations after the exams. But my mind was always towards it, even during my exams. Exams were over and I started to read the book. I always love reading books on Data Structures. But, at TCE the exposure to Algorithm concepts were less compared to the other top seeds in Tamil Nadu. I have to accept this. But I need to know these concepts if I need to attend the Trilogy interviews. I slowly got myself into that core of Algorithms and developed the habbit of calculating the complexities of each and every solution I make. I got help from Arunachalam (an Anna University student), Ekanth (my brother) and a huge from the Internet.

After a week or two, I thought that I'm prepared. I informed Deepak that I'm ready and forwarded my resume to him. He was always positive in his replies and I was asked to wait untill the interviews are scheduled. One fine day I got my interview date (18th was scheduled date). I stayed with my cousin Sankar for the days I spent at Bangalore. He has always been a motivating mind to me. His roommate Venkat was too friendly and encouraging. A cool and interesting personality. I had two tech rounds in the interview process at Trilogy. The interviews were all focussed on Data Structures, Algorithms, general problem solving skills and a programming language of my choice. I'm not going to say anything on the course of my interviews. Simply to say it went fine. Trilogy's interviews were of new kind to me. They don't care for your areas of interests or any specific things from your resume. They need people who can work on problems, give innovative solutions and so on. I'm happy that I have cleared the two rounds of interviews and got through my challenge. My college-mate Parasuraman has also been selected. We are first to enter Trilogy from TCE.

You know, I felt contented that day when I received my result positively. The *JOY* you get when something happens that has been your dream for the last couple days is different from the normal ones. Seldom it happens!! I have no words to describe them. Two days back I came to Madurai with my offer letter for Trilogy. I think I have made my parents feel good. Everyone around feels happy, that pleased me to my heart. Sometimes or other, things like this should happen to all, making them feel good.

wu :: forums, Berkeley

http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~wwu/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi

Dictionary of Algorithms and Data Structures

http://www.nist.gov/dads/

Yet another BE product has come out

On 25th of April, I have completed all the works to become a BE graduate. My theory exams were all over the last week and on 25th my project viva-voce were too over. There was no problem with viva-voce. I'm too an Engineer!!

People have started to move from Madurai. Few of my friends have received their call letters from their company and are getting into the corporate world. I cann't think of the transition from a student to a professional. Probably at the start it may/will be interesting bacause of the new corporate ambience, the money you get and so on. But we are going to be made responsible and the care-free life has come to an end. I have heard this from lot my seniors and ppl in the industry. Life goes this way and you need to have this change.

In the previous blog I was promising to write things on the last few days of the my college life. I'm trying to get that out from my memory now. I will start with the 'Geeks' day and continue with the 'Last' day of my college.

(Geeks Day)
Geeks, we the CSE guys like call ourself. We had a plan of printing a shirt and worn that some day to make FUN. Finally we decided with a caption that is to be printed in the shirt. It goes lik this

v are int
v may float
v never char
v love struct
v r a union

Hope you could get the meaning of what I'm trying to say. We being the compsci ppl we have dealt everything with the data types. We call this 'Geeks' shirt. We ordered the shirts for a count of 84 people. It came on one fine morning, that day had the CSE Association valedictory function in the morning and the official college culturals in the noon. The CSE Association function is a very formal one. We ppl being the final years has to in the formals (atleast semi-formals). But everyone were with the 'Geeks' shirt. No one can question us, coz the count is big and no Geek is ready to listen to anybody. The function was over. The next plan we had was to run from the college canteen till the B.Arch. department. We the Geeks stood in a row and started to run. Remeber it is a working day, the time was around 10:45 am in the morning and we ppl are running with a hell of noise and scream. We stopped near our department and took photographs. I think during that time, our HOD called one of the Geek and read that quote in the shirt. To our surprise, he didn't say anything. Then we continued towards the B.Arch. department. Few videos were too taken. The morning seesion went as such with lot of photographs in all the places of TCE. It was lunch time then. We (10 of us) went to the Aarthy drive-inn restaurant. Had a nice time there. The college culturals was the one which made everyone to stand wild. We enjoyed a lot there in the KM Auditorium. As we were late to the culturals the seats were all occupied. We had to stand at the last and watch. As usual we ppl started to scream, sang some strange songs and everyone were attracted to our noise. The staff incharges came and warned us not to make noise. Then came a security, then our HOD. Still Geeks is uncontrollable. The HOD was very concerned because the shirt was printed with 'CSE 05' in the front and the CSE department's name will going down. We then moved to the KM Audi's balcony. There Geeks were in the excited mood and started to dance to the tunes. Imagine how could that be. In the last four years of my college life I have never seen a college day like this. People used to scream that all, I have never seen ppl dancing, but it happened this year. The 'Geeks' day was over with few other good things. I trying hard to type all those.

(Last day)
The last day of my college was too a memorable one. DUring the morning we could not feel anything. It just went of. During the afternoon slowly people started to think a bit heavier. Guys never down, we were all njoying. The two persons with whom I saw tears was Meena and Archana, my classmates. People slowly started to get signatures in their shirts. I had no plans for that and came to the college with a good formal shirt. But how could my friends leave me. You could ask abt the fame of my 'Bue Jean', which I used to wear daily. Maddy and Keyan caught me and they were the first to sign in the jean. Then I made up my mind to get signatures in my lovely jean. It was different because everyone were getting signatures in their shirt/t-shirts, but myself in the jean. But somehow at the end of the day, my jean was filled with signatures. Apparum, around 05:00 pm our class guys sat near the dept and started to share the good old memories. Everyone was led to speak and share his happiest/sad moments. Everyone were open with thier mind and that talk contniued till 10:00 pm. By 06:30 pm we were told to leave the college, so moved to the Vinayagar temple and continued our discussion there. During the discussion was going on a small misunderstanding too raised. But that was solved. Hope my classmates understands this. To finish the day, after the discussion was over, we went for the dinner in Triparankundram. By 11:30 pm we bid adieu and went back to home.

We had many good times like this. The student life @ TCE is over. Even now when I go to my department, my juniors call me an aluminus :-(

TCE is great, long live TCE!!

Chandramuki - lakka..lakka..

The Kollywood's superstar is again in his track. After his unfortunate movie "BaBa", he is now back in "Chandramuki" with a bang. He looks good as he was in his previous blockbusters. The movie as a whole is superb with a neat story and screenplay. But at the start it moves slower and picks up its pace as the story moves. Rajini has not done any gimmick or says any punch dialogues in this movie. This may be a disappointment for his fans (me too). The movie actually is a thriller and says about split personality. Jothika is the one who suffers from this split personality. Jothika need a special mention. She has performed really to the mark. I stood amuck with her performance at the movie's end. Sometimes scared too. And the one more that is impressing to us all was the dialogue "lakka..lakka..lakka.." which Jothika says at the end of this movie. Go and see why this needs a special mention.

Dare to face Chandramuki!!

Back to my Blog

Its been long time blogging. I was busy with my last few days in my college, enjoying the life to the extent possible and now in mid of my semester exams. Third have gone well and yet three more to go. I have to log lot of good experience in the past few days, after my exams were over I hope to do that.

Local touring with friends

GATE was over yesterday. I thought of going somewhere yesterday itself, but since we had no plans I could not catch up my friends. I slept in my home in the afternoon and in the evening I went to John's house. There we planned to make to local trip to Alagar Kovil and Hawa Veli the next day. Everything was planned pakka yesterday night and everyone agreed to meet infront of the British Bakery at around 08:15 am (that was too early for me and John), today. We have planned to tour by bike, coz., we thought that going by bus will be tiresome and won't have lot of FUN.

I was the second to reach the British Bakery after Aravind Baalaaji. Then slowly everyone came, it was Keyan the last. We then marched to Natarajan's house. We then started from there with five vehicles with two per each bike. Oh..!! lemme list the names of the people who went there, it was, Myself, Bara, Bala, Keyan, John, Jagu, Chellapan, TVR, Purushothaman and Nattu. First I don't know why everyone rode slowly, then we started to pick up the speed. Driving in the outskirts of a city will always be a FUN, those who has an experience will say more on that. We had few snaps, posing while on the move. We reached the Alagar Kovil in few minutes. Near the Kovil entrance we took few snaps. While we were there, Fredrick called up Jagu and told he too will join us. He was in Mellur and it is 15km from there to Alagar Kovil. We told him to come directly to the Palamuthir Soalai. We then started to move up the hill. There were some hairpin bends, monkeys, lovers (today is Valentine's day, remember!!) and all. While at a bend we stopped for a snap. Took few and it was there we had a nice experience with monkeys (Chellapan will say a lot, coz of his bitter experience there). Nattu has got some chips with him. We unpacked that and it was made half empty. We continued and reached the Palamuthir Soalai soon. Went inside the temple and worshipped the Lord Muruga. This is one of the Aarupadai vedugal of Lord Murugan. It was a small temple indeed. We parked the vehicles there and started to walk towards the Amman Kovil that was few yards from there. There was an water vuthu (I think we call that as 'cove' in English) in that Amman Kovil. They say it is holy to drink/take bath in that water. We drank that, let your blessings be on us too, my Lord!! After worshipping the Amman, we ppl started to move upwards the hill. After that Kovil, there were no tar roads laid. We had to move in a path, that was like doing trekking. It was only we eleven (Fredrick has joined us there) who were moving up the hill, there were no public movement. We managed to move a good distance and stopped near a water vuthu. We climed up some rocks, went a steep down for snaps. We drank that holy water from that vuthu too. After sometime, making good FUN over there, we started to return back. When we reached the Amman kovil back, we saw the Tamil Nadu famous Sivakasi Jayalakshmi. It was tiring when we came nearer to our bikes. Started to move down. It was around 12:30 noon when we reached the down hill. The Alagar Kovil doors have already been closed and we missed the chance of worshipping Lord Kallalagar. Hawa Veli was the next stopping for us. Hawa Veli, a place that need to visited during the evenings. It was hottest noon when we reached there. Hawa Veli had a big lawn (superb one of quality), dashing car race area, a restaurant and ofcourse few couples. While coming back to Madurai, we stopped at Nattu's Manga thoppu. It was now the flowering season and so no Mangos!!

When we reached Nattu's house it was around 02:00 noon. Had some cool drinks there. Bidding goodbye everyone started to their home. Touring with guys that too in bikes, you can think of so many. We did all those you can think of. In the evening we have planned for the Ideal Home Exhibition @ Tamukkam. Life is going good like this.

Revolutionary movie @ CSE Aalamaram

Movie "The Code - Linux", which we people were planning to see one day. Joe has this movie in his Laptop and we were finding difficult to fix a date so that we could screen this movie with the LCD projector and everyone could see that.

Today asusual we closed the Lab and we were moving out. When we neared the CSE Aalamaram, someone took this topic (abt screening the movie) and I casually asked Joe can we see the movie now. Joe too responded that he is ready. Hey! we thought that Joe was kidding, but Joe was serious. Then we ppl too agreed. I think it was around 07:00 pm, it was almost dark. Joe switched on his Lap and everyone found a comfortable place under the Aalamaram and started to see the movie. Those ppl who are from TCE-CSE must know the fame of this Aalamaram. The movie is a documentary on how Linux was developed and related stuffs. We enjoyed the movie but the mosquitoes there toutured us like anything. That was something like hearing Buddha's philosophies under Aalamaram. I have not had such an experience before, hope no one. Coz, just think of seeing a movie in a Laptop, under an Aalamaram that too during the late dark evening. Good experience. Need to make a copy of that movie, you know this movie too has been released under some license under which you can make copies of that. Cool illaya!

TCE Marathon 2005

Oh my GOD, today in the *early* morning my phone rang up. I woke up and asked my dad what is the time? He told it is 05:30 am. I was drowsy but suddenly a thought struck my mind. We have our college Marathon today. It was announced yesterday that the college bus which picks up the students to the starting point will reach Alagapan Nagar by 05:15 am. It was already late and so I called Aravind Baalaaji to ask where they are now. He told that he has already reached the spot, but he told there is an another trip via Alagapan Nagar. Then I hurried myself to catch that bus.

Do you think I'm a real marathon runner. Never!! Do you know why we guys are gonna participate in this event? The Physical Education Department has announced that every participants will be given a t-shirt (College name printed on it). This is reason!! Ok, somehow I reached the spot before time. We got the t-shirts, worn it. Summa how can we stand there, so we started to do warm-up exercises (vetti joo than). Around 06:30 am, our college Principal came there. There were some snaps by the media persons. Principal then waved the flag, the students of TCE started their ride for 8 km. I too was one among them, he! he! As we crossed around 200 feets, my good friend Keyan started his ride towards his house. He told he will return back with his bike. We ppl (Myself, Aravind Baalaaji, John) continued to run with FUN. I ran till the Duraiswamy Nagar and then started to walk. But those two guys continued. I found a companion (Sankara Narayanan of Mech) with me will in walk. We walked for a little distance and then stared to run for a while. Near the Nataraj Theater, they were giving away the cool lemon juices. But to our fate it was already over when I reached there. We continued our run. When we were near Palanganatham Keyan came in his bike. "Oh my friend, I was expecting you". I told bye to Sankara and started with Keyan in his bike. We rode really slow so that we could encourage all the participants. Its really stunning to see so many people doing good job there. We reached the college by 07:10 am, I suppose. When we reached the college the first and second place holders have already the finished the race. They are great. The first place was bagged by a junior, the second by a final year and the third was by an PG student. I think the first to reach in my class was Rajesh Raja. Hats off the winners.

Suba Siva has got his digital camera there, we took snaps, had fun. Real show there. People who missed this has really missed something. Hey, this is a part of final year life. Still more to come ;-)

Life is Beautiful

Today I saw the movie "Life is Beautiful". My brother has been asking me for a long time to see this movie. Once in last year I had a chance to see this movie, but I was not able to see the complete movie that time. It is only today I saw the complete movie. Its good, the director/actor Roberto Benigni has done a really good work. The way he explains things to his little son, his way of expressing love towards his son and wife are great. Also I saw the movie Anbae Sivam, yesterday, I think the third time. Kamal's and Madhavan's natural expressions and dialogues have struck my heart. Hey I think both the movies are equally good on all the aspects, on my view. I don't why Anbae Sivam was not given big awards? Really Life becomes Beautiful on seing these movies, it gives you good thoughts.

Enjoyable week !!

For me the last whole week was good. To start on monday, I took a seminar on UNIX kernel internals. Coz., it was realted to my favorite area, Operating Systems, I enjoyed a lot taking that to my classmates. The following day we had a hottest fight ever with a staff member. His name is Mr. Balaji, he used to tell that TCE is poor and we the students are not doing anything great. He always has three things to say, TCE is bad, TCE students are not stuffed and then CSE is the worst branch. That day we started shouting at him. Nearly five of us guys (Venkatesh, Nethaji, Myself, Keyan and Nagaraj) stood up and just straight to his face denied what he was telling these days. After few minutes everyone started shouting at him. A joyful day, I think he won't talk on this here after. The problem with him is the way he says. It makes every student to get angry eith him. And during the friday and saturday, I was busy with learning Bochs with my project mates. It was on friday we made a base design for our project. On the same saturday we conducted a mock GD and interview for our juniors. I really enjoyed that and had a satisfaction of helping my juniors. On sunday night we had a new audio system (Sony MHC RV22, Mini HiFi system) in our home. It plays audio, video and mp3 cds and the cassettes obviously. It really ROCKS. Today morning I felt do I really need that much big sound system, coz., it shocks your heart on every beat. A nice weekend and hope there are good days to come in future for all!!

Discussion on goatee design

Today in Joe's house the goatee team (we) had a discussion on the base design. I think after a long time we have had a good discussion. When we started to discuss we were not able think the way we need to. Joe started to talk first. He told something on what the first task must do. Then we were put in the stream and we started to discuss on the design. Slowly the different functionalities of the different servers were listed. The dependencies between these tasks were also listed. The priorities of this were also finalised. Today somehow I need boot up the ProX kernel in Bochs. The minutes of the discussion is on http://sigos.blogspot.com/

Getting placement is a cakewalk for me

This article is published in the January 2005 issue of IT Inside, a CSE Association monthly of Thiagarajar College of Engineering.

Have you ever heard of this statement from someone, before? I think most of the people who have got their placement in some company say this. Do you think that it is that much easier to face interviews? Yah, it is an easier one, provided you are prepared for that in advance. The simple secret of making anything come on your way is *hard work*. It is a matter of planning and executing those plans with dedication and hard work.

Basically you must equip yourself with few skills before the campus recruitment starts. Look back! I have used the word ‘starts’, because once the campus process begins, the companies will be pouring down daily like anything and you won’t have time to prepare rather you will be missing them out one by one. The skills you need to have are

(0) Mathematics skills (general aptitude)
(1) Technical Skills
(2) Soft skills (communication)

Let me discuss these one by one. I will start with the Technical skills first, then Soft skills and finally to Math.

Technical Skills:

Technical skills never mean that you have to be a genius in all your domain related areas. The interviewer expects the fresher to be strong in all the basic concepts. He knows how a fresher would be and what he could expect from a fresher. For *comfortably* clearing the technical interview, you need to have an area of interest first and then have done few projects.

(Area of Interest) I know, most of the third year students still won’t have any area of interest for them. Well, when I ask the question, "What is your area of interest" to the third year students, the most probable two answers are, "I’m interested in all the subjects and don’t know which one to choose" or "I’m not interested in any of the subjects and don’t have any idea of which one to choose". If you are in any one of these categories, I promise that, you will never choose your area of interest. The best option for you is to choose any one of the papers which is easier and may be a little interesting for you. Anyway, you have to force yourself to choose something at least for the purpose of interviews. I have a point for those who have a peculiar area of interest (like Neural Networks, Genetic Algorithms or some specific technology) which might not be known to all. It is better that you have another area (common ones) also. It is because if the interviewer does not have any knowledge in that peculiar area, he might be put in a situation to ask questions from the area in which he has more expertise and you may be put to trouble in that case. After you have picked up your area of interest, you need to spend at least a month, reading any two standard books in that area. You must be able to answer any question from your area of interest.

(Mandatory Areas) Apart from the area of interest, there are few mandatory papers which you must read. Any two Programming Languages (C, C++ or Java), Data Structures and basics of Computer Architecture will do. Better be strong in C. You are expected to know the concepts like pointers, file handling, storage classes, structures and unions in C. In the case of C++ or Java, all the OOP concepts and the specific special features of them are important. Learn the differences among these three, the most favorable question in the interviews. At least, be strong in any one of them. Regarding Data Structures, you need to have a thorough knowledge on arrays, stacks and queues, all kinds of linked lists, trees, graphs etc., Learn all the operations possible in these structures and always be ready with a code example to explain these operations (adding, deleting, inserting a node, etc). Different types of Sorting and Searching are also important. You are sure to get a question in anyone of the sorting techniques. As I mentioned read about the basics of Computer Architecture.

(Projects) Projects play an important role in technical interviews (even in HR interviews) as it is considered a must. There are many people who have excelled only because of their projects. It is preferable that you have at least two projects in your resume. Make this as a mandatory one. If you don’t have any one now, start doing one. Many times, interviewers get impressed by the projects and they keep on talking about those and forget to ask questions from the technical subjects! So try to project your projects first to the interviewer.

Most of the technical questions will be of the type "what is what" and definitions. So when you read any topic, have the habit of jotting down the important points and definitions you read, preferably in flip charts. I recommend flip charts because you could any time have a skim at it. When you are done with all the above, I think you are ready for the technical interview.

Soft Skills:

Software professionals are expected to have a good communication skill in English. Some companies take people only for good communication skill. You can even trick the interviewers with your communication skills and get through. But this won’t workout always. Multi National Companies (MNC) prefer pakka techies who is also a good communicator. A strong communicator does not mean a person who uses hi-fi English. Communication really is the ability of making the other person to understand what you are trying to say. Even if you are from a Tamil medium school, don’t be afraid. You need to come out, that’s all. Try to speak out in English even with mistakes. Those who feel inferior, I have a best quote for you,

"Don’t worry what people think about you,
they are too busy wondering what you think about them"

Get that, it is a real truth. The expert way of breaking your inferiority complex is by speaking out and get experienced with that. There are so many places where you could improve your English speaking skills. You could conduct class club events, you could attend Rotaract club meetings or form a group of your own and keep improving your skills. Things might sound odd, it even sounded odd for me too. But you need to practice these if you want to improve your communication skills. I have heard from my seniors that the best way to improve communication skills is by *practice*. Few might think that they could directly go to the interview desk and speak out. It will never work out and have not worked out till, mind it. Start now and keep practicing till you get the confidence that you are able to communicate in English of what you think. Someone from every class must take the initiative, so that everything is done within your classroom and with your classmates and finally everyone gradually improves before they face the recruitment board. Keep conducting Group Discussions (GD) on varied topics within your class. GD is the best filtering method most companies prefer. Improving the soft skills is much easier when you do these things. Do it for your sake!!

Math skills:

I see many people (of third years) going around with the aptitude books now. I think that they are too early to start with the aptitude now. I know everyone possess the basic intrinsic aptitude skills. I suggest you to start working on these books a month or two before your campus recruitment begins. The materials preferred for aptitude are

(0) Quantitative Aptitude by R. S. Agarwal.
(1) Shakuntala Devi’s Puzzle books.
(2) Puzzles and Teasers by George Summers (a bit tougher one).
(3) Previous year question papers of different companies.

You try to get the previous year question papers of almost all the companies. Few of the questions are repeated often. For your information, one particular company is using the same question paper for the past five/six years. So it is advisable to solve the previous year question papers. Maintain good contacts with the other college students, so that you could get the red-hot question papers from them. Don’t spend much time on these now. It is better to spend your time getting on with good projects and improving your technical knowledge now, so that you could have an easy cross over in technical interviews.

How do you feel? Campus placements are a cakewalk? Yah, it will be a cakewalk *only* after you do all these things. Plan your days effectively and execute them. It is a matter of four/five months of hard work. Do some good work, do something great that satisfies you. It is easier to get placement in the campus than in the off-campus. If you feel that nothing above appears to be good for you and you are looking for the way of improvement, talk to some seniors, staff members, relatives or anyone who could really help you out. Share your views/problems with them and people are always there to help you. Do well and excel. Remember, after you get your placement it is going to be your time. So can’t you make the campus placement a cakewalk for you? Make it!!

GLUG/GLUGOT Session #11

Today on the GLUGOT meeting we had a session on "Basics on programming with gtk+ libraries". The session is by Nithya. She started from the very basics of what is gtk and so forth. There was a good explanation on widgets, signals and events. She explained with examples of creating windows and different widgets, packing them within the containers, setting signals to them, handling functions for these signals and compiling these gtk programs. There was exactly ten people to the meet. We discussed on few doubts, had some clarifications and I think everyone was clear at the last. As a whole it was an informative session for GNU GUI programmers.

Jeevana School reunion

We Jeevanities had a gettogether today in Cafe CoffeeDay in Anna Nagar. First I thought whether should I attend the meet, coz I know very few people there (hum.., I studied only one year there). I had a invitation for that gettogether and I called upon Krishna Priyan whose number was specified in that invitation. I talked to him after around seven years I think. His voice was gigantic, but I could get a tint of the voice of him which I have heared during my school days. We talked about us, abt the meet, the arrangements for that and a few. He asked me to compulsarly come to that meet and he promised me that there will be a lot of people and we could have a nice time.

I then talked with Parasuraman (IT guy) and Senthil Murugan (ENC guy).They told we could go there. But the next day when I called them, they both told that they will not be able to attend for some reason. I was then put in a dilemma, with lot of questions, should I go ? will that be interesting? .. Ok then I decided to go. I started to CoffeeDay and to my surprise I was the first one to be there. I have never been like that before, even a single day in my college life. Then people slowly started to turn-up. First few girls came (many were my college mates) and then Arun Thangarajar came. We had a small intro with those I was not been before. Few minutes later the crowd begun to rise up. I could recognise only few faces there and many were new to me. But hear me, it is a nice experience to meet people whom you have not met for a long time. I had a talk with all those guys and gals, few retrospects, blah.. blah.. We then ordered for a drink.

The drink was over. We thought there was no much interaction between people and we decided to have some games, so that people will be forced to mingle within their team atleast. Krishna then separated us into three teams in a random order. He then called upon two members from each team. I was one amoung the two to represent our team. The game was to lit up a many number of candles I can with using a single matchstick. Hey the team A (Arun Thangaraj and Brindha) lit around 15 odd candles. I was in team B, we (Myself and Mathangi) could lit up a much of *zero* candles. Then the team C (Aravind and Bansuri) lit up around 7 candles. Since our team had the extraordinary talent of litting up zero candles, we were given another chance. This time another two people (Mohammed and SriRanjani) went and they could lit up 9 candles. So we wentup to the second place. We had few snaps and few fun over there.

It was around 02:00 pm, and everyone started to say they need to return back to home. So to finish up, we ordered veg. sandwich for all. Meanwhile few people (Radha Krishnan, Vinoth, Vaibhaw) started to move out. Then everyone was asked to talk a few words on this gettogether and the plans for meeting in the future. Mostly I could hear, "It was nice being here", from everyone. We also have decided to create an e-group for our set, so that we could maintain contacts with all and there be no communication gap amoung us. The final talk was over and it was time to pack off. Everyone payed their part in the bill and started to bid adieu. I came back with the thoughts of what had happened there, in my Major. Back to home and back to normal life.

I had a good joy there and came to know lot of new people. May this happen in future too. A day to remember :-)

New Year 2005

A new year has dawned a minute ago.. Happy New Year to all bloggers.